An estimated 55 delegates from various women’s and cinematographer organizations around the world participated in a two-hour meeting on Thursday with EnergaCamerimage representatives, for what was described as a private forum to voice views and ideas as a step toward continued discussion and a goal of addressing diversity, inclusion and representation at the annual cinematography […]
“Gavin & Stacey” fans are set to rejoice as the BBC unveils a first look image of the long-awaited special reunion. The image features the show’s lead quartet, James Corden, Ruth Jones, Matthew Horne and Joanna Page. Corden returns as Smithy, Jones as Nessa, Horne as Gavin and Page as Stacey for the upcoming special. […]
SongVest, a company that enables fans and investors to purchase fractional shares of music royalties, is opening the reservation period for “Queen SongShares.” From today (Nov. 21) through Thursday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. ET, fans can reserve SongShares in four Queen tracks — “Under Pressure,” “It’s A Kind of Magic,” “I Want It All,” […]
“The Simpsons” voice actor Pamela Hayden, who played Milhouse and a variety of other characters, announced she is retiring from the show after 35 years. Her final episode will be “Treehouse of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” airing Nov. 24. Hayden voiced Milhouse Van Houten, the blue-haired best friend of Bart Simpson, as […]
When Chad Michael Murray was sent the script for “The Merry Gentlemen,” the Netflix movie about an amateur all-male musical revue that tries to save Christmas by rescuing a local diner, he gave an “immediate, terrified yes” — mostly because he hadn’t done anything that scared him in years. And then he hit the gym. […]
To describe “The Merry Gentlemen” as “The Full Monty” meets a Christmas-themed Hallmark movie might be overselling the goods. However, that’s essentially the elevator pitch for this feature, in which a big-city dancer returns to her small town to save her parents’ concert venue by having hunks go shirtless on stage. Yet director Peter Sullivan […]
A deeply moving humanist drama with potent social and political undercurrents, “Abang Adik” charts the hardships faced by two orphaned Malaysian brothers who have no legal identity in the country of their birth. The mightily impressive first feature written and directed by renowned producer Jin Ong will move many viewers to tears as the brothers’ […]
In celebration of the film’s upcoming 30th anniversary, David Fincher’s crime thriller “Se7en” will be released for the first time digitally in 4K Ultra HD and on 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc on Jan. 7. The physical version will be available online and at major retailers while the digital release will be available on Amazon Prime […]
Apple TV+ has released the first trailer and premiere date for Seth Rogen’s new comedy series “The Studio.” The Hollywood-based, 10 episode comedy will premiere with its first two episodes on March 26, 2025, with one new episode dropping Wednesdays thereafter until May 21. The show was originally commissioned at Apple in 2022. The full […]
Denzel Washington may have said that his same-sex kiss in “Gladiator II” was cut from the movie because the powers that be got “chicken,” but, according to director Ridley Scott, the kiss may not have happened at all. “No, that’s bullshit,” Scott told me Monday night at the “Gladiator II” premiere in Hollywood. He later […]
Conan O’Brien revealed to Eric Idle on a recent episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly) that Robin Williams cold called him after NBC fired him as host of “The Tonight Show.” O’Brien took over the late night show from Jay Leno in 2009, but he was infamously fired after […]
Rebecca Hall said in an interview with The Observer that she does not regret working with Woody Allen despite apologizing once for starring in “A Rainy Day in New York.” Hall has made two movies with Allen: “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Rainy Day,” the latter of which she only filmed on for one day. Hall […]
San Francisco Film, which presents the San Francisco International Film Festival, has named Steve McQueen as the honoree for the 2024 SF Honors Award for his latest film, “Blitz.” The Academy Award-winning filmmaker will receive the recognition in person during a pre-screening award presentation. After the screening, there will be an in-depth conversation with McQueen, […]
Elizabeth Olsen has the best of both worlds as the Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and an indie film darling. At Vulture Festival over the weekend, the “WandaVision” and “His Three Daughters” star clarified that though she doesn’t feel forced to make Marvel series and movies in order to pursue indie projects, it’s […]
Taiwan production house Aview Images has struck a partnership with Singapore’s Momo Film Co to co-produce two upcoming features – Nelson Yeo’s “The Drought” and Daniel Hui’s “Other People’s Dreams.” “The Drought,” Yeo’s sophomore feature, explores family dynamics and personal struggles against the backdrop of an uninhabitable drought. The project marks a reunion between Yeo […]
In the days before the election, when too many stories about deadlocked polls and undecided voters and the MAGAfication of young men began to wear on my soul, I turned to TikTok to see what women were thinking. Soon enough I was swimming in a sea of female excitement and angst. I watched videos of ordinary women of all ages and races—in deep blue districts and deep red ones—describing what this election meant to them. Women who had just voted, sitting in their cars and sobbing about what it would mean to elect the first female president, what it would mean to defeat a vitriolically sexist candidate who’s been found liable for sexually assaulting one woman and who stands accused by dozens more, whose campaign gleefully demeaned women as “trash” and “childless cat ladies.” What it would mean to elect someone who’d spent the last three months, and the two years before that, connecting reproductive freedom to economic concerns. What it would mean to elect someone taking the stress of caring for both kids and parents seriously, who recognizes the housing crisis is hurting all but the richest, who has more than a concept of a plan for how to address such problems.
