On Being A Vagina Voter

I am a woman and I am a Latina. I am a child of immigrants. I grew up in a minority community. I grew up in a working class home and was raised by a single mother. I am a college graduate and I am a millennial. All of these identities, and more, have influenced my lived experiences and together my experiences and every one of these identities, shape my politics.

I am a Democrat and I am a Hillary Clinton supporter. Identifying myself as a Clinton supporter has at times been taken to mean that I am uninformed. But I am not, I consider myself to be quite informed actually. I have, in fact, researched the work Clinton has done throughout her long career, a career that spans longer than my lifetime. The more I learn about the woman, the more impressed by her I am. The more I learn about her work, the more I realize how her work directly affected me growing up, and how it continues to do so today. Hillary Clinton’s life work has been one dedicated to breaking down barriers for those disadvantaged, and there are multiple identities of mine that inherently disadvantaged me since birth.

An uninformed voter is not the only assumption that has been made about me for being a Clinton supporter, though. It’s also not the worst assumption; the worst has been that I am a vagina voter. I take issue with this because it’s derogatory, and because it reduces me to nothing more than a woman voting for a woman just because she’s a woman. But the reality of my support, as I have explained a bit above, is not that simple. The reality is far more complex than that, because as I began this piece by identifying some of my different identities, I am more than just my gender. Every woman, whether she supports Hillary Clinton or not, is more than just her gender; and our gender, or any single identity of any person for that matter, shouldn’t be used to diminish our perspectives on our political system, the political issues, or our political candidates.

Why I choose to support Hillary Clinton and why I choose not to support Bernie Sanders are two different questions and the answer is not simply that she’s a woman like me and he is not. I will not say, however, that Hillary Clinton’s womanhood it not a factor, it is; but it is but one of many reasons why I support her.

One of the many critiques against Clinton is that she’s made mistakes. I won’t deny that she has made mistakes, but I refuse to allow those mistakes to define her. I’ve made mistakes, but they do not define me. There is no one I know who hasn’t made mistakes in their lifetime, but I do not define them by those mistakes. It is only fair to hold us all to the same standard. No one is perfect, and it’s unfair for us to expect her to be.

What I appreciate about Clinton is that she is able to look back, recognize her mistakes, apologize for them and move toward discussions that seek to address how to correct the mistakes, instead of just lamenting them. She is a problem solver and I find these qualities of her admirable. They are qualities I believe necessary of our next commander in chief.

These qualities are not ones I see in Bernie Sanders. In the debates, he has made his message clear. I know what he stands for, I know his goals, but what I do not know is how he plans to make them happen. His inability to answer questions, in the debates and for The Daily News Editorial Board, on how he is going to get things done tells me that he is not a problem solver. His answers, so far, prove Clinton right, “It’s easy to diagnose the problem. It’s harder to do something about the problem.”

When it comes to mistakes, Bernie Sanders is almost never able to admit to them and I find that problematic. Sanders has made Hillary Clinton’s support for the 1994 Crime bill a central issue of this primary season. This isn’t the only piece of legislation he’s used to create a certain narrative around Clinton, but I want to look at this piece of legislation in particular because there is a lot to learn from both candidates from their support for it, both at the time of it’s passage and in the present. While Sanders won’t stop saying how Clinton made a mistake supporting this bill and that her support for the bill shows her poor judgment, he glances over the fact that he actually voted for it. His 1994 record shows it. His 1994 speech on the bill, which has been widely circulated online, also show that he considered mass incarceration a problem at the time and foresaw it getting worse. He foresaw mass incarceration getting worse and he still chose to vote for this bill. That to me is poor judgment. So maybe Hillary does at times lack judgment, but so does he. Now, I don’t expect politicians to always get things right; politics is too complex for that. What bothers me about Sanders is his inability to admit when he has been wrong. His inability to admit that he too, sometimes lacks judgment, and the holier than thou narrative he has created for himself bother me deeply.

Which brings me to my next point, while Clinton apologizes and says lets re-examine the bill, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and let’s find solutions for what we know does not work; Sanders says he couldn’t not vote for the bill because it helped the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and because it increased regulations on guns. Now, when I consider his long record on guns, I have trouble believing him on the latter reason. What is most concerning to me, however, is that he makes excuses. He would rather make excuses for his mistakes than own up to them.

