Over the past couple of election cycles I’ve noticed the ubiquity of photographs of Susan B Anthony’s gravesite adorned with “I voted” stickers. One or two appear to be photoshopped, but the majority are pretty obviously real and usually posted in real time. I’ve found myself viscerally moved and have joined with those who’ve made them memes.
Now some with a keen historical sense note the various shortcomings of using Ms Anthony as the placeholder for this momentous shift in our times, where that saying “women belong in the house” becomes “women belong in the house, and in the senate” and of course, we are a scant two weeks from a moment where it is increasingly likely “and in the white house.” The fact is any actual living person is going to have problems, not be the perfect representative we might wish for.
And with that Secretary Clinton is not the person many would want to be the first woman to be elected president of the United States. There are reasons asserted from both our political right and left. And while many, in my view most are overstated if not outright lies, some from both right and left tinted with sexism, the reality is she has been around the political world a long time and she has done and said a lot of things, and, well, yes, she is a flawed figure.
And anyone who thinks that woman who assumes the presidency should be some pure and uncontaminated figure, a virgin queen carrying a silver sword, clearly do not live in the same world I live in – or, in the world that is going to elect a president of the United States of America. (Right here I can hear several, including friends, who say, but, but, she really is a bad person. And with that throw out a bunch of specifics, some of which are not wild eyed exaggerations, or fulminations about what her political stances really should be.)
Objections of whatever sort aside what we are going to get is by our American standards, a center-left president. (I’ve deleted a longish paragraph here outlining the details, particularly about her economics and her style vis a vis military engagement. Not the point for this reflection.) We’re getting someone with proven political skill, a pragmatist with a pretty clear-eyed view of the human condition. Let’s be honest. We could do worse. And, let’s be clear, with many of the guys we’ve elected, we have.
That said, here’s the deal for me, today, two weeks out from the election.
Something important is going on. Setting aside the details of this race, important, yes, terribly important, yes, important enough that I would never vote for or against because of the gender of the candidate. But. Also. And. The one of the only two possibilities for becoming the next president of the United States who isn’t bat shit crazy happens to be, along with everything else, a woman.
And, I think this is something amazing and wonderful. For most of my life I didn’t think it was possible we Americans would elect a woman to the presidency. My own mother thought women shouldn’t be the anchor of the nightly news because they didn’t have authoritative voices. That sort of sexism, in the air and even internalized continues to this day.
As pretty much everyone knows who wants to, women didn’t win the right to vote until the 19th amendment was passed in 1920. However, until the middle of the twentieth century women’s rights were severely curtailed, not merely by custom, but often in law. It wasn’t until 1972 that women were guaranteed by law the right to equal access to higher eduction. It was 1974 that women could get credit cards in their own name. It was 1978 before it was illegal to fire a woman because she was pregnant. And, of course, without Roe v Wade abortion would be illegal in many, maybe most states in the union. Which right whatever else we might think about it must in the last analysis belong to the person who is pregnant, and is critical for full autonomy. And, despite the apparent fact that most people think the Equal Rights Amendment passed, it didn’t. The deal is not yet sealed.
I look at the younger generation, the one coming into their own right now, and on the one hand I’m glad so many of them just assume women and men should be treated equally. And I notice how some among the younger women don’t seem to think they need to identify as “feminist,” as that seems to imply things they don’t identify with. And, I’m aware of how fragile it all is. How recent. And, how tentative. Of course the disgusting personal aspects of the current Republican nominee raises some of what is there, even yet. And the issues around rape and consent should remind us all of tensions and problems about full equality that are very much with us.
And, while I have no illusion that there is a march of history with an inevitable outcome, the trend for us within our liberal Western democracies has been one of ever widening and inclusion – and I’m so grateful to have been lucky enough to be born into it.
There’s a lot on the table. Maybe too much. As I said, I am one of the opinion that we don’t necessarily win. Things do not have to turn out well. Maybe the odds are even against it going well for us in the long haul. I already have friends who are happy to discuss how the planet can heal itself once we kill ourselves off. But, I do have hope. I think we can make our way through.
However, for us to make our way through, this I am sure of, it requires we increase the size of the table where the problems are considered and at which decisions are made. And, how with full and genuine equal rights, in a single stroke we can include half the species. And. And. And. The election of a woman as president is no mere symbol. It isn’t enough. Not by a far shot. But. But. But. It is more than critical. It is absolutely essential.
So, the fact that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we would be at the edge of electing Hillary Rodham Clinton, among many other things, a woman, as president of the United States… Well… That’s breathtaking. It ranks equally with the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president. It shouldn’t be anything special. But. It is.
It is amazing.
It is wonderful.
And it is happening.
And, it is worth pausing, and noticing.
So, in two weeks, if all goes as I pray it will, I will be joining those who post photographs from the day of Susan B Anthony’s grave adorned with all those stickers from women, and I hope, from men, celebrating something deeply worth celebrating.
For all of us. All of us.
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