Dear Peyton Spanbauer,

While I appreciate and recognize your right to shun all white women who think differently than yourself, I also appreciate and recognize mine to provide a thoughtful response. There are a few things in your piece posted on Iowa State Daily that I’d like to address, as they were concerning and frankly not rooted in facts.

The piece to which I am referring is titled, “White women voters are failing us.” As a fellow white female voter who is a proud conservative woman who stands strong in her values, the title is immediately and extremely off-putting. Why is it that voting Republican is synonymous with failing everyone who didn’t? Secondly, why does the Democratic Party feel entitled to the female vote?

In your last paragraph, you stated:

“Just because we are white in America, does not mean we are no longer held responsible for upholding the rights our gender deserves. Women cannot succeed until every woman of every color and every background has an equal chance in this country. In those regards, white women, it is on us to stop voting for Republicans.”

I’m confused. Did I miss a memo that says “[women] of every color and every background” do not have the same rights in America as everyone else? Why is it that we continue to drill the idea into the minds of young girls and women in this country that we already won’t succeed because we are women? Statements like these create a dark cloud that looms over the heads of women and constantly whispers, “Everyone says we aren’t equal, so it must be true,” and gives us the false conception that we’ve already been set up to fail. No one is oppressing us. This is America in 2018. We start succeeding when we stop feeling sorry for ourselves.

In combination with stating that we need to stop voting for Republicans, you also mentioned that “white, male politicians do not have our best interests at heart.” (The first, obvious point to make here is that this blanket statement includes J.D. Scholten, so are you saying the people who voted for him are also in the wrong?) Unrelated to King or Scholten, the main statement I want to make is that the Republican Party played a major role in giving women in America the right to vote at all. In 1848, Gerrit Smith began fighting for women’s suffrage alongside the Liberty Party. John Allen Campbell passed America’s first law giving women the right to vote in 1869.

Both of these men were Republicans and both of these men had a big hand in granting us the right to vote. Then, in 1919 when the 19^th Amendment was passed, Republicans were considerably more in favor of passing the amendment than the Democrats were. Additionally, most women who voted for the first time voted with the Republicans. Going back to your statement on how we need to “stop voting for Republicans”, these facts are important because it shows that this is not a new concept. Women have been voting with Republicans since the day we were able to vote.

While those are just a few historic examples, they showcase the phenomenon that Republicans did not become the enemy until people like yourself decided we were.

So, with respect, please stop assuming that we voted blindly or didn’t use our minds at the polls. I can’t speak for everyone, but most us made very educated decisions in both 2016 and 2018. You stated that overall, 49 percent of white women voted Republican. That is not a mistake. We did it on purpose. We are not ashamed of our mission to ensure our country remains the best in the world, and snarky opinion pieces like yours and many others are not going to change our minds. We will continue to stand strong and we will continue to stand for America.