Race Intersecting in Trump Dress Like a Woman

Alia E. Dastagir

For the American women who believed the future was imminently female, Donald Trump's inauguration Friday marks the end of mourning and the beginning of resistance. One day later, after the transfer of power is complete, more than 200,000 women and men are expected to unite for the Women's March on Washington, offering the nation its first glimpse into what feminism will look like under President Trump.

"A lot of women are going to literally die because of this administration," Jaclyn Friedman, a feminist activist and co-editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, said about threats to the Affordable Care Act. Trump and Republicans want to repeal it, while feminists fight to preserve the law that made it impossible for women to be denied coverage because of their gender.

It is one of many battles ahead in what promises to be another challenging chapter for the women's movement. If America had elected its first female president, feminists say they would have continued to fight deeply entrenched sexism. But under Trump, who won the presidency after accusations of serial sexual assault and bragging he groped women's genitals, they worry about a more permissible culture of misogyny, as well as the potential loss of federal protections. Women's advocates say now more than ever, feminism needs to stop being seen as a dispensable fad and start being understood as fundamental to democracy.

The stakes are high

Trump has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, which guarantees women the right to have an abortion, even though seven-in-10 Americans support upholding the decision. Congressional Republicans are committed to defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides critical health services to women, many of them low-income, even though in 2015 the public by a wide margin said any congressional budget agreement must maintain funding for the group.

Trump's pick for secretary of the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, which runs Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, has vocally opposed raising the minimum wage. According to the National Women's Law Center, nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage workers in the U.S. are women.

Trump's nominee to head the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, offered few details during her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday on how she would combat campus rape. She said it would be "premature" to commit to upholding the Obama administration's Title IX guidance, which requires colleges and universities to be more responsible for cracking down on sexual assaults.

The scope of these concerns is broad, because feminism is multifaceted. It's human rights and reproductive rights and voting rights and ending sexual violence. It's wage equality and economic mobility and fair representation.

The deal with sexism

At its most basic, feminism seeks to end sexism. Yet the way people understand sexism, and the way women experience it, varies dramatically.

Kristin Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Houston-Downtown, writes in her book Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era, that research shows sexism toward women can largely be broken down into two categories: Hostile sexism and benevolent sexism.

Hostile sexism is the one most people think about. It's openly insulting women: Like when Trump insinuated that moderator Megyn Kelly was antagonistic toward him during a Republican debate because she had her period.

Benevolent sexism is less obvious, because it seems complimentary, even though it's rooted in men's feelings of superiority. It's when men say women are worthy of their protection (women and children off the boat first) or how they're more nurturing (and therefore better at raising children). This kind of sexism is restrictive, and many argue it undermined Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"We have to speak the unspeakable, which is that people didn't vote for Clinton because of sexism, misogyny and attitudes about strong, competent women, and still to this day sexual assault is dismissed and women are demeaned as locker room entertainment," said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA. "These are issues that were put before the American people and too many of them are still not getting it."

While feminists agree on the goal of ending sexist oppression, they often disagree on the language of the movement, the application of its principles. Fights over who gets to hold the mantle and internal clashes over tactics can seem to muddle the mission. Is feminism Hillary Clinton's pragmatic ambition? Is it Beyoncé's #blackgirlmagic? Is it a T-shirt proclaiming "The Future is Female?" Is it a slut walk?

We've seen these debates play out with the Women's March on Washington.

The rally, which began organically on Facebook, was initially criticized for failing to include any women of color as organizers. The team diversified to include Tamika Mallory, an African-American civil rights activist and former executive director of the National Action Network; Linda Sarsour, a Muslim who heads the Arab American Association of New York; and Carmen Perez, a Latina activist who is executive director of Harry Belafonte's Gathering for Justice.

Organizers have since released a policy platform of "Unity Principles," including the belief that "gender justice is racial justice is economic justice."

The march has also been criticized for failing to deliver a focused statement of purpose. Defenders say this is intentional to ensure the march, which seeks to bring together a diverse group of women, remains inclusive.

'Intersectional feminism': More than a buzzword​

The time is right for breadth, organizers say, which is why "intersectional feminism" is entering the mainstream lexicon.

Intersectionality is the understanding of how women's overlapping identities — including race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation — impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination. A white, educated, middle-class woman experiences less systems of oppression than a poor, black, transgender woman.

The term makes some people uncomfortable in part because it suggests that white women recognize their privilege and examine the ways in which that privilege can make other women invisible within the feminist movement.

"I'm a bit over how the mainstream narrative flattens the feminist movement to try to make it into the Sheryl Sandberg-identity of feminism," said Syreeta McFadden, a professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City who writes frequently on racial discrimination and black American culture.

More than half of white women voted for Trump, while 94% of black women and 69% of Latina women voted for Clinton. The day after Trump was elected, many women of color woke up to the only America they know.

"I was disappointed but I wasn't shocked, not in the least," McFadden said. "I was hopeful for an outcome that demonstrated that America and my countrymen and women understood what the stakes were in terms of the election. They chose self-preservation over something more holistic: an America where there is opportunity for a variety of people, that protects all the people who occupy this space and this country."

Ruth Enid Zambrana, director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland, said women of color have a long history of fighting for a voice in the feminist movement.

"At Barnard College in 1971, we walked out of a white women's meeting because they were talking about climbing the corporate ladder and we were trying to talk about how to graduate African-American and Latina women from high school," Zambrana said.

Understanding how sexism affects women of color differently is why Jennifer Young is attending the women's march.

