I’m a White Dude and I Want a Woman President

Hi there. I’m a straight, white, cis-gendered, Jewish male. I’m 32 years old, so I’ve technically aged out of the 18–30 demographic that would suggest my allegiance to Bernie Sanders can be virtually taken as a given, but just barely. I lived in Brooklyn, NY for nearly a decade, then moved to Berkeley, CA, because Brooklyn apparently wasn’t liberal enough for me.

I voted for Obama over Hillary in the ’08 primary because I believed in his message of change. I don’t have any love for big banks or big business, I’ve met enough rich people to know better than to trust them, and I think expanding access to higher education to everyone who wants it would be possibly the most productive thing we could do to secure a bright future for this country.

Based on demographics, I should be solidly in the Sanders camp. I mean, I went to Wesleyan, for crying out loud! Wesleyan!

And yet, here we are. My name is Ben, and I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.

This is the part where I’m legally required to say that I like Bernie Sanders. And I do, I like him a lot. I like that he dreams big, and I like that he’s driven this primary contest to the left. If he somehow ends up becoming the nominee, I’ll vote for him in a heartbeat. (Full disclosure, though: I’d vote for a basketball with googly eyes if it meant stopping any of the Republican candidates from taking the White House.)

But I’m ready for America to elect its first female president, and I want it to be Hillary.

I could lay out all the reasons I’m voting for Hillary — there are a lot of them, and they’re pretty good — but plenty of people who are, frankly, a lot more eloquent than me (I mean, most of them never even mentioned their genitals, and I’m at best four paragraphs away from talking about mine) have already expressed them in any number of articles, essays, blog posts, videos, listicles, etc.

I could talk about policy or experience or her frankly ridiculous record of impressive accomplishments that have made life better for disadvantaged people all over America and around the world. But instead, I’m just going to talk about the one reason we’re all supposed to pretend doesn’t exist: I want a woman president.

All too often, when someone says they’re voting for Hillary because they want a woman president, the knee-jerk response is, “you’re just voting with your vagina!” The trouble here, of course, is that I don’t have a vagina. I have a penis, and Li’l Ben and I will be checking the box for Hillary in the California primary on June 7.

See, women aren’t the only ones who can consult their genitals on political matters. My wiener and I talk about this stuff all the time, and when we do, we talk about the future. I’m not talking about the future in a grand, sweeping, conceptual way; I mean the future as it will specifically pertain to us.

I’m not a dad yet, but I hope to be one someday soon. If I’m lucky enough to have a kid, I want to be one of those dads who tell their kid they can be anything they want to be. And because my kid will have 50% of my wife’s DNA, I have to prepare for the likelihood that this kid will be much smarter than me. So when I tell this awesome, half-genius child they can be anything they want, I want to be able to back it up with evidence. Especially if my kid is (gasp!) a girl.

By the time she’s old enough to go to school, I want her to look up at the faces above the chalkboard, or the holographic iBoard or whatever they have by then, and see someone who looks like her. (And if that face is right next to the face of the first black guy? How cool would that be?)

Because we tell our daughters they can be anything they want, and then we dress them up as princesses. That always struck me as a little odd, because the odds of them actually becoming a princess are pretty lousy. But hey, thanks to Princess Grace, at least there’s evidence that it’s technically possible. Whereas, if I tell that little girl I might theoretically have one day that she could grow up to be President of the United States, what proof can I offer her?

People tell me that if I want to see real change, I need to vote for Bernie, because the system is broken and he’s the only one who can fix it. Well, we have a long and proud history in this country of electing old white guys to be our president. So if we really want a change, how about giving a woman a shot? Let’s see if that shakes things up, huh?

Because we’ve never had a female president. Or a female vice president. Or a female majority on the Supreme Court. Or a female majority in the Senate. Or a female majority in the House. Or even a female majority among cabinet members. But we have had all-male versions of all those things many, many times.

Now I’m not saying that we should put women in all of those positions just to placate my hypothetical daughter, or just because it would be different from what we’ve done before, although I think you’ll agree that if you’re interested in change for change’s sake, that would be a big one. But no, I believe in electing the best person for the job. So isn’t it lucky that, in this case, the best person for the job also happens to be a woman?

Look, I don’t think that Hillary Clinton is perfect. She’s a bit more hawkish than I’d ideally like. She can be stiff and awkward when she’s campaigning, which is a rough trait in someone who’s running for president. Like everyone else on the planet (including Hillary — in fact, especially Hillary), I wish she hadn’t voted for the Iraq War.

But I don’t expect my president to be perfect. If that was my criteria, I’d never find a candidate to support. Human beings aren’t perfect. Men aren’t perfect, not that it’s ever stopped them from getting elected. Bernie Sanders certainly isn’t perfect, and the myth that he is — this notion of progressive purity and that he is the arbiter and embodiment of that purity — is actually one of my biggest issues with him (for a thoughtful breakdown of some of the others, read this excellent essay by Robin Alperstein).