I watched one young woman driving 10 hours to her home state because her absentee ballot never arrived, muttering “10 and 2, 10 and 2” as she stared out at the road ahead. I watched women flying across the country to vote. I watched women take part in the “They both reached for the gun” Chicago meme as they talked about canceling out the vote of their Trump-supporting father, brother, or husband. Or bragging on husbands or dads whose vote they didn’t have to cancel. One who said she wouldn’t have to cancel out her husband’s vote because he’d forget to do it if she didn’t remind him.
One woman told of breaking off her engagement when she found out her fiancé was for Trump. (“I can’t share my life with someone who is going to vote in that direction…Ladies, we need to stick together.”) I watched as young woman after young woman testified that they’d never, ever consider dating anyone who voted for Trump. I watched as women who were in middle or high school in 2016 reacted in horror at seeing, for the first time, Trump bragging on an Access Hollywood bus about grabbing women by the pussy and moving on them “like a bitch,” or stalking Hillary Clinton around a debate stage, or seeing the testimonies of the more than 25 women who have reported being sexually assaulted by him. “Dads voted for this?” read one incredulous caption.
There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women.
I was well aware that algorithmic offerings are not reality, particularly on TikTok, which serves you things akin to the things you’ve engaged with. But the videos seemed to be representative of a record gender divide, clocked by pollsters at about 30 points nationally at the time and even higher in key districts and among certain demographics. Would women, horrified by Trump’s and Vance’s statements and actions, furious that their reproductive rights were rolled back, foreclose another Trump term? Would enough white women finally cleave from white men, and vote for a woman who was also Black and Asian?
We know the answer now, and while conclusive demographic data will take months to emerge, exit polls in 10 historic battleground states indicate that women there favored Harris by 8 points overall—less than the margin for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020—resulting in an 11 point gender gap. (The exit polls’ ongoing inclusion of Florida, Ohio, and Texas might being warping our conclusions, but we don’t yet know.) Black women, Democrats’ most loyal constituency, voted for her in those states at a rate of 91 percent. Latinas, 60 percent. Young women, 61 percent. Other age groups, 49–54 percent. Harris won 57 percent of women with college degrees and 66 percent of women with even more education. But she lost white women with little or no college education by a mile. Only 35 percent of them supported her, and since those women constitute about one-fifth of the total electorate, they drove down her margins with women overall.
The questions that feel most burning right now—like what is up with those who voted against abortion bans but also for Trump, and which part of his gains can be attributed mostly to racism and/or sexism—are complex and will take more data and analysis to really understand. But it’s safe to say Trump’s margin of victory was powered by men, who, those same polls found, voted for him by 55 percent—a few points more than went for him in 2020. Trump looks to have made gains with almost every type of man, especially younger men and Latino men. (Despite a lot of pre-election angst, Black men overwhelmingly backed Harris, though Trump increased his margins there, too.) White men of all education levels went for Trump, but white men who didn’t go to college overwhelmingly so.
The Trump campaign knew that men were his ticket back to power, and it targeted them—pointedly young men, and men of color—with a sophisticated campaign of grievance and disinformation. And in that, they were massively aided by the manosphere and its billionaire mascot: Elon Musk.
