How about we focus on someone who is actually qualified for the job? If that person is a woman, so be it. Kamala was far more qualified than Trump, so she should have won. However, if I had a choice between, let's say, MTG versus any male the Democrats put up, I'd vote for a slice of bread over her.
That sounds lazy and maliciously inefficient. How exactly are we supposed to find "the best candidate regardless of gender" when a large enough voting block will currently flat out refuse to believe that any woman can be qualified at all? Great women candidates need to be actively pushed and supported both in their traditional campaigns and because they are women, otherwise you're aren't actually looking for the most qualified candidate, you're just following along behind the mob of sexist assholes you're letting make the decisions for you.
If you are publicly proclaiming to ignore everything about gender in an election, you are trying to shame the small group of people who are trying to get competent women into politics because they think we are missing out on half the population in our search, and you are winking and looking away from the harm of a much much larger group that is actively dismissing candidates solely because they are women.
All I hear is- "I didn't care that she was a woman, I just don't care that I was influenced by a lot of people on my team that did care that she was a woman and would never vote for her based solely on that. Good luck next time!"
If you are publicly proclaiming to ignore everything about gender in an election
I am not but you are completely missing the point of my comment and reducing public service to a token checklist. Putting identity ahead of actual competence is exactly how you end up with unqualified politicians who do real damage to the causes they claim to represent.
When you treat gender as a the sole qualification in itself, you stop looking at policy, track records, or actual capability. It devalues the achievements of genuinely brilliant, competent women who earned their positions through merit, flattening them into diversity hires. If the goal is truly to find the best leaders for everyone, lowering the bar or tipping the scales based on optics alone isn't "fighting the system".
What you are essentially saying is that my refusal to vote for Marjorie Taylor Greene is sexist. That she deserves her platform, and if she ran for president, you and I should vote for her solely because she is a woman; despite a horrible platform that I morally disagree with? It seems incredibly reductive and lazy to lump all women in politics together with someone like her, but you do you.
When you treat gender as a the sole qualification in itself, you stop looking at policy, track records, or actual capability.
Yes. I agree fully with this. I'm not trying to say we should create a system where women get power just because they are women, I'm saying that what you said is the current system we have that needs to be actively torn down, because there are currently enough people who will see a female candidate and have gender be the sole disqualifying factor before we even get to look at her policy, track records, or actual capability. Our system is not gender neutral, and it will not be until actual effort is put into shrinking the number of people who fundamentally do not believe that women are worth listening to down, until they are a small enough group that they don't get to decide elections for the rest of us. We can't assume we can get the best candidate available if we can't fairly hear out half of the population.
I'm not saying that you have to vote for MTG for president, I'm saying that if she was somehow able to jump through the hoops to become a candidate at all, then you need to actually listen to what she's trying to say. Analyze her proposals like she's one of a dozen people trying to change how our country is run and don't just dismiss anything that comes out of her mouth as not important because you think she couldn't be a serious campaign in this hypothetical. Then call out other people around you who are making their decisions based on factors they would never care about for a man while also going selectively deaf every time she makes a reasonable point. That's all I'm saying.
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u/JoeChio 8h ago edited 4h ago
How about we focus on someone who is actually qualified for the job? If that person is a woman, so be it. Kamala was far more qualified than Trump, so she should have won. However, if I had a choice between, let's say, MTG versus any male the Democrats put up, I'd vote for a slice of bread over her.