In the Days After Trump’s Victory, Women Feel Emboldened to Defend Their Rights
CHICAGO (AP) — In the days following the presidential election, Sadie Perez began carrying pepper spray with her around campus. Her mother also ordered her and her sister a self-defense kit that included keychain spikes, a hidden knife key, and a personal alarm. This is a response to an emboldened fringe of right-wing “manosphere” influencers who have seized on Republican Donald Trump’s presidential win to justify and amplify misogynistic derision and threats online.
Many women have seen a worrying increase in online harassment and violence, with some feeling that men’s perception of the election results as a rebuke of reproductive rights and women’s rights is being used to fuel their anger. “The fact that I feel like I have to carry around pepper spray like this is sad,” said Perez, a 19-year-old political science student. “Women want and deserve to feel safe.”
Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on polarization and extremism, said she has seen a “very large uptick in a number of types of misogynistic rhetoric immediately after the election,” including “extremely violent misogyny.”
Frances-Wright attributed the surge in online harassment to a post on the social platform X by Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and far-right internet personality who had dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida two years ago. Fuentes’ post had 35 million views on X within 24 hours, according to a report by Frances-Wright’s think tank, and the phrase spread rapidly to other social media platforms.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said the phrase transforms the iconic abortion rights slogan into an attack on women’s right to autonomy and a personal threat. “The implication is that men should have control over or access to sex with women,” she said.
The phrase has been seen on TikTok, with women reporting seeing it inundate their comment sections. School districts in Wisconsin and Minnesota have sent notices about the language to parents, and T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase were pulled off Amazon. Perez has seen men respond to shared Snapchat stories for their college class with “Your body, my choice.”
“It makes me feel disgusted and infringed upon,” she said. “It feels like going backwards.”
women on college campuses have reported being subjected to online harassment, including rape threats, and have seen boys chanting the phrase in middle school. One mother said her daughter heard the phrase on her college campus three times, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report and social media reports have documented similar incidents. Online declarations calling for women to “Get back in the kitchen” or to “Repeal the 19th” amendment, which gave women the right to vote, have also spread rapidly.
The language is part of a broader trend of misogyny and online harassment, with many women feeling forced to take extreme measures to feel safe. For some, the election felt like a referendum on women’s rights and the loss of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris felt like a rejection of their own rights and autonomy.