I can’t believe I’m still reading that BS comment over and over and over on this site. Along with, “I would have been excited for Elizabeth Warren.” JUST STOP.
There have been brilliant women who were strong leaders and would have made excellent politicians since the beginning of time. We haven’t been adolescents for the last 200 years who had to mature and evolve into viable Senators and Governors and Mayors and Presidents. We aren’t magically putting forth a unicorn called The First One. We’ve been standing here with those talents and skills and abilities for literally FOREVER. We just needed some white guys to let us access education, make space for us in their political organizations and movements, take a seat and stop sucking up all the air in the room so we can get our ideas, solutions and experiences into the reforms and legislation this country needs.
This election has shown how much more of that still needs to happen.
There is no requirement that a woman who enters public service be pure or perfect or have higher morals than the standard man running for office over the last two centuries. We are complicated HUMANS just like the men who have shut us out of government. Like all people who seek to work in public administration or run for office we might make mistakes in judgement, we might make awkward statements sometimes, we might have embarrassing personal lives, we might get angry and loud, we might have compromising ties and special interests we favor or support. We STILL deserve political representation and a chance to bring our ideas and solutions to the table just like all the flawed liberal and conservative men we’ve had to choose from over our lifetimes as voters...with no other options.
The Dudebro that is sympathetic and tells you he’ll work on your lack of safety from violent men with guns, try to get you equal pay and better childcare options but rarely delivers?
Or the Dudebro who tells you to get a gun, the workplace is for men and would have you give birth to your rapists’s baby?
Imagine if every time Trump appeared publicly there was large group of people, nearly all women, who asked him questions, analyzed his behavior, wrote about his remarks, talked about him on TV, judged his policies, his motives, his personality, his facial expressions, his body, his personal relationships and his LIKEABILITY.
How would the Election 2016 narrative be different?
It isn’t only Hillary. Our female politicians and candidates are trying to carve out a space in male-oriented, male-dominated political traditions from City Councils and School Boards to state legislatures to the US Senate. If you think Hillary is a hawk or a corporate whore or she’s riding the coat tails of her husband and so you just can’t support her, great. But stop pretending that there is somehow a ‘better’ woman out there we all should have held out for. That myth needs to die.