Women and "Children" First

Though this Globe and Mail story carries the offensive title, "Will women or children pick the next president?" there's actually some good stuff there.

Basically, it's another piece about why young women aren't voting for Hillary Clinton. It starts off towing that same, bullshit:

Melissa Haussman cannot wrap her mind around why young women would vote for Barack Obama.

"It disappoints me greatly," said the professor of political science at Carleton University, an American who drove to New Hampshire last week to work on Hillary Clinton's campaign. "Your grandmothers chained themselves to the White House fence so that you could vote."

That's right - guilt us into voting for Hillary, that's great. But, even though the article gets a little condescending, the author, Siri Agrell, makes a good point.

The results of a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press give the impression that Mr. Obama was tailor-made to woo the youth demographic.

Describing "generation next" - 18- to 25-year-olds who came of age with personal computers, the Internet and the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001 - the Pew Center found that nearly one in five has no religious affiliation, and that the majority are pro-immigration, in favour of same-sex marriage, colour-blind, pro-choice and against the Iraq war.

THIS is why we're not for Clinton. She's for the Iraq War and, more superficially, she doesn't speak to the younger generation. We have the luxury to vote for someone because we WANT THEM AS OUR PRESIDENT. So why shouldn't we use the rights women fought so hard to give us? We want someone who will stand up for women, but it doesn't have to be a woman. I think it's wrong to guilt us into voting for someone because of their gender. Voting for Clinton because she's a woman is as bad as voting for McCain because he's a white man.