This year's election brought women's anatomy into play with some of the crudest language ever. We all remember that quote that kicked it all in:

"I don't vote with my vagina"

(or at least that's the one I remember).

But worse, the cat was out of the bag (or Pandora's "Box", so to speak) - women's privies are fair game for contemptuous political comments. A woman, Susan Sarandon, told us so. And she's a liberal political activist, a feminist, so it must be okay.

Just in case that wasn't clear enough, in endorsing Bernie she clarified "I don’t vote with my vagina…It’s so insulting to women to think that [we] would follow a candidate just because she’s a woman."

As if it's not insulting to women to equate voting their gender and social and familial interests as simply their snatch.

The original quote was in early April 2015, about 6 months before Trump was talking about blood coming out of Megyn Kelly's "wherever", and repeated often so by February, Bernie black outreach figure Killer Mike was pitching such fine constructs as "a uterus doesn't qualify you to be president", using the feeble hall pass "a feminist (Jane Elliott) told me this!"

Rather than distance himself, Bernie defended Mike:

"What Mike said essentially is that ... people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender, but based on what they believe. I think that makes sense," said Sanders, who has mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"I don't go around, no one has ever heard me say, 'Hey guys, let's stand together, vote for a man.' I would never do that, never have."

Wow - Susan and Killer Mike and Bernie managed to dismiss 150 years of women's struggles to a vagina or uterus thing. This is what's called an "Anchor" in Trumpian Neurolingustic Programming - an issue (and a person) is quickly reduced to a symbol, here a body organ.

With the implication if women *do* vote for "that" woman, they're slaves to their anatomy - it's a twofer.

Of course providing a laughable nonequivalent whereby men have to bond together slyly ignores the extremely common case where Irish vote Irish, Catholics vote Catholic, blacks vote black, Hispanics vote Hispanic, southerners vote southerner - and Bernie's biggest street-cred, "vote me because I'm still as poor as you millennials". And yes, men vote men - they just don't have to "say" it. Social Justice Warrior Bernie should know all this. Black Lives Matter is just about skin color and selfish racial identity politics?

Maybe rapper Mike was emboldened by Trump kind of calling Ted Cruz a "pussy" (Trump actually reported a *woman* in the crowd saying it - no blame, no blame, just an earnest cub reporter). But using standard female genital slang for being weak was simply declassé by this point, no longer shocking. Tough women like Susan Sarandon say so - no Vaginal Vote.

And maybe Trump was emboldened by Madeleine Albright having to apologize days before for a fairly anodyne comment she'd been making for decades:

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Yep, it's wrong for women to bond together, to engage in any sort of (pejorative) "identity politics", to push for common goals or solve problems that only or largely affect women. Nope, that's being a pussy, voting your vagina, letting a uterus influence - because God knows that unlike any other interest group, women should focus on non-gender issues like war, the economy, emails, and not ones likely to affect their daily lives as women.

(During the 2008 campaign, I remember a lot of laughable comments like this one: "In this race, Barack Obama is the true feminist. Hillary Clinton, unfortunately, still does not get it.")

In any case, by the time we got to Pussygate, the vulgarity was already shoved out front and present, the exceptionalism of Hillary's run - no, stil no woman besides her has ever made a serious credible campaign for President, much less won - had already been hobbled and diluted.

Trump of course piled on with his own array of comments ("nasty woman", doesn't look impressive from behind, Hillary taking too long in the bathroom became "disgusting" - Republicans like that kind of horror at the thought of vaginas), but for the most part, Trump simply followed along with the ugly ad hominems and sexist framing that others had laid out since April 2015, while pivoting back to his brand - rich with beautiful pieces of ass/pussy.

Even his bringing Bill's "victims" to the debate was simply displaying what partisans on the left had accused Hillary of doing for months - attacking Bill's victims along with laughing at a rape victim she was defending. For many, it wasn't an over-the-top crudity - it was just confirmation of what they'd been told.

The other constant of shaming women for being fat or in some way not good looking enough is too long to go into here, but much of the serious damage to Hillary was started from the left. Even running as a woman became "calculating", and then people would ask why Hillary didn't seem "comfortable". Remember how she was "shouting"? You come a long way baby.

In 2003, the Dixie Chicks were banned and boycotted and had their career destroyed due to 1 comment a week before the Iraq War, something awfully mild by today's standards:

"We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

It's hard to imagine that happening to a male celebrity for something that trivial. 4 years after the Dixie Chicks suffered their career backlash, they released a new album - much lauded at the Grammies, but no longer a huge commercial success and still no radio play. The most famous song was "Not Ready To Make Nice".

And 10 days after the horrid finish to this awful awful campaign and election, I'm not ready to make nice either. All this backlash around distorted facts, lies and shaming, and the continual insults towards women and the unfair measures and backbiting and double standards from both my own party, amplified more than ever through social media, and the more and more broken media machine that never found a fact check it couldn't equivocate on, combined with the usual extra awfulness and hypocrisy of the right just has me royally pissed.

If we think we're going to regroup and get serious now, it's not going to happen without a fight or accepting the degree of misogyny and tilt against women that's entered the party (or those independents we welcome). If people think 1) another woman will sanely want to expose herself to all this, or 2) it'll all be different next time when not *that* woman, they're quite deluded.

Megyn Kelly was stalked by Roger Ailes as her network's top female anchor and forced to cut her own deal with Trump. I noted yesterday, Joe Biden gave a speech at a woman's group in 2014 noting the good old days when predator Bob Packwood was still in the Senate. Some other woman will be a Vagina Vote when she doesn't embrace a ban on fracking or Native American rights or a trade deal or some other topic du jour - the shuttering of abortion clinics or the high incidence of rape on campus or the paucity of female execs in Silicon Valley or just everyday sexism and stalking are just marginal to serious issues or women's true function, which is to keep us entertained and do things our way. Same as it ever was. But hopefully not as it will be.