I know for a fact that I am a smart girl. This is a trait of mine that I am extremely proud of. My desk at school is covered in sky-high piles of books and worn out pens. I know I’m smart and my loud, Italian personality combined with this knowingness is a deadly combination. I sit in the front row of all of my classes, and I am the one speaking more often than not. I am the one who did the reading and wants to share my well-versed opinion I’ve been contriving in my head while I walked to class. But what I’ve learned is that no matter how well worded my response is- there will be some dude two seats away from me who will talk over me. He will talk louder and in a deeper octave but he will have no idea what he is talking about… yet, he has the whole class listening because he talked over me.

I’ve been watching the presidential race with a close eye for the past few months. What I’ve seen is an informed, educated, and experienced woman being dehumanized by a man who talks absolute nonsense in a louder voice. The way Donald Trump would woof “wrong” into the microphone, how he spoke over Martha Raddatz, and how he barked answers at the audience said more about him than the actual content of the questions. Watching Hillary Clinton smile politely into the camera while he seeped into her two minutes gave me flashbacks to the hundreds of times dude-bro in my gender studies classes yelped over me. Look, this is not about who you’re voting for - this is about the kind of world you want to raise your daughter in.

I’ve been Hillary more times than I haven’t. I’ve been the girl who eventually gives up and lets the man with a louder voice speak while I smile and pretend to take notes in class. I’ve been the one who closes my textbook and lets my professor teach inaccurate biases because his ego is more delicate than my education. I have been the girl who looks away from the creepy guy at the bar instead of telling him to shove a you-know-what in his you-know-where. I have seen my friends be Hillarys- shift their eyes to me when a guy says something offensive, or Locker Room Talk as some call it, instead of rolling their eyes and correcting him. The times that women keep their mouth shut turn into something else- something more worrisome. What happens when they stop speaking up when men say gross things to them? Or when they stop correcting professors, managers, and coworkers for mistreating them? Or when they don’t report sexual assault? Or when they become more comfortable keeping their lips tightly closed than they are hearing their own voice?

I don’t care what your political party is… write in Vermin Supreme, whatever. But what I do care about is what you are teaching our girls. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for the guy who tells me to shut up in English class because he is “done with my feminist bull sh*t”. A vote for Trump is a vote for the campus police officer who told a girl to shake it off when she was assaulted because there is way too much paperwork. A vote for him is a vote for the guy who told your daughter to relax when she wanted to be an athlete. A vote for him is a vote for the guy at the bar that told your daughter she’d be prettier if she just made a few, little changes to her appearance. This is no longer a presidential race- this is a race against time to help your daughters, sisters, friends, me, you, that girl on the train you never met. This is your opportunity to help.