Since he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk has been on a mission to turn it into an amplifier of toxicity. He allowed hate-mongers—including virulent misogynists such as Andrew Tate—back on the platform, now called X, and dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans, foremost himself. He personally promoted disinformation of all kinds—about voting, about transgender kids (despite, or because of, having one), about Harris (his PAC literally called her a “c-word”), about science—to his more than 204 million followers. Who can forget his promise to impregnate Taylor Swift after she announced her support for Harris? His misleading election posts, including ones falsely claiming Democrats were “importing” millions of migrants to vote for Harris, were viewed 2 billion times according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which estimated his posts were worth $24 million to the Trump campaign. (Musk, who likes to claim he’s a defender of free speech, sued the center in 2023; a federal judge tossed the case, ruling it was an obvious attempt to both stifle criticism of X and bankrupt the organization.)
Musk gave, directly and through super-PACs, about $200 million to help Trump’s campaign in the final months, and mounted a parallel ground game in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried. He stumped for Trump, made the “brocast” rounds for Trump, and urged other tech billionaires to support Trump. He gave millions—possibly tens of millions—to Building America’s Future, a group focused on dividing communities of color and wooing Black men to vote for Trump.
Musk dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans—foremost himself.
Musk’s efforts are both part of and indicative of the fact that more and more men are cocooned in a YouTube/podcast/Twitch information ecosystem that connects sports, gaming, and other male-dominated hobbies to politics. And in that space, algorithmic forces and concerted efforts by far-right influencers and adjacent grifters are normalizing disdain or hate for women, part of a conveyor belt of extremism. A good example of that came immediately after the election, when neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes (who famously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) posted “Your body, my choice.” Soon that slogan was screamed at high school girls all over the country by their male classmates, many of whom had likely never heard of Fuentes himself. (Similarly, Black people, including kids at my son’s school, were subjected to a decentralized but nationwide campaign of racist texts.)
There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women. For decades, men have been losing ground relative to women, be it in education or job opportunities. Women are increasingly likely to be a household’s primary breadwinner or raise families by themselves. The MeToo movement was a massively needed corrective for sexual harassment and abuse, but the ferocity of it (and some occasional overreach) did destabilize many men.
This has all happened before. Women in the 1940s were sent to the factories and then back to the kitchen. The feminist movement of the 1970s led to big gains—we finally got those credit cards, ladies!—and then to a backlash, as Susan Faludi famously chronicled. An “anti-PC” movement arose too. But eventually the pendulum swung back, and new waves of female empowerment began to swell. Hopefully this election will do the same, and figuring out how to reach young men before they calcify into hardened misogyny needs to be a big part of that.
After the 2016 election, I wrote that Trump’s victory was a “brutal affront to women” and “all who value kindness and tolerance.” His administration plumbed new depths of chaos, corruption, and cruelty, and while some voters are too young to fully remember, his 2024 campaign made sure that no one could say they didn’t get what he stands for.
The women who voted for Harris know that—and they are not okay. About one-third of women now live in states with abortion bans, and anybody who believed that Trump won’t try for a national ban, or revive the Comstock Act to stop distribution of mifepristone or even contraception, is likely to be bitterly disappointed. Even if nationwide prohibitions don’t come to pass, women in red states, and their doctors, will be further surveilled to prevent abortions, and women trying to have children will continue to die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid to provide lifesaving care. What else do the “pronatalist” policies that JD Vance and Elon Musk have been so eager to enact hold for women?
Women are suspicious, guarded, and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status.
When I went back to TikTok after the election, I saw sorrow and disbelief and terror, but also incandescent rage. Women are furious—in a Greek mythology sort of way. Black women are especially flattened and yet unsurprised that white women didn’t break for Harris. Some young women began shaving their heads and embracing the South Korean feminist 4B movement, in which women swear off dating, sex, and childrearing. (“The good news is that men hate us, so there’s no point in catering to them,” posted one.) Not many are likely to go that far, but it was clear even before the outcome that this election could have far-reaching impacts on dating and marriage and divorce. Certainly sex: If women can’t get abortions and are prevented from obtaining contraception, young men will awake to a very different world, soon enough. “If his ballot was red, his balls stay blue,” posted one woman. (And guys? Project 2025 wants to come after porn, too.)
Will the backlash, once the election’s consequences become fully apparent, help power a reckoning with misogyny and racism once more? Perhaps. But right now, so many of us fear for ourselves, fear for our daughters, fear for women whom we’ve never met, and all others with a target on their backs, and we are walking around, suspicious and guarded and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status, and wondering what else they’re ready to go along with.
