At last today marks the end of a long and divisive US Presidential Campaign. It also marks an historic occasion. It’s the first time Americans are able to vote for a woman from a major party for President.
Although as staunch conservative Republican my mother wouldn’t have likely voted for her, as a woman who wanted to become the first woman professional baseball player, I think she would be pleased. She was an early proponent of women’s rights and she instilled in me from an early age, women should have the same rights as men. An avid softball player she had wanted to become the first female professional baseball player as a young teenager.
It was she whose life inspired me as a young 12 year old to do a presentation for an English class on the women’s suffrage movement in America. This was back in the 1970’s when women’s rights was taking off and feminist anthems like “I will survive” came out. I bravely donned my maxi dress with my wrists bound, a painfully shy introverted nerd who longed for nothing more as a young 13 year old than her classmates approval, and in front of these classmates many of whom sexually harassed and bullied me (back in the day when sexual harassment was yet to be defined), I started my spiel (Susan B. Anthony as my role model who gave me my courage), “I have been bound by the chains of a man.” Yikes! Needless-to-say, I was mocked for days afterwards. But, also since then, I have never wavered in my support for the rights of women and girls.
Another painful step in my journey was in 1996 when I decided to speak out as a Conservative Evangelical Christian woman against the gender discrimination I faced in this environment. The occasion was a Promise Keeper’s March on Washington, D.C. where male Christian evangelical leaders were marching on Washington, D.C. to take leadership of their families back, whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean. I nearly crashed my car when I heard a prominent evangelical leader preach on the radio that Deborah, the Judge, in the book of Judges, a fierce woman leader, was God’s second choice because there were no righteous men to do the job. I suddenly woke up and realized that I actually believed that lie! I was angry, upset and didn’t know where to go.
As an international leader for a large nondenominational nongovernmental organization, I was shocked to realize that I subconsciously believed the lie that permeated the culture of this organization, an organization that pays lip service to women in leadership, that I was a second class leader because God’s first preference for leadership was men! This prompted me to read Dance of the Dissident Daughter, a book by Sue Monk Kidd, former editor and contributor to Guidepost, a fairly conservative evangelical publication. My background was similar to hers, so if she found her way out of this crazy situation where I was actually allowing myself to be defined by conservative white evangelical males and their faulty theology, then, I could too.
This took me on a long journey of reading, studying and writing about women’s equality, including every genre of theology about gender equality out there. In fact, for those of you male theologians who still advocate that women cannot become ordained pastors and who do not think I have the theological chops to back up my position, I do and I will happily take you on.
I went on to do an MA in religions, gender and cultures and an MPhil in feminist ethics from the UK University of Manchester in politics. For my MA, I used female genital mutilation (FGM) as a case study for looking at how religion and culture can be used to form a universal feminist ethic that positively works to end traditional forms of gender discrimination such as FGM and the trafficking of women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation. My MPhil involved developming an ethic of flourishing which goes beyond human rights ethics and looks at how to promote the flourishing of all people irrespective of ethnicity, color, gender, dis/ability, nationality, class, or sexuality or any combination of these factors. I write extensively about this now and represent this ethic in all the work I do.
I am a feminist, which originally and actually means equality of rights for women and girls to men, despite the baggage it has accrued over the years. Part of this journey also involved setting up a center for international justice and reconciliation for the large interdenominational nongovernmental organization mentioned above. The center’s main focus was gender equality, a difficult cause to campaign in that conservative evangelical environment. And for nine years as part of my journey since 1996, I lobbied at the United Nations to end all forms of violence against women and girls. I have held many positions since, one of them serving on a local women’s centre as a Board Trustee, but all have a common theme–ending all forms of violence against women and girls and promoting the flourishing and dignity of all human beings.
All that to say, today is monumental for me and for other women and girls like me who have fought and campaigned in myriads of ways for gender equality. We have fought so that our daughters, nieces and their daughters, and their granddaughters would not have to face the obstacles that I have and the women, most notably the suffragettes before me, have faced. One incident that really sobered me was the It’s not Okay campaign that was unleashed on social media after Trumps Access Holly wood comments about being able to grab and kiss women without their consent.http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/11/497530709/one-tweet-unleashes-a-torrent-of-stories-of-sexual-assault I was stunned, but not surprised when friends and female relatives also began sharing their stories about how they’d been victims of sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment. These stories are heart wrenching, and I’d ask you to read them if you haven’t as this is part of what us women and girls are fighting to end.
