Let’s start, this time, with a story. This is about Hillary Clinton – everything I write seems to be about her these days – but it’s about me, too. It’s about what it means, to be a feminist, or a woman on the left, and whether it matters. So before I get to her, let’s give you a good look at me.

I’m at a job interview. It seems like I actually have a shot at this one. Someone who likes me knows the boss here, and has talked me up to him in person. I can show him my most recent performance review, in which I’m described as “a joy to work with,” that “my editors fight over who gets to edit my pieces,” and where the “places for improvement” section mentions they actually have to “wrack their brains for something I could do better.” I’ve come prepared to talk about my strong, built-in reader base, which I built from the ground up; the fact that I’ve led several social media campaigns that received national or international press attention and raised substantial funds, one of which was enthusiastically endorsed by several pro-choice members of Congress; my award for social media activism, from a prestigious women’s media organization, which I won by popular vote; the fact that I wind up at or near the top of my magazine’s “most-read” traffic list every time I publish a new piece.

I can mention other things, basic work-ethic things. I can mention that I have not voluntarily taken a vacation day or a sick day for the past 18 months, and that the last sick day I took was only because I was hospitalized. (I do have to take the day off on federal holidays, but on those days, I usually write for fun.) I can mention that I have never been late filing a piece. I can mention that the copy comes in clean, doesn’t require much editing, and gets turned around quickly, with maximum co-operation. I can talk about all that, at my job interview. Those are the questions I’m prepared to answer.

I’m not prepared for the question they ask.

“We’re a progressive site,” the man across the table begins, “And our readership, as with most progressive sites, is mostly men. You’ve focused a lot on women’s issues. Would you be comfortable writing something that men would be able to read?”

I’m silent for a second. I keep smiling — always smile at the job interview — but I cannot speak. Largely because I believe that what I just heard cannot possibly be what he really said. I misinterpreted something. I missed a word, misheard a word. He can’t actually be telling me that I would have to stop being so feminist to get a job at his “progressive” site. Or that “progressive” media is mostly for men.

“I read your most recent article,” he adds, helpfully. “That seemed very sympathetic to the male character.”

Okay. So I heard him right.

I keep smiling. It’s a test, I tell myself, he wants to see if you’re an angry feminist. I tell him that I pride myself on my versatility, having covered everything from campaign finance reform to reproductive rights to television. I tell him that many of my long-time readers are men, in fact, and I appreciate them very much; I’m confident that I would be able to deliver a diverse and substantial reader base to his publication. I mention the “most-read list” factoid. I keep smiling.

My most recent article was a Mad Men recap. I’ve written an 8,000-word profile of Elizabeth Warren. I’ve raised over $10K for RAINN. He prefers the TV recap. Because I’m “sympathetic” to an imaginary, sexist man.

I’m the sort of person who is excited by new challenges, I tell him, and I’ve learned a lot from every job I’ve had. One of the reasons I’d especially enjoy working with him would be the challenge to go outside my usual beat and develop a new mastery of the important issues that face the world today — there are, after all, so many issues that progressives ought to be working on, and that his publication has been so masterful in addressing courageously and through a diversity of voices.

“That was a good answer,” he says, smiling.

In a just world, I would be throwing my coffee into your face, I think, and I fucking smile.

*

“Support Hillary Clinton all you like,” a young white man with a Serious Beard says, “but don’t confuse that with opposing actual power.”

All I can do is smile. Because not only do he and I disagree on the definition of “actual power” — men and I usually do — but I know which of our definitions is correct. His current position provides some pretty fucking good evidence for mine. He’s a writer – a staff writer, cushy job, steady work, benefits, I’m assuming – for one of those “progressive” sites. He’s not particularly talented, this guy. I’ve looked through his work, from time to time, and the best compliment I can come up with is serviceable. But he doesn’t need talent; he has the job.

I could be wrong. But something tells me his interview was a little easier than mine was. Something tells me no-one ever asked this guy whether he “would be able to write something that men could read.”

And no-one ever had to tell this guy that “men” is the definition of “progressive.” That men, “progressive” men, won’t be able to read or understand something if the voice is too female, too feminist, or not “sympathetic” enough to men.

Which, for the record, might be true.

*

Is feminism part of the left? Is it non-negotiable, central? Or is it a side issue, something that can be written off, discounted at will — and whose participants, whose vocal advocates and theorists and practitioners, can be turned into the enemy any time you like, in the name of “real,” male progressive politics?

