I don’t vote with my vagina.
Whether you’re being literal or figurative, you need to stop using this phrase.
Do people who use their vaginas to vote do their voting in a private room? Would stripping in a church be a form of blasphemy?
My precinct votes in a less-than-handicap-accessible church gymnasium. We have some sign-in tables, in-house detention desk-style booths, some tables with chairs, and a Scantron reader. Privacy is more of a theoretical thing for us. It’s like going to school and hoping that your friends don’t look at your paper. That’s why it sounds a little confusing to me.
Does it require training or is it instinctive?
I would think that voting with my vagina would mean I would need to order some Ben Wa balls, which could be a problem in the state of Alabama; we have very strict obscenity laws that make buying sex toys a bit more difficult than it is in the rest of the free world. Would I need to find a BDSM group to help me figure out how to use them? (Oddly, that’s probably easier to find in Alabama than the balls themselves.)
Is it sanitary?
Like…really. My OCD can’t even fathom doing this on that level. Would I need to bring my own pen to make sure?
Would I be filling out my ballot with a pen in my vagina? Or would I just be dropping it into the reader with my vagina?
I would think that it would be more difficult to fill out a ballot with a pen than simply dropping it in the reader. No matter how it works, it would be embarrassing.
Since my parents and I go to vote at the same time, would they see me half-naked? Would I see them half-naked? How would my father be voting?
See. This is something that a person growing up in a sex-negative state just can’t handle thinking about without getting a bit queasy. This isn’t Sweden.
Or do you mean that each person has to pick up a fake vagina-enclosed pen to fill out their ballot?
Oh, wait…it’s not what I think? It’s figurative, not literal? Oh.
Do you mean that people think that I’m voting for Hillary Clinton because she has a vagina? Isn’t that degrading?
I don’t go up to men and say, “Are you voting for Donald Trump because he’s got a prick like you?” I’m more likely to wonder if they’re voting for him because they’re pricks like him. But I wouldn’t ask because I actually know how to act in public.
I vote for candidates based on how closely they align with my beliefs. I voted for Kerry in 2004, Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Sanders in the primary this year. Guess what? Hillary is closer to what I believe in across the board. It’s not her vagina that is making me support her candidacy. When you suggest that that’s all I’m interested in, you’re basically saying that you don’t think that I am capable having fully developed beliefs. Yes, there are vagina-related issues that I strongly support — i.e. anti-discrimination laws and affordable healthcare (including reproductive healthcare and abortion). There are also issues that have little to do with vaginas that I support — climate change, gun control, taxes.
People made these same suggestions when Barack Obama ran. People were only voting for him because he was black. It wasn’t because his opponents made sexist comments about women or included Sarah Palin on the ticket. It was all because he was a black man receiving a major party’s nomination in a country where that had never happened before. People didn’t notice that Barack Obama’s support was coming from young people who tend to be more progressive across the board than older voters. All they could see was his skin color. And look at how that sort of narrow-minded thinking has turned out. If you can’t connect the dots between Trump’s candidacy and that sort of “he was only elected because he was black” thinking, then you’re not paying attention.
Whether you’re a woman or not, if you suggest that people are only capable of electing a woman because they have a vagina, then you need to stop. Stop using the phrase. Stop making the insinuation. Stop asking if people are only voting for her because she is a woman. It’s not about that. Even people who have talked about wanting to elect a woman as President aren’t necessarily voting solely for that reason. They may be with her, but I doubt that they would be with Carly Fiorina, Sarah Palin, or, even, Jill Stein. If they only wanted to elect her because she’s a woman, then they wouldn’t care what party she was in. Or did that logic escape you?
People have the ability to have complex thoughts and opinions on ideas. I understand that. Why can’t you? Maybe you should try thinking with your brain instead of asking people if they’re voting with their genitalia.
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