Rules of the Game: Steinem, HRC and Power

I was just thinking this last night, that Gloria Steinem's comment was basically about it's uncool to support Hillary. And a lot of people, particularly young people, have a lot invested in being cool. And this is my opinion, not hers, but so many men only have examples of women having power over them when they felt powerless--as young sons, as teenaged students. Once they get in the workforce, they see examples of power more often than not, embodied by men. So it's reinforced culturally from birth on that men are emotionless and powerful and women are emotional and nags. Ask yourself, who would you want to be more powerful than you--someone who is seen as powerful or someone who is seen as a nag? Just like racism, we have to work so hard to unlearn sexism. It's insidious, buried in everything we encounter. When was the last time you heard anyone ask a white man, are you just voting for Bernie because he's a white man? If this contest were two men, each with the same platforms and experience as these two, the Hillary style candidate in a man's body would be mopping the floor with Bernie's idealistic attitudes which exist in a vacuum without obstructionism or this country's bedmate, capitalism. The representations of who should win are about gender, because we are a binary-focused society in which many people feel threatened by the prospect of the most powerful figurehead of our country being a woman. Since gender is indelible in this election, imagine a country in which it is cool to vote for a woman in the first place. Because you and I, we aren't going to be having a beer and shooting the shit with Bern or Hill, so whatever your politics are, imagine for a moment the frame around this race if both candidates were women? I'm not voting for HRC because she's a woman, I'm voting for HRC because I'm a woman and I want a president who believes in equal rights. All the other things I care about--racial equality, reducing income disparity, international diplomacy, protections for lbgtq people--I'll continue to work for those same as everyday.