Story highlights Dasha Burns: Dust-up over feminists chastising young women cool to Clinton backfires like a mother-daughter spat

She says despite Sanders' appealing idealism, young women should know election's importance, Clinton must show she hears them

Dasha Burns is a writer and works as a strategist and creative content producer at Oliver Global, a consulting agency where she focuses on leveraging media and digital technology for global development. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) An intergenerational clash within the feminist movement is playing out online and in the media. Surprisingly, two of the most iconic feminist leaders are the cause of the latest controversy: Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright. In trying to convince young women to vote for Hillary Clinton, they've instead incited a backlash.

At a rally for Clinton over the weekend, former Secretary of State Albright said that women who didn't help other women went to "a special place in hell." And on Friday, Steinem told Bill Maher that young women were breaking for Bernie Sanders, in part, because "when you're young, you're thinking, 'Where are the boys?' The boys are with Bernie. ..."

Dasha Burns

The tone-deaf comments did not go over well with young women.

If you read some of this conversation out loud, it sounds like a textbook mother-daughter spat. Frustrated with her daughter's decisions, Mom thinks she knows what's best and tries hard to get through to her. Daughter lashes out, feeling patronized and lectured. Both parties feel like they aren't being heard and resort to saying some things out of frustration they don't really mean.

But this is not a family feud -- it's a national election -- and it can't end in slamming bedroom doors. And in this case, young women do have a voice (it's called a vote) and it's going to be heard whether Clinton likes it or not. It's just short of an embarrassment that feminism in the Democratic Party has come to this -- where some feel like they must resort to essentially parenting and chastising their younger peers.

Read More