I know the answer I want to believe. But I also know the answer Bernie Sanders gave Madeleine Kunin, when running against her for Governor of Vermont in 1986:

By any measure I was regarded as a progressive governor. If I was vulnerable, it was for being too liberal. As a legislator, my maiden speech on the floor of the Vermont House was in favor of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. My first priority as governor was universal access to kindergarten. I set a record for a Vermont governor’s appointees; women filled half of my cabinet. I sought out talented women, many of whom were the first women to head their agencies… When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on “class analysis,” in which “women’s issues” were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a “sexist position,” he declared.

When asked to consider the differences between Kunin and her Republican opponent (who was also running against her; Sanders was a third-party candidate in those days) he called them “Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

So that was the answer. Feminism didn’t matter. Her record of fighting for women’s equality, and of working to secure women both legal protection from discrimination and representation in their own government — well, that was all “women’s issues,” not real progressivism. In his view, there was no difference between a feminist ERA supporter and a Republican. In fact, Kunin’s actual gender politics were totally erased, so as to argue that her supporters were guilty of the “sexism” of voting for her “because she was a woman.” Because, in the end, that was all she was. Just “a woman.” Not a progressive. Not a feminist. Not even herself. Just female.

All from a guy who now Tweets “It’s my firm belief that if the US Senate had 83 women and 17 men, women’s reproductive rights would never be under question or debated.” Sanders, or his campaign staff, are more than able to talk the talk when it comes to women’s representation. But he’s never really gotten around the contradiction inherent in the fact that he talks about getting feminist women into office while actively, repeatedly running to keep feminist women out of office; that he is currently running to keep a feminist woman out of an office that men have held an exclusive monopoly on since this country was founded; that, simply put, if you plan to elect a majority-female Senate, at some point, somewhere, a whole lot of people are going to have to vote for someone just because she is a woman. Which, as we all know, is sexist and horrible and wrong.

Oh: And not “progressive.”

But I don’t need to look to Bernie Sanders himself for the question of whether feminism is part of progress. I can get the answer when a young man who calls himself a “secular progressive, against bigotry of all kinds,” with a picture of Bernie Sanders as his banner image, Tweets to call me a “regressive feminazi,” and an example of “sheer female ignorance.” I can get the answer when Shane Ryan angrily asserts that sexism has no influence on this election, that any attempt to address or analyze sexism aimed at Hillary Clinton or her supporters is just an attempt to “turn the discussion away from the political, and toward the personal,” and that sexism, in fact, is not political at all: “Talk about sexism, and at the very least you aren’t talking about politics,” he writes.

If you’d like to talk politics, by the way, Shane Ryan’s stated politics are that he wants a Republican to become President if Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination. I’d argue that this is at least in part because that Republican is likely to be a man, and that Ryan is calling himself a “progressive” while being so blinded by his own fears of female leadership that he’d actively work to bring on a disastrously extreme and oppressive right-wing administration to avoid it, and that, even if Ryan believes the Republican nominee’s gender has no impact on his decision, he is still making an inherently privileged argument because, as a man, he has far less to lose from a Republican administration than any woman in this country, all of whom would be disastrously impacted on one level or another by a Presidency and/or a Supreme Court nomination actively aimed at rolling back the progress on their human rights; but then, I guess that’s just talking about sexism, which as we all know is stupid baby personal feelings crap for dumb girls.

Is feminism progressive? Is sexism political? I get the answer every time someone complains that Hillary Clinton’s supporters are only backing the most qualified and experienced Presidential candidate in memory “because she is a woman;” because Hillary Clinton, too, the politician who was a pioneer in the fight for universal healthcare, who has been one of the most visible advocates for women’s rights in the world since the mid-‘90s, who was one of the more liberal Senators on the floor, who was the second-most popular Secretary of State in history and whose incorporation of feminist priorities into foreign policy goals was so unprecedented that entire books have been written about it, is just “a woman.” Not a feminist, not a liberal, not even herself; just a gender, and the wrong gender, at that. I get the answer whenever, despite Clinton being almost ideologically identical to the current, male President, and for that matter to his equally male Vice-President, people looking to compare her to another politician can somehow only ever do so by comparing her to a woman — usually a dead woman, from an entirely different country, with entirely different, openly conservative politics, and who, by the way, was Margaret fucking Thatcher. Once again, Clinton is just a gender, and the gender is bad. I get the answer every time a guy defines “actual power” for me, and doesn’t include sexism on the list of what “actual power” is. I get the answer continually, as it happens, because somehow, no-one, anywhere, from any part of the political spectrum, will stop bringing up Hillary Clinton’s goddamned vagina.

I have my answer. I do. When one of the most accomplished women in the goddamned world is rhetorically reduced to just another pussy, over and over, and when “progressives” are not only not furious about this, they’re actually the ones doing it, and they are telling those of us who complain about it to shut up, I know exactly where I, and women, and feminism, rank on the “progressive” movement’s list of priorities.

