What Would the Women’s Suffragists Do?

By Lisa Fary

The New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women feels betrayed and abandoned by Ted Kennedy because he’s not supporting Hillary Clinton for president. I imagine their statement was supposed to be hard hitting and critical, but it just came off as a bunch of whiny, entitled women raging because their boyfriend won’t leave his wife.

After Kennedy announced his support for Barack Obama, NOW-NY released this statement:

“This latest move by Kennedy is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a president that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

“He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton.”

[nms:womens suffrage,1,0]

What ever happened to voting for the person who, given the choices, is best for the job?

Ladies, Ted Kennedy’s support of Barack Obama doesn’t mean he doesn’t like chicks anymore. That doesn’t mean he’s going to introduce legislation removing our right to vote. Perhaps it just means he thinks Hillary Clinton isn’t the best person for the job.

A lot of people don’t think Hillary Clinton is the best person for the job. Many of them are women who are weighing the options and making an informed decision to vote for someone else. Not because that someone else is a man, but because that someone else is a better candidate for them.

[nms:womens suffrage,1,1]

It’s not about electing a woman - it’s about electing the right woman. It’s our obligation to vote for the right woman – being the only woman available at this point in time does not, by default, make Hillary Clinton the right woman.

The triumph of women’s suffrage is the ability to make our own political decisions, to chose leaders based on a criteria that we set for ourselves, not to blindly vote for a candidate just because we have the same reproductive organs.

For many Americans, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and eventual election or loss just doesn’t have anything to do with her being a woman, no matter how hard NOW-NY and company try to make it so.

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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.

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