It is hard to speak about the complex politics of sex and gender and race, or feminisms for that matter, in a presidential campaign. But we need a dialogue that creates some space to really think about the way gender, and with it race, are a part of the present campaign.

A big disappointment of this election for some is that Hillary does not seem like more of an agent for/of change than she does. She is instead caught remaking the old-Bill's old-boy political networks. In `92 Hillary promised herself as a co-president that was newly different at the time. Today she promises Bill, and a co-presidency seems old hat. The footing has shifted for Hillary, but she does not get it. Even if not enough has changed in the last decade, too much has changed to make Hillary's run for president remarkable. And Barack Obama is starting to get it. So, he says that his mixed-race family and the interplay of race and gender especially for women of color must be part of the narrative of change.

By now several countries have female presidents: Liberia, Chile, Germany, Argentina to name a few. India, Israel and Pakistan had women leaders long before the U.S. talking about it. Hillary simply expresses a new form of nepotism within this last enclave. We should not forget Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, or Madeleine Albright who make clear that powerful females can be elected and appointed to office. And we should not forget General Janis Karpinski who oversaw Abu Ghraib prison or private Lynndie England who humiliated prisoners there. But women occupying previously manly spaces do not inherently mean that sexual or racial or gender equality exists. As such, females like Hillary can act as sexual decoys.

A decoy is a misrepresentation-one thinks one sees something that is not really there. So although Hillary is definitely female, she has no record of advancing women's rights at home or abroad in spite of her rhetoric at the Beijing Conference on Women. Of course, I guess it also matters how one defines rights and feminism. But Hillary has never identified herself as a feminist, like Michele Bachelet has done as Chile's president. Hillary has said yes to cluster bombs, yes to Israel's bombing of Lebanon, yes to curtailing abortion, yes to a constitutional amendment against flag-burning, no to gay marriage.

All this is not to say that Hillary is sometimes held to different standards because she is a woman. When she is criticized for her cleavage and her cackle or called a bitch this is unacceptable misogyny. The rub here is that Hillary will not speak honestly and forthrightly about this discriminatory treatment or the reality that despite her run for the presidency we still live in a white man's world.

The presidential candidates need to listen up. There are as many kinds of feminism(s) as there are ideas about what a woman is, can be, or should be. In part this is because one's sex, as in female, does not automatically clarify one's notion of gender, as in one's notion of womanhood. Or as Simone de Beauvoir stated years ago: one is born female and becomes a woman. So the woman we choose to be is complex, and plural, and not homogeneous. It is then no surprise that Hillary is running into problems assuming she can count on women-as though we are some homogenous group-to vote for her because she is female.

Hillary's problem is that she is a neo-liberal individualist who uses her femaleness for her own gain. As such she does not have, nor has she ever had, a coherent feminist and anti-racist political agenda. Instead her silences speak a denial of the significance of gender and race in everyday life. Barack has begun to challenge her on her silences and manipulations and her purported claim on women. He is beginning to articulate a progressive agenda that recognizes single women parents and their needs and says he is committed to making the changes necessary to embolden women.

Hillary acts as though gender is and is not at issue. She says she is not running because she is a woman, or as a woman, but because she is the best qualified. And yet her best qualification that she offers as her experience as first lady. She no longer even tries to appear as though she is her own person. She has dropped the Rodham, and promises black voters in South Carolina, that if they vote for her it will be like the Clinton years again.

Hillary, you should stop saying that any individual can be president and then also say that you are glad to be the first female to run for president. Stop saying that your opponents criticize you not because you are a woman, but because you are ahead, and then go to Wellesley to mobilize young female voters. Stop using your life as first lady as putting you in the know. Stop talking about "my husband, Bill". Stop courting women with all the above while acting tough in your pantsuits. I do not understand why people, especially the right wing think that Hillary is a feminist other than she once said she was "no stand by your man woman", and that she doesn't bake cookies. But she does stand by her man, and she tells us she now likes the heat of the kitchen. She says she can win. She says that "sometimes the best man for the job is a woman" while promising to win in the "all-boys club of presidential politics".

Hillary keeps bringing up the woman thing and then closes it down. She is clearly female, but has not come out as a feminist, nor does her record as first lady bespeak feminism. As first lady she stood by and said nothing about the crisis of day care in this country, or the misuse of immigrant women as nanny's, as two women lost their nods at attorney general, and she turned her back on Lani Guinier who was nominated and then dropped, to work in the civil rights division of the justice department when wrongly labeled a quota queen. As first lady there was no loyalty to the issues or the people related to women's and civil rights.

Barack seems to be gaining against Hillary as he exposes her so-called experience as too much a part of `politics as usual'. She has mobilized the formidable Clinton machine, but she still takes second place to Bill, even though she may be as consequential as he is. No male candidate for president has the `wife' status to deal with like Hillary does, but she won't talk about it anyhow. She does not talk straight about her life as a woman, or a wife because this exists outside the realm of her neo-liberal politics. Chelsea is nowhere to be seen in the campaign and I assume that this is because Hillary needs to seem manly, rather than motherly, at least for now.

What is with the pantsuits? We have yet to see Hillary in a skirt. I don't have a problem with pants, but why all the time, as though they are glued to her? When image is everything, why have her handlers chosen this one? It is as though female bodies are too troublesome in the world of politics. Instead of bringing her body with her, Hillary seems to be trying to hide hers, like a decoy might do. Hillary is and is not female in this campaign. This duality is her greatest liability. She has chosen to compromise about the one thing that has no room for compromise: being honest about the complexity of one's sex and its relationship to gender and race in this country.

