By Chelsea Handler
Four weeks ago, 135 million Americans cast their presidential ballots and the final vote count (as of Dec. 9) was:
- 65,746,544, or 48.2%, for Hillary Clinton
- 62,904,682, or 46.2%, for Donald Trump
- 7,645,378, or 5.6%, for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Captain Kangaroo, Easter Bunny, etc.
94% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, because unlike white women, black women don’t take their rights, liberties, or justice for granted. They honor how hard people fought for them, and they are fully committed to honoring the very people who risked, and in many cases lost, their lives fighting for ability to count. They understand how fragile our democracy is and they show up again and again, because they know firsthand how fragile democracy and civilization are.
Another 96 million eligible American voters — or 41% of eligible voters — didn’t register and/or didn’t vote for president.
And oddly in these United States of Russia, the popular votes aren’t worth the ballots they’re cast on thanks to America’s infamous Electoral College.
So here we are, with President-elect Donald Trump and his Vice President-elect Mike Pence—who as the governor of Indiana spent most of his free time signing Christian Shariah forced pregnancy laws — ready to lead the United States of America starting January 20, 2017, at precisely high noon.
But let’s return to the scene of the November 8 election itself, which had a lot of other poisonous ingredients aside from the Electoral College.
One of the saddest things about November 8, aside from the very presence of Donald Trump on the ballot as a major party American presidential candidate, were the women of America who somehow managed to vote for Donald Trump, specifically the 53% percent of all white female voters who chose Mr. Trump.
We don’t just have a problem with men supporting women in this country; we have a problem with women supporting women.
America is a free country, and we are free to differ on public policy, but what kind of a woman votes for a white, entitled rich guy who has spent his entire life working the system for excess personal profit while insatiably groping strange women for personal pleasure while Hillary Clinton — arguably the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history — was standing right there in her pleated pantsuit waiting to lift America up out of its 240-year “winning streak” of male dominance and patriarchy?
American women had a unique chance to vote for Hillary Clinton, the woman who started her career at the Children’s Defense Fund defending the least among us — the woman who was the guiding intellectual and compassionate light behind the 1997 creation of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides health care coverage to more than 8 million American children — that very same CHIP of which the late Senator Ted Kennedy said, “The children’s health program wouldn’t be in existence today if we didn’t have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
And yet, when Hillary Clinton — with her long, accomplished record of public service who left the office Secretary of State with a 69% approval rating just a few years ago — presented herself on the presidential ballot, white women of America reactivated their prehistoric Pavlovian reflexes and fell obediently as they reincarnated the great female penchant for self-mutilation so brilliantly articulated by H. L. Mencken:
“Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.”
Ladies, we can do better than this. We can eliminate the competitiveness that has been imposed upon us because we are treated as a minority and have been taught to tackle, rather than climb.
We can wake up America and American women to do a better job going forward; to create an activist fire under women to start treating other women and our America with more respect than we have obsequiously shown for our traditional male dominators.
We need to rise up and use our votes to help ourselves, and to stop hurting ourselves.
Forget the jealousy. Forget the competitiveness. We are stronger together. Find a woman you have nothing in common with and give her a hug. Then hug yourself. Then roll up your sleeves and stop looking in the mirror.
Look around. Get away from yourself. Find women to support. Throw your weight behind them. Get involved.
We are better than this. We have got to get behind each other. We have to stop ourselves from the snide comments that come easily and out of jealousy that are simply a projection of our own insecurities.
Let’s stop it with the dialogue about how women look or what they wear, or if they’ve gained or lost weight. We are more guilty of this with each other than most men are.
It’s time to get focused on what really matters. Find women that are different than you and figure out the things you have in common. We have a whole generation of girls who are looking at us to see how we treat each other. Let’s show them what the power of being a woman really looks like. Let’s open our arms to each other, and to them.
We can do better than this, ladies, and we will during the next four years as we stand up for women, children, the majority vote and American justice against the Trumpian whitemare. I know I can do better, and I will. It starts now.
In the words of a female much greater than me who stood up to the patriarchic Taliban:
“I raise up my voice — not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard… We cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”
―Malala Yousafzai
Originally published at medium.com