Author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, "the women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because their shit worked out.   They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it. They handled it in a thousand different ways, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes." Most people are filled with the assumption that superheroes are mainly men with large muscles, elaborate costumes and an oversized ego with an illustrious cape, but I'm here to confirm that that isn't always the case. 

It was colonial America and the year, 1756. Under British rule women were allowed to vote. From 1776 to 1807 in New Jersey, unmarried women owning property were also allowed to vote. However a law was passed in 1807 excluding women to vote in that state. In the year 1756, Lydia Taft made history by being the first legal woman ever to vote in the United States. She voted on three separate occasions but non of these elections were ever connected to choosing a president. 

It would be almost 120 years later in 1872 to be exact, that a woman would actually take another step towards reshaping history. Her name was Susan B. Anthony and she was known to be the very first woman ever to have voted in a presidential election. She once said, "A woman must not depend upon the protection of a man, but must be taught to protect herself." Soon after she was arrested in Rochester, NY for having voted illegally. She was charged, publicly tried, convicted and ordered to pay a hefty fine that she ultimately refused to pay. 

That same year 1872, in the exact same election the first woman in the history of the United States, public nominee Ms. Victoria Woodhull ran for president, but she would lose. She had hopes of running alongside the infamous civil rights activist Frederick Douglas. As he was also a nominee, but he respectfully declined and instead served on the electorial board which got Ms. Anthony nominated to enter the race in the first place. In 1878 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had arranged for the people in Congress to be presented with an amendment they had put together, giving women the right to vote in the United States of America. It didn't become the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution until 1920. It is popularly known as the Anthony Amendment. It was introduced to Congress on behalf of Anthony and Stanton by Sen. Aarons A. Sargent. 

Over the years there have been many changes and more than a few female presidential candidates that have been  brave enough to run for office here in the United States. Women like Belva Lockwood, Grace Allen, Margaret Chase Smith, Charlene Mitchell who happens to be the first African American woman to have ran. Patsy Takemoto Mink who was the first Asian American to run. Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and a few others.

 What was a surprise to me was not that there were so many women that I had never before heard of who had ran for presidency, but it was more so of how many had attempted so many times but had never actually been successful. That factor alone bothers me and has me smh in the disbelief of knowing how far we've proclaimed to have come but yet how far behind we still are. 
 

Are we really all created equal and if so shouldn't we be treated and respected as such? Being turned down because of age requirements or the lack of appropriate family status is one thing but being denied due to something that is out of your control such as being born a specific gender, ethnicity or perhaps a specific race is simply obsurd. 

I happen to be checking out a past episode of Being Mary Jane the other night and they posted a quote by John Lennon that said, "Woman is the nigger of the world." Ordinarily I may have thought the very worse of this quote but I was smart enough to have a full and total understanding of what Mr. Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono's ideology and their driving premise to have created such a song was. The statement was indeed a raw one but I'm convinced that it was truth inspired. 

Californian Democrat, also ex mayor of Oakland Ron Dellums shared my same perspective when he opted to release a statement right after the song's release which said "If you define niggers as someone whose life style is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by others, then good news!-- you don't have to be black to be a nigger in this society. Most of the people in America are niggers"

So this all left me in deep thought did most men, most people truly think that all women were an "ignorant" creation? Especially when it came down to their work ethic and standing up for themselves. In retrospect James Connelly said, "the worker is the slave of the capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave." So the question remains are women understood to be the gender who just doesn't know much of anything at all. Was that why most men treated us women like we we're utterly helpless and like we just did not know any better? I gotta tell you the truth. The entire ideal alone has made me very hot under the collar. But then I thought to myself, that that had been the exact reason why most men felt the way that they did about women in the first place. Always believing that we can't use common sense and a decent level of calm intellectual rationale to properly make wise enough decisions. That somehow we're all crazy because we must be on our periods.

Maybe in their eyes we'd never be quite good enough to do a great job because either way we'd just always be too steamed up emotionally. Way too sweet or maybe even entirely too damn cunning to actually keep it all together and balanced enough to properly fulfill the job description. Afterall in the words of the late James Brown, "this is a man's world" A man did once say, "women are some unstable creatures." Keeping in mind to the fact that women have been known to give birth to an entire village, supply food, keep house, raise nations and be there to comfort and keep everyone else all while disregarding their own needs. So keeping an entire country together well the idea of that would just be utterly  insane. I say that's a load of freshly popped poppycock.

They could give us all numerous  reasons as to why no woman to date has ever been elected president and say that it's because the female candidates in the past haven't been very likeable or may have been under qualified to say the least but it has been known that many of the past and current male candidates have also had the exact same issues of being not qualified enoughstill somehow are elected and are morally accepted. How is that fair? In my book the main ingredients in the recipe to being a great president would have to be a person not to be percieved as being perfect but someone who has a very strong mental state of mind. Acts well under extreme circumstances and works very well under pressure. They would have to be strategic. All while being a fair, logical and rational human being.
 

Currently there are atleast 23 Democrats running in the 2016 race for presidency. A total of around the same number of Republicans are running for office as well. Our former US secretary of State, representative of the Democrat party Hillary Clinton has decided to take a second chance at running for president in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections of 2016. She is one amongst approximately 65 other female candidates. This number also includes a transgender woman by the name of Midgelle Regina Potts of the Green Party. 

Others like Republican Businesswoman Carly Fiorina of VA have been identified as unqualified Fiorina was the 1st woman to head a fortune 20 company. Fired from her job as CEO for outsourcing jobs. She also lost a California Senate rate in 2010. 

With Hillary Clinton leading the polls by 58% and Senator Bernie Sanders not trailing too far behind her with a 16 point deficit things are looking beyond interesting for the new year. In the words of a great novelist Toni Morrison, "make a difference about something other than yourself."