With her second caucus win this weekend in Nevada, Hillary Clinton is doing well. She has 433 Superdelegates and is expected to keep raking them in as the months up until the nomination ensue. She is well-spoken on stage, she is leading with the older generation. She has a clear policy, and some may argue it's far better than many of the other candidates. She is without a doubt going to keep on winning on the Democratic side and might even get the nomination. With all of this in mind my question is, why are you begging me and women around the country to vote for her? Why are women like Madeleine Albright condemning women for not voting for her? Why are you calling for all the feminists around the world to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton?
In case you haven't heard, there's a "special place in hell for women who don't help each other" which I actually thought was something Taylor Swift once said thanks to Hillary Duff's character on Younger.
When I heard Madeleine Albright say this though, I was appalled. This just days after Cosmopolitan published a rather biased article entitled "Do You Really Not Like Hillary Clinton, Or Are You Just Sexist?" , it seems like feeling that a candidate more suited to my views was out there was worthy of a guilt trip. Sure, the quote is true in theory, since women should help other women not tear them down. Never did I see an asterisk at the quote that adds on "...win the presidency." The problem with condemning women who are voting for who they want to vote for (yes, even if the candidate is a man), is exactly that. You are degrading women by insinuating that every girl who wears a Bernie 2016 button is guilty of "internalized misogyny". Yes, I do understand the struggle women went through to get to the point where Hillary becoming a president is a very real possibility. Yes, I do realize Hillary has good points and that her foreign policy experience is better than Bernie's. Yes, I will sit here and nod my head when you tell me Hillary is a women so I need to vote for her. But, Hillary supporters who use this argument have to realize there are intelligent women in the world who aren't voting for Hillary and we need to stop reducing them down to "oh, she wants to follow the boys."
She wants to vote for a candidate, and it's not Hillary. That should be okay.
People who have tried to speak out about this in the press often go misunderstood or misquoted, which only makes the matter worse. A case such as this is one of Bernie's supporters who goes by his stage name Killer Mike. When quoting feminist Jane Elliott in one of his speeches, he spoke about how Jane told him that a "uterus doesn't entitle you to the presidency, your policies also have to reflect social justice". People took to social networks shortly after this to call him a sexist for implying that Hillary was nothing but a uterus. But, he was actually suggesting we look at all the candidates based on their political stances and policies. He later clarified that he doesn't want people to disregard sex in general but to do what is best for people of their gender and others.
But it didn't get the point across that it should. This point being, you should vote for the candidate you feel best represents everything you believe in. You should vote for a candidate who is passionate about all the things you are passionate about whether it be Black Lives Matter or the environment, or both. Look at the key social, economic, environmental stance of each of the candidates (All of the candidates, meaning even The Green Party and other minor parties.) Do you want someone who is corporately funded or has a grassroots campaign? Democratic or Republican? Do you have certain issues that you would your candidate to have a strong opinion about? How important is their level of experience? How about foreign policy?
Do not vote with your guilt or what people have labeled you as, vote with your brain.
In the end, you'll be happier about it knowing you picked whoever you wanted.
To Hillary supporters who have used her gender as a marketing tip (and that's not all of them): Stop believing that a woman who doesn't support Hillary is misled. Stop thinking that we all collectively hate woman, or we hate Hillary just because she isn't getting our vote as of right now. The answer to both of those is, we don't. We just think there are people out there who represent our views better because we've done the research just as you have with Hillary. Our views line up with Bernie Sanders, or a Republican candidate. Maybe some of us are even voting for Green Party's Jill Stein (in which you would be wrong about us not voting for a woman). That's okay. You know why? Women of the past fought hard for our right to vote, and it's our right to choose. We take it seriously, and there should be no correlation of our acts of feminism and our candidate choice. You can't disregard one because of the other.
That being said, if you are a woman and you end up siding with Hillary Clinton because of her policies, excellent. If you end up voting for her and one of your key points for voting for her is that she is a woman, that's great. There is nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton and I would never insinuate there is. The only thing that is wrong is trying to guilt other women into voting for a woman solely because she is a woman, even if that's why you are voting for her.
Let people all across the nation choose for themselves who they want to vote for, and don't try to guilt them into voting for anybody who they don't want to, for any reason.