The glass ceiling remains intact and women’s reproductive rights are still in peril. To be a woman in America right now … man.
Young women in the crowd wept as Kamala Harris delivered her fine concession speech on Wednesday, where she said she would not concede the fight that fuelled her campaign: “For freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people.” It was an uplifting, heartfelt speech-cum-pep talk, meant to provide some light in this uncertain moment. “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” she said.
Compare that to Donald Trump’s drunk-uncle-at-a-wedding-esque ramble, when he went on about watching Elon Musk’s rocket and brought random people to the microphone, including UFC president Dana White, who spoke about karma, and thanked podcasters Bussin’ With The Boys and Joe Rogan, another crass, far-right, axe-grinding conspiracy-theory-flirting hero of the manosphere. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. may be in charge of women’s health – everyone’s health – and he’s crackers. The bros are moving into the White House, and women (and reasonable men) of America will have to steel themselves.
In one post-mortem, a CNN pundit suggested where Ms. Harris’s campaign went wrong: all you heard about was joy and abortion, he said. The glass screen of my TV somehow remained intact, despite tempting projectiles close at hand. Instead, I was just another old woman yelling at the clouds.
In her speech, Ms. Harris said she will never stop fighting for a future “where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not have their government telling them what to do.”
The restrictions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade do not just affect a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted (or unviable) pregnancy – although that is of critical importance. Also at stake is women’s reproductive care – which is women’s health care, period.
One of the scariest days of my life was the afternoon I started spotting, while pregnant. I was able to go to a hospital and be cared for by nurses and physicians. Imagine the terror of finding blood in your underwear and worrying about your fetus, only to have medical staff forced, by government decree, to turn you away, afraid of landing in jail themselves. This could be a dystopian novel. But it is reality in some U.S. states, and it’s going to get worse.
“Actually, Project 2025 is the agenda,” right-wing commentator Matt Walsh posted after Mr. Trump’s win. The 900-page conservative manifesto, which Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from during the campaign, calls for banning abortion pills and using Big Tech to Big Brother abortion access, among other draconian measures.
I heard a news report the morning after the election suggesting that voters didn’t know who Kamala Harris was or what she stood for. (To them, I might suggest: do a little reading.) But people certainly know who Mr. Trump is and what he stands for – and they still voted for that. He stands for misogyny, racism, nastiness, narcissism, division, lies and crimes. For, “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats.” For grab ‘em by the part of her body that men want to control. For the felon who essentially called his worthy opponent stupid, lazy and a “sleazebag.” (One might view this as projecting.)
In the face of this, how to remain in the fight with kindness and respect, as Ms. Harris urged? For women – knowing not just that men overwhelmingly voted for that, but many women did, too. Why? Because of the porous border they think Mr. Trump is going to fix with a snap of his little fingers? Because of their grocery bills? Because things are worse than they were four years ago? Have they perhaps heard of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting global impacts? That was not Joe Biden’s fault, nor Ms. Harris’s.
Do people just believe what they want to believe? Or are people just that gullible? So wholly self-interested?
Sorry, I’m despairing right now. A lot of women are. A colleague covering the election told me about women openly crying in a U.S. bathroom Tuesday night, as the results rolled in. There were tears in my house, too.
In 2016, it was a shock when Hillary Clinton lost to Mr. Trump. So many of us had been expecting the historic moment of a first female U.S. president. That bit of potential history felt important, but less so this time. Because now we know, we really know, what Mr. Trump is about. We lived through four years of the chaos, and this time will be worse, with no checks and balances that come with needing to win another term. As he said in that speech, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
I’m looking, reaching for those stars Ms. Harris talked about. And the hopefulness of her words. “Don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”