In a recent post on Women’s Space by Robin Morgan, author of the essay, “Goodbye to All That” (1970) about the politics of accommodation regarding women, she writes about the double standards that have applied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.The full link is here but I’d like to share with you some points that I think are particularly important to me.

Older woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy, who inspired men to become more nurturing parents, who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put child care on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of US voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means.
So listen to her voice:

“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely–and the right to be heard.”

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the US State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (the full, stunning speech is here).

And this voice, age 22, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969” (full speech: )

“We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don’t have time for it.”

That last line is particularly salient to me. We must all fight against the fear that engulfs us and makes us immobile. We can’t sit around an idly expect that life will do it’s thing and we don’t have to engage. That’s the passive approach, and frankly, that’s the “life happens” approach and I won’t have it.

Life is for the living, and to live well we must embrace all aspects of it. Good and bad. There are some ugly things going on in this country right now, and we can either throw up our hands and give in, or we can do something about it.

It doesn’t take much to see where my loyalties lie. I’m all for Hillary winning this Presidential election. Yes, she’s played in the men’s department, but I have no doubt she’s ALL woman underneath the skin of politics she’s assumed and given a chance, she will run this country with fairness, with compassion and will bring much needed healing to a badly wounded population, both male and female.

Too many women swallow the insults, the pandering, the indiscretions and the abuses, and say nothing. She doesn’t, and neither do I. Too many years of doing that taught me otherwise. “Fear is always with us, but we just don’t have time for it.”
We live in a culture of fear. It’s time to stop the mayhem. Women’s voices must be heard at the forefront of government, of the family, of the communities in which we live.

They are the voices of reason.

So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves? “Our President, Ourselves!”

My vote is for Hillary and my hope is that we can start to bring this country back to the magnificence it once was before GWB took over.
She ended (her commencement speech at Wellesley, where my daughter goes to school) with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.” And for decades, she’s been learning how.

Believe anything is possible. It’s amazing just how much we can realize in our lives.

Being Fearless is not the absence of Fear, but the choices and decisions we make when it shows up in our lives.

Don’t be afraid to vote for a woman. Don’t be afraid to vote for yourself.

Fearlessly
Jacqueline Wales
www.fearlessfifties.com