A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has found that digital hate and harassment against women rose rapidly after the U.S. presidential election. Sexist phrases like “repeal the 19th [Amendment]” and “get back to the kitchen” surged on platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and Reddit following President Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Many of the most frequent comments involve calls for a decrease in women’s rights, while others have explicitly threatened women with sexual assault and harassment. Mentions of the statement “Your body, my choice”—a direct response to the reproductive justice movement’s slogan, “my body, my choice”—grew by over 4600 percent on X. The phrase also appears to have grown in popularity offline, with parents and students reporting groups of boys chanting it to girls in schools. One parent commented online, “Today my daughter was told three separate times on campus ‘your body, MY choice.’ The third group of boys told her to ‘sleep with one eye open tonight.’”
This started on Wednesday, almost immediately after Trump’s victory was announced. By Friday it was already being reported in grade schools because asshole parents enjoy raising asshole sons, and Trump tells people that it’s ok to be the absolute worst human being they can be.
I have a friend who is a hard Republican. We generally don’t talk politics, but after this started last week he was posting things online being offensive towards women and POC (and the whole “illegals took my job and healthcare”) so I finally had to call him out. His response was basically that he wasn’t aware of any increased discrimination happening against women, therefore he didn’t believe it was happening. I’ve known the guy for 40 years but this may be the thing that breaks our friendship. He claims to be an advocate for people’s rights yet he is painfully unaware of the world around him.
You really can’t be both at the same time.
After this election I’ve had to cut a bunch of people out of my life, even relatives. A lot of them saying such wonderful things as “trump’s just saying things, he doesn’t actually mean anything he’s saying.” And then they’d get defensive when I’d ask them why they votes for him then if he doesn’t mean anything he says.
It’s really hard to cut people out of your life but afterwards it’s amazing realizing that you don’t need to tip toe around things that may be vaguely political (or explicitly) anymore to not start an argument.
Of course you can, you’re just missing the subtext:
Advocate for people like me’s rights
Right wing beliefs have always been about empowering the “I’m alright, Jack” types (I don’t know if that phrase is known in the US, but here is an explanation if not). Purely for helping the powerful stay powerful, at the expense of everyone else.
People that vote for the violence against the people I love have no place in my life no matter who that person is.