Even if it were possible for a presidential candidate to be perfect, the first woman president isn’t going to have that luxury. She’s going to be imperfect, probably deeply so. Because in order to get into a position where she can even be considered a serious candidate for president — let alone clinch the nomination, win the general election, and actually do the job of leading the country — that woman is going to have to crawl through muck the likes of which a straight, white dude like myself can hardly fathom.

She’s going to have to shout to be heard, then be told she’s being shrill because she shouted and she needs to quiet down. She’ll have to compromise to get anything done, because if she doesn’t get things done, she’ll be brushed off as useless and weak. She’s going to have to be tough enough that no one would ever dare fail to take her seriously for a single second, but also soft enough that she never fails to be feminine, approachable, and likeable for a single second, and she’ll have to do those things simultaneously. And if she slips up, she will be burned alive in the media, both social and otherwise.

She will have to exercise supernatural judgment at all times — not only perfectly capturing the will of the people at that moment in time, but also anticipating how the will of the people might shift in the future — because her record will be ripped apart in ways that a man’s will not (for instance, she might take all of the blame for a problematic bill that she spoke in favor of, while her opponent, who actually voted for it, will not be held accountable for any of its problems and can actually use it to attack her).

She will have to be perfect. And not just as a politician. As a person, as a wife, as a mother, as a grandmother. She will have to dress perfectly and wear her hair perfectly, but we better not see any of the effort she puts into it. She will have to deal with people telling her she should shut up, telling her she’s too emotional, telling her she’s too cold, and of course, telling her to smile. And if she ever gets upset or loses her cool, even once, we will absolutely crush her.

This isn’t just when she’s running for president. This is what her life will be like for years, possibly even decades before her name ever appears on the ballot. I’m right about this. And for once, the reason I’m so positive that I’m right isn’t just because I have a wang. It’s because it’s already happened.

Hillary Clinton has already been through all that, and much more. And somehow, after well over twenty years of this crap, she’s willing to take on even more and even worse, because that’s how much she wants this. That’s how much she believes she could do some good in this country.

That kind of perseverance and grit is incredible to me. I get upset when it takes too long for someone to like my post on Facebook, but this woman has been ripped to shreds on a daily basis for almost as long as I’ve been alive, and her response is, “Bring it on. It’s worth it.”

Look, electing the first woman president isn’t going to end sexism any more than electing the first black president ended racism. The first woman president is going to face tremendous opposition from politicians, the public, and the press from the moment she takes the oath until the day she leaves office. Just ask what’s left of President Obama.

But the point of electing the first whatever isn’t just about achieving that milestone. It’s about passing it. It’s about making that thing, that first, no longer a novelty, so that we don’t all collectively freak out as much the next time around. It’s about smoothing the way for the next person.

Because every time we come close to one of those milestones and don’t quite reach it, we go back to the starting line, and it becomes that much harder the next time around. Because if a woman with Hillary Clinton’s qualifications — a woman who was an incredibly active and dynamic first lady, a beloved senator, a secretary of state respected the world over, a passionate and successful advocate for human rights for decades — can’t get across the finish line, what sort of credentials will the next woman have to bring to the table?

And for anyone out there who thinks that all these obstacles are specific to Hillary, that another woman, like Elizabeth Warren, wouldn’t have to face them, wouldn’t be picked apart the same way, you’re simply delusional. I love Elizabeth Warren, I really do. Ask her if she’s ever encountered sexism getting to where she is. Then ask her if she thinks she’d face more sexism or less if she was running for president.

Hillary’s already run through the gauntlet. And she knows there’s more in store for her. But she’s a fighter, she’s a warrior, and she knows that she’s not just doing it for herself. She’s doing it so the next woman who tries won’t have it quite so bad.

So, yes, I want a woman president, and I want one in this election. I want to get past that milestone as soon as we possibly can. I want it for the sake of the hypothetical daughter I might have one day. But I also want it for my wife, who is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met, and who goes to conferences a few times every year for work and inevitably comes back exhausted with stories of being leered at, followed around, or blatantly hit on. I want it for my mother who, like Hillary, devoted a huge chunk of her adult life to making life better for children. I want it for my grandmother, for my aunts, my cousins, and all my female friends, all of whom have stories of obstacles they’ve had to face for the crime of being women.

I want it for all the women in my life, and for all the women in this country who have fought day after day for a seat at the table, and who deserve to sit at the head for a change.

I want it because it would be a sign to the rest of the world that when America calls itself the Land of Opportunity, we actually mean it. We’ve already been beaten to the punch on this one so many times by other countries, it’s embarrassing. And I’m a white dude; embarrassment is a new experience for me, and I don’t care for it.

Oh yeah, and I also agree with like 98% of Hillary’s platform and I think she’d do a phenomenal job of actually governing. So there’s that, too.

People say we need a massive change in this country. I agree. That’s why, when we get our chance, my penis and I will be voting for Hillary Clinton.