But I already knew all this. I knew it when Michael Moore giggled about sexual assault allegations on TV. I knew it when Olbermann called Katie Couric “the Worst Person In The World” for suggesting some journalists had been sexist toward Hillary Clinton. I knew it when Freddie de Boer was out storming women’s comment sections because they told too many jokes to be Real Leftists, I knew it when I sat at that job interview and heard that “progressives” were mostly men who couldn’t read feminist writing, I knew it every time I saw left-wing men being abusive and shitty and condescending to their female co-workers, and believe me, I have seen that one thing happen, a lot.

I knew. I just hoped it wasn’t true.

But if this is where we stand, fellas, then hear this, from the bottom of my stupid ol’ vaginavoting feminazi crybaby dumb girl heart: You can do this, but you can’t do it and ask me to pretend it isn’t happening. You can use sexism to rally people for a “progressive” cause, but you can’t then claim that the sexism is invisible, that it doesn’t exist, or that it doesn’t matter, or doesn’t compromise you. You can frame women and feminists as your Women’s Auxiliary, people to be tapped when you need their time and effort and platforms and organizing skill, and discarded or flat-out trashed in favor of better, more male politics whenever we step out of line or whenever it’s convenient. But you can’t do it and tell me that your gender politics are “progressive.” You can’t be a feminist on some days and a person screaming about Hillary Clinton’s vagina on the internet other days, as a wise man might say. So go ahead. Type about how Hillary Clinton is “pandering for votes with her vagina.” But don’t do it and then tell me your opposition to Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with her gender. There is a limit to precisely how many times you can feed me horseshit and call it chocolate frosting, and right now, the taste in my mouth says your time is up.

*

Another story, then, to close us out.

“Secretary Clinton, first ladies, as you well know, have used their position to work on important causes like literacy and drug abuse,” the moderator says. “But they also supervise the menus, the flowers, the holiday ornaments and White House decor. I know you think you know where I’m going here.”

I watch Hillary Clinton’s face. She smiles. You always smile at the job interview. She smiles like a motherfucker, that woman.

She smiles while she assures the moderator that she won’t make her husband do stupid lady things like - ick! - decorating. She smiles while assuring the world she won’t forsake her duty as a woman, that she will still “pick the flowers and the china for state dinners and stuff like that.” She smiles while answering the question of whether female Presidents are fundamentally unnatural, whether she is fundamentally unnatural, whether electing her will emasculate not only Bill Clinton but the nation itself. And she has been the second-most popular Secretary of State in history, and she has been the member of the Obama administration with the highest approval rating, and she has been one of the most liberal Senators in Congress, and she has been an early pioneer whose work laid the ground for both CHIP and eventually Obamacare, and she has been one of the single most visible advocates for feminism globally and in the United States since the mid-90s, and she has done the work, the basic work level of the work, the coming-in-when-you’re-sick-don’t-be-late-don’t-take-a-vacation work, and she still has to answer this fucking question – the one that’s not about her, but about her gender; the one that’s not about policy, but whether she could govern in a way men can accept – but smiling is just what you do, if you’re a woman, and a feminist, and you have to field questions like these. You don’t challenge the premises. You don’t tell them to fuck off. You let them test you to see if you’re an angry feminist, and you pass the test by letting them insult you to your face and not getting angry. Because after everything you’ve done, everything you’ve fought for, that’s still what most men want to know. They want to know they can insult you and get away with it. They won’t work with you if they can’t.

Hillary Clinton lets them insult her with a smile on her face, because she wants the job. Because there is no way to just flip a table, throw the coffee, walk out of this bitch in protest, and get the job she wants. There never is. Not for her, not for me, not for any of us. She smiles.

Yeah, I’m voting for her. Not “because of her gender.” Because of this really basic, stupid belief I have that the most qualified person should be the person who gets the job. Because I know for a fact that a million male idiots have walked the halls of power — for Christ’s sake, the New York Times just endorsed a guy who tried to get Fargo banned from his local Blockbuster because it was too scary — and a million qualified, brilliant women have sat on the sidelines. And I know this is true, not just in politics, but everywhere in the world. That women can never be seen as “the most qualified person,” even when they’re more qualified than men, because people keep asking us these fucking questions, the ones they don’t ask men, about whether our gender would prevent us from doing the work.

If you got this far, you probably agree with me. After all, I’m told men can’t read my writing. But if you don’t: Congratulations. You’re about to see something special.

This is what it looks like when a woman stops smiling.