File this under clouds with silver linings.

If you support Hillary Clinton, as I do, you're becoming familiar with all the disadvantages women have when they compete with men.

I saw it in the debates with Bernie Sanders. He would talk over her, wave his hands at her, and it was clear she couldn't object. There were so many things we would never tolerate from a woman that are seen as commanding or signs of strength in men.

And it's happening again in the competition with Trump.

He's pouring a waste dump full of garbage into the political commons this year, while Hillary has dropped a few bits of litter here and there. Trump has said he doesn't plan to uphold the First Amendment. He might use a nuclear weapon in Europe. He wants to withdraw from our international commitments. He has declared war on Mexico. 

Hillary used a mail server to send and receive classified documents. An exec at the DNC suggested doing something evil to Sanders (the idea didn't go anywhere).

But it's second nature I guess to examine every nook and cranny of Hillary's humanity, repeatedly, while letting Trump slide. Everyone makes mistakes, we might say about him. But this is a job where even one mistake can lose us human civilization. 

With such extreme differences, the thing we're learning, if we come out the other end with an intact culture, is that we need to consciously treat women as equals in every way. There's no doubt the woman in this election is the only one who we can trust to do the job. Yet for reasons that are mysterious to me, we could go the other way.