Growing up I was taught that a marker of a person’s maturity was whether or not they were willing to own up to their mistakes; making excuses was childish and immature. I was taught that it was only by admitting your mistakes that you could learn from them and grow. So when Sanders makes excuses for himself, instead of admitting a mistake and trying to find a way to amend that mistake, I can’t help but view him as insufficiently mature to become the leader of the free world.

Another issue that I find with his excuses about his support for the 1994 Crime bill is that it proves that he is not, as he and his supporters say he is, unwilling to compromise. The fact that he says he voted for the bill because of VAWA and gun control, despite him foreseeing the effects on mass incarceration (as video of his speech on the bill shows), tells me that he is willing to compromise some issues in order to move forward on others. I do not condemn him for proof of his willing to compromise, on the contrary, I respect and admire it. What I find problematic is that he prefers to create a narrative of being uncompromising. He prefers to tell people that compromise is bad, and this is not true. In fact, I think it’s dangerous to tell people that compromise is bad.

It’s become popular for people to complain about the ineffectiveness of our government and they often blame that ineffectiveness on our politicians’ willingness to compromise, but that is not true. The reason our government is in gridlock is that they are unwilling to compromise. Somewhere in our history we got it in our heads that our political system was a win all/lose all game, and that is not how it was meant to work. Our founders created our political system precisely to foster debate and compromise, because they knew that dissent would always exist and they wanted a fair system that could address the diversity of our voices.

So when Sanders says he will not compromise, what I hear is that he has a myopic view of the world and is intolerant of the diverse voices that exist throughout our society. It also tells me that he has forgotten how our political system is supposed to work.

Additionally, when I hear Sanders speak about how he will not compromise, I have trouble believing he can be an effective leader. I think about how there will still be Republicans in our Congress who do not agree with his positions (whose constituents do not agree with his positions) and how they will work to prevent him from achieving his goals. Sanders has been unwilling to recognize the reality that he will have to work with these people, and that is a problem. He cannot circumvent them and the people they represent. He will be forced to compromise if he wishes to make any gains for progressive change.

So while he criticizes Clinton on her willingness to compromise as if compromise were anathema, I see it as an asset. I view it as a necessary quality of our next president. Clinton actually recognizes that not everyone thinks like her, or prioritizes the same things as her. She recognizes the diversity of our voices, and the fact that it is only through compromise that we can move things forward in a way that works for everyone. She understands that our political system is not a win all/lose all game. When I reflect upon the political gridlock that’s pervaded our government for far too long now, I am impressed by how Clinton has, however rarely, managed to get people to compromise in order to actually pass legislation. This ability is why I know that she is the best person for the job. Because I’ll take incremental progress over no progress at all; and I do so knowing that it’s incremental progress that is more likely to be sustainable.

Another critique of Clinton, coming from men and women, is that she is a part of the establishment. That may be true but I ask you this: Is there anything more “establishment” than another old white man in power?

Anyways, these are some of the reasons why I support Clinton over Sanders. As you can see, whether you agree with my reasoning or not, my reasons are thought out. They go beyond he’s a man and she’s a woman. I do want to address, however, that while I don’t support Hillary just because she’s a woman, her womanhood is a factor in my support; and that is OK. Here’s why:

There have been times, when I talk about politics and the issues that matter to me, where I have been told that I’m just focusing on women’s issues. I have been asked to instead think of the serious issues facing our society instead of distracting myself with women’s issues. In fact, Sanders did this in an interview with Rachel Maddow. When she prodded him about Trump’s comments that a woman should be punished for getting an abortion, Sanders chose to glance over the issue. Yes, he admitted that Trump was wrong and agrees that women shouldn’t be punished, and that they should have access to reproductive healthcare, but he then asked us to move on. He asked us to ignore Trump and the stupid crap he says because they are a distraction from the serious issues. I find this problematic. Yes, what Trump said was stupid and awful, but it was important and it deserved attention. Trumps comments proved that men who try to restrict women’s access to abortions do not do it out of concern for our health, they do it because they want to punish us for thinking we deserve control over our bodies and our reproduction. So no, I don’t think the media should ignore these comments; and I think anyone who says that they should because they think it a distraction from the serious issues is someone who can’t understand that to women, it is a serious issue. Women are not some special interest group; we make up 50% of our nation’s population and our issues deserve to be addressed, not diminished.

