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Bill Clinton is our "first female president." novelist Mary Gordon said at an anti-impeachment rally in New York. (This was at about the same time fellow fiction writer Toni Morrison said he was the first black President.) This may be stretching it. But if not quite a female, he is the next best thing to it, our first feminist, even a feminine, president, so cued to emotion and feeling, so alert to nuances that may become crevices of opportunity. Few ever stepped out of the "prison of gender" so much as Bill Clinton, the mama's boy, sheltered by so many strong women, and so secure in their protective circle that at times he has seemed to be one of the girls. In many ways, most of his traits seemed to be female: He cried. He emoted. He hugged without mercy. He never stopped talking. His m.o. was seduction, not conquest. He tended to whine, and not threaten. He seemed to dislike, even fear, the armed forces. His physical presence appeared soft and squishy. He had a weight problem. People made fun of his thighs. True to form, he followed the feminist line on all points of theory. He gave them a Cabinet that looked the way that they thought that America ought to, not only with people of varying color, but of fierce-looking women and tame-looking men.
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