Hillary Clinton's Entire Career Has Been Set to a Soundtrack of Shouting

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

I've got a new essay up at BNR: "What's All That Shouting at the Democratic Convention?"

To be a woman is to live a life against a backdrop of shouting.

...And most of us don't live our lives on a stage as visible and a scale as grand as Hillary Clinton has done — and continues to do.

...Hillary is used to being shouted at. The sound of shouts echo through the halls of whatever space she works, doing the business of getting things done, for the people who shout at her. And the people who don't.

So it was inevitable that there would be shouting at the Democratic convention, this place in which Hillary will officially become the first woman ever to be nominated for the U.S. presidency by a major party. It is the biggest and best thing she's ever done (so far), so naturally there is shouting.

But if shouting could stop her, she never would have made it to this moment. Hillary is tougher than the people who shout at her ever will be.

And then there is this: There are people who are shouting for her. With lungs full of air drawn in the deep breath of relief and validation. There are people who are shouting with all of our might that she has done this thing, this extraordinary thing, which took 227 years for a woman to do.

We are shouting, too. We are shouting with the fervor of multitudes; with the vigor of millions of ghosts. Women who have lived and died without ever seeing this moment, who no longer haunt us; whose rattled chains of celebration reverberate in our lifted voices.

We have taken up their legacy with breathless gratitude and compelling need, drawing our lives from their oft unknown lives, beneficiaries of a legacy we only deserve if we endeavor to enrich it with our own contributions, no matter whether infinitesimal or grand, as long as they are honest and true.

This moment is grand. And so we shout. Our shouting will drown in deep, incandescent pools of reproach the shouting of those who would try to derail this moment.

Head on over to read the whole thing. And please share it far and wide with all the Hillary supporters you know who might need the reminder that there are millions of us shouting with joy.