I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I think she is your typical scheming, conniving politician, and we disagree on fundamental ways to run the country. She has huge monetary donors in her back pocket, and I know that those who contribute the most money to a candidate also influence policy. In my opinion, she cannot claim to be the face of feminism after nearly starting a "mommy war" in 1992. Her marriage also emulates heteronormativity, and I am not sure the gender roles will shift if she is in the White House. Clearly, Hillary Clinton is not my politician of choice in the 2016 election.
However, I saw something recently that disturbed me to the core. A friend of mine shared a post denouncing Clinton, and it was pretty tame. I can tolerate that since I share posts denouncing Trump and Cruz on a regular basis. He has a right to his opinion. What sincerely bothered me was the comments underneath. Someone, who will remain nameless, replied: "of course I think Hillary should be in the White House...vacuuming." The scary part? It got more likes than any other comment on the post. There were others too vulgar for me to repeat, some of which referred to Bill's affair and essentially blamed Hillary for not satisfying him. How indicative of how we view women in society: sexually and domestically subservient to the ever-growing male ego.
Of course, the comments only continued. And of course, as anyone who knows me could have predicted, I defended her. It bothers me when people judge women for not voting for Hillary, as if our charge as being women is to vote her into office. I find that point of view very sexist, actually. However, I believe it is our charge as women (and as a human race!) to defend Hillary or any other woman who is facing sexism. All women have or will experience some form of discrimination or trauma related to her gender, or she will be prepared to deal with it. For instance, my conservative parents will tell me sexism is not as bad as we, feminists, claim it is, and then tell me not to walk alone at night in the same breath. They are going to kill me for using that example, but it is the best way I can describe the dichotomy of how women are expected to exist within our society. Hillary is no exception, and any comment about her relationship with Bill involving his affair demonstrates how we expect men to sexually stray if their wives are not satisfying them, but expect women to react if their husbands are caught.
In essence, I will not vote for Hillary. That is not my duty as a woman, as I require more from my candidate than merely her gender. But it is my duty to defend her against sexist, degrading comments. If we all adopted this attitude of defending people of whom we may not be fond, the world can be a much better place.
