Dear Mitt;

The “Binders full of women” comment continues to eat away at me. It’s more than just a Twitter hashtag. The Binder bit brought you to a new low.

You see, Mitt, we women are intelligent, capable, competent people. We’re not a separate race. We feel, we love, we care, and we worry. We worry a lot. When a candidate for the highest office in the land thinks he’s being fabulous by claiming he found “binders full of (qualified) women” for professional positions, we worry and we wonder.

We wonder —

• Why did you know of no qualified women until the Binders showed up on your desk?
• Why did women’s groups have to push you to hire women – in 2003?!
• When did you realize that you slipped (another case of Romnesia, no doubt) by claiming you’d sought out qualified women to hire? Did you not know the very women you’d mentioned would handle their own fact checking? Did you not care?
• Why are we still fighting these battles?
• How did it happen that banning birth control is even on the table for legislation? Isn’t this ridiculous? No, don’t answer that second one.

In my mind’s eye, I keep seeing Mel Gibson in the movie What Women Want. Mel had to get struck by lightning in order to really hear what women were thinking and saying. Mitt, you don’t need a lightning strike. You simply need to listen. Listen, that is, with an open mind.

Instead of telling us females what we need, ask us. Ask us why birth control matters. Ask us why we think it’s utterly insulting to imply we’re incapable of making our own health care decisions. Ask us why we’d like to be considered qualified professionals. Consider why we might rather fill offices than fill three-ring binders. Put yourself in our shoes.

Maybe that’s the crux of it, Mitt. You seem to be incapable of empathy for anyone born female. You don’t know how to wear our shoes.

Frankly, Mitt, leave me out of your binder. Since you consider me a lesser being, I’ll stick to my own professional networks. I don’t need a lightning strike to show me that your Binders full of Women are just another token. I get it. I do.

When will you get it, Mitt?