Hillary Clinton's speech was a powerful, primal first – and it blew me away

[niyad]

Hillary Clinton's speech was a powerful, primal first – and it blew me away
Xeni Jardin

I disagree with her on many issues. But the impact of seeing a woman accept the nomination reached a part of me deeply wounded by sexism, and made me weep

‘Imagine him in the Oval Office’: Clinton takes down Trump as she accepts nomination




Sometimes we look to the internet hoping to be seen and heard by the world. Other times, we see in some stranger’s tweets our own experience. We see ourselves reflected, and it makes us feel less alone, and whole, when we didn’t know we were missing anything moments before. On Twitter Thursday night, I saw an image that mirrored my own experience of watching Hillary Clinton accept the DNC nomination for president of the United States. It was a photo of a little girl gazing at a regal woman in a white pantsuit.

For so many women and girls watching, her public, historic speech was a powerful, primal, private first. It was a first for that toddler, and it’s a first for me. Someone like us is up there. The glass ceilings in our own lives feel thinner today, if not entirely shattered. Today’s little girls will grow up knowing they are complete human beings, equal to and possessing the same innate dignity and value as any boy or man. I wasn’t prepared to feel all this gratitude, all this grief. Sadness that something so simple had finally happened, after being denied to so many for so long. I’m old enough to have followed Clinton’s career for almost as many decades as she’s had one. I never identified myself as a fan or supporter. I disagree with her take on many issues, war and whistleblowers among them. I felt the Bern, and had hoped to cast my vote for Bernie Sanders. I was surprised at how this moment changed me.

. . . . .


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.
. . . .



Men, you can’t know what it’s like to always navigate the world knowing that your ability to navigate the world means, in part, charming or pleasing or deferring to or avoiding sexual inappropriateness from men. The countless little invisible slights, the horrible attacks, the 30 cents missing from every earned dollar. We all know about all of that, not that the world cares, but Thursday night a spotlight shone on something so powerful that it was invisible. The understanding that only men are American presidents. Perhaps no longer.


. . . .

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/29/emotion-watching-hillary-clinton-woman-candidate-for-president

[niyad]

1. . . .