“Flying Close to the Sun,” is a memoir by Cathy Wilkerson, who was a political protestor and a member of the Weathermen during the late 1960s-early 1970s. I was immediately drawn in by her story, which seemed suddenly very appropriate to bear in mind after the intense and failed political campaign by Hillary Clinton this spring. The endless barrage of articles and blogs pointing out the sexism used by or made towards Clinton and her campaign put gender issues right up to the front lines again and so it seems like a good time to think back forty years ago to the efforts, success, and failures made by so many women.

As a brief synopsis of the book, Wilkerson was born in 1945 and raised in an upper-middle class family in New England. She blossomed during the mid-late 1960s, finding her place among student protestors and political engagement, starting with the Student Democratic Society. But soon her political stance developed further into revolutionary ideology, and she became a member of the Weathermen—and then the Weather Underground, which used violent means for conveying their message. During this era Wilkerson also participated in the development of the feminist movement. She tried to balance her identification with women’s struggles while trying to see the bigger political picture of government coercion and war. It wasn’t easy. The Weathermen and SDS were notoriously macho groups. She sited numerous cases in which men in these liberal movements blatantly blocked women’s opinions and insulted their efforts at building the feminist movement.

Wilkerson’s memoir is not a glorification of the past, but an honest reflection of the era and her choices, as if she is still making sense of all the madness of that time. Despite the clear advancements, women are still caught in the proverbial Catch-22. Women are still subjected to intense scrutiny and obstacles that are put into place by men who have held the reins of political power. Clinton was subjected to all sorts of inappropriate and non-relevant criticism from her choice of pantsuit, to her “frigidity,” to her relationship with her husband. Following her defeat some critics sought to do a mea culpa by pointing out this unfairness…too little too late. The damage was done. We are such an image-conscious society and once the image has been tainted-there is no going back. Having passed thru 2nd wave feminism and moved into the 3rd if not the 4th wave, full of the growing complexities that make up this world, I find it shocking the backlash that so many women felt and the anger and aversion towards someone like Clinton. At times it felt as if they were afraid to identify with her. As Gloria Steinem stated in The New York Times, January 8, 2008 article “Women are Never Frontrunners:” “… what worries me is that he (Obama) is seen as unifying by his race while she (Clinton) is seen as divisive by her sex.”

As a woman born in the early 1970s and therefore a direct recipient of the effects of 2nd wave feminism, I am regularly inspired by the risks these women took for the Cause. It’s hard to imagine the efforts and sacrifices that these women made. Yes, we still make sacrifices today-but the scale is different. Our choices are more our own and so when I see women tearing apart other women about their choices, lifestyle or choice of pantsuit, it is frustrating. What gets lost in the scuffle are the core issues raised in the 1970s and still not settled: Daycare, healthcare, support for single parents, education, sex-education, and positive female role models in the news. Instead we see the TV show characters of Gossip Girls and how they are adored by millions of women because of the fabulous designer fashions as a cover article in the New York Times. (This in between a road bomb in Afghanistan and the global food crisis). Too many women will embrace these characters as “role models,” then they will admit a sense of pride for a women running for president. Many women of my generation say gender is not an issue; that they can’t identify with the early feminists; or that feminism is not relevant anymore. I have to wonder.