In an op-ed for the Guardian today, I shared the primal and personal experience I felt as a woman watching another woman make history, as Hillary Rodham Clinton accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States.
A woman is the center of the world's attention at this moment and her sexuality and desirability as a sex object has nothing to do with it
— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) July 29, 2016
I can't wait until she's elected, so I can start fighting her lousy positions and mocking them here on Boing Boing. My politics and beliefs didn't change. Something about how I see myself and other women changed.
Snip from the Guardian op-ed:
Hillary’s speech was like watching the moon landing. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that a woman could never be president. But that’s how deeply sexism and “less-than” are woven into American culture. My culture. The understanding that women matter less, that we’re capable of less, and that all our achievements can be calculated in husbands, babies, hotness or bra size – it’s everywhere. It’s what we breathe.
And suddenly last night, right there on our screens: we breathed new air. I couldn’t know before I witnessed this moment of political theater, in which Clinton even quoted Hamilton, how the presence of a woman on stage would lift up a part of me that has always been downtrodden. Seeing this fellow woman, with whom I share the experience of surviving a culture, a government and an economy that treats women as 70 cents to a man’s dollar … it felt like something broken inside me spontaneously mended.
Hillary’s speech was like watching the moon landing. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that a woman could never be president. But that’s how deeply sexism and “less-than” are woven into American culture. My culture. The understanding that women matter less, that we’re capable of less, and that all our achievements can be calculated in husbands, babies, hotness or bra size – it’s everywhere. It’s what we breathe.
And suddenly last night, right there on our screens: we breathed new air. I couldn’t know before I witnessed this moment of political theater, in which Clinton even quoted Hamilton, how the presence of a woman on stage would lift up a part of me that has always been downtrodden. Seeing this fellow woman, with whom I share the experience of surviving a culture, a government and an economy that treats women as 70 cents to a man’s dollar … it felt like something broken inside me spontaneously mended.
"Hillary Clinton's speech was a powerful, primal first – and it blew me away" [Guardian]
I let my daughter stay up late to watch @HillaryClinton prove that girls can and will run the world. #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/uhwisLfXqy
— Megan Fishmann (@mfishmann) July 29, 2016
WE HAVE NEVER HAD THIS. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS. IT IS LIKE A MOON LANDING FOR WOMEN. https://t.co/M97iyNbp9r
— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) July 29, 2016
Oh my god they're treating a woman like me as if she is a complete human being I'm weeping
— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) July 29, 2016