It’s Been 227 Years — And Here We Are!

http://bluenationreview.com/its-been-227-years-and-now-we-are-one-day-away/

By Melissa McEwan

UPDATE: Minutes after we published this piece, the AP announced Hillary has clinched the nomination. Congratulations!!

Hillary Clinton will be the first woman nominee to represent a major party in the nation’s history. I have been waiting for this for a very long time.

On my 13th birthday, my aunt asked me: “Where do you want to go in the world?”

That was not an existential question, but a literal one. On our 13th birthday, each of the female cousins on that side of the family were gifted a trip to anyplace we wanted to go on Earth — by my aunt, the only girl in a family of seven, the lone sister of six brothers, a woman who had worked her way up from a mailroom to an international vice-presidency.

I wanted to go to Britain, and so we did. On that trip, she asked me the bigger questions of where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be. When I asked her a question back, why it was that she only took the girls and not the boys, she explained: “I want to give you something that is yours because you are a girl. You will be denied so much for the same reason. This is a world of men.”

This is a world of men. Her words still hang in my ears. And what she told me has been true: I have been denied on the basis of my womanhood. I have witnessed other women be denied. I have seen how womanhood intersects with other oppressions to deny women of color, queer women, trans women, fat women, disabled women, poor women, old women, in particular ways.

I have seen the ways in which this is a world of men, in which its institutions are the realms of men. I have cheered as women have broken through, and I have grieved when women have failed.

And I have watched, with incandescent joy and agonizing fear of disappointment, as Hillary Clinton has fought her way through brick walls of misogyny to stand on the precipice of the presidency.

I have clapped my hands with elation and I have wrung my hands with worry and I have knitted by brow in rageful vexation and I have worked my mind and fingers to their limits, pounding away on a keyboard, with hope and anxiety.

This is a world of men. And the United States Presidency is one of the biggest, baddest Boys’ Clubs on the planet.

I don’t just want any woman to break into it. I want a woman who has spent her career fighting for women and girls, who leverages her influence to uplift other women, who listens to women and amplifies their voices. I want Hillary Clinton. I want her to win.

And now, after two hundred and twenty-seven years of uninterrupted male presidencies, and nary a single female nominee from a major party, Hillary will pass the threshold. She will earn a majority of pledged delegates and clinch the Democratic nomination.

This is a world of men. But it doesn’t have to be. Not anymore.