Young women play key role in upcoming election
I believed I was one of the luckiest women in the world for being born in a country where I have so many rights, until Oct. 13, 2016.
That was the day a poll was tweeted that if only men were to vote, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would win the election, the twitter hashtag #RepealThe19 was born. The Nineteenth Amendment, known as the Suffrage Amendment, granted women the right to vote.
In light of this hashtag, young women must take a stand to use our political voice and speak up for our rights and respect. Whether the words come from Donald Trump, his supporters or anybody else, the true way to make a statement is to stand up for ourselves and make our appearance at the polls. Having a right to vote, especially for women, is powerful. At a college age, women have a future to create, and hopefully it doesn’t involve sacrificing our rights and supporting politicians who devalue others.
As if this week needed any more news about Donald Trump and the garbage that surrounds him, we now can add #RepealThe19 to the list of awful things about him.
Now, Trump himself didn’t say to repeal women’s right to vote — that was his supporters. Going through Twitter and reading the tweets from supporters of this awful idea, I am blown away.
One Twitter user @mmaier2112 said, “Give out enough nice handbags and most broads would gladly trade their voting rights for one. #RepealThe19th”
My first feeling was that this had to be a joke because no man would be serious enough to say that to a woman. I don’t know a single man that would say that to their mother, daughter, wife or sister, so why would someone say that to any woman at all?
Have we all not had enough of Trump this election season? First, he accused Ted Cruz’s father of being connected with JFK’s killer before the assassination, saying, “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.”
We then heard the audio of Trump and then “Access Hollywood” host, Billy Bush, in which he brags about sexual assault against women, because “When you’re a star, they let you do it. They let you do anything.”
We should have expected more out of the radical Trump supporters, and we didn’t. We didn’t prepare ourselves for #RepealThe19 because that’s so incredibly low, we didn’t think Trump’s campaign could get that low. Since the release of the tapes, many Republicans have pulled their support.
Women are tweeting their thoughts about the hashtag, and it’s anything but kind. One Twitter user, @pari_passu stated, “Women were not given rights; we fought for them. And they will not be given away; we will fight to keep them.”
Women are standing up for all the hateful things that have been said to and about them.
As a woman, the things Donald Trump has said makes me sick to my stomach. I cannot believe a man who can sit with a straight face after all of this and says he supports women and their rights is a respectable candidate. It’s not only the tapes that make me sick to my stomach that this man may be president, but the fact that he as multiple rape allegations against him.
Is this someone you can really trust with being president? If this is the next president, I cannot be proud to be an American woman any longer.
