A Vagina changes nothing

In case you haven't guessed by now, I have a vagina. While I do sometimes think about (or WITH) this particular aspect of my anatomy, overall I’d have to contradict the historical platitudes, which mistakenly assumed that having a vagina makes me so very different (or inferior to) my male counterparts. No, I've found that it doesn't make a big difference.

I don’t stand in the produce section of the grocery store and consider its health and well being while I select vegetables. It doesn't effect how I take in or retain facts. It doesn't manipulate how I see colors. It doesn't change how I react to other people. In fact, I’m sure no matter what my anatomy everyone else on the road would still drive just as badly. I see this same lack of difference in other beings that I know to also possess vaginas. My upstairs neighbor, for instance, stamps her feet like a bricklayer (especially after 11pm) despite her petite feminine physique.

So here we are in another fun-filled election year and at the top of the Democratic Party sits Hillary Clinton. As a first presidential runner with a realistic shot at winning to be a “she”, Hillary storms across the country touting herself as the standard bearer of “change”. Suddenly, having a vagina is supposed to make a difference.

It doesn’t.

Sorry to disappoint, but no matter what the gender of the chef, the sausage will still come out of the Senate kitchen with the same stink.

Any one looking to Hillary Clinton's electability and thinking that in her lies a new vista of equality for American woman had better scratch the surface a little more. We might be fooled to think that we are getting someone who cares about our Health care concerns and desires to end a senseless war and bring our sons and daughters home. But no. She is a candidate who’s funding sources put her so in bed with the exact corporate interests that we say we don’t want having any more say in our lives that there stands little hope of America, under her leadership, really seizing hold of that promised magic: change.

Of all the presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton has received the most funding from defense contractors who have wasted billions of our dollars in Iraq. These are companies who have taken bales of Ben Franklins into the desert to “pay off locals” as needed and lost over 8 million dollars. These are companies who have sent truckloads of “sail boat fuel” (read: air) across Iraq, risking the lives of civilian contractors, just so they could bill our government for the expense. Who picks up that tab? You and me baby. I don’t know of any American who, upon hearing that story, doesn’t grow more than a little mad and want these companies held accountable. They have stolen. This is money that has not been spent at home on our social welfare. This is money that has not been used for our soldiers and their safety. The current administration is not going to lift a finger to take such action because the biggest culprits: KBR / Haliburton form Bush’s funding base. By funneling money into Clinton’s campaign these corporations are merely insuring four (or eight) more years of kid-glove treatment for all their wrongs.

Lest anyone get too optimistic, the candidate who has received the second most amount of funding from these clowns is Barak Obama.

And yet the word on every candidate’s lips is “change”. But change doesn’t necessarily amount to an improvement.

The issues written on the hearts of Americans may be too broad and personal to fit into choice A, B or C of a focus group form. But focus we must so that candidates can spend the next 10 months tossing around words we might not understand about issues we might not care about in ways that we already know and avoid adding any real truth to the public discussion. But really, do we want “change” or do we just want the war, the obvious lies and political nonsense to stop? Don’t we really just want our jobs back? Don’t we really just want to push the pre-chewed punditry off our plates forever and see some real democracy? Don’t we all really just want to put our head to the pillow and know that our government isn’t trying to screw us?

Someone has suggested handing the candidates a thesaurus to get them out of that one word rut. Cooler minds might go so far as to hand them a dictionary so they can see what that word really means. Last time I checked it didn’t amount to having our once democratic elections auctioned off to the highest bidding corporations, just like four years ago, just like eight years ago, just like everyone in the past generation as done as they pretzel themselves to emulate Reagan’s dynamism and landslide victories.

Hillary Clinton has had immense success in raising funds for her presidential bid. Where the money goes the cameras follow and what gets the TV coverage gets a better chance at being elected because if its on TV it must be true. I have only a little doubt that she will end up in the white house. She may go down in history as the first woman elected president of the United States and her strength and gall to pursue such a goal will be no doubt extolled ad nausea. But is she so very different that what has come before her?

A vagina changes nothing: but money sure does.