Former first lady Michelle Obama said American women who cast their votes for President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election “voted against their own voice” and “just like the thing you’re told to like.” She made her comments during a speech Wednesday at a marketing conference in Boston.

Obama said she believes all women should have voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton if they truly respected their own voices and their own independence. For all those women who did choose Trump over Clinton, the former first lady implied these women were misled into listening to the voices of the men in their lives and following orders by voting for the male candidate over the female one.

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“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” Obama said at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, The Washington Times reported.

“It doesn’t say much about Hillary, and everybody’s trying to worry about what it means for Hillary and no, no, no what does this mean for us as women?” Michelle Obama continued. “That we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, ‘He’s better for me. His voice is more true to me.’ To me that just says, You don’t like your voice. You just like the thing you’re told to like.”

Obama claimed that many women across the country have been conditioned in “very subtle ways” to sit quietly and passively allow men to direct and monopolize.

“Care about how much you pay in taxes? You’re a traitor to the cause. Care about getting inner-city kids who want to succeed into better schools? Traitor.”

“The Left is like the sorting hat from Harry Potter” that placed Hogwarts students in one of the four class houses, Eddie Zipperer, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College, told LifeZette in an email, noting that the Left enjoys “defining people and then pigeonholing those people.”

“If you’re a woman, abortion and free birth control are all that should matter to you. If you’re Hispanic, illegal immigration is all you can care about. If you’re black, your life should revolve around historical injustices,” Zipperer said of the Left’s pigeonholing. “Care about how much you pay in taxes? You’re a traitor to the cause. Care about getting inner-city kids who want to succeed into better schools? Traitor.”

“This is an intimidation tactic, and it’s shameful,” he added. “Before the 19th amendment, the country was full of people who believed women shouldn’t vote because they would only vote how some man told them to. So their vote would be redundant. The argument was stupid then, and it’s stupid now.”

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The former first lady attempted to strike a more gracious tone when she spoke of the 45th president directly.

“We want him to be successful. He was elected,” Obama said of her hopes and former President Barack Obama’s hopes for the new president. “When you’ve been in that position, you have a different perspective.”

But Michelle Obama’s demeaning criticism of female Trump voters and their autonomy cast a shadow over her relatively mild words for the president.

“Wake up, feminists! Call out Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton for the sexist, superior attitude that women can’t make up their own minds!” Zipperer said. “I know lots of women who voted for Trump, and guess how many of them are incapable of thinking for themselves. Zero.”

“If the Democrats embraced diversity of thought along with diversity of gender, skin color, country of origin, and sexual orientation,” he added, “maybe they would stop losing so many elections.”

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Gage Skidmore, Flickr)