I'm still fighting for someday

It’s very hard to wake up to a world where you have to face the fact that your fellow Americans chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. I try to tell myself, maybe for many people it simply comes down to difference in policy, and these people are able to ignore the innumerable wrongs his election represents. I have never been someone who can ignore right from wrong.

It is wrong that a man who proudly treats other people so poorly will lead a country. But yesterday I had the perfect distraction from that reality: I got to attend The Earthshot Prize ceremony, an event that embodies hope and optimism for our future. I got to be the proud partner of a man who dedicates himself to the well-being of all people and wildlife everywhere, especially those in precarious situations. It was a salve to be there, among people who face extreme adversity, but persevere. Who act on what they know to be right, no matter the consequences or complications of doing so.

And so today I am continuing to mourn the opportunity that we lost, but embracing the hope for the future that I witnessed last night.

Contrary to what JD Vance might think, I care about and have a stake in the future. I want to give girls — especially my nieces — an America that rejects misogyny and hatred without exception.

What would that mean? For one thing it would mean not looking the other way when a man talks about women like toys or is convicted of sexual assault. It would mean rejecting this man and his chosen running mate, who thinks women in abusive relationships should just stick it out to maintain a conventional family unit for the sake of the kids. Because how else do you continue a cycle of abuse and subjugation except to allow young people to witness it as acceptable behavior?

Rejecting misogyny would mean that women might eventually get to live in a world where most men know that women are not their toys, and we are not disposable.

How many times have I stepped aside as two men plow down a sidewalk without leaving space for me? Or scrunched myself up on an airplane to make space for man who does not have the consideration to do the same? Mapped a route in advance so that I wouldn’t need to risk being distracted in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar men? Changed course on a run because I was alone and afraid of the way a man was looking at me? Sat in a meeting while men talked over me or ignored me? Laughed good-naturedly at an obscene comment so as not to come off as sensitive or bitchy? Been told to calm down?

What does all this accommodation have to do with Donald Trump? Everything. He obnoxiously represents every single one of these sacrifices women make to survive in a world ruled by men. Would he even see me passing on a sidewalk? Not unless I was dressed in a slip and batting my eyelashes at him. Would I want to be sat next to this man on a plane, cross his path in a secluded alleyway, participate in a meeting with him?

No, because I would almost certainly be mistreated. And now he continues to have a platform to perform this role for the men and women looking up to him.

Of course a win by Kamala Harris would not have fixed these problems overnight, just like Barack Obama’s election did not cure racism in this country. But it would have been a step in the right direction rather than five in the wrong direction. It would have been a sign that most people value a woman who acts with intelligence and empathy more than they value a bully who invents problems he can then pretend to solve.

It’s not just that Kamala Harris is a woman. The thing that makes my soul ache is that her opponent was blatantly hateful toward women. She lost, at least in part, because he tapped into Americans’ disdain for women doing anything other than playing homemaker.

We do not need a strong man to protect us. This dynamic has never served us as women, because the only thing we need protection from is men with a strong-man complex.

So we lost a chance to be respected as equal members of society. But that does not mean we can give up on this project. Jessica Valenti wrote yesterday:

But we can’t sit with the horror for too long. We can’t let it overtake or immobilize us—because that is exactly what they want. The men who want to put us in our place, keep us in the home and humiliate us into subjugation need us to be paralyzed with fear and sadness. They are desperate for us to give up, or to bury the reality of what they’ve done in a small corner in our mind. They want us to decide that it’s easier not to put up a fight.

I know—because I know you—that you’re not willing to do that. 

Throughout history, we can see that the underdog rarely makes an overnight victory. Our steps are small and sometimes faltering, but they must be persistent.

• The women’s suffrage movement began in earnest in 1848, but the 19th Amendment was not ratified until 1920. For 72 years, women fought for the right to vote.

• The Comstock Act of 1873 restricted movement of “abortion-related” materials and birth control. Still, 100 years later we achieved a right to abortion. I know, this example stings, but we will get there again, and further.

• Flawed as she was, Margaret Sanger began a crusade to give women a way to control fertility as early as 1910. It was not until 1960 that the FDA approved the first birth control pill.

• In 1965 the Supreme Court said that married couples may use contraceptives. Seven years later, it decided that single women could also obtain them.

• The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed in 1923. We are still fighting for it today.

Someday, a woman will explain how, decades ago, Americans elected a petty, hateful man to the White House. And her friends will widen their eyes in horror at the things he said and did, way back then.

Can you believe it used to be like that? they’ll say.