While lying in bed, mindlessly refreshing and scrolling through my Twitter feed, I noticed a trending hashtag that completely blew me away. The hashtag I’m referring to is #RepealThe19th. For anyone who may have slept through their history class, the 19th Amendment is the one that gives women the right to vote. Go ahead, reread that last sentence because I pray you’re as appalled as I am.
This hashtag was started by Trump supporters who realized that if women were not able to vote in this election, Trump would win by a landslide.
This is one of the saddest things a group of people in our country has ever done. It is our first ever election where there is a woman as a Presidential candidate and there is more sexism attached to this whole election than ever before. Clinton supporters have been being harassed by Trump supporters this whole election and now that they can physically see a threat, they want to completely take away every single woman in this country’s right to vote. This is about 10 million steps backwards from where we should be heading as a country.
Something that is utterly disturbing about this is that WOMEN are supporting and using this hashtag too. One woman by the handle @London313 tweeted “#repealthe19th I would gladly waive my right to vote to solidify the win! #TrumpPence2016 #NeverHillary.” Pick your jaws up now, this is real life. Other comments have included things like if you give women enough nice handbags we would gladly surrender our right to vote. Terrifying, but yes, entirely real life.
The scariest part of this hashtag is that it can actually happen. Remember how alcohol was a legal for a hot minute and how now it’s not? Yeah, this amendment can legitimately be repealed just like that too. It is not funny or a joke in anyway. Women have worked so hard to be where we are now and we are still fighting and a group of people supporting a person who could very well be the leader of the “free” world want to take away the simple, but beloved right of voting for women.
Instead of looking at different sides of things and trying to understand the thinking of others, people just want to strip you of your rights. THAT IS NOT HOW AMERICA WORKS. That is not how it was ever supposed to work. Did we all forget that this is the land of opportunity and the melting pot of the world and the land of the free and any other phrase linked with the United States? Sure we didn’t start out with giving women the right to vote, but that is part of the beauty of America. We are constantly attempting to better ourselves and to move forward or at least we should be. I can promise you things like #RepealThe19th will never “make America great again.”
