He’s called women he disagrees with “fat pigs” and “disgusting animals.” He described a woman who’s been a district attorney, the California attorney general, a U.S. Senator and the Vice President as a “low IQ individual.”
In an interview with Access Hollywood in 2005, leaked in 2016 during his first presidential campaign, he was caught speaking candidly to a friend on a hot mic.
“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”
His friend was a sex offender with a penchant for minors, a friend who died in jail by hanging — all before facing charges of sex trafficking underaged girls in two states. Both were accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old together in 1994, a suit abruptly squashed days before the 2016 election.
In March, he posted a $91.6 million bond, appealing the $83.3 million he owed for defaming and denying his sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll. Two months later he was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
That’s who America re-elected.
Donald J. Trump will be the United States’ 47th President and the first convicted felon to hold the office. His win was decisive: Trump got 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226, and 3 million more popular votes.
The inescapable irony: The man with such a troubling history with women has now twice denied the United States its first Madam President.
“We, as a nation,” LPC psychology professor Dr. Sheena Turner-August said, “absolutely did this again.”
Of the 24 women who have run for president of the United States, two — Harris and Hillary Clinton — won their party’s vote for presidential nominee. Harris was the first woman of color at the top of the ticket.
Both lost to the guy who said he’d date Ivanka Trump — if she wasn’t his daughter.
It’s the highest office in the free world. Commander in Chief. The POTUS is a status as much as it’s a responsibility — a symbol as much as a public service.
The bearer of the seal is an ambassador of the nation’s ideals. A shaper of its collective vision. The country’s primary representative. The theoretic model American.
Barack Obama was an emblem of African-American progress. John F. Kennedy was the office’s first Irish descendant and first Catholic — both particularly disparaged at the time. Bill Clinton, the first Rhodes Scholar, raised the ceiling of influence for the intellectually astute. Ronald Reagan carved a path from Hollywood to Pennsylvania Avenue. Quakers have Herbert Hoover, and the disabled have FDR.
But the largest American demographic yet to occupy the Oval Office — and benefit from the presidency’s intangible affirmation — is women.
“Just the simple fact that a woman was going to be the main leader in America — I don’t think many men like that,” said Akihiko Hirose, a professor of sociology at LPC. “There are sociological studies that actually provide evidence that they feel threatened. … (They’re) voting for protecting the status quo — protecting the status of masculinity in America.”
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia has a letter from Abigail Adams written months before Independence Day in 1776. It was addressed to her husband, John Adams, and the other founders working to manifest a nation from an ideal.
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency,” she wrote. “And, by the way, in the new code of laws, which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.”
Remember the ladies. Be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.
Nearly 250 years later, America’s pinnacle of prestige is off-limits to half the population. Worse still is who, again, reached it: A man reputed for having enough primeval masculinity to reinvigorate national chauvinism.
Columns and conversations across the country have deemed Trump’s reelection a familiar demonstration of misogyny. An unsurprising outcome given the presidential position’s historical exclusivity.
The presently nebulous reasons for his resounding victory will be studied as long as Gen Z draws breath. Whatever they are, the inauguration of a second Trump administration figures to broadly embolden bigotry.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue — a think tank based in London — found misogynistic dysphemisms increased by 4,600% on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a 24-hour period following the election. Users exhausted the terms “your body, my choice” and “go back to the kitchen.”
In May on his social media app, Trump talked about terminating reproductive rights.
“I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” he said on Truth Social. “Much to the ‘shock’ of everyone.”
The Democrats seemed to bank on Trump’s history with women and recent regressions in abortion rights to benefit Harris. Instead, it underscored an especially befuddling element: the role of women in preventing a woman from adorning the presidential seal.
As of July 1, 2022, per the U.S. Census Bureau, women made up 50.4% of the population. According to the League of Women Voters (LWV), women register to vote at a higher rate than men.
In 2022, per LWV, 84.4% of eligible adult women reported registering to vote. It stands to reason that the sheer volume of voting women could rally to put one of their own in office.
“Women all across America,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ pick for vice president, said on the campaign trail in Detroit the night before the election, “… are going to send a loud, clear message to Donald Trump.”
