Why I support who I support

I haven’t talked much about who I’m supporting in the election, mostly because I haven’t found the words to say what I want to say. My friends and family know because it’s easier to talk about it endlessly than write it concisely in one post. I do like both Democratic candidates (and get icky feelings in the pit of my stomach from all the possible Republican candidates), but there is one who stands out for me for so many reasons. And finally I found something that says it all. I hope you’ll read it. Even if doesn’t resonate with you, I hope you’ll read it, all of it, with an open mind.

Goodbye to all that (#2) by Robin Morgan

Some of my favorite parts:

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this [the examples she listed] is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”

So listen to her voice: “It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.”

I’m upset that Michigan broke the rules, and I wasn’t able to express my support for her in the primary. But I really hope I have to opportunity to support her in the general election.