I have sat ~relatively~ quietly (while working on the election beat for Junkee yesterday, while working on everything else today) and watched people respond to the tragedy that is a Donald Trump presidency. I read this excellent piece in the New Yorker, and I also read Lindy West’s blistering, tragic, hopeless op-ed in the New York Times. I wanted to write a response to it all, so here it is. I don’t know how much my opinion matters on this subject, but it’s here for you nevertheless:
A lot of people are articulating with a great deal of condescension the unfortunate position that Hillary Clinton must be in. To have to concede to that man, of all people — someone so ludicrously unfit to take the job she has worked so hard for right out of her hands. To realise that perhaps (or rather most likely) she has now lost forever the opportunity to become president (an appointment that would’ve meant a whole hell of a lot to a lot of women besides her). There’s a lot of “no matter what you thought of Hillary, she is gracious in defeat” talk — an astonishingly gendered way of saying she is behaving with the kind of decorum we demand of women: to never fight, to never rage, to never become upset or “hysterical”, to never question the lot that is handed to them. To call her gracious in defeat is to imply she is behaving as she should, as we women are socialised to behave when we lose out.
But the thing is, it’s exactly that kind of attitude that prevented Hillary from winning an election she would’ve handily won had she been a man. Had she been a man, the fact that she supported her husband in his indiscretions and some bad policy-making would’ve been irrelevant. She would’ve been a candidate in her own right, because men are never measured against anyone but themselves, while women are measured against everyone and always fond wanting. Had she been a man, the fact that she seemed cold, or “untrustworthy” or inauthentic, the fact that she used a private email server, would’ve meant nothing, a blip on the radar. Men are not cold; they’re strong and reticent. Their authenticity is never called into question, or, rather, is never a problem to be solved.
Nobody worries about the things men do that might be questionable or even illegal. An entire country just elected a man who is a narcissist and a liar, an accused rapist and fraudster, a smug elitist who twisted the grievances of the so-called “dispossessed working class”, as well as the niggling fear of wealthy white people who felt themselves becoming irrelevant and who worried they were losing their iron-clad supremacist grip on the social hierarchy. These people trusted a man who told them he would protect them, regardless of how untrustworthy that man was, because he was a man. And no matter how elitist and white and establishment Hillary is, she is still woman in charge, a figure that represents the same kind of gentle progressiveness that was embodied by a brilliant, kind, fierce black man who managed to stay president against what we now know to be nearly insurmountable odds in a society so clearly racist, misogynistic and resistant to forward momentum.
This is a severe but ultimately unsurprising loss, when you consider who is outgoing from that office and what he represents, when you consider the climatic push against so-called “SJWs” and “PC policing” (which is really just consideration, tolerance and empathy). It’s a loss that gives me the same kind of unpleasant and desperately hopeless feeling I get when I consider that we consciously — deliberately — emulate some of the darkest periods of history right in our backyard, in concentration camps we have set up to bully, oppress and torture vulnerable and innocent people to the point of self-harm and suicide. It’s that feeling I get when I realise I missed a rally for asylum-seeker rights, or a meeting at YAP because, no matter how I feel about the issue of our cruel and draconian refugee policy (passionate and sick), it’s still sometimes not enough of a priority for me to inconvenience myself over.
This is the attitude that has us voting in governments who pledge ever harsher immigration policies to keep us feeling happy and “safe”, in our own little bubbles of zenophobia and blind comfort. We do that, as a collective group, and we cannot hide from that.
This is the attitude that elected Donald Trump. And not just because rural people (the “poor white”) turned out in waves to vote for him because they finally felt that a politician was mobilising them and speaking to them on the same level, not on high like our politicians do when they take a pander trip out to Western Sydney, or when they prattle on unconvincingly about “working families” and “Aussie battlers”. It’s also the rich white men who knew that a woman elected to the highest office in the US would put a shadow on their patriarchal vice grip (the grip that accepts that a man who is an accused rapist, who openly brags about assaulting women, can become president, because men can do whatever they want, can destroy women’s bodies and minds and put their hands on them because they are men, and men are above reproach). These men, educated and supposedly socially sophisticated, voted to keep their patriarchal power for a little longer. (This, by the way, is why I am a feminist who stands for liberation, not equality. There is no possibility for equality when smart men would rather watch the world burn than give up their chance to touch a woman’s body without permission and have it be put off as “locker room talk” or “boys being boys”. The patriarchy will always exist, and will always harm all of us, unless it is toppled completely and raised to the ground.)
Then there are the white women (especially wealthy white women), who exit polls have shown turned out in droves to vote for Trump because they believed, wrongly, that protecting their privilege of whiteness was more important than protecting their rights as women — than protecting the vulnerable women who are their sisters. These women are the argument for intersectionality, because intersectional feminists could not vote for a man who will do so much damage to ALL women, just to protect their own white supremacy. As Lindy West says in her glorious NYT op-ed, “white women who voted for Trump […] your shelter is illusory”. You will suffer — certainly less than other women who are not protected by the swathe of wealth and whiteness — but you will suffer the injury of a Trump presidency that will attack women without mercy. These women are socialised not just to believe that their whiteness is paramount in their voting for self-protection, but who are also socialised to distrust, fear and tear down a woman who dares to step off her own designated path and demand that she be given a job that is considered to be for men only. These women have been conditioned to think “How dare she” and to punish her, and ultimately themselves, for her insolence. This, perhaps more than anything else, makes me so deeply sad; I am disappointed, grief-stricken, that society has failed women enough that they have done this to each other and to themselves.
