What Is the Biggest Angry Voting Block in the US----Women! Because We are ALL Oppressed.

You can slice and dice the US electorate in many ways. Rural versus urban. Old versus young. Black versus white. Immigrant versus native born. However, there is one demographic that transcends age, race, birth status, economic status. That is gender. If you are a woman in the United States, you are a second class citizen.

We have all been there. We are denied promotions. We are forced to train the newly hired men who will become our bosses. We are paid a fraction of what men make for doing the same work. Our ideas are ignored in meetings. Our ambition is treated as shameful--unfeminine.

Our bodies are kicked around like footballs by men trying to score ideological points---why protect the already born when you can protect the unborn to show your "family values"? We are denied birth control then condemned for trying to raise children we "cannot afford." We are condemned if we ask the fathers of our children to help in their care---"That whore probably got pregnant to collect child support," say the woman haters.

If we speak up to question our lot in life we are called "bitch", "witch", "castrating." We are told that issues which affect us are less important than issues which affect men---our concerns are just "women's and children's issues." We are told that we can have our equality after our men have their equality. We are supposed to be happy with "trickle down" equality---if our men get ahead, then we will get ahead. In this last respect, we are treated like children, who derive their social status from that of their parents---

Fifty years into the new feminist movement that started in the later 1960s, women are still treated as infants. Well, this "dumb blond" stopped being a child many decades ago. She is a grown up, and she expects to be treated as a grown up.

It is not my job to make men feel better about themselves by hiding my intelligence, agreeing with them when they are wrong or apologizing before I (reluctantly) have to set them straight in order to keep them from making fools of themselves and steering our organizations into disaster. I expect to take part in a dialogue about the policies which will guide my company, my country, my world. I expect to have my voice heard. And I don't think it's right that in order to do this, I have to assume a gender neutral name, so that trolls will not flame me for being female.

I am not smart in spite of being a woman. I am smart, in large part, because of the shit I have been forced to endure because I am a woman. The oppression which I have suffered (and yes, even a physician in this country suffers oppression, if the doc is a woman) has taught me a lot. I have learned to value my own opinions, to distrust social dictum. I am willing to cast off the old and look for a new, better way, if the new, better way will make life better for all of us, especially the children, who---as the dependents of adult women who have been turned into children themselves----are doubly disenfranchised and doubly oppressed.

How did sexism affect my life? Let me count the ways. It started before I was born. My mother, an Emory grad, could not go to medical school because she got married and had a child. Having a spouse and child would not have been a barrier to a young male pre-med back in the 1950s, but it was an absolute barrier for a woman. And guess what? Twenty years later, when I applied to medical school, I was told by several interviewers to reconsider my career choice. My sin? I had married an engineer. I was told that if I wanted to keep my husband, I would have to rethink being a doctor, because he would never be able to stand the shame of having a wife who made more money than him. By the way, we recently celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.

As a child, we moved from apartment to apartment. Even though my mother was a computer scientist for NASA contractors and later NASA, she could never get a home loan, because she was divorced. In the 1960s, banks would not write a mortgage unless there was a man's signature attached. Oh, and speaking of computer science jobs, my mother was interviewed and hired by one firm in the 1960s. Then the real boss got back to town. He summoned his secretary into his office. He had her sit on his lap. He told my mother that his firm only hired women to be secretaries---

We have come a long way, baby, but we still have far to go. And one of the hurdles we need to overcome is the myth that a woman president is unnatural. That a woman who wants to be president must be some kind of freak. That a woman as president can not keep us safe. That she will be too easily swayed by the men around her. That she will not be able to accept campaign contributions without repaying that money in quid pro quo, because women are weak, puppets, devoid of ideas, fueled only by a single desire---the desire to please the men around them, meaning that we do not judge women on their own worth, we judge them by the worth of their men.