It was this comment from Trump and this reaction from Sanders that solidified a thought I have had for a while. Women’s issues are not real they’re a myth. They are a myth because “women’s issues” and “serious issues” are not mutually exclusive; they are not separate. Women’s issues lie within the serious issues facing our society. What “women’s issues” are, are women’s perspectives on the issues; and this is an important distinction to make.

This distinction is important because the way women are often told that they’re issues are just women’s issues is often done so as to make us feel selfish and ashamed. This has been helpful in getting women to sometimes vote against their best interest by convincing them that they should be voting in the interest of everyone, not just themselves. So basically, women are being asked to sacrifice themselves, and their concerns, for the greater good. But who is sacrificing themselves for us?

So when I hear someone diminish my concerns to nothing more than “women’s issues”, what I hear is that my perspectives on the issues don’t matter. This is especially hurtful when I think about how I developed my perspectives. My lived experiences are what shape how I think about the issues, so to be told that my perspectives don’t matter is to say that my lived experience as a woman doesn’t matter. But it does to me, it does to women everywhere and we should be able to talk about how the issues affect us without having them diminished. We deserve to have our voices heard; we deserve to have our concerns addressed; and more importantly, we need it!

Because while men are worried about raising the minimum wage, so are women. But women are also worried about earning as much as a man in the first place. Because white women make 78 cents, Black women make 64 cents, and Latinas only make 54 cents to every one-dollar a white man makes.

Because while men talk about the high cost of college tuition, so do women. And while our gender may not affect how much we pay for college, or how much debt we graduate with, it does affect our ability to pay it off. As I stated above, women don’t earn as much as men, and our lower income means we’ll be straggled with debt for a longer period of time.

While men complain about the disparity between the rich and the poor, women do too. Our discussions about disparity, however, don’t end with disparity between the rich and the poor; we also concern ourselves with the disparity between men and women. I’ve discussed how women have lower incomes and how that makes them more likely to straggle with debt, now compound that with the fact that women are more likely to end up as single parents and heads of households. This responsibility to provide for not only themselves, but their child(ren), all while on lower incomes than men and with more debt than men, mean they’re more likely to end up living below the poverty line. And that they do, women and children make up the majority of those living in poverty.

While men complain about Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) and try to repeal it, women are grateful for it. Women recognize that the legislation that passed was not perfect, but its passage was monumental for us, despite its flaws. Preventive care and contraceptive coverage are now covered at no out-of-pocket costs. Being a woman no longer classifies us as having a pre-existing condition and maternity care is no longer an option; it is required. All these things have greatly alleviated healthcare costs for women, which is important because, before it, many poor women were priced out of healthcare. So, we’re glad for the relief. We would love to see the Affordable Care Act improved upon, but we do not wish to see it repealed.

Because while men are afraid that the government is coming for their guns, women are afraid they’re going to end up killed by them. They’re afraid their children will be killed by them.

I have addressed some of the very real and legitimate concerns of women. And while we’re told that our concerns are the concerns of our representatives, we too often do not see them address them. Because it just takes paying attention to the news to know that our laws do not work for us.

We know this because Marissa Alexander was convicted for standing her ground and firing a warning shot to protect herself from her abusive husband but George Zimmerman walked free for “standing his ground” and shooting and murdering a child.

Because Purvi Patel has been convicted, and is facing 20 years in prison for having what the evidence shows was a miscarriage.

Because in 2014, Alabama decided to allow judges to appoint attorneys to fetuses in order to be able to prosecute women for thinking they should have a right to make choices over their bodies.

Because it took 13 women willing to testify to get Daniel Holtzclaw, an ex-cop, to be tried and convicted for using his position and power to rape women.

Because until now there has been no justice for the nearly 60 women who have come out about their rapes, and from the looks of it, Bill Cosby will not face any charges in the future.

Because in states across the country thousands of rape kits have gone untested; and the longer they do, the less likely it is that a survivor sees justice for the crime committed against them.

Because at colleges across the country, when a young woman speaks up about having been raped and names her perpetrator it is more likely that she, not he, will be kicked out of school. She’s more likely to be left unable to complete her education and left to deal with the emotional struggle of having been violated; all the while he continues on with his education with little to no repercussion.