When Hillary was asked in a recent presidential debate about whether she would appoint only pro-abortion judges when president she refused to answer the question and instead said that she supported the right to privacy. She only spoke within the vague rubric of privacy rights with no mention of women or their bodies. Without this clarification, privacy is simply a universal right, and has no connection to reproductive rights for women. Roe v. Wade was decided using privacy rights to defend a woman's right to her own body. Barack, listen up.

Hillary voted with Rick Santorum and co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act that will allow workers to refuse to perform key aspects of their jobs-pharmacists could refuse to fill birth control prescriptions or police officers refuse to guard abortion clinics. Really?

Hillary wants the woman's vote and yet does not want to risk being identified as a feminist, or too feminine, or too soft, or too whatever. So she says too little and does too little to mobilize women. But she does not get it. She is a female body in men's clothing. She is a sexual decoy who allows her husband to philander and to use other women for sex.

Gender is changing, and Hillary running for president bespeaks that it is changing, but not necessarily in progressive ways for most women. So as more women must labor in their homes, and on the job, and in the grocery store, and on the battlefield, etc. they need a presidential candidate that recognizes these changes and speaks to the new needs these changes create: day care, environmental protections, global peace, good schools, affordable health care. Men and women share these needs even if differently. So gender is not just about women.

Hillary is similar and different to her male opponents, much like gender itself. Gender is never simply an either/or option. A November CBS poll found that Hillary is thought to be the best person for overseeing war as commander in chief and Barack is found to be more likeable and more likely to create change. People think Hillary can win the presidency and might vote for her because of this, but would choose to spend an evening with Barack, rather than her, if given the choice. So does Hillary act tough so she isn't seen as too nice, and does she do this because of her fear of being engendered as too womanly in the campaign? So she de-genders herself in order that she not be gendered and the public re-genders her by viewing her within the man/woman divide. Obama as a black man becomes the non-threatening male and Hillary as the white woman becomes the militarized female. So are men the new women? and women the new men?

Lots of the anti-Hillary foment is misogynist and this makes it tricky to oppose her. But, by being a female man-her love of power-also makes it necessary to make clear that vaginas and penises are not what define gender. They instead allow for an easy misreading--that the biological sex of any person supposedly defines and determines their gender and their politics. But gender is both ossified, as in the way people think about biological sex and very fluid and changing as in women are the new men. If Hillary really ran on the change that Barack speaks of maybe she could win. But she won't, and can't, because she is stuck in centrist neo-liberal politics that is already structurally gendered and raced. So her individualism-as in any one can win the presidency in the U.S.-is not working for her because she is not enough of a feminist who recognizes the changing terrain of gender and race.

Hillary hopefully will be unsuccessful in using her female body and women's rights Barack and Hillary both went to Selma, Alabama near the beginning of this campaign to connect with the important and difficult civil rights history of this country. Barack says he is black enough to know that his roots are in Selma; Hillary says that she embraces the struggles that started here. They are each supposedly courting the black vote; he as a black man that some say is not black enough, she as a (white) woman who is married to Bill who sometimes has been called our first black president. Whether this depiction makes any sense at all will be saved for another day

There is gender switching and that also means racial confusion. Hillary is running as a white man-experienced and tough-- and Barack is depicted by Hillary as inexperienced, and by default as a black woman? Yet she is courting the black woman's vote. But who gets to say what the experience is and what it counts for? And Bill is said to be black and Obama is pitted against him as not black enough. Meanwhile some black women are said to favor Bill and worry that Barack would be killed before he would be elected anyway. Hillary meanwhile promises black women that if they vote for her she will deliver Bill. Black women are neither simply black (men) nor (white) women but simultaneously both black and female. Obama is neither simply black or a (white) man. Hillary is neither simply white nor a woman. They are each always both and never simply one or the other. In this sense gender and race are always being defined and changing. Barack should address this changing reality as he speaks to the need for change. He need not silence gender in the fear of giving it to Hillary; nor silence race because he fears being regendered black.

Much of the election rhetoric aligns Barack with his race; mixed as it is, but also black given the surround. And Hillary is aligned with her sex (she is female), and her gender (she is a woman). The usual race/gender, either/or split is in play: Barack is black and Hillary is a woman. But actually one could as easily say, that Barack is black and Hillary is white. Or, that Barack is a man, and Hillary is a woman. Each one has both a race and gender. He is a black man and she is a white woman. Each one represents both race and gender. When pundits speak about either one of these candidates mobilizing the black vote, it needs to be said that black women are in a really tough spot here. Some of them embrace both parts of themselves. They are black women and feel close to Barack because he is one of them; and Hillary because she too is female. So Hillary asks black women's groups to break barriers with her. She silences the race issue and asks them to identify with her as female. She says this is an election for breaking barriers and she wants them to break the gender barrier with her, not Barack. She wants them to be female and not black.

Barack needs to speak while embracing race and gender and then he may mobilize both white women and women of color on behalf of creating racial and gender equity in this society. Take the real risk here and speak truth to power. Say you will work for all of us while recognizing that misogyny and racism make this very hard to do. This is both good politics-white men are a minority in comparison to men and women of color and white women-and a politics of social justice. As a white female who is an anti-racist feminist, speak as you say you will, for us all.

For a much fuller accounting of Hillary Clinton's record as well as discussions of feminisms, race and gender see my books: The Color of Gender (University of California Press, 1994); Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st Century (Routledge, 1996); Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy (NYU Press, 1998); Against Empire; Feminisms, Race and the West (Zed Press, 2004); and Sexual Decoys; Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy , (Zed press, 2007).