They did.
According to CNN’s exit polls, Harris lost ground with women in the 2024 election. In 2020, Biden won the women’s vote by 15% over Trump. Hillary Clinton won the women’s vote by 13%. Harris only beat Trump by 8% with women. In the three elections featuring Trump, Biden did better with women than both women candidates.
Sarah Thompson, a sociology professor at Las Positas, thinks the only viable first female president would have to be a Margaret Thatcher type. A conservative who wouldn’t have to overcome conscious and unconscious bias.
“Their secret convictions,” Thompson said, “that maybe Kamala wouldn’t be able to do a good job because she was a woman. Because she was a Black woman.”
NO MADAM PRESIDENT: Kamala Harris became the 24th woman to run for President of the United States. The nation still has yet to elect a woman to the highest office in the land.
So Harris desperately needed women. But her campaign’s condemnation of Trump’s attacks on women’s rights and democracy didn’t resonate. Women aren’t a monolith.
Some think Trump will be good for women. Like Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, who pointed to Trump making Susie Wiles the first-ever woman chief of staff.
“This is real American feminism,” Justice told the New York Times.
Sofia Ywar is an LPC biology major. Resistance isn’t among her priorities.
“It’s kind of mean to say I don’t care, but …” — she trailed off.
Turner-August’s General Psychology class meets in the 2400 building at 9:30 a.m. The room, 2450, has floor-to-ceiling glass windows — the morning sun and a panoramic view of Las Positas’ manicured setting are visible. But Wednesday morning’s view offered little solace.
Turner-August had no use for the sliding whiteboards, or the overhead projector and screen.
Room 2450 was dismal. Pessimism abounded. Students vented.
But the psychology professor, who also works in the private sector as a therapist, knew how to handle Nov. 6.
“She did such an amazing job wrapping things together,” social work major and general psychology student Fiona Hua said. “And having us talk about it without putting out her beliefs and guiding us toward a certain side.”
Half of the populace is frightened by a second Trump term. The other half was pitched fear of non-whiteness — by a GOP campaign many considered relentlessly bleak.
Turner-August thinks we’re united in fear. That we’re a nation of people afraid of each other.
“Taking a risk on what is new,” she said, “and what some have worked against — a female of color, a progressive female of color like Kamala Harris is and what she represents — is fearsome to many groups.”
As the holidays approach and Inauguration Day nears, the natural question for opponents of MAGA becomes what to do next.
Minnow Delapena, a student of digital illustration at LPC, anticipates two possible public responses.
“It can either be a time for people to stand up and protest,” they said, “or it’s just gonna get worse.”
Hua is countering her initial pessimism toward Trump’s win with courage. The “courage to scream,” she said. To resist.
To Sarah Thompson, resistance looks like taking up public and political space. She canvassed California in 2017 — attending innumerable women’s marches after Trump’s first win, wearing a pink hat.
Turner-August champions knowledge. Consuming it. Reading. Not tuning out because you don’t like what you’re hearing. Leaning in and learning more. Knowing what you’re resisting.
“There cannot be an uprising, a revolution, even a noteworthy pushback,” she said, “if we don’t understand our history.”
It’s a history obscuring the possibility of revolution. But the alternative, for many, is unfathomable.
The alternative is to do what a manifold sum of voters did: put their faith, their well-being, their futures, into the stewardship of a president who vowed “whether the women like it or not” they will be protected.
To follow the lead of a galvanized patriarchy, increasingly given to dogma of yesteryear. To exist in vulnerability, hoping men won’t be the “tyrants” they could. To rely on the kindness of the patriarchy, making the same appeal as Abigail Adams.
Remember the ladies. Be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.
“We can sit around and we can complain and we can be upset,” Turner-August said. “Or we can get ready to do shit.”
TOP PHOTO: The Democrats banked on women coming out to vote for Kamala Harris, especially in light of Donald Trump’s history of questionable behavior with women. But Trump actually improved among women compared with 2016. (Photo courtesy of Envato Elements)
Olivia Fitts is the News Editor and Opinions Editor for The Express. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @OLIVIAFITTS2.
