In recent history, many people around the world have become more accepting of things such as race, appearance and gender. Barack Obama being sworn into office and Hillary Clinton deciding to run in 2008 and currently are just two examples of how politics have been starting to stray from the stereotypical rich, white male race.
Author and contributing editor at Elle magazine Rebecca Traister wrote her second book, “All The Single Ladies” to shed light on how young people, particularly women, have an opportunity to break social norms and join together for the upcoming election.
Although society’s level of acceptance has been progressing, there still seems to be groups of people who believe in the tired, mom-and-pop way of life. A woman is expected to marry a man and have children. Traister told Rolling Stone magazine she believes people feel nostalgia for this way of living because we’ve been told that’s when America was at its “most normal and healthy.”
“It’s interesting that that version was mostly normal and healthy for white men — not for women or people of color, and that it’s often white men who are beset by this level of nostalgia,” Traister said in the same interview.
This lifestyle was the norm decades ago, but people don’t live this way anymore.
Men have always assumed they have control over women. In the past, and still today, men have tried to control a woman’s right to vote, have children, not have children, own credit cards and more. Topics such as birth control and abortion, which have been big discussion topics this election, are taking that power away.
Traister believes if unmarried women vote in larger numbers it could have a big effect on the election.
Founder and President of the Voter Participation Center Page Gardner predicts that there could be more unmarried women in the electorate this year than married women. She also said they vote to the far left.
In the article, Traister bluntly said: “A lot of government policies presume that women and men live together in early-married, hetero units. But we don’t live that way anymore, and what we need is a set of policies that better acknowledges and supports the way that especially women are living, because it is new and revolutionary, and women have not benefited from government support the way that their male counterparts have, historically.”
People who believe in the way things were might think they’re going to “make America great again,” but to do so, they’d be taking away basic rights from more than half this country’s population. Is that people really want for America?
The progress that has been made in the past eight years has been detrimental to the evolution of America and its citizens. In that time, we’ve been introduced to new models of who can lead and represents the nation.
Many people, including myself, are worried that a person like Donald Trump could even get close to The White House. I can only hope that people realize they deserve better than, as Traister elegantly puts it: “The unapologetic sexist id of this country.”
With progress comes change in perspectives, and there is still a lot of progress to be made.
Email Laura Schmidt at opinions@cardinalpointsonline.com
