“You don’t have to take it personally,” someone said to me Wednesday morning after I started crying again about the meager vote for Senator Elizabeth Warren on Super Tuesday. It wasn’t that she was my perfect candidate. It was about the demoralization of coming in third in her own state. About the fact that the most motivating slogan to arise around her in the weeks before was the profoundly melancholy: “She’s electable if you f*cking vote for her.” About the fact that I wouldn’t even have a chance to vote for her in my own state’s primary. About the simultaneous doubt and rage cast at her by men and women alike, who found her patently not angry enough and then far too angry, cruel even, the taker downer of a “good man”. About the seeming impossibility of our American culture, at this point in time, being ready to uplift a brilliant woman, a sane woman, a capable woman.
Tell me again this isn’t personal. Tell me again it’s not personal to want a leader who does not leave my body, or the bodies of womxn of color, out of the equation when she’s passing legislation. Tell me again it’s not personal to want an elected official who has the experience and the qualification to do the job. Tell me again it’s not personal to see a brilliant woman being told over and over again she’s not enough and then way, way too much. To want to see womxn respected, believed, and, yes, electable—for what does electable mean but simply worthy of being chosen? Tell me again it’s not personal, to be worthy of choice.
Tell me again.
