I was recently at a museum in Manhattan when I noticed the Post-It taped to the stall of the ladies’ room. “From woman to woman,” it said, “Remember: your voice is private. Harris/Walz!’ The message was encouraging, but it made my heart sink. Never in my life have I experienced an election campaign in which… this had to be shared.
But in the devastating aftermath of Trump wins another presidential electionwe find ourselves in a reality marked by fear and intimidation so intense that it is no wonder women have exchanged secret messages in the few private spaces we have left.
And the threat of – to use Donald Trump’s favorite word: ‘retaliation“- hangs so heavy over us that we can only brace ourselves for what comes after November 5 or January 20,”Whether the women like it or not.” We women have been robbed of what could have been a momentous campaign and a historic victory.
We are normalized foreign so long that it seems impossible to suggest it didn’t have to be this way. Just a few election cycles ago, the political debate featured losers who conceded and voters who did not. storm the Capitol and representatives who did not attempt to overturn the election.
In an alternate reality, Harris might have faced a Republican opponent who didn’t questioning her racial identity and routinely mispronouncing her first name. Maybe mainstream pundits didn’t accuse her of that “a DEI rental” or to sleep his way to the top. The fact that she has no biological children may not have been used as a weapon a rebuke of her ‘humility’. And her opponent’s former aide wouldn’t joke about undoing the 19th Amendment.
But civil discourse at this point has been ground into a useless kernel, and into a presidential candidate can make rude jokes about his opponent with barely a hiccup in the news cycle. A candidate who has that also convicted of crimeswho has been found liable by a civil jury for sexual assault. Meanwhile, once-reputable newspapers, now run by billionaires, refused to support a competent, coherent woman for president.
Hey guys, because I think for the last eight years women’s marches And #Me, too I didn’t make it clear – how do you think this has made women feel? Women of color? Women who have suffered sexual harassment and survived sexual abuse? What do you think the lesson we learned here is about our value in our own country?
Last week I asked some women to think about those questions and this campaign.
“Throughout my family’s history, people in my family have reached a point where white male society said, ‘Okay, that’s far enough,’” my friend says. Celeste Headleeauthor of “We Need to Talk,” told me. “Most women, but every woman of color, has had their intelligence underestimated, they’ve been called angry, they’ve been called aggressive, they’ve been called intimidating. I’ve lost two jobs where they specifically told me it was because I was ‘an angry one.’ person.’”
“Watching Kamala Harris run for president is like watching all the disappointments and heartaches of your life play out in real time, except this time the stakes aren’t me losing my job,” Headlee noted. lose democracy, lose all reproductive rightslosing bodily autonomy in a way that has not happened to women of color since the end of the Civil War.”
The complacent political sexism of our neighbors has been a painful disappointment.
Journalist and expert in the field of labor participation Farai Chideya saw this moment the same way. “When you watch this race, you cannot underestimate the impact of misogyny,” she said.
“There are many different ways in which Kamala Harris is considered less viable because of her gender and the combination of her gender and race. She’s not just dealing with sexism, she’s dealing with sexism specifically. misogynistic.”
I have tried, for the sake of my daughters and their generation, to remain positive, even though I have regretted that today they have fewer reproductive rights than I did at their age. I recognize the gains we have made despite and thanks to the enormous setbacks. Would we have had #MeToo without the fear of Hilary Clinton’s defeat in 2016? Would we have that now? a record number of women in Congress? Oh well, we would have had that too “Barbie”?
“When it comes to social justice, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” Lily Burana, author of ‘Grace for Amateurs‘, told me. “Women and Gen Alpha girls are aware of systemic misogyny, of queer issues, of their value, in ways that would literally be unthinkable to me as a Gen X girl. Once you turn the stone over and people see these systems of oppression, you can’t unsee them.”
There is no denying that the past few years have been a cataclysmic era of significant progress in gender equality. They were also undeniably a spectacular disappointment, on a macro and micro scale.
