When I originally heard about Hillary Clinton, I was excited. She is a woman running for the presidency, and that meant a lot. I thought if she were to be elected, young girls could look up to her, and an increased amount of women would run for president. I hoped one day we would have an equal amount of female and male presidential candidates.
All of these thoughts were before I educated myself on the candidates of the 2016 election.
As I read articles, watched debates and more, I started to see that Hillary was not the right candidate. She appeared to be a follower, latching onto whatever new issue everyone was crazed about.
Her original standpoint was the legalization of gay marriage. When it was legalized in June, she lost her major issue to support. So, until she found something else, she decided to have many female celebrities endorse her in an attempt to get in with the younger crowd that Bernie was easily capturing.
What bugged me about this strategy, though, was that I saw some of my favorite female celebrities supporting a candidate just because of their shared gender. These girls were badass and independent, each having her own awesome opinions. Why were they stooping to this? Were they looking for publicity? Were they brainwashed like I was in the beginning? If they are truly supporting Hillary, I wish they would say why and not relate it to gender.
My gender does not dictate my vote.
Does that make me less of a woman, less of a feminist?
My answer is no. A feminist is someone who wants equal rights for everyone, not someone who favors women over men. By voting for Hillary because of my gender, I would be promoting the wrong definition of feminism, the one everyone thinks feminism is. I shouldn’t be seen as less of a woman for thinking with my brain and not my anatomy.
When people ask me how I can not vote for the woman candidate, I like to point out how wishy-washy Hillary is. She claims to be supportive of diminishing racial inequality in the justice system. But while Bernie Sanders was getting arrested for fighting for civil rights in the past, Hillary was working for a senator against the civil rights movement, and she also said black youth were “superpredators.” With malicious comments like these, it doesn’t make sense to me why Hillary is sweeping the black vote in the primaries. How is this okay?
While I believe it would be great to have a woman as president, I don’t think Hillary is the right woman. Hopefully her campaign will lead to more women running, like I hoped. But for now, all we can do is wait.