At sixteen years old, at my very first job, a co-worker three times my age groped me because we were alone together and he had gotten away with it before so he thought he could do it again.
When I was seventeen years old, my biology teacher in my Baptist private school verbally sexually harassed me. The pastor of the church and dean of the school called me a liar and a few months later I was kicked out in the middle of my junior year.
At my first job out of college, at a very prominent global law firm, I was continually told I needed to smile more, that I needed to "look pleasant."
The next year at a different law firm, I was repeatedly sexually harassed by a lawyer I worked with. I finally got the courage to tell him to stop when he asked what color panties I was wearing.
Last year I was raped by a man who is currently "serving our country" as a soldier and secret service agent on the Secretary of Defense's detail.
At the age of twenty-seven, when I asked for a well-deserved raise and title change, my male boss told me that I was "very bold" and that I wouldn't be getting the promotion.
Throughout my career I have been called "sweetie" and "honey" by men who didn't see me as anything more than a pair of tits and a skirt and certainly not anyone with a brain.
Almost every day I'm whistled at while walking to work by men who think I'm there for their viewing pleasure, by men who think I should be grateful that they find me attractive.
You tell me not to take this election personally. You tell me to sit down, shut up, and get over it. I've been doing that for twenty-seven years and I'm fucking done.
You tell me that it wasn't about gender; gender had nothing to do with it. Gender had everything to do with it. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the most experienced and qualified presidential candidate we have ever had and she lost the job to an inexperienced white man who wouldn't have even passed an HR screening for a job as White House janitor.
I'm taking this personally because I have a niece for whom I would gladly give my life if it meant she would never be touched by a man who thought he was entitled to her body. I'm taking this personally because Hillary represented me and every other woman who has had to listen to men say "the boys will take it from here." I'm taking this personally because having a Madam President would have propelled us light-years into the future, past oppression and into an era of acceptance and equality for women.
You think you've silenced us. You're wrong. You've united us. You've strengthened us. And you've made us even nastier.
