When you wake up to almost 100 notifications, you know you’re in for brilliant or terrible news. I, however, only had to glance at the first of them – a furious “Fucking morons!” – to know I was in for the latter this morning: America’s citizens have elected Donald Trump as their president. Again.
Not all of its citizens, of course; it was too close to call for much of the evening, with various exit polls showing that US women voted for Kamala Harris in their droves – and little wonder, considering she was the candidate standing up to defend their reproductive rights, health and freedom. Men, on the other hand, have been shown to favour Donald ‘Grab ‘Em By The Pussy’ Trump, who was recently found guilty of sexually abusing magazine columnist E Jean Carroll in a department store changing room in the 1990s. Who is, too, scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom on 26 November to be sentenced for 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign, after she alleged a prior affair with the president-elect (an affair which Trump continues to deny). Who has, terrifyingly, vowed to protect American women “whether the women like it or not” by making sure they won’t “be thinking about abortion”. Who still faces backlash now for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
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A misogynist criminal, then, has secured a historic win as the 47th president of one of the world’s most influential countries. Is it any wonder that so many of us are terrified? It already felt like an ominous time to be a woman: the Taliban recently banned Afghan women from hearing other women’s voices, the latest in its extreme restrictions on women’s behaviour. With 3,000 offenses recorded each day, 1 in 12 women victims each year, violence against women and girls has been branded a deepening epidemic in the UK. And a recent survey by Vodafone has revealed that 69% of 11-14 year-old boys in the UK have been exposed to misogynistic content online. Misogyny, something we’d so hoped was a thing of the past, isn’t just present: it’s mainstream.
I suppose it’s telling that there’s a huge divide in my friends’ reactions, largely depending on their gender. The men – all allies, all of whom I love dearly – are busily taking the time to understand why this has happened. They’re critiquing the Democrats’ campaign, recalling how Kamala was a late contender when she was brought in to replace Joe Biden. The amazing women in my phone don’t need to understand why, because they’re all too aware of the fact that our rights have always sat precariously on a razor’s edge. They don’t have the privilege to “take a step back” or “try to see things from the voters’ point of view”.
And they’re not shocked, really – not the way they were the first time Trump got in. Back in the first iteration of this nightmarish Groundhog Day, he was the ranting and raving butt of a joke we never suspected could beat Hillary Clinton to the White House. Now, he’s more powerful, he’s flanked by JD Vance (a man with perhaps even more alarming views about women than Trump himself), and a proven danger to all marginalised communities – and his voters can’t stop lapping up the vitriol he spits out.
It’s a stark reminder that we are never far removed from the dystopic nightmare of The Handmaid’s Tale – which, as Margaret Atwood has pointed out that, has always been rooted in reality, as every aspect of Gilead’s culture has really happened at some point in history, somewhere in the world. Speaking to The Guardian when the TV adaptation first premiered, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author explained: “When [my book] first came out it was viewed as being far-fetched. However, when I wrote it I was making sure I wasn’t putting anything into it that humans had not already done somewhere at some time.”
As a woman who’s been through this political wringer once before, I’m exhausted. As a mother to two little girls, though, I know I can’t afford to stop fighting the good fight now; I’m all too aware of the ripple effect that America’s decision will have across the world. We, all of us, need to stand together and make it abundantly clear that we will not accept our fates, that we will not wear the red cloaks, that we will never go quietly into the good night. That Trump is not, has never been, our president. And that we will never accept his vision for our future.