Whatever you think of her, Hillary Clinton has fought a momentous battle. She fought a heroic campaign in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries which she lost, only to go on and serve a term as her primary opponent, Barack Obama’s, cabinet as Secretary of State. Then, in 2015 when she was could retire and rest on her laurels as a life long campaigner for women and girls rights, she threw her hat in the ring again. Once again, she faced a grueling primary and then went on to fight a grueling campaign, the likes of which we’ve not seen in our lifetimes; one in which her opponent broke every norm of social decency in a presidential campaign, one in which her opponent called women miss piggy, ugly, nasty, etc, one which slandered ethnic minorities (Miss Housekeeping anyone), one which stirred up racial hatred and appealed to the alt right, and one who poses a serious threat to the very institutions of democracy we hold dear.
Honestly, she wasn’t my first choice for the woman to break this ultimate glass ceiling on behalf of women, but here she is and she’s about to break it after a campaign of breathtaking misogyny. Her grit and determination has won my respect and I wonder if there is any other woman out there who could have persevered in the face of the obstacles that she has.
This campaign has highlighted how far women and girls still have to go. It is astonishing to me that we have a candidate running for the Republican party who is actually proud of being a sexual predator and who has actually gone on record as such. And they aren’t just words because since then 13 women who have come out and filed suits against him for sexual impropriety. He got a slap on the wrist from his party and models of sexual propriety such as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani and was able to pass it off as “locker room” talk. I could go on and on about all the ways in which this candidate has acted in misogynist ways but that is a subject for a post-election post-mortem blog.
The fact that he’s the most unqualified Presidential Candidate to run in over 150 or more years, that he can stand on the same stage and debate a woman far more prepared to debate, someone with substantive policies and substantive experience, and mock that he didn’t need to prepare, is astonishing. This would have finished a candidate in any other election campaign. That he could stand on stage and call this woman a liar, a nasty woman, someone who should be put in prison, etc, whilst she kept her cool and stuck to defending her policies without taking the bait, shows the battle she and we have had to fight.
I’m not saying people should vote for her because she’s a woman. Today is election day and by the time you have read this blog many of you will have already cast your ballot anyway. Vote for whichever candidate you have decided on. What I am saying, is pause for a moment and revel that today she is making history for you, for me, for our daughters, our niecesa and granddaughters as well as for men and boys, our sons, nephews and grandsons—for all of humanity. It is a historical watershed and it matters. It means something that this huge barrier against women is being broken metaphorically and in reality.
For the record I am not voting for her just because she is a woman. Had there been another candidate that more mirrored my policies and preferences, I would have voted for them. In the primaries, I voted for Bernie Sanders. And had the Republican party nominated someone like John Kasich, I might have been in the position to cast a vote for him, who knows. But also for the record, I am not only voting against Trump, but I am voting for Hillary Clinton. Her policies, which I have read in detail, are the closest fit to my policies and she does represent me.
And if, which is likely, she is elected, I will dissent loudly and vociferously where I disagree with her. And if she is guilty of any breaking of the law with her Foundation or in any other way, I will insist that she be held to account. But, similarly, irrespective of whether or not her opponent wins, I insist that he be held to account for his egregious, flagrant violations of the law that have yet to be tried in the court of public opinion in the manner in which Hillary has throughout the campaign, let alone in a court of law. There are so many serious allegations out there against him that need to be pursued that I don’t know where to begin and I won’t today. But, I will say that I don’t know what has happened to the FBI and to the criminal justice system where a person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and a person is not even indicted or charges made public against them until the Prosecutor has a proven case to bring.
Her victory in getting this far, and her very likely victory today in winning the presidency, is a very powerful symbolic and actual victory for women and girls around the world in a similar way that Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 was a victory for African Americans and people of color.
So today, I wear my pantsuit with a purple blouse with pride. And hopefully I will put on a gold sash once the polls close in honor of the first woman president of the United States!
Whatever happens, see you after the 9th!