A few years ago, someone asked me when I started identifying as a feminist, and I struggled to answer. Since childhood, I’ve always believed in — to quote author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — “the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” Part of the reason I’ve identified as a feminist, even if I didn’t always understand that label, is my mother. Thanks to her, I’ve always felt confident in myself and my abilities despite living in a society that can often belittle or doubt women, and I’ve always felt comfortable speaking up in the classroom regardless of how male-dominated it is. Better still, with her support and keen eye for editing cover letters, I found a dream internship at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. My mother and I have always tended to agree on most political issues, and when we’ve had our disagreements, like all mothers and daughters do, it’s over small things — like how I dye my hair liberally with blue streaks or my stubborn insistence on only studying dead languages. However, the 2016 primaries has triggered a larger disagreement over politics, progressivism and how to judge whether a candidate is feminist and whose feminism should be used as that metric.

I support Bernie Sanders, and my mother supports Hillary Clinton; we perfectly mirror the generational divide that pollsters have found among white, female Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. There have been plenty of think pieces and op-eds about why young women simply are not voting for Hillary Clinton, be it because younger people generally tend to be more to the left than their parents or because of splits in feminist theory or because young women haven’t lived as long as older women and therefore haven’t experienced as much sexism. My former idol Gloria Steinem would claim it is because young feminists like me only care about getting boys’ attention — never mind that many young Bernie supporters like myself tend to loathe the so-called “Bernie Bros.”

My mother and I disagree on who we support because we disagree on who the more feminist candidate in the election is. This disagreement, I believe, stems from the differences in the feminist waves to which we belong. My mother is of the second-wave generation of the 1960s to 1980s, a feminist movement that largely focused on legal barriers to equality, such as abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment. On the other hand, I am a third-wave feminist, interested in how issues like race, gender identity, sexuality and class intersect with each other in terms of oppression and privilege. Second-wave feminism focuses on legal and political equality while third-wave feminism is more concerned about the intersections of identity and combatting structural inequality. That is not to say my mother does not care about racism or homophobia or that equal pay is not something I’m passionate about, but we express those concerns in different ways and through different lenses. As a result of our different focuses and understandings of feminism, the two of us disagree on what makes a candidate better for women.

There are many reasons that my mother supports Hillary Clinton just as there are many reasons why I support Bernie Sanders, but for her, a big political issue is abortion access. It’s a big issue for me as well; I didn’t spend a summer in Planned Parenthood’s communications department for nothing. For my mother, Hillary Clinton is the preferred feminist candidate because she has a very good record on both protecting abortion rights and leading consistently on the issue — while Bernie Sanders, despite being pro-choice, just does not have the same enthusiasm on the issue because abortion access is not his top priority. There’s a sense as well that the ultimate end-game for second-wave feminism, the full realization of legal and political equality, rests with a woman in the White House. For many second-wave feminists, perhaps the act of choosing a male candidate over the qualified female is an act of betrayal for what feminism is supposed to be about.

I have a lot of sympathy for second-wave feminists. I can only imagine their frustration; many second-wave feminists fought for abortion access — only to see it eroded away — and dealt with workplace discrimination in the hopes that one day they too would have a chance in the White House. 

To watch young women, the vanguard of the feminist movement, reject that ideology must feel like a slap in the face. Prominent female politicians, like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, have been plenty critical of young women who do not measure up to their second-wave aspirations. At a rally in New Hampshire, Albright told the crowd that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” apparently in reference to women who did not support Hillary, and Wasserman-Schultz told the New York Times in a Jan. 6 interview that there is “a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided.”

However, for young women like me, this knee-jerk support for Hillary Clinton and statements decrying our feminist credentials can feel like a slap in the face, especially as so many of us have been active in organizing for issues like reproductive health access and equal pay. Third-wave and second-wave feminism are different, and feminists from these two schools of thought are also going to be different. Assuming that all feminists have the same perspective ignores our individual experiences and when and how we came of age. My experiences and my mother’s experiences are different, and even though we both are frustrated with each other — my mother because she thinks I’m being impractical and idealistic; myself because I think my mother tends to ignore unsavory aspects of Hillary Clinton’s record, like her hawkish foreign policy or tendency to flip-flop on issues like LGBTQ rights and racial justice — both of our perspectives are valid because they come from our own experiences.

In a Feb. 11 New York Times op-ed, Gail Collins said it best: “If the younger voters who are flocking to Bernie Sanders don’t share their elders’ intense feelings about needing to elect a woman president right now, it’s partly because Hillary Clinton helped create a different world. So no matter what comes next, everybody’s a winner.” Supporting Sanders does not make someone a bad feminist compared to Clinton supporters. It just indicates different ideologies and experiences.