The day before the US elections, a photograph of a Polish protester waving a rainbow flag went viral. She’s wearing a mask and dressed all in black; in the background, a group of men light smoke bombs and she stands, confidently, in front of billowing clouds of smoke. It’s a striking image and, as Polish women and their allies fight for their reproductive freedom, it gave me hope. To then finally hear, after days of tension, that the misogynist Donald Trump had been voted out of office felt as though a stone had been lifted from my chest.
Global feminism is like a tangle of cables, intertwined in complex knots. Those cables bind us to one another, transmitting our struggles in fractions of seconds. I have female friends who are Polish and Irish and American, and how they are treated by their home countries matters to me. But my solidarity stretches further than that, and is underpinned by a sort of simmering anger. I cried for American women when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and I applauded with joy for Irish women (and later, thank God, for Northern Irish women too) when abortion was legalised there. I stand with Polish women, because their fight is also our fight: it’s a fight to be recognised as fully human, and to obtain the rights that come with that.
Trump didn’t see women as fully human. There is no doubt in my mind about that. It’s still difficult to express the full implications of a man like that holding such a position of power in the 21st century, how it felt to witness it, to see him take office despite his flagrant boasting of sexual assault. For those of us who have been victims of male violence, for the many women who have fought to be believed, it felt like a kick in the teeth.
It was not the same as being directly affected, of course. There are many thousands of American women who, in the wake of the 2016 election, rushed to stock up on birth control, who went and got IUDs. I can’t imagine how that must have felt. It makes me shiver.
But we still felt something. Even women of my acquaintance who have never been particularly interested in feminist politics wept when they watched Brett Kavanaugh make it to the supreme court. It reminded them of the times men hadn’t listened when they had said “no”. “It makes me feel as though we do not matter,” one friend said.
How will we remember feminist resistance under Trumpism? We’ll remember the words of Chanel Miller’s victim impact statement during the trial of the Stanford University graduate who sexually assaulted her: “you don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me”, and the word “gaslighting”, which became part of everyday parlance. We’ll remember the courage of the women who came forward against Harvey Weinstein, and the women who took to the streets for Black Lives Matter. We’ll remember Greta Thunberg’s defiance. The agitators who dressed as handmaids and who, for a time, seemed to be everywhere, and the fact that they became such a potent symbol that they prompted a follow-up novel from Margaret Atwood.
We’ll remember those who protested after allegations emerged of the forced sterilisation of women at an immigration detention centre in Georgia, and those who stood with trans women in their fight for their human rights. We will remember the Women’s March and, though some feminists hated them, the pussy hats. We’ll remember the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements: all those women who took the long walk over to HR, or who didn’t, but felt themselves seen and believed. We will remember Heather Heyer.
This has been a period of resistance for feminists, partly because there was something so awful and so monstrous to kick against. The machismo of the Trump movement, its overt sexism, and how it intersected with white supremacy, felt horrific to observe. The way he openly belittled and derided female politicians was unprecedented.
Once Trump is kicked out of office the fight is by no means over. We will not suddenly wake up in a feminist utopia, and Trump is not the only male politician to have done harm to women. There have been allegations against Joe Biden – which he denies. When women of my generation look back on the Bill Clinton era, and how liberal women journalists rallied to castigate Monica Lewinsky, it is with disgust (it is no coincidence that her influence has continued to grow under this administration). Feminists must guard against blind spots. In some ways, insidious sexism is more difficult to fight.
Biden, at least, seems to see women as people, which is a low bar, but after Trump, that is where we are. The work that he has done on domestic violence should be noted, as should his support for Kamala Harris.
The feminist fight will continue. I anticipate a shift in tone, but I hope the solidarity that has built up will manifest. White feminists should be feeling especially grateful to black women, without whom Trump would still be in power, and they owe it to them to fight for their rights, and to continue to remember how many white women benefit from systems of patriarchy and white supremacy.
At the same time, I cannot express the relief I feel. The trauma I have felt from being a victim of male violence is shared with many hundreds of thousands of women. This period of history has not been easy. It has dredged up feelings and will continue to do so. Exhaustion, liberation and jubilation will all be felt in that man’s lamentable wake. We will all take a moment to breathe and reflect on how this period has galvanised and mobilised us. And then: we fight on.
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author
