... I’m tired of educating strangers on basic Feminism 101 points that they could have learned within (a) their first week of an Intro to Women’s Studies class, or (b) their first twenty-four hours on Tumblr. I’m tired of having to explain why it’s sexist for men to tell me how to do my feminism “right,” why they shouldn’t impose their self-declared authority on my liberation. I’m tired of explaining why barring women’s access to public life, penalizing their public voices through tactics like harassment and intimidation, is integral to the functioning of patriarchy. I’m tired of explaining why demonizing powerful women — calling Hillary Clinton a murderer, a criminal, a hag, a witch, a bitch, etc — is a tactic as old as witch-burning. I’m tired of explaining why “likability” is a trap designed to make women worry more about other people’s feelings than they do about their own lives — and why no powerful woman will ever be “likable,” because the only “likable” thing she can do is give away her power. I’m tired of reading shitty divide-and-conquer thinkpieces about the catfight between “old” feminists (evil, capitalist, wear pantsuits, loathe the young and wish to feast on their economically disempowered flesh) and “young” feminists (hot, cool, hip, fun, down with male power because they understand these silly identity-politics struggles don’t get us anywhere and sometimes men are just smarter, am I right, girls?) and I am supremely tired of looking at that thinkpiece, and others like it, and seeing a male fucking byline on it. But mostly, I am tired of even having to bring it up. I’m so, so, so tired.

Because you know what the kicker is, don’t you? You know what the fun, Black-Mirror-style twist in this story turns out to be? After months and months of painstakingly arguing that (a) sexism was real and (b) sexism played a role in the election, trying to get people ready for the uniquely gendered opposition a female candidate for the presidency would face — “the current Hillary-hate [in the Democratic primary] is an overture: A fraction of the sheer tonnage of misogyny and dishonesty that’s going to come if and when she wins the nomination,” I wrote, back in November of 2015 — and being willfully misunderstood or attacked for it about half the time, well, Hillary Clinton’s feminist supporters were proven right. Now, a year later, in October of 2016, there is nary a progressive-aligned person who would not agree that yes, in fact, sexism does play a role in this election. A very large, very disturbing role, for that matter. We were right. We were vindicated. We won. And it happened in the worst way possible.
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Being right should at least feel good, but it doesn’t. I should have enjoyed the debates — seeing that, finally, many of my Clinton-doubting friends got what I saw in her; her grace under fire, her merciless tough-bitch baiting of his insecurities, her ability to take a man who’d bulldozed over a dozen Republican candidates and make him look like a screaming, pouting toddler — but I didn’t. It isn’t just an insult to Hillary Clinton that she wound up facing Trump. It’s an insult to all women; it’s confirmation of our darkest suspicions about sexism, that while women are killing ourselves to do better and be smarter and work harder, while we’re building resumes, accumulating qualifications, going to classes, applying for extra credit, the only thing all that excellence does, at the end of the day, is to put us on equal footing with some male idiot who’s done precisely none of the work. It isn’t fun, realizing that the most qualified candidate in modern history is considered roughly equivalent to a barely literate game-show host with no government experience, just because she’s female. It doesn’t feel good, knowing that even Hillary Clinton has to stand there and get screamed at by some Twitter troll, just because she’s trying to get a job.

It is not fun, was not fun, has never been and could never be fun, spending nearly two years “debating” my own humanity through the lens of the biggest news story in the country. It has not been fun realizing that this matter was up for debate. I mean: By my count, Donald Trump currently has twelve standing allegations of sexual assault. Now, thanks to the magic of modern polling, I can see exactly how many of my countrymen don’t give a shit. According to FiveThirtyEight, the number of Americans who would rather elect a rapist than a female human being stands at around 45 percent.