It is hard to breathe today. Civility is dead. So is polling and punditry. But the most dangerous element of yesterday’s U.S. election results is the woman-hating engaged in by the Republican presidential ticket. Like other types of hatred, misogyny usually lurks in dark crevices, but Donald Trump has thrust the demeaning of women out into the light, where it is now breeding freely.
There was a TikTok trend this past week of shocked teens discovering the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the p — y” tapes. They were too young in 2016 to have seen them. The modern world moves fast, but the internet is forever.
We’ve become inured to the coarseness of discourse — and gesture, to cite the fellatio-simulating microphone action Trump engaged in last week.
I’m glad my kids aren’t still young; it would be hard to teach them appropriate behaviour in decent society when someone so tawdry is rewarded with the highest political office. But it would be harder still to watch them become aware of the world in a time when women are treated with such open disdain. And while words hurt, misogynistic policy consequences are deadly: women are dying of medical emergencies after being denied abortion health care, thanks to the Trump-stacked Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
The campaign was once again a steaming pile of negativity. J.D. Vance’s Childless Cat Ladies slur was a flashing red flag that contempt for women was a major part of this platform. The suggestion that women over 50 should no longer care about reproductive rights and that women’s sole purpose should be to raise children was archaic.
It was also designed to appeal to men. Last night around 6 p.m., Trump supporter and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller encouraged voter turnout by tweeting, “If you know any men who haven’t voted, get them to the polls,” and then “Get every man you know to the polls.” Of those who did, exit polls show 54% did indeed vote for Trump, and he saw an 18-point boost over 2020 from Latino men.
Yesterday’s result was somehow more crushing than Hillary Clinton’s loss of 2016. It felt like a clear sign that it is open season on women. In just 100 days, Kamala Harris made magic, she brought back hope to flailing Democrats. She did not dwell on the historic nature of her candidacy, but women and people of colour around the world felt deeply invested in her run. Harris is classy and funny and articulate, has an impressive resume and developed concrete policy plans to benefit the people, not just the .01 percenters and tech oligarchs.
She conducted herself with grace throughout the race, even as her opponent sunk to ever-lower lows, calling her “re — ded” and “dumb as a rock.” Of course, she had to: As a woman of colour, she had to be more-than-perfect, that oldest of clichés. She was embraced by cultural icons from Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift to Harrison Ford. But it wasn’t enough.
More Americans voted for a fever dream of hazily remembered good times set to Muzak, peddled by a convicted felon, a xenophobe who stoops to insult nearly everyone and who openly embraces the world’s dictators. He made them feel like they were a part of something, even if it’s just a group that wears the same red hat. In return, they gave him an unprecedented mandate, with few safeguards to counter his impulses and ignorance.
Trump promises to dial back the clock to a time when everyone could afford a house, a car and a beer on the back deck at the end of a workday. Unfortunately, that means sending women back to the 1950s, too, serving their menfolk, with no control over their own bodies. It makes the “trad wife” social media trend so, so much creepier. Cos play is one thing; affecting real people’s real rights is another. That Julia Roberts had to tell women in an ad that their husbands don’t control their vote was a real eye opener.
Trump’s re-election brings to mind an old aphorism about scarcity mindset: When the watering hole shrinks, we animals start to look at each other funny. It’s a scary moment, from extreme weather events to war in the Middle East and Europe, and there’s crushing sticker shock at the gas pump and the grocery store.
Perhaps that’s why the fight to restore reproductive rights in America, a potent rallying cry for women that cut across socio-economic lines, proved less powerful than Trump’s promise of renewed economic success. It is ironic that a failed businessman with multiple bankruptcies — even if he played a successful one on TV — is being credited with an economic magic touch. Tax cuts for rich people and corporations won’t work. Trickle-down economics won’t help regular people. Trickle-down dreams, reflected off the shiny gilt of billionaires’ nameplates, are apparently sufficient.
The shrinking watering hole breeds a might-is-right, swinging-dick take on the world, fed by anti-immigrant fear mongering and hating on trans kids. How could a con artist make people believe he was out for their best interests, again? Sleight of hand: His diehard fans read his vulgarities as sincerity, took his scapegoating of marginalized groups as freedom to say the dark things they themselves want to say, without recourse.
Watching this unfold from north of the 48th parallel, many of us in our privileged, educated, healthcare-having bubbles, is the ultimate in armchair quarterbacking. It feels unfathomable that a wannabe authoritarian could again take the helm of the big country next door, the cultural force and economic and military powerhouse that eclipses our own democracy project huddled along its border.
We reassure ourselves that it can’t happen here. But abortion rights, once thought to be “settled” law in the U.S., were dismantled overnight. Our economic outlook is tied to our neighbour and closest trading partner. Fear-mongering over immigration, stoked by global unrest, has seeped into our once proudly welcoming society. Our wallets are hurting too.
It’s hard to swallow that for many, the threat to democracy and basic human rights, especially for marginalized people, is simply not as powerful as Trump’s siren call to restore a Vaseline-lensed American Dream.
But amazing things can happen when women are galvanized by disappointment and disparagement. The pollution of regressive Trumpian discourse will leach into our lives only if we let it. We stand with our American sisters. The resistance begins today.