Because women who get swarmed and called murderers while walking up to the doors of a women’s clinic are not being harassed, they’re being “counseled”.

Our laws don’t work for us. They just don’t. I won’t ignore the fact that they’ve come a long way in doing so, or that there are men in our federal, state and local governments who keep trying to fix the system so that it works as equally for women as it does for men, but the truth is that they can only do so much. Men will never truly understand women’s perspectives on these issues because they do not know what it is like to live as a woman. I appreciate their sympathy but I want to be able to count on the empathy of more of my representatives. Their empathy will mean that they cannot just ignore the very real concerns of women because they know, first hand, how serious they are to us.

This is part of why I stand with Clinton. Her womanhood is not irrelevant. She understands the concerns of women across this country at a personal level. And women’s concerns deserve to be represented. I won’t overlook the female representatives at our local, state and federal levels. I admire and respect these women. But the percent of women in office is paltry when we consider what percentage of our country, women make up. We need more women in office and I think part of pushing us further in that direction is making ourselves comfortable with seeing a woman in the highest position of power possible in our nation.

I ask that men not be afraid of this scenario. Do not be afraid to not see one of your own in the ultimate position of power in our country. You’ve held the position through 44 men and for 240 years, you and your concerns are well established and ingrained in our laws. You have nothing to lose, but women have everything to gain.

I am, and will always be, grateful for our male allies. But that will not stop me from demanding more of our boys club government. We are living in 2016, and it is about damn time we end the paternalism that pervades our government, at all levels. I am tired of hearing women scream their lungs out about the forms of oppression that persist within our society, only to have it all fall on deaf ears. I am tired of hearing men repeat these women’s screams, and have them be heard and lauded for their compassion and progressivism. I am tired of having to have men speak for us when women are perfectly capable of speaking up for ourselves. It is time our male allies pass the microphone on to us. It is time they stopped standing in front of us as our representatives and time they stood behind us as allies should. It is time for women to demand, through their voice and their vote, that it be women who lead our fights.

Yes, I do believe more people should be supporting Clinton and I do believe more women, in particular, should be supporting her, but that is my opinion. While I may not agree with you, I will respect your decision not to support her. I do not think anyone owes Clinton his or her vote. As I’ve said before, our voices are diverse. We do not all think alike nor do we all prioritize the same issues, so if there’s another candidate that best represents your opinions and priorities for our nation than I encourage you to support them with your all.

I do ask two things of you, however. First, if you identify as a Democrat or a Progressive Independent, I urge you to open your minds and your hearts to Clinton. I am not asking that you give up Sanders as your first choice, by all means support him with your all. But if Sanders does not win the nomination, I ask that you be willing to look to Clinton as your next option. I urge you to unify the Party, because when I look at the other side, I know we cannot afford to have people just give up their vote. The other side’s candidates are far too regressive, and I fear that the strides we’ve worked so hard to achieve will come undone.

Second, I ask that you give Clinton supporters the benefit of the doubt, especially her female supporters. We do not deserve to have our support diminished to nothing more than a woman voting for a woman for the sake of being a woman. As I’ve explained, our support is far more complex than that. But even if there were women voting for Clinton on the basis of her womanhood alone, I think I’ve explained pretty well why they would have legitimate reasons for doing so. So I ask that you respect our voice and our support for our candidate; I ask that you not diminish us to nothing but “vagina voters.”

Unfortunately, as a woman, I know better than to think that my voice will be heard, which brings me to why I titled this piece the way that I did. I have not liked the use of “vagina voter” throughout this campaign because of its derogatory and diminishing effects. And while I ask you not to use it, i know that I cannot expect everyone to give it up, which is why I am choosing to embrace it.

I am done giving haters the satisfaction of being angry about it. I am done considering it an insult and I am reclaiming it. I will reclaim it the way I have had to reclaim “bitch” for being a woman willing to speak up about her opinions. The way I’ve had to reclaim “slut” and “whore” for believing in reproductive justice and for daring to think that a woman shouldn’t be judged based on what she wears. The way I’ve had to reclaim “corporate Democratic whore” for believing in a woman who was able to successfully navigate the male dominated world of politics. So by all means, call me a vagina voter; I will embrace it, and I will wear it as a badge of honor.