The insight Burana speaks of is painfully omnidirectional, and we can also never take away from view what we now know about some of the people closest to us – or the agenda they are willing to support. The toxicity and polarization have done that broken friendships and divided familieson a deeply surprising level.
“I just don’t know if the (election) result will change the feeling in society,” says comedian and writer Micaela Fagan. “It starts to feel like you don’t know who to trust.”
I remember the last time I spoke to a particular family member, I was told clearly that we could “agree to disagree.” I can agree to disagree on a lot of things: tax rates, arts funding, even the nuances and limits of it all gun control. I can’t agree with any party that is okay with having a sexual attacker in the Oval Office. I cannot agree with the dismantling of women’s health and privacy.
I can’t agree to disagree about doctors refusing medical attention for ectopic pregnanciesand are women arrested because of their miscarriages. Have you ever had a miscarriage? I have. It is physically and emotionally devastating enough without the fear that you and your healthcare provider may be questioned, investigated or punished, that your life may be in danger, because of the way it is managed. And we can lay all this suffering at the feet of the pathetic carcass of what was once the Republican Party.
Misogyny cuts to the heart of the family.
Now that so many of us know exactly which people in our lives aren’t affected by the punitive reaction to our gender, how much of it can ever be right? How can we just chill on Thanksgiving, while on the other side of the table there are people who are completely in favor of it a dystopian Project 2025 future? Patriarchy really does count on keeping women comfortable and unchallenged, and it especially counts on it under its own roof.
Of course there are Guys for Kamala And MAGA womenbut the power dynamics of gender are unique. Soraya Chemalyauthor of the aptly named “Rage Becomes Her,” pointed out to me that other forms of oppression, such as racism and homophobia, depend on marginalization. But misogyny goes to the heart of the family. She called it “the most intimate inequality.” That’s what makes it so harrowing – and so dangerous.
“Most families are of the same race, ethnicity and religion, so the pressure point in those families will be gender,” she said.
The complacent political sexism of our neighbors has been a painful disappointment. But for other women, resentment of our gender is much more overt.
The patriarchy wants us to be afraid. And well done, Patriarchy, because I certainly am! But more than I’m afraid, I’m angry. And more than being angry, I am determined.
The United States in terms of maternal mortality, the country far exceeds comparable countries. A leading cause of death among pregnant American women, more than hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage or sepsis, is murder. So don’t talk to me about it how dangerous immigrants arehow valued mothers are, while the party that claims to want to make America great again is so conspicuously silent about intimate partner violence. And the threat of post-election retaliation, both public and private, is real enough to give us all pause.
“I strongly believe that it will be bad either way, and it will be bad in different ways,” Chemaly said. “Frankly, women, especially poor black and brown women, will suffer the consequences of an entrenched consolidation of power by male supremacists, or of resistance to the idea that the ‘women’s party’ has won.”
“Maybe it’s a choice between getting fucked fast or getting fucked slow,” she said. “I think you’re fucked anyway.”
I can’t convince anyone of anything. I can simply express what many women have felt: an exhausted sadness that any spark of joy this campaign season might have had has been sucked away by a vengeful, babbling old man and his crybabies.
“Ten years ago we would have said, ‘Yes!’” Fagan said. “Everyone would support this.” Instead, we pass notes in the toilets. We carefully use not only our voice, but also our stealth.
A note left in a New York City bathroom stall in late October 2024. (Photo courtesy of Mary Elizabeth Williams)
“I feel like we are in the middle of a global women’s denial movement,” Chemaly noted. “We don’t call it a protest because it is not the typical protest led by a charismatic leader on the streets. Women are gradually moving away from heteropatriarchy.”
The patriarchy wants us to be afraid. And well done, Patriarchy, because I certainly am! But more than I’m afraid, I’m angry. And more than being angry, I am determined. The coming years will be ugly and unsettling for women in many ways. No doubt it will be good for others too.
“Patriarchy will not disappear quietly, but that does not mean it is not coming to an end,” Burana said.
And in the meantime – at least for now – our mood is private.
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