An open letter to my Democratic sisters: You're missing the point!

An open letter to Harriet, Koryne, and all my other sisters who would rather vote for John McCain than for the "spoiler" Barack Obama:

I am a woman "of a certain age." I have not forgotten the struggles of feminists during my life time. But in case you have forgotten: the whole point of the feminist movement was to make gender a non-issue. I remember the bad old days. I was told by my boss that while I could marry for money, my less-qualified coworker had his family to support and needed the higher salary. I have been told that my highly technical profession, because it is primarily a female workforce, should be content to take home "pin money." I have suffered the slings and arrows of sexism, and I apologize to no one for my feminist creds.

Hillary was the first woman in history to win a presidential primary, in any state. She had the first real chance at making it all the way. But under the Democratic primary process, that we have carried out for decades, the other candidate won. Not because Obama was a man and Hillary was a woman, but because the necessary number of people, in the necessary states, voted for Obama. The victory was that for the first time in history, a woman was taken seriously as a candidate.

So I have this to say to you: If you want to vote for McCain because you think he would do a better job than Obama of addressing those issues that inspired you to support Hillary, then God bless you (and God help you, while she’s at it!). But if you want to insist that, because Hillary is a she, either Hillary has the nomination or you will vote for Bush’s heir apparent, regardless of how many more wars result, how many more children go to bed hungry, or how many women die because of reproductive rights eroded by McCain-appointed judges, then you are as sexist as any of the men who have patted us on our pretty little heads throughout history. This is not about our "tribe." This is about the Supreme Court. This is about our tenuous national security. This is about our crumbling infrastructure, our unequal health care, our children’s education, and the next generation’s very survival.

Barack Obama won the nomination. He would have won even with Florida and Michigan counted at 100%. We followed the process, Hillary had an honest shot at it, and she nearly made it. That’s progress. Now please don’t disenfranchise the rest of us who want an end to this right-wing insanity before we lose more of our children, whether in the Green Zone or the inner city. Voting for McCain to spite the rest of us is not going to get you any closer to what you say you want: a woman in the White House. Because if you are holding gender over all other qualities, then you have truly missed the point of the feminist movement.