America’s oil industry released its wish list for the incoming Trump administration on Tuesday, a five-point plan that would eliminate many of the Biden administration’s most far-reaching efforts to reduce climate pollution and limit the warming that is driving ever more destructive and deadly extreme weather.
The list, released by the American Petroleum Institute and coming on the second day of the global United Nations climate conference, does not mention the words “climate change.” The document maintains that the industry group and its members agree on the need to reduce emissions. Yet its requests, if enacted, would remove many of the tools available to the United States to achieve that goal.
Perhaps most importantly, API asked the incoming administration to repeal the tailpipe and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks that aim to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector, the nation’s largest source of climate pollution. The list also includes revoking a waiver that allows California and 12 other states to set tougher rules for vehicles. These rules together are expected to speed the nation’s transition to electric vehicles and significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions.
“The API’s wish list demonstrates the fossil fuel industry’s existential threat to life on earth.”
API also called on the Trump administration to issue a new five-year plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling leases and to repeal rules adopted by the Biden administration that restricted new drilling on public lands. The Biden administration had greatly reduced the amount of new drilling on public lands and in waters offshore. The oil industry also wants the new administration to accelerate permits to export natural gas, a process the Biden administration had put on hold to review its climate impacts.
API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, said his group would press Congress to enact a bill to ease permitting of major energy projects before the end of this session, and would seek more changes to further speed permitting next year.
The proposal also looks ahead to a looming debate to extend or replace the 2017 tax cuts that expire next year, seeking to maintain the lower corporate tax rate the first Trump administration enacted and the numerous benefits the oil industry enjoys.
In a call with reporters, Sommers said voters had elected Donald Trump with energy and the economy in mind and that the proposals would help increase the nation’s oil and gas production, which climbed substantially under President Joe Biden. The United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.
“It is clear that energy was on the ballot, whether it was EV mandates in Michigan or fracking in Pennsylvania,” Sommers said, referring to the Biden administration’s policies to encourage the sale of electric vehicles.
Environmental groups reacted to the proposal with scorn.
“This is a toxic soup of reckless proposals that would benefit the oil and gas industry at the expense of the climate, frontline communities and future generations. We’re prepared to fight them in court,” said Jason Rylander, legal director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The API’s wish list demonstrates the fossil fuel industry’s existential threat to life on Earth.”
Some of the requests seem difficult to square with the stated goals of API and many of its members to support the Paris Agreement and its goal of limiting warming.
Sommers said his industry supports the federal regulation of methane, for example, and that some API members support the idea of a methane fee. But the group is united, he said, in its opposition to the fee the Biden administration enacted. Sommers did not elaborate on what type of fee, if any, his group would support.
When asked if API would oppose Trump’s stated desire to withdraw the nation from the Paris Agreement, Sommers declined to answer directly, saying the industry would continue to support cutting emissions while producing more oil and gas regardless of whether the country stays in the global pact.
“It does everything possible to lock us into the fuels of bygone eras.”
This year is expected to be the hottest on record. Scientists say that in order to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, governments must begin reducing oil and gas production.
Kathy Harris, director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that the car and truck efficiency standards would save Americans “billions of dollars at the pump, so it’s no surprise that the oil industry would want to gut them.” She added, “Drivers, auto companies, and workers are all benefitting from these standards. For their sake, they should be preserved.”
Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in an email, “This agenda looks like something written in the 1900s.” Rolfes’ group has campaigned against building new pipelines and export projects along the Gulf Coast because of their impact on communities and the environment. “It does not reflect the technologies that are available now, and forfeits American leadership in so many areas, including high mileage and electric vehicles. It does everything possible to lock us into the fuels of bygone eras.”
Oil executives were prominent donors to Trump’s campaign, and the industry is likely to find a partner in a new Trump administration on many fronts. Yet some signs of possible friction emerged during the Tuesday call. Sommers indicated his industry might oppose efforts to implement new tariffs, for example, if they restrict the free flow of oil and gas across national borders. The imposition of new tariffs was one of Trump’s central campaign promises.
Many of the steps sought by API could be taken through administrative action, but some, including the repeal of the fee on methane emissions from oil and gas equipment, would require congressional action. Either way, they will be sure to face new lawsuits from environmental groups, which were able to delay or stymie many similar efforts by the first Trump administration.
