Why Hillary Clinton's DNC speech was 'a moon landing' for women

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.

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]