It would have been good for feminism if it had taken a pass on Clinton’s candidacy in light of all this. Instead, it now gives the impression, in the immortal words of Lena Dunham, that women simply “vote their uterus.” It is fashionable these days in lefty circles to insist that identity is not something you are born with, it is something that is imposed on you. To think otherwise is to be guilty of essentialism and confuse category for identity, a cardinal sin.

Yet feminists uncritically flocking to Clinton risk giving the impression that they are, like The Nation’s Liza Featherstone, voting for her simply to elect the “first woman president of the United States.” They are acting more like “vulgar” feminists — rather than mature ones whose concerns as women are part of a more capacious identity based on a whole range of interests from foreign policy to national security to the economy.

After the first Clinton-Trump debate, Michelle Vitali mused: “Imagine a woman who showed up unprepared, sniffling like a coke addict and interrupting her opponent 70 times. Let’s further imagine that she had five kids by three men, was a repeated adulterer, had multiple bankruptcies, paid zero federal taxes, and rooted for the housing crisis in which many thousands of families lost their homes. Wait… there’s more: She has never held any elected office in her life.”