In the days before the election, when too many stories about deadlocked polls and undecided voters and the MAGAfication of young men began to wear on my soul, I turned to TikTok to see what women were thinking. Soon enough I was swimming in a sea of female excitement and angst. I watched videos of ordinary women of all ages and races—in deep blue districts and deep red ones—describing what this election meant to them. Women who had just voted, sitting in their cars and sobbing about what it would mean to elect the first female president, what it would mean to defeat a vitriolically sexist candidate who’s been found liable for sexually assaulting one woman and who stands accused by dozens more, whose campaign gleefully demeaned women as “trash” and “childless cat ladies.” What it would mean to elect someone who’d spent the last three months, and the two years before that, connecting reproductive freedom to economic concerns. What it would mean to elect someone taking the stress of caring for both kids and parents seriously, who recognizes the housing crisis is hurting all but the richest, who has more than a concept of a plan for how to address such problems.
I watched one young woman driving 10 hours to her home state because her absentee ballot never arrived, muttering “10 and 2, 10 and 2” as she stared out at the road ahead. I watched women flying across the country to vote. I watched women take part in the “They both reached for the gun” Chicago meme as they talked about canceling out the vote of their Trump-supporting father, brother, or husband. Or bragging on husbands or dads whose vote they didn’t have to cancel. One who said she wouldn’t have to cancel out her husband’s vote because he’d forget to do it if she didn’t remind him.
One woman told of breaking off her engagement when she found out her fiancé was for Trump. (“I can’t share my life with someone who is going to vote in that direction…Ladies, we need to stick together.”) I watched as young woman after young woman testified that they’d never, ever consider dating anyone who voted for Trump. I watched as women who were in middle or high school in 2016 reacted in horror at seeing, for the first time, Trump bragging on an Access Hollywood bus about grabbing women by the pussy and moving on them “like a bitch,” or stalking Hillary Clinton around a debate stage, or seeing the testimonies of the more than 25 women who have reported being sexually assaulted by him. “Dads voted for this?” read one incredulous caption.
There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women.
I was well aware that algorithmic offerings are not reality, particularly on TikTok, which serves you things akin to the things you’ve engaged with. But the videos seemed to be representative of a record gender divide, clocked by pollsters at about 30 points nationally at the time and even higher in key districts and among certain demographics. Would women, horrified by Trump’s and Vance’s statements and actions, furious that their reproductive rights were rolled back, foreclose another Trump term? Would enough white women finally cleave from white men, and vote for a woman who was also Black and Asian?
We know the answer now, and while conclusive demographic data will take months to emerge, exit polls in 10 historic battleground states indicate that women there favored Harris by 8 points overall—less than the margin for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020—resulting in an 11 point gender gap. (The exit polls’ ongoing inclusion of Florida, Ohio, and Texas might being warping our conclusions, but we don’t yet know.) Black women, Democrats’ most loyal constituency, voted for her in those states at a rate of 91 percent. Latinas, 60 percent. Young women, 61 percent. Other age groups, 49–54 percent. Harris won 57 percent of women with college degrees and 66 percent of women with even more education. But she lost white women with little or no college education by a mile. Only 35 percent of them supported her, and since those women constitute about one-fifth of the total electorate, they drove down her margins with women overall.
The questions that feel most burning right now—like what is up with those who voted against abortion bans but also for Trump, and which part of his gains can be attributed mostly to racism and/or sexism—are complex and will take more data and analysis to really understand. But it’s safe to say Trump’s margin of victory was powered by men, who, those same polls found, voted for him by 55 percent—a few points more than went for him in 2020. Trump looks to have made gains with almost every type of man, especially younger men and Latino men. (Despite a lot of pre-election angst, Black men overwhelmingly backed Harris, though Trump increased his margins there, too.) White men of all education levels went for Trump, but white men who didn’t go to college overwhelmingly so.
The Trump campaign knew that men were his ticket back to power, and it targeted them—pointedly young men, and men of color—with a sophisticated campaign of grievance and disinformation. And in that, they were massively aided by the manosphere and its billionaire mascot: Elon Musk.
Since he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk has been on a mission to turn it into an amplifier of toxicity. He allowed hate-mongers—including virulent misogynists such as Andrew Tate—back on the platform, now called X, and dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans, foremost himself. He personally promoted disinformation of all kinds—about voting, about transgender kids (despite, or because of, having one), about Harris (his PAC literally called her a “c-word”), about science—to his more than 204 million followers. Who can forget his promise to impregnate Taylor Swift after she announced her support for Harris? His misleading election posts, including ones falsely claiming Democrats were “importing” millions of migrants to vote for Harris, were viewed 2 billion times according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which estimated his posts were worth $24 million to the Trump campaign. (Musk, who likes to claim he’s a defender of free speech, sued the center in 2023; a federal judge tossed the case, ruling it was an obvious attempt to both stifle criticism of X and bankrupt the organization.)
