According to an op-ed published by TIME Magazine Monday, attacking Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton‘s handling of her private email server is an attack on womankind itself.

“I am mad,” writes Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley. “I am mad because I am scared. And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.”

“The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female,” Lakoff continues. “Can you imagine this happening to a man? Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere.”

Lakoff argues that criticizing Clinton’s emails was part of a Republican war on women, and amounted to criticizing Clinton for using a form of communication. “If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no ‘scandal,'” she argues. “Those very ideas would be absurd. Men have a nearly absolute right to freedom of speech.”

“Since it’s a woman, doing what decent women should never do—engaging in high-level public communication—well, there must be something wrong with that, even if we can’t quite find that something,” she continued sarcastically. “We will invoke the terminology of criminal law to account for our feelings. She’s getting away with treason! Put her in jail!”

[Image via screengrab]

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