Every morning, when my jaw drops as I scroll my feed, taking in new lows of the corruption in Trump’s administration, I wonder: Americans, do you still care about Hillary’s emails?

(Photo is of my dog and me hiding under the covers after reading about Ben Carson’s comments comparing slaves to immigrants coming to ‘a land of dreams.’ Carson is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.)

Trumpitis has infected the USA but a side effect of this disease is that I no longer have to live in a reality that people claim is post-feminist. While this may not seem like much, when you’re a feminist blogger/ writer/ speaker/ thinker and people are incessantly informing you that your subject matter isn’t real, isn’t important, or doesn’t exist, it’s actually a pretty big deal not to crash into that wall of denial many times a day, every day. I can’t remember a time where 99% of my work towards gender equality wasn’t just pointing out that sexism exists.

I got into feminism in my twenties. Studying philosophy at NYU, I suddenly realized there was not one– not one— female philosopher in my curriculum. How could I be engaged in a search for truth and meaning that is void of any women’s thoughts, voices, or experiences? How, philosophically, did that make any sense?

Mind you, this was the 90s. Feminism, as a social movement, was not cool or hip. If you wanted to be those things, you were post-feminist. I think part of the reason my peers, women in their twenties, saw little reason for feminism is because, for some of us, inequality hadn’t hit yet. Still In low-level jobs, pre-kids, women’s gains were noticed more than our setbacks. Again, for me, this was not the case. I witnessed blatant gender disparity because I grew up in a very “privileged” world where men and women seemed like different species: all the men were running the world and all the women were dieting. As a kid, I’m not sure I saw anything “wrong” with this yet, but it struck me.

Though I don’t have to encounter, for the most part, people telling me misogyny isn’t real, I do get pushback, mostly from progressive men and white women, when I point out their sexism. Recently, a progressive male friend of mine posted on Facebook a meme of Kellyanne Conway captioned “Sewer Rat Barbie.” I commented something like: “There are so many reasons to criticize KC for her policies and words, but focusing on her appearance is sexist.” The guy responded that I was overreacting and had no sense of humor. Weeks later (and part of the inspiration for this blog) a New York Times headline came out that read: Sexist Political Criticism Finds a New Target: Kellyanne Conway. The NYT post came out after a Democrat told a joke — hahhahahahaha– alluding to KC’s position on a couch, that it looked like she was giving a blow job.

Here’s the thing: we will not get a woman president until white women and progressive men vote for her, until these groups make gender equality a priority. No matter how hard they search, white women and progressive men will never find a totally pure female candidate to vote for. I’ve blogged before about how many women who hated Hillary assured me they weren’t being sexist (and let’s remember here, yes, women can be sexist. As bell hooks writes “patriarchy has no gender”). They would campaign for Elizabeth Warren. She’s a woman, right? Well, yes, she’s a woman, but, um, she’s not running for president. That, my friends, is what made her so pure and perfect. She wasn’t tainted by ambition, the worst of all female traits. A powerful woman threatens the very foundation of our society and women and men are terrified of her. Recently, Vanity Fair posted: Elizabeth Warren Gets a Reality Check with the subhead: A new poll finds that while Donald Trump would easily lose to a generic Democrat in 2020, the president would wipe the floor with Warren.

In their book, Half the Sky, Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn argue that gender equality is the paramount moral challenge of our time. We must recognize the ubiquity of misogyny affects so much of America from who we choose as president, to the wars we choose to wage (or not wage) around the world. Until combating sexism is a priority for our citizens, leaders like Trump will rise to power.