Musk gave, directly and through super-PACs, about $200 million to help Trump’s campaign in the final months, and mounted a parallel ground game in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried. He stumped for Trump, made the “brocast” rounds for Trump, and urged other tech billionaires to support Trump. He gave millions—possibly tens of millions—to Building America’s Future, a group focused on dividing communities of color and wooing Black men to vote for Trump.
Musk dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans—foremost himself.
Musk’s efforts are both part of and indicative of the fact that more and more men are cocooned in a YouTube/podcast/Twitch information ecosystem that connects sports, gaming, and other male-dominated hobbies to politics. And in that space, algorithmic forces and concerted efforts by far-right influencers and adjacent grifters are normalizing disdain or hate for women, part of a conveyor belt of extremism. A good example of that came immediately after the election, when neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes (who famously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) posted “Your body, my choice.” Soon that slogan was screamed at high school girls all over the country by their male classmates, many of whom had likely never heard of Fuentes himself. (Similarly, Black people, including kids at my son’s school, were subjected to a decentralized but nationwide campaign of racist texts.)
There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women. For decades, men have been losing ground relative to women, be it in education or job opportunities. Women are increasingly likely to be a household’s primary breadwinner or raise families by themselves. The MeToo movement was a massively needed corrective for sexual harassment and abuse, but the ferocity of it (and some occasional overreach) did destabilize many men.
This has all happened before. Women in the 1940s were sent to the factories and then back to the kitchen. The feminist movement of the 1970s led to big gains—we finally got those credit cards, ladies!—and then to a backlash, as Susan Faludi famously chronicled. An “anti-PC” movement arose too. But eventually the pendulum swung back, and new waves of female empowerment began to swell. Hopefully this election will do the same, and figuring out how to reach young men before they calcify into hardened misogyny needs to be a big part of that.
After the 2016 election, I wrote that Trump’s victory was a “brutal affront to women” and “all who value kindness and tolerance.” His administration plumbed new depths of chaos, corruption, and cruelty, and while some voters are too young to fully remember, his 2024 campaign made sure that no one could say they didn’t get what he stands for.
The women who voted for Harris know that—and they are not okay. About one-third of women now live in states with abortion bans, and anybody who believed that Trump won’t try for a national ban, or revive the Comstock Act to stop distribution of mifepristone or even contraception, is likely to be bitterly disappointed. Even if nationwide prohibitions don’t come to pass, women in red states, and their doctors, will be further surveilled to prevent abortions, and women trying to have children will continue to die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid to provide lifesaving care. What else do the “pronatalist” policies that JD Vance and Elon Musk have been so eager to enact hold for women?
Women are suspicious, guarded, and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status.
When I went back to TikTok after the election, I saw sorrow and disbelief and terror, but also incandescent rage. Women are furious—in a Greek mythology sort of way. Black women are especially flattened and yet unsurprised that white women didn’t break for Harris. Some young women began shaving their heads and embracing the South Korean feminist 4B movement, in which women swear off dating, sex, and childrearing. (“The good news is that men hate us, so there’s no point in catering to them,” posted one.) Not many are likely to go that far, but it was clear even before the outcome that this election could have far-reaching impacts on dating and marriage and divorce. Certainly sex: If women can’t get abortions and are prevented from obtaining contraception, young men will awake to a very different world, soon enough. “If his ballot was red, his balls stay blue,” posted one woman. (And guys? Project 2025 wants to come after porn, too.)
Will the backlash, once the election’s consequences become fully apparent, help power a reckoning with misogyny and racism once more? Perhaps. But right now, so many of us fear for ourselves, fear for our daughters, fear for women whom we’ve never met, and all others with a target on their backs, and we are walking around, suspicious and guarded and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status, and wondering what else they’re ready to go along with.
Emmy-winning comedian, writer, producer and former late-night host Conan O’Brien has been tapped to host the 97th Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday. This marks O’Brien’s first stint as as host, coming after two consecutive years with Jimmy Kimmel as emcee. The ceremony is also coming off winning an Emmy […]
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