Hillary Clinton and her supporters have made my personal day to day life a heck of a lot harder. Let’s not even discuss what a horrendous example of a feminist Hillary is-- that's a rant that deserves its own article. But this pompous, horrible candidate runs her entire campaign by promoting an image of herself as a strong, powerful champion for women. She demonizes the Republican party as being full of rich, white old men who hate the female gender in its entirety. Since she began her campaign for the 2016 presidential election, I’ve been met with far more criticism than ever before. As a young, proud conservative feminist, I have a big problem with Clinton’s platform.

All of a sudden, I have people telling me things like, “But you’re a girl… You can’t be a conservative AND a feminist.” Well, that in itself is a pretty sexist comment in itself, is it not? Because I’m a woman, I have to adhere to certain political principles and if I don’t, I must not value equality for my gender? How manipulative, and how grossly incorrect.

Feminism is the concept of gender equality, which is something I completely agree with and support. I just disagree on what causes and constitutes as inequality in today’s society. I don’t believe we live in a patriarchy where men are trying to oppress women. I don’t believe rape culture exists- because for it to exist in a cultural sense would be for it to be widely accepted in social norms, and I don’t believe it is. I believe a fetus’ right to life supersedes a woman's right to choose. I believe the wage gap can be largely accounted for by the number of women who choose to take time off from work to start families and because women are statistically less likely to apply for high power positions, not by workplace bias.

With that being said, I think we, as a society, need to encourage and empower women. We need police stations and shelters that will protect rape victims. We need to comprehensively educate young women on birth control options. I’m a female athlete, and I believe women should be respected for their athletic talent the same way men are, and I’m appalled by some of the sexist remarks that were made in the Rio Olympic Games- again, a topic for another article. We need to support young women in their youth so they grow up confident enough to go after those high power positions if that’s what they want, but we also need to stop attacking stay at home moms for not coveting those positions. Rather, we should embrace them because being a full-time mom is a hard job. I believe powerful women are everywhere; not just CEOs and lawyers and doctors, but teachers and moms and nurses.

I believe in equal opportunity and equal comfort- a woman should be just as comfortable in the weight room and engineering field as her male counterparts, and she should have the opportunity to pursue those passions. I believe in day to day empowerment of women- complimenting, supporting and encouraging my classmates and friends in whatever it is that they have a passion for. Hillary will continue to run her campaign demeaning young conservative women like me, and young conservative feminists like me will continue to support, encourage and empower each other.