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This Entire Election Is About Gender.


If we’re being honest with each other, I’m glad we’ve reached this point. At least we can talk about what this election is really about.

This should not even be a contest. It shouldn’t. Nearly every editorial board in the country including ones that have endorsed Republican candidates for a century, have unequivocally endorsed her. Members of our national security, a former Republican president – pretty much anyone with any knowledge of what it takes to do this job is literally telling us that he is unqualified for the job.

Still, he is ahead.

He is leading in the polls.

Why?

Because he has a penis.

I’m serious. It’s the only reason he is winning right now. If anyone tells you that they can’t vote for Hillary Clinton because of her email server you should immediately stab yourself in the face with a blunt object. Because that is what progress in America in 2016 looks and feels like.

The very fact that this is a contest at all is the definition of a double standard.

She wiped the floor with him at that debate and guess what? It didn’t matter. Why? Because he was gracious enough not to mention her husband’s former indiscretions. We should applaud one man not bringing up another man’s past sexual dalliances.

You see, she is responsible for all of it. She is responsible for staying with a cheater. If she had left, let’s all be straight with each other – she would’ve been another cold divorcee. She owns his mistakes. Some other guy gets points for sort of not mentioning his mistakes. She just loses. She loses if she yells. She loses if she talks. She loses if she smiles. She loses if she is smart. She loses if she owns or is in any way proud of her intelligence.

This election is about currently nearly half of the country supporting a man who has spent the better part of the past 4 days, last night, and early this morning, bringing up the questionable past of a former Miss Universe. You see we can question what she does sexually, that’s fair game because she is a woman. We don’t need to question his own sexual past. That is assumed. Something he should in fact be proud of, or so his old Playboy cover might suggest. Or maybe as he sorts out his current rape investigation. Either way, it’s irrelevant. He’s a man.

In this election, women are fat, bloody pigs who react wildly when challenged, who are manipulative and crooked and vindictive. Is this election about her being a woman? You bet your ass it is. You may not like which woman got first crack at it, but there’s a reason she’s there now. It’s because it’s her that has been absorbing the body blows for the past 30 years (sorry Jill Stein – you can take a seat). It had to be her. She had to go first. Of course she did. She always has.

Still, she’s losing. Every single person – do not kid yourself - literally every single person in this country knows that she is more qualified. But only 40% are willing to even entertain the terrifying notion that we might open up this job to someone without a penis.

This election is about a penis. There are no social issues. Nothing. It is about what you think about women. It is about the burdens we carry with us every single time we open our mouths to be feminine but strong but not too strong – to be healthy but not too thin. To be able to throw back the cheeseburger with the guys, but keep the same waistline as a Barbie doll. To know that when the house looks shitty or the kids act up in the restaurant it’s always our fault. It is because we have always been afraid that if we are too vocal or too smart in class, that we would intimidate the cute boy and then he wouldn’t want to be with us. That strength drives them away. This is not new. We have always known this. I have no idea why I am so shocked to see this play out on a national scale.

I swear to God I have no idea who will win this election. Honestly, I think we’ve just totally underestimated how terrified people are of smart women. So all I can do is dedicate myself every day to raising a man who respects women, who does not compare them to farm animals, who embraces their sexuality, who wants to learn more, who wants to engage with them – who embraces their voice at whatever pitch it comes out at because that is irrelevant to the content of what they are trying to tell him. And I’m going to make it my life’s work to raise young women who will never quit what we’ve started here until we one day people hear them and see them for who they are and not the body part they lack.

I don’t know how this ends, but I swear to God it’s up to us parents of young boys and girls.

We’ve got to be the ones to finish this.

It’s enough.

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