What Can Girls Do Now?

Produced by ElevenLabs and Information Over Audio (NOA) utilizing AI narration.

How ought to the ladies who didn’t vote for Trump go about their lives, understanding {that a} majority of People voted not simply towards their speedy well being and well-being, however for a candidate who actively sidelined and maligned folks like them? After months and months of watching Donald Trump and his band of bros belittle Kamala Harris and all girls usually—the childless, the childbearing, and the post-childbearing—55 p.c of male voters supported him, in response to CNN’s exit polls. So did 45 p.c of feminine voters. What are the opposite girls—those that really feel that they’re residing in a nation that’s hostile to their very existence—to do?

The reply is one thing completely different from what they did the final time.

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s loss despatched 1000’s of girls into the streets of Washington, D.C., with their indicators and their pussy hats, many assumed that the sexism Clinton had skilled was a bug of the Trump period. That if girls banded collectively, expanded their notion of feminism to incorporate experiences throughout race and sophistication, and fought again, they might change issues.

Learn: How Trump neutralized his abortion downside

And in some methods, they did. That collective energy laid the inspiration for the #MeToo motion in 2017. Extra girls ran for workplace, and gained, within the 2018 midterms than ever earlier than. However the floor has shifted within the intervening years.

Sexism, it turned out, was not a bug however a characteristic of the Trump years. Misogyny actually seems to come back naturally to Trump, however it was strategically amplified—via surrogates and messaging—to draw supporters, significantly youthful males of all races. Elon Musk’s political-action committee even put out an advert referring to Harris as “a giant ole C-word”—and Communist was solely one in every of its meant meanings. Trump has at all times been good at exploiting the ugliest features of America, and the rising isolation and rightward drift of younger males was an ideal goal.

American males are lonely—in 2021, 15 p.c had been more likely to say that they had no shut mates, up from 3 p.c in 1990. They’re additionally extra more likely to not be in a relationship: In 2022, six in 10 males beneath 30 had been single. In a 2023 survey of males ages 18 to 45, a majority agreed with the assertion “Nobody actually is aware of me.” Many discover solace on-line, the place they eat their information on Reddit and X and take in content material from influencers similar to Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, and Joe Rogan. The content material, like its creators, is usually blatantly misogynistic.

Many of those younger males apparently see Trump—together with his microphone-fellating pantomime and his crowds chanting the phrase bitch—as presidential. He spoke to younger males, in a voice they acknowledged. Greater than half of males ages 18 to 29 voted for him.

However Trump didn’t simply decide up assist from younger males; he picked up assist from virtually each group. For a lot of older white males, and the numerous, many Latino males who broke for Trump—nicely, the misogyny might have appeared macho. And what about his feminine supporters? Consultant Shirley Chisholm, the primary Black lady to run for president, wrote in 1970 that “girls in America are way more brainwashed and content material with their roles as second-class residents than Blacks ever had been.” This stays true right this moment. Regardless of the variety of marches girls maintain or memes they publish on-line about sisterhood, many ladies are unswayed: 53 p.c of white girls (and a rising share of Latinas) voted for Trump. Girls can implement patriarchy simply in addition to males, because the “trad wives” on the web have demonstrated.

Many had hoped that as president, Harris would have reached throughout not simply the political aisle, however the gender divide. In her concession speech yesterday, she listed girls’s rights as one trigger amongst many, talking of the necessity for ladies to “have the liberty to make choices about their very own physique,” for faculties to be secure from gun violence, “for the rule of regulation, for equal justice.”

No such restore will occur beneath a second Trump administration, for the apparent motive that division advantages him. Misogyny helps disempowered males really feel empowered. After Trump’s victory, the right-wing activist Nick Fuentes tweeted: “Your physique, my alternative. Without end.” It truly is a person’s world now.

The state of affairs isn’t hopeless, however it could require new techniques. The time for thumping on our chests and railing towards the patriarchy may be previous. The protests that felt so highly effective in 2016 might have backfired to some extent, by inflicting the folks girls most wanted to hearken to their message to tune them out as a substitute. However girls can’t merely retreat, both—their lives and futures rely on it.

The reply is engagement: delicate diplomacy in on a regular basis life. “We’ll proceed to wage this combat within the voting sales space, within the courts, and within the public sq.,” Harris mentioned in her speech. However “we can even wage it in quieter methods.”

Begin straightforward: Thank the boys in your life who supported Harris; thank them for trusting and respecting girls and believing that they will lead. It appears small, however tens of millions of males apparently don’t really feel that manner, so let’s encourage those who do.

Hear: Are we residing in a unique America?

For moms and aunties of younger males and boys: It’s possible you’ll not have the ability to management what they’re studying on the web, however you’ll be able to fight it, via dialog and counterprogramming.

And most vital, girls who voted towards Trump ought to discuss truthfully with the boys of their lives—their cousins and fathers and colleagues and mates—who voted the opposite manner. Discuss to them about girls’s lives and values. Higher but, enlist different males that can assist you. One motive fewer Black males drifted towards Trump than Latino males is as a result of, within the months main as much as the election, on social media and in non-public conversations and at church, many Black folks talked truthfully in regards to the significance of valuing girls. They addressed voters’ hesitance about feminine management immediately, by discussing the lengthy historical past of fantastic Black feminine leaders. Minds could be molded by the web and its algorithms, sure, however minds could be modified by conversations as nicely. As Harris reminded everybody, “You could have energy.”

Regardless of what many say, the fashionable lady doesn’t want a person. However girls’s lives can actually be improved by males not hating them.