Vance’s cruel words won’t stop women from electing Kamala Harris this November | Opinion

Girls, I beg you, do not pay attention to the petty, cruel insults that come from the vicinity of men like former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, his running mate. You are not a lesser creature simply because they dare to say so beyond the confines of their own thoughts.

In fact, I would have you believe that it’s likely men like that try to hurt women because they know we have real power — political, familial and otherwise — and they seek to diminish us to raise up their mediocre selves.

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I will not waste my time and energy attempting to refute Vance’s cruel words that childless women are miserable “cat ladies” who don’t have a “direct stake” in our country.

Men like that are best ignored, left to stew in their own vile execrations.

What I will do is replace their hatred with love and support for all women; be they wives or mothers or childless and single, and whether they were born a woman or became one. Women, your worth is not defined by the industry of your womb or the beauty of your body, but rather by the content of your mind. You have it within you this November to deny power in this country to those who would seek to hold us down and keep us subservient to them. Will you answer the call?

America has been blessed with numerous, talented women who have been candidates for the U.S. presidency, from Victoria Claflin Woodhull to Shirley Chisholm and Hillary Clinton. This year, another woman has added her name to that list. With her entry onto the field, she has given this nation back its sense of hope — a hope that someday in our lifetime, we will see a Madam President.

Girls, they will call you a childless, miserable cat lady. They will call you a spinster and other vile words. They will say you are barren, unlovable and ugly. They will dismiss your successes and focus on your failures, all while demanding that you perform at the highest levels of your industry and then they will fault you for choosing that career in the first place. We cannot win in this game, and that’s their point.

But nothing will make them angrier than ignoring them, and succeeding on your own terms.

The fact that even Vice President Kamala Harris so daily deals with misogyny — she who has served as a district attorney, attorney general, United States senator, vice president and now a woman in serious contention for the presidency — should shatter the glass ceiling for any girl in this country who has ever felt held down by the weight of misogynistic expectations.

This week, women across the country have come together of their own accord, in massive online video calls to support Harris. It started with more than 40,000 Black women in a historically large Zoom call just hours after Harris was given President Joe Biden’s endorsement. Then, a similar event was organized for Latinas, who also showed up in the thousands and reached capacity in the first hour. On Thursday, white women broke Zoom again, in the first call to have more than 100,000 registrants. We gathered to heed the call for solidarity from our sisters of color and promised to vote accordingly.

Together, we will support Harris so that these men who so obviously despise women know that we have a power they can never take away. United, we will stand — women supporting women.

We will extend a hand to those behind us and gratefully accept the hand of the women who came before. We will show our children — whether they are biologically ours or not — that American women are not a punching bag, nor a punchline.

“We realize the importance of our voices only when they are silenced,” Malala Yousafzai has said. Will we continue to let these petty men, drunk on power, silence and humiliate women? If the answer is no, then vote for Harris this November, and hope will win the day.