Millions of words have been devoted to unpacking this: how it came be, why it came be, how it felt, how it feels. In the face of the unfathomable it is human nature to seek to fathom it.
For plenty of women Trump’s victory feels like salt being pounded into an open wound. Not merely because his female opponent lost but because she lost to a man whose credentials are non-existent, whose credibility is absent.
Because instead of witnessing the rise of a champion for women, we are witnessing the rise of a man who treats women with disdain.
It is salt in a painful wound for any woman who has been on the receiving end of harassment: women who have suffered by either speaking out or staying silent. Women who have suffered while they have watched the perpetrators of harassment, abuse, even rape, prevail unharmed. Without consequence.
It is salt in the wound for women who have missed promotions or been sidelined in favour of less qualified peers.
It is salt in the wound for women who want to live in a world where being respectful towards men and women, of every race and background, is the baseline for leaders: not the high mark.
The issue of gender in the 2016 presidential election is impossible to untangle from the web. Trump’s victory cannot be explained wholly by Clinton being a female, but nor can it be dismissed.
Even if Trump hadn’t triumphed over a woman, gender would remain despairingly pertinent due to the president-elect’s shameful treatment of women.
Last Wednesday’s election was a watershed moment but not for the reason many of us had hoped. There are so many questions to consider but there is one we need to ask now: Where to from here?
It is tempting to lay down our tools, admit defeat and wallow in despair. Not because we are weak, but because we are weary. Because fighting is hard. Because losing hurts.
“I cried because it’s not fair, and I’m so tired, and every woman I know is so tired,” Lindy West wrote in a New York Times essay last Wednesday. “We have been weathering this hurricane wall of doubt and violence for so long, and now, more crystalline than ever, we have an enemy and a mandate. The fact that we lost doesn’t make us wrong; the fact that they don’t believe in us doesn’t make us disappear.”
We are not wrong and we can’t disappear, so there is only one path forward: to keep fighting.
More than ever before we need to rally: against racism, sexism, misogyny and intolerance. We need to protect the rights of women. We need unity, strength and solidarity to ensure the election of Donald Trump doesn’t, by proxy, permit the basest conduct to flourish.
We need to turn to bold women like Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish National Party, who was unwavering in her criticism of Donald Trump’s behavior.
Trump’s election has been surrounded by hyperbole, some of which we can hope will prove unfounded. Perhaps, past performance won’t prove instructive of Trump’s presidency.
But the hyperbole isn’t all without foundation.
Will his win embolden men with whom his rhetoric around women resonates? Author and commentator Jamila Rizvi certainly feels that way.
Last Wednesday night as Trump’s victory became apparent Rizvi interrupted radio host Steve Price, on Channel Ten’s The Project. Price took issue with her interrupting him, accused her of being “the reason people voted for Trump” and was then admonished by co-host Carrie Bickmore to “check his tone” in the way he responded. It was a highly-charged exchange but worthy of threats being made against Rizvi? Hardly.
Yet since then Rizvi has faced a number of physical threats – attempts to locate her home address have been made – and a barrage of online abuse so vile she has closed her Facebook page. Rizvi is no stranger to an online stoush, having worked online as a feminist advocate for five years, but the abuse is unlike anything she has seen.
A petition is currently circulating that has over 30,000 signatures demanding The Project apologise to Steve Price for Rizvi’s interjection and Bickmore’s response. Price himself has clarified he seeks no apology.
But that will deliver little comfort to Rizvi, who is quite literally in the firing line, for interrupting a man.
And there is an ugly double standard at play. You might recall that earlier this year Steve Price interrupted Van Badham on Q&A about 12 times and accused her of being “hysterical”. In that instance, no threats were made against Price’s life, but Price was incredulous that Badham “ambushed him” and made no apology for his repeated interruptions.
Perhaps there is no connection between Trump’s election and the abuse Rizvi is facing. But perhaps there is. Perhaps, it is inevitable when a man who openly mocks and threatens women wins an office as powerful as the US President’s that others feel entitled to .
Some people will read this and laugh. They will call me hysterical or elite or out of touch but, to paraphrase Lindy West, “That’s fine. I am used to it. It doesn’t make me wrong.”
We cannot allow Trump’s defeating Hillary Clinton, be the defeat of strong women.
“The fact that we lost doesn’t make us wrong; the fact that they don’t believe in us doesn’t make us disappear.”
