Donald J. Trump has been president or running for president my entire voting life.
2016 was the first presidential election I could vote in. I remember waking up that November and feeling, like many Americans, wholly shocked by the election results. I didn’t understand how we all were expected to just go to work like nothing happened. How could this country elect a man who hates women so much? What did this say about the deep-seated hidden misogyny woven into the fabric of our culture?
Laura Ellis
Eight years later, I feel a little less shocked, a little less naïve, a little more calloused and numbed to the reality of this political climate. That doesn’t mean I’m not devastated, that I wasn’t sick to my stomach reading the results early Wednesday morning.
This year’s ballot held the choice between our first female president or a convicted felon who’s been accused of sexually assaulting 26 women. And for the second time in history, America chose Trump over a woman.
I’ve been thinking a lot today about a quote from Michelle Obama’s campaign speech in Michigan: “Now I recognize that there are a lot of angry, disillusioned people out there upset by the slow pace of change and I get it. … But to anyone out there thinking about sitting out this election or voting for Donald Trump … in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you, your rage does not exist in a vacuum. If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”
Not everyone who voted for Trump did so because they hate women. But behind every vote for Trump is the reality that women’s pain, devaluation and diminishing rights were not a dealbreaker for many. Women were not the intended targets for all voters, but women’s bodies being caught in the crossfire was an acceptable fatality for most.
“Women’s pain, devaluation and diminishing rights were not a dealbreaker for many.”
The fact that the polls leading up to this election were wrong and this election was not as close as the experts anticipated indicates some people who voted for Trump were ashamed to do so. There is a portion of the country who voted quietly and secretly, knowing Trump is not a good person, but voting for him anyway.
My dread for women’s future well-being in this country is hardly comforted by these quiet voters. When inflammatory hate speech and systematic dissolvement of basic human rights is lauded by the most powerful man in the country, racism and misogyny are normalized.
Regardless of how secretly some of his voters showed up to the polls, this election signals that a certain kind of language and oppression is acceptable here. Even the quietest supporters are given liberty to profess racism and misogyny or at least watch silently and inactively from the sidelines as others who are bolder take the platform.
A friend of mine told me she was in high school when Trump was elected for the first time, and the day after the election some high schoolers graffitied a classroom of an ethnically Mexican teacher, telling her to go back where she came from. What once was a hidden belief of these students was given permission to become public action.
And then there are the effects that happen behind closed doors of doctors’ offices and hospital rooms. Women who are already more likely than men to be gaslit and misdiagnosed by medical professionals will continue to be in increasing physical danger under a second Trump presidency.
I know multiple people who’ve had horrible birth experiences — women who have wanted children and planned for months and sometimes years to become mothers. Due to complications in childbirth, they were left in prolonged life-threatening situations as doctors hesitated to give medicine that would save their lives because the drugs were banned for their unrelated uses in some abortions.
“Women share these stories with one another like friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert.”
The saddest part of this is that most all women know at least one person with a story like this or have a similar story of their own. Women share these stories with one another like friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert — they are so common that when the topic comes up the discussion comes easily. We all know women like these. Friends and family members whose experience in health care has been some of the most dehumanizing and dangerous experiences of their lives.
How strange it is to live in a time when we’ve reversed the course of technology. We have the knowledge, materials and expertise and yet doctors in many states cannot provide lifesaving treatment because women truly are collateral damage — an expected and acceptable sacrifice of a different mission.
How often have we heard this same story in the church? How frequently have women been collateral damage to men’s rage, men’s comfort, men’s quest for power and control in the name of God?
In the midst of quiet voters who deemed the collateral damage of entire people groups acceptable as means to an end, the world desperately needs brave and loud truth-tellers.
I hope women talk more about birth experiences and all their experiences in health care and don’t default to silence about their pain. I hope women speak up about the atrocities of violence and exclusion they’ve experienced in churches.
Mainly, I hope people care enough to listen and believe them. Ask a woman in your life if she knows any stories like these. I bet she does. We all do.
As Michelle Obama said, “I am asking from the core of my being to please take our lives seriously.”
I don’t have a good way to end this — no nice bow to tie. All I can say is women were not made to be sacrificed on this altar, and at the very least I hope we don’t go quietly.
Laura Ellis leads a collaborative effort between BNG and Baptist Women in Ministry to increase female voices in our opinion content. She is a former Clemons Fellow with BNG and earned a master of divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology. She lives in Waco, Texas.
Related articles:
Here’s the toxic racism and misogyny you let loose with a vote for Trump | Opinion by Rick Pidcock
Living as aliens | Opinion by Jean Humphreys
Letter to my Black daughter on the 2024 election | Opinion by Maina Mwaura