We can be disgusted by these people who voted for Trump — because they were afraid of losing their power, of losing their privilege, of losing their “manhood” to a woman president — but in a way we’re all these people because at some point we all choose to protect our own absurd, blind “luck” (to be born white, to have the privilege of wealth, to be an Australian, to be straight, cis, male, able-bodied, whatever) rather than protecting those for whom we should mobilise, exploit and, yes, sometimes sacrifice our “luck” and privilege. We are not better because we are disgusted by a Trump presidency. We’re just not.
I’m sad for a lot of things that Trump’s win appears to prove. That, as my housemate bitterly noted, hatred will always be more powerful than anything else. That the system of white male power is unable to be broken, toppled, even nudged in the most gentle way by a rich white woman taking power. That, to paraphrase West again, people (even other women) do not respect women, do not care for women, do not even like women. How could they if they voted in winning numbers for a man who so clearly hates women and wishes to cause them harm? That women are so maligned in our world that we will vote a rapist as president before we vote for a woman who has never quite represented what society considers a “good woman”/”the right woman” to be.
I’m sad that men continue to avoid accountability, consequences and punishment for disrespecting, hurting, raping and oppressing women. People don’t like talking about how Hollywood protects rapists and abusers. If these men are simply “accused” rather than convicted, they’re “innocent until proven guilty” and they’re men who are being unfairly judged; however, the women who accuse them, the potential victims, are untrustworthy, “guilty before proven innocent” of lying about these men. (God forbid they be innocent before proven guilty; they are, after all, just women.) We don’t trust women; we don’t believe women. Half a century of women have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, and yet people are still on the fence about his guilt. There is video footage, photographs of bruises, witness accounts and an out-of-court settlement to back up Amber Heard’s claims that she was abused by Johnny Depp, but when I wrote an article about how he has escaped reproach, how Hollywood continues to protect him and to sign-off on his abuse by their protection, the comment section was bombarded with “How dare you! Innocent until proven guilty!” Charles Saatchi grabbed Nigella Lawson by the throat in a crowded restaurant; he assaulted her in public, in broad daylight. Onlookers took photographs, staff did not intervene, and the media speculated about the “reasons” why Saatchi might have grabbed her (as if there is ever any justifiable reason to assault a women — what a truly despicable thought). Gable Tostee was recorded stopping Warriena Wright from leaving his Gold Coast apartment, telling her she couldn’t leave because she had been a “bad girl”. He locked her out on a high balcony while she screamed and attempted to escape him. And yet he has walked free from ANY responsibility for her death (even just the minimum possible sentence for the role he so clearly had, even if it cannot be proven that he murdered her) because men cannot believe that a woman would rather jump to her death then endure what he might have had in store for her — what might perhaps be a fate worse than death. Wayne Carey kicked a woman in the face, and he gets to sit on an AFL commentators’ panel on “White Ribbon Day” (what a fucking joke), earning thousands of dollars talking smack with other entitled men without reproach.
Trump is a president who has been accused of raping a child, who has openly bragged about assaulting women, who has made lewd comments about his own fucking daughter on the television. He is living proof that powerful men who assault women don’t ever really get punished; they get made president. How is that something we can explain to the children we know, who will grow up understanding that even a highly privileged and unbelievably qualified woman cannot get a job she deserves; who will grow up believing that men can do what they like to women and still get everything they want because they are men. This is how we raised oppressed girls and entitled boys; it’s not how we raise progress.
We don’t like women; we don’t believe women; we don’t protect women. How much more evidence do we need? How is this possible? How is this real life?
I’m scared for the women I know, and the women I don’t know — for how their lives might be broken or extinguished by the kind of sentiment that puts a man like Trump in power. That sentiment is what drives men like those “Yeah The Boys” dickheads, men who feel their right to hurt women, to dominate women, slipping away from them, and who act out in violence and sadistic anger to claw it all back.
I think I’m most sad that Trump’s win seems to indicate that words are meaningless. He is a man who has nothing to say for himself. His words have no meaning (sometimes literally); his speeches have no profundity, no gumption, no purpose other than to mobilise mass hysteria and false elation. I watched Trump’s acceptance speech. It was nothing. Other politicians have made speeches that have changed lives, changed the world. We study these speeches, quote them, teach them as examples of how to stand up for what is right. What can we learn from a man who, underneath it all, has nothing to say for himself? If that man says nothing and still wins, then words must be meaningless. For a writer, this might be the toughest pill to swallow.
It’s easy to be upset when you’re a privileged white women living in Australia, where this news is devastating but not immediately so fucking terrifying and dangerous. And so the other part of accepting our part, as privileged people who put ourselves first at great detriment to others, is to just stand aside and listen to the people who are going to be most in danger from a Trump presidency: people of colour, immigrants, LGBTQI+ people, disabled people. These people are in actual danger; Muslim women are worried to walk out of the house in their hijab, are being begged by members of their families to stay hidden; trans people are terrified of being erased and trapped further by cruel legislation that denies their very right to exist. These people need a voice and we have to move out of their way: listen to them, ask them what we can do to help, allow them to take their rightful place leaders in the movement against this white supremacy, “conservative nativism”, patriarchal extremism that is slowly strangling all our governments. Be angry, but don’t be selfish. We must move over, sit the fuck down and listen.
I don’t think there’s any point in moving from this anger and pain to hope for the future — not yet. We need to feel this pain, anger, horror, whatever, to remind ourselves that we are all culpable, and all capable of doing the equivalent of voting a man like Donald Trump to the presidency. It’s a pretty unpleasant lesson to learn, but clearly it’s one we need.
Fantasise or Perish 