The layers of hurt are just so deep.
I'm not saying I'd have voted for ANY woman but I was counting on electing a woman and the fact that we didn't against someone so wildly unqualified hurts me.
A personal anecdote that keeps popping into my nogs.
I spent all of my high school days busting my hump for the class of 1999. I served as sophomore and junior class treasurer, I led our spirit committee for three years, I did all of the footwork to scout out prom locations and costs and borrowed my mom's car to drive my classmates around to see them all. And I was planning to be the senior class president. I was ready and I had earned it.
When the time came for elections a football player approached me. Friendly guy, bit of a stoner, the lovable flake. He had decided to run for president. He was sort of mocking me but as a professional high school politician I kept my cool. I told him that if he felt like he had something to offer our class he should and I'd run my hardest to beat him. He laughed. I went home and cried.
Either I got to him or his flakey stoner-ness made him miss the filing deadline. Either way he flaked and I ran unopposed.
It hurts that this doesn't just happen to high schoolers. That the scale is boundless. And yes, it could have happened to a nerdy boy - it is generic light bullying. But my femaleness and my preparedness were absolutely being used against me then. And they are used against women now. Because we are used to it and it feels shitty but normal. I'm still optimistic for little girls today. Scratch that. I was optimistic until we just showed them this stark example between a qualified woman and a man who was not only unqualified but outwardly hostile and disrespectful to women.
I remember 16 year old me crying in my car, why the fuck is 35 year old me having to do so again?
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1 comment:
I know. Oh, I know, I know, I know. I am here in the onion layers with you. I think about it everyday when my students react differently (more disrespectfully) to female teachers than males... when I remember discovering an old "offer" letter in the files I inherited at KCTS and learned that the man who had done the job before me had started years earlier making thousands of dollars more a year... and even when my male students never use exclamation points but my female students feel like they need to use them to be heard.
My heart also breaks for the old women who said they wanted to see a qualified woman in the White House before they died... and instead they have this.
My heart breaks when I think about PBS News Hour anchor Gwen I. dying just days after the election... what terrible news to have on your mind then.
I still don't know what to do... but tears seem like a perfectly reasonable response at times. You are not alone!
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