“Just because she’s a woman,” is what people love to tell female supporters of Hillary Clinton. “You’re supporting her just because she’s a woman.” But what I find offensive in this statement aren't the implications against me, that I find Hillary Clinton’s womanhood to be a check in the “pro” column. What's offensive, is the implication that Hillary Clinton’s womanhood is an irrelevant and shallow factor in this year's presidential election, that it is frivolous to want to see a member of a historically oppressed group put into a position of power after centuries of exclusion. The significance of a female president is far greater than the word “just” could ever hope to connote.
I support Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman who refuses to sit back and behave, even when it means facing decades worth of discrimination.
Since the early 1990’s when her husband became president, Hillary has been targeted with vitriolic hatred for her refusal to sit in the passenger seat. She continued advancing her own agenda and fighting for the issues that mattered to her. She was the first president’s spouse to have an office in the West Wing and play a central role in policy decisions, even being appointed to lead a task force on health care reform. This refusal to be the president’s pretty cheerleader was not met well by critics. If she had been one of the thousands of men who used their influence to further the movements they cared about, she would have been seen as passionate and a revolutionary. (Sound like any other presidential candidates we know?) But she is a woman, and the American public didn’t know what to make of a woman who refused to behave. So Hillary Clinton was cast in the role of ambitious, cold and calculating. And now Clinton critics on both sides have picked up this narrative and run with it, but they refuse to acknowledge its sexist origins. Which leads me to my next reason.
I support Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman who stands up for the sexism and double standards still being applied to her.
“That was then!” the uber-liberals cry, “We young liberals have progressed beyond sexism!” I wish that were true. In reality, Hillary is constantly in trouble for seeming either too hard or too soft. If she cries, she’s weak. If she laughs, she’s scary. She has ambitions, so she’s pathological and insane. People don’t like her speaking voice, so they call her “shrill.” Whenever Hillary calls out this sexism or mentions the fact that she would be the first female president, she is derided for playing “the gender card” because to even mention gender is sexist. As much as I’d love to believe we are in a post-sexist society, that statement is as naïve and as harmful as claiming colorblindness in regards to race.
People can dislike Hillary, dislike towards any political figure is to be expected. But the current wave of hatred against Clinton does not exist in a bubble, separate and untouched by the past. This new generation of haters have picked up the narrative that has been steadily built by chauvinism and sexism over the course of decades – the narrative of a woman who is cold, pathologically ambitious and just plain not cool – but they refuse to acknowledge its problematic origins. As revolutionary and progressive as fervent Bernie supporters believe themselves to be, there is nothing new or progressive about the use of a sexist narrative, disguised by liberalism as totally innocent. If you want to convince me that there is nothing even remotely sexist about using this rhetoric against Hillary Clinton, show me a single male politician who has had to put up with something comparable.
I support Hillary Clinton just because she is a leader on women’s issues.
In January of this year, Planned Parenthood did something that they've never done before. They endorsed a presidential candidate. It should come as no surprise, that when women’s reproductive healthcare is under constant attack and the non-profit is fighting just to keep its doors open, that they want someone who will stick up for them sitting in the oval office.
When Planned Parenthood announced its official endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, the move came as unsurprising to some and enraging to others. Impassioned Sanders supporters raged on and on that Hillary doesn’t really care about women’s issues, and that Sanders has always been the only true champion of women’s rights. But Planned Parenthood has held firm and defended their endorsement.
Women and children’s rights have always been Hillary Clinton’s passion, just as economic inequality have always been Bernie’s. Her first job out of law school was at the Children’s Defense Fund and her first scholarly article “Children Under the Law” (1973), advocated for children to have rights and liberties separate from their legal guardians. As First Lady, she attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and uttered the now famous words, “Women’s rights are human rights.”
As a senator, she constantly introduced legislation aimed at expanding and protecting women’s healthcare, introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act on three separate occasions, and constantly defended women’s rights to birth control and contraceptives. As secretary of state, she launched the federal Office of Global Women’s Issues, created the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, and started countless global programs to aimed towards helping women and children living in rural parts of the world. Throughout the years, Sanders has been a constant supporter and voter of these bills and initiatives, and while support is good and valuable, Hillary Clinton has been a leader, consistently fighting to make women’s voices heard.
And yes, I support Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman.
Women are drastically underrepresented in the U.S. government. We hold less than 20 percent of congressional seats, we rank 98th in the world for women in the national legislature, and only twelve of the hundred largest cities in the country have female mayors. With leadership so dismally unrepresentative of its country's demographics, can anyone be surprised that women’s issues are either constantly ignored or under attack?
Having a female president wouldn’t solve women’s issues overnight, just as having a black president hasn’t mended all racial divides. But it is a step in the right direction. It means that after nearly two and a half centuries of leaders who represent one-half the country's population, there could finally be someone who represents the other half. Someone who understands and prioritizes the issues and experiences of women because she is a woman. As The Guardian puts it, “Only in a sexist society would women be told that caring about representation at the highest levels of government is wrong.”
Admitting that you want a woman to be president is usually met with scorn and used to reinforce the blanket assumption that this is your only reason for supporting a particular candidate. Is Hillary Clinton being a woman my only reason for supporting her? Of course not. If that were true, I would have been a fervent supporter of Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina as well.
But the factual statement, “Hillary Clinton is a woman,” encompasses more than a few of my reasons for supporting her. And if you want to say that these reasons are shallow enough to deserve a “just” before them, then maybe I’m not the one trivializing the issues.
