There are multitudes of ways in which a person can experience oppression. Sometimes we realize it in the heat of the moment, sometimes not until weeks or months or years later. There are probably some instances that have gone entirely silent throughout history.

That being said, there are many times when discrimination does happen, blatantly so, and it seems that the world has just started to listen to the voices screaming for relief.

People experience oppression for many things about themselves that they can’t or won’t change. That includes race, religion, gender, sexuality, or a combination of any or all of those things. The reasons for and histories behind discrimination are different in every country, specific to each culture.

Here in America, we’ve been working on women’s rights for a while. We’ve been able to vote for (almost) a whole century. Despite the continuous wage gap and sexualization of women’s bodies without their consent, we’ve gotten pretty far in comparison to other countries around the world. Now that it’s 2016 and we finally have a woman in the running to become president and it seems as if we still can’t let women enjoy their own success.

Why, whatever do you mean? There’s a woman running for president, isn’t that enough?

Shockingly, no, it’s not. Now, hang in there for a second while I talk about Hillary Clinton, I promise it’ll come back around.

Before you knew her like you most certainly do now, she was Hillary Rodham and she was an extremely intelligent young woman, whom many people believed would go far in life (how much of a relief it must be that they were correct). She graduated with honors from Wellesley College and got her law degree from Yale, where she met Bill. She then turned down his first marriage proposal so she wouldn’t be inclined to link her future to his.

Now, if you heard only those accomplishments of a woman, wouldn’t you think she was badass? Even if you knew nothing else about her, those things alone are impressive.

Let’s fast-forward to present day, just days after her nomination to executive office by the Democratic National Committee. Women and men, from sea to shining sea, are celebrating this historic event.

The country seems pretty evenly split between Clinton and Trump, and there are millions of reasons and rationalizations for each and every voter’s choices in the upcoming election. You can believe that Hillary is the best or the worst for this nation, you can believe that Trump is either/or as well. You can believe that they’re both disastrous and we’re all doomed.

Whatever position you decide to take, it’s yours, and yours alone. You can have any and all reasons to form your beliefs. I think that’s a relatively universal agreement and, if you’re not quite on that level yet, you should probably stop reading Twitter for a few days.

This is where it all comes together: stop telling women that Hillary Clinton’s gender “shouldn’t matter” in their decision to vote for her or support her campaign. Actually, stop saying it in general. Her gender does matter, just maybe not to you.

It matters because Hillary Clinton has battled sexism throughout her life, just as I have. I can empathize with her on that fundamental and extremely personal facet of womanhood and, whether or not you can participate in that empathy, it’s influential to my political beliefs and those of women in every demographic of the population.

I’m not saying that this single-point view of politics is the most beneficial for democracy or for our country (that’s for another article, though). I’m not supporting the idea that her gender should overwhelm the discrepancies and obvious mistakes in her campaign.

However, there are registered American voters who believe that Hillary’s gender is a powerful factor in her candidacy, and others believe that it’s a reason not to vote for her. Either way, it matters to someone, and that’s enough.