"I feel responsible as a white woman to hold people like me accountable for their privilege," said Young, 45, a therapist in the Tampa Bay area who works with trauma survivors. "A big part of my feminism is knowing more about that and not asking my minority brothers and sisters to help me with that. I need to figure that out for myself. I don't think it's OK for me to sit back and be comfortable as a white woman."

Can Trump voters be feminists?

Last weekend "Women Who Voted for Trump" was a trending phrase on Twitter. Among those tweets, an oft-repeated word was "strong." It's how many women who voted for Trump identify.

Plenty of Trump supporters — both male and female  —  say sexism had nothing to do with their vote. They're fine with a woman in the White House, just notthatwoman.

Some feminist scholars balk at this argument but also tread carefully in countering it.

"To me, the most constructive response to a Trump voter who calls herself a feminist is simply to ask: 'why?'  And then to listen," Williams said. "(Then) to invite the Trump supporter to consider how her views relate to the priorities and experiences of women who found Trump's overt misogyny and valorization of sexual assault to be profoundly anti-woman and hence, distinctly unfeminist."

Lara Schnitger, a 47-year-old L.A. artist who plans to bring her performance on women's rights,Suffragette City, to the march, was more pointed in her response.

"You don't have to vote for a woman, but do you vote for a man who says he's going to grab you by the p****?"

During the campaign, Trump's surrogates and many supporters dismissed those comments as "locker room talk."

There are women who "see their sons and husbands in Donald Trump, and they love them too much to call out their male chauvinism," Williams said. "There has to be more of a willingness among women to stand up to this in intimate spaces."

The great Ivanka debate

Many point to Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka as someone who will advocate for women in Washington.

Janice Reals Ellig, chair of the Corporate Board Initiative for the Women's Forum of New York, an organization which works to advance female leaders, said she doesn't think women should underestimate Ivanka's influence on her father.

"I see an opportunity here with Ivanka who is a level-headed, gracious and articulate woman, who's running a business, who has a family and who has her father's ear," said Ellig, who hopes Trump will appoint more women to high-level positions. "I think as women we can come together around some of what she is putting forth. I think there is a lot that can be done to rally around what she is proposing."

Ivanka was lauded during the campaign for championing her father's plan for paid parental leave, though critics argue it's unlikely to make child care more affordable for those who need it most, and only offers maternity, nothing for fathers, underscoring that raising children is women's work.

This insufficiency, many feminists say, is evidence that Ivanka Trump peddles a variety of feminism that benefits her personally — appropriating feminist ideals for profit, such as using her #WomenWhoWork campaign to sell her eponymous fashion brand.

"The policies Trump advocates and will likely implement are profoundly anti-feminist," Friedman said. "I don't care that there's a symbol like one lady up there doing whatever, I don't care that they want Ivanka to be an American princess, it's what they do and what their actions are."

Friedman expressed similar concerns about Kellyanne Conway, who will serve as counselor to Trump.

"Kellyanne Conway as a feminist is one of those tokenisms that doesn't help anyone," Friedman said. "It's like saying I have one black friend so I can't be a racist. Hitler had a couple of Jews he favored but that doesn't mean he didn't murder 6 million Jews. Just because he has a woman in a position of power doesn't meant he's not a misogynist. We are not fools. It's not that a woman has power, it's what she does with that power."

Many have scolded liberals, however, for bemoaning Clinton's loss while failing to acknowledge that Conway, a mother of four, shattered a glass ceiling as the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign.

"I think Kellyanne Conway is an incredibly accomplished woman," said Maggie Alhadeff, 32, who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, voted for Jill Stein in the general election and said she supports Trump's presidency. "I hate to tell people to calm down. But just kind of like 'calm down!' It's not this crisis scenario. He's not Hitler. He's not Satan incarnate. He's a human being. There are ... a lot of women who supported him."

Alhadeff, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., laments the irony she sees in liberals snubbing Conway's success, adding that these contradictions have led her to forfeit the feminist label.

Earlier this month, Conway told USA TODAY that she's "hardly thought about" the Women's March on Washington.

What now?

The women's march is expected to be unprecedented in size, according to presidential historian Mike Purdy. He said the only demonstrations worthy of comparison, though markedly smaller, are the anti-Vietnam protests during Richard Nixon's inaugurations in 1969 and 1973, and the George W. Bush protests in 2001 (over the contested election) and 2005 (focused on the Iraq war).

Feminists say the rally cry in Washington is a moment for women to begin to re-imagine the nation once again.

"On the one hand it looks absolutely terrifying, every nightmare we could have possibly conjured will come to pass, not one nightmare but a cascade of nightmares," McFadden said. "But the good thing ... is that this is a powerful opportunity for all of us to define what kind of people we wish to be."

Many feminists can't agree on whether gains for women are possible during a Trump administration. Friedman said she's terrified, but refuses to petrify into a defensive crouch for the next four years.

"I tend to feel a blend of hope and rage," she said.

On Wednesday, President Obama gave the final question of his final news conference toChicago Tribune reporter Christi Parsons. She asked how he and Michelle Obama, who spoke passionately about the treatment of women while campaigning for Clinton, have talked to their daughters, Sasha and Malia, about Trump's election.

"They paid attention to what their mom said during the campaign and believed it because it's consistent with what we've tried to teach them in our household ... what we've asked them to expect from future boyfriends or spouses," he said. "But what we've also tried to teach them is resilience, and we've tried to teach them hope, and that the only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world. And so you get knocked down, you get up, brush yourself off, and you get back to work."

Alia Dastagir writes about media and culture for USA TODAY. You can follow her on Twitter @alia_e.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/19/trump-feminism-sexism-racism-womens-march-washington/96621634/

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