2 weeks Ago By Tarla Lambert-Patel
I can still remember the cold wood of my apartment floor, watching Donald Trump’s 2016 victory speech with tears running down my face. At that time, he was the political unknown, but ultimately what we know about Trump as a human being was chilling: a serial liar, an accused rapist, a rampant, racist, megalomaniac..
. How could he ever prevail? Now, here we are in 2024, with an even more emboldened Trump jingling the keys to the White House. Perhaps, the shock has worn off somewhat.
After all, in 8 years we’ve born witness to some truly draconian shifts. Human rights, women’s rights, support for marginalised communities– in America and across the world there have been disturbing warning signs and outright efforts to encourage voters to thrive only on hate and division. Three and a half years of a Biden administration did little to quell the disunity that Trump so expertly created.
And now, with his reelection, the return of strongman politics and strongman ideology is more alive than ever. Indeed, leaders like Jacinda Ardern, Sanna Marin, and Angela Merkel feel like distant abberations. And while the shock of Wednesday’s result may not feel as extreme as 2016, the despair is crippling.
This outcome is catastrophic for the world. Trump may be adept at capitalising on an age of anxiety, but he will do nothing to alleviate it, and that perhaps, is the saddest part. There are huge swathes of the US population who genuinely believe in him.
Young men in particular trust him to make things better, to understand their grievances and return their voice. They view Trump as an economic populist, railing against the establishment with a “doesn’t give a fuck” authority. They have been left disenfranchised as (mostly) women speak up on longterm inequities of the patriarchy.
Polls showed throughout the election campaign that the Democrats were consistently underperforming among voters aged 18 to 29 and this was concentrated among young men. This was a crucial oversight on the part of Harris’s camp. Could she have done more to appeal to this demographic? Would things have changed if she’d gone on Joe Rogan’s podcast for instance, the most listened-to series in the US? Yesterday, a doctored photo went viral of Harris sitting with Rogan in a UFC cage.
The post highlighted a missed opportunity. It’s fair to argue that such a significant gender gap should never have been ignored by Harris’s campaign. At the same time, it’s hard to keep talking about the plight of men, and our need to engage them at the same time that so many women around the world (including in America) continue to be oppressed by them.
Is it men walking down the street holding their keys in their fists in case of attack? Is it men who are dying in their homes, subjected to years of torment and terror in domestically violent and coercive homes? Is it men whose bodies are on the line as reproductive rights are washed down the drain? No. Or at least not nearly at the scale that these issues impact women. While I wholeheartedly agree with encouraging more dialogue, mentoring, and role modelling for young men who may be feeling left behind, there will always be a hard and definitive line.
It feels incredibly hard to sympathise with the growing willingness of young men to support a sexist, racist, abusive agenda all because they feel like they’ve been relegated. The self-obsession is jarring. As a mum to a 4 year-old boy, I can say this: I’m ok with him confronting hard truths about the world, its systems and structures and his historic privilege within them.
His discomfort will never outweigh the bigger picture. And obviously my hope is that his discomfort will never outweigh his own ability to see the bigger picture. This election has made me think even harder about the ways that I raise critical conversations with him about gender equality throughout his life.
No matter how uncomfortable it may be for either of us. To everyone who hoped for a brighter future this week all we can do now is band together and keep pressing toward progress. We need to continue have challenging conversations with our kids, and stay on course to deliver a world that’s truly better and safer for them.
Putting aside the fleeting vindication that young men may right now feel, the truth will quickly reveal that Trump’s only ever agenda was for himself..
