In Which Things Get Mean
EMILY's List intern Jamie has been faithfully reporting from inside the Smart Girl Summit all day. She's met some really nice women. In fact, aside from the speakers, who seem a tad peeved, she's met NOTHING but nice women.
She was ok with it when kick-off speaker Dana Loesch called her a trust-fund socialist and an old, irrelevant feminist. She didn't take it personally, because Dana was talking about ALL liberal women. Bad for the rest of us, but easier for Jamie for sure.
She was a little creeped out by the Voter Fraud session, and the imminent threat of Democratic fraud and violence, but she took it in stride. And she liked the "Dawn of the Democrats" zombie poster.
Then she went to the Susan B. Anthony List panel. And I'm worried we broke her.
See, what she learned at the Susan B. Anthony List panel is that she, and I, and most likely you, are a "freak of nature" for being a liberal feminist. You heard that right, freaks. "Liberal feminism is in truth, a freak of nature."
It gets worse.
As a "liberal feminist" -- a phrase hurled often at the Smart Girl Summit, like an epithet or a dinner plate -- we adhere to the "neo-Nazi feminist way" of going to an ivy-league school, starting a career, and putting off having children.
Let's just back up for a moment, shall we? We're really talking about choice now. Not just the right to choose when we want to start a family, but the right to choose what kind of life we want to lead. And unless the life we're choosing involves GENOCIDE, there is no "Nazi way" of doing it.
So, smart girls, I have a question for you. Were there any of you in the audience who cringed a little when panelist and congressional candidate Princella Smith said that? Any of you who made the choice to wait a while before having children and never thought that made you a freak of a woman? Any of you who went to an ivy league school and never thought that meant someone would think you were somehow un-feminine?
Name of your conference aside, we're all grown-ups here. And as women, we have fought so hard for so long for so much. But at the very root of it all, we fought for the right to live the lives we choose to live. And if you don't understand mine, that does not, in fact, make me a neo-nazi. It doesn't even make me less of a woman than you.
So let's keep it civil, why don't we, and intelligent. For Jamie's sake. She's been through a lot today.
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