Welcome to Gilead. Enjoy Your Stay in the New Trump Era
“I never realized before how much men despise us.” That was the stark realization from one of my peers in Reno, Nevada, the day after the 2024 general elections. She had just turned 21 during the campaign, a grueling three-month stretch she embraced as a daily chance to absorb as much knowledge as possible from her experiences. “It’s clear they despise immigrants too,” she continued, “and I am both.”
On the morning of November 6th, I joined her and four other women to confront the grim election outcomes. The six of us had been inseparably involved in the northern Nevada campaign efforts to elect Kamala Harris as president and secure Jacky Rosen’s Senate seat. Although we would later discover Rosen’s success, it was already apparent that Kamala Harris would not be our next president; Donald Trump would be. This marked my fourth involvement in elections with UNITE-HERE, the hospitality workers’ union, but my first collaboration with their Reno partner, Seed the Vote (STV), an organization aimed at winning elections and bolstering our movements.
Initially, I was doubtful that STV, a progressive nonprofit from the San Francisco Bay Area, could adapt to the union’s robust campaign strategy of effectively running electoral campaigns while training hospitality workers like cooks and hotel staff to build a sustainable union. Could temporary volunteers match the commitment I had seen in union canvassers, even after facing hostility, threats, or intimidation at the doors they knocked on? As it turned out, most of them did.
It was also no coincidence that all six of us were women, which mirrors the predominantly female membership and leadership within UNITE-HERE. Our diverse motivations for joining the campaign were unified by our shared struggles for a living wage, affordable housing, healthcare, and essentially, our lives.
Welcome to Gilead. Enjoy Your Stay.
In Donald Trump, we faced a candidate who pledged to “protect” women—regardless of whether they desired such protection. He boasted about appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping bodily autonomy from millions of women. He argued that this transfer of control over women’s bodies to over 50 state and territorial governments was the collective desire of the populace—a dubious claim at best. This was certainly not the “protection” Jessica Barnica sought when Texas doctors denied her an abortion during a miscarriage, leading to her death from sepsis three days later, nor was it what other women envisioned as their stories of suffering and death post-Roe surfaced in a New York magazine article titled “Life after Roe.” Clearly, we did not appreciate Trump’s brand of protection.
Here was a man whose previous admissions of sexual assault did not prevent his 2016 White House entry. Here was a man who demeaned his female opponent in 2024 as mentally unfit, insinuating something essential was lacking in Kamala Harris—suggestively, a male attribute. Trump also crudely joked about Harris and Hillary Clinton’s careers being influenced by sexual acts, echoing right-wing slurs that Harris advanced politically through a relationship with California politician Willie Brown. His campaign’s final stretch was marked by targeting some of society’s most vulnerable—the transgender youth.
His running mate, J.D. Vance, openly scorned women who pursue careers over childbirth, claiming such women, devoid of children, project their misery onto society. Welcome to the Republic of Gilead, where the disdain for women is palpable and unapologetic.
Your Body, My Choice, Forever
Before anyone rushes to the defense with “#notallmen,” let me clarify—my brother doesn’t hate me, nor does my nephew or my father. Nor did any boyfriends from my past. Yet, some of these men, and many others, harbor deep-seated, often unspoken beliefs about the supposed inferiority of women—beliefs that, like a hidden infection, can breed contempt.
When this contempt is allowed to fester, it can infect the bloodstream of a nation, leading to a fever of misogyny, as seen in the aftermath of Trump’s recent reelection. The sentiment was epitomized by white supremacist Nick Fuentes’s election-night post on X, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” Although often interpreted as a jab at reproductive rights, it’s evident that Fuentes and his ilk viewed Trump’s win as a green light for sexual violence.
Such views quickly gain traction; Fuentes’s post alone garnered 90 million views within a day. These sentiments are not confined to obscure corners of the internet but are voiced openly, influencing behaviors and attitudes across society.
#yesmostmen
Exit polls indicated that 55% of male voters supported Donald Trump. This majority included a varied age demographic, suggesting that if only women had voted, Kamala Harris would have won decisively. Calls for repealing the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, also surfaced online, highlighting a disturbing desire to roll back women’s rights.
One vocal advocate for this rollback was John McEntee, Trump’s former aide, who humorously misconstrued calls for mail-only voting as male-only voting, suggesting that the 19th Amendment might need to be rescinded.
The Four Bs
Like the younger campaigner who only fully grasped the depth of misogyny post-election, I was in my early twenties when I first confronted the reality of men’s hatred towards women. This realization was sparked not by personal experience but by the global eruption of the second-wave feminism, which radically redefined what seemed possible for women.
Yet recognizing women’s full humanity comes with the painful acknowledgment of those who wish to deny it. Why should women compromise on this fundamental aspect?
In recent years, I’ve observed the plight of young American men, whose prospects have been dimmed by decades of neoliberal policies. While it’s easy to blame women for their troubles, the real culprits are the structural powers limiting their lives. Yet, this doesn’t justify the mistreatment of women.
Thus, in the wake of Trump’s reelection, many young American women are adopting the 4Bs movement—rejecting marriage, childbirth, dating, and sexual relations with men. This sentiment echoes the early days of women’s liberation: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
Indeed, women don’t need men who hate them. And as the political landscape continues to evolve, it’s clear that understanding and confronting these deep-seated prejudices is more crucial than ever.
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