Contributors to the new anthology book “Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America” recently gathered at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington to talk about “where we go from here” in Trump’s America.
The four feminist writers at the October 3rd talk were Nicole Chung, managing web editor of Catapult, Mary Kathryn Nagle, a playwright and partner at Pipestem Law, and the “Nasty Women” editors Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding. (Essays were also contributed by writers Cheryl Strayed, Rebecca Solnit, Jessica Valenti, and Katha Pollitt.)
53% of white women voted for Donald Trump while 94% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton.
Anthology co-editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay set the tone: “The night of the election, I was working in a newsroom, and we had prepared for a Hillary win,” she said. “I was going to go out and party. I was at the Javitz Center [in New York] and was ready to go out and party. It became the feminist zombie apocalypse. I can joke about it now after months of therapy. After I realized I had to go back tot he office and rewrite everything. That was every newsroom in America.”
So what is the solution for progressives, who are still in shock after the election? More identity politics and a further lurch leftward.
The writers hit all the usual social justice themes, from the importance of “centralizing marginalized voices” (which is more important than “trying to create a uniform American”) to condemning those who “dehumanize others” (which never applies to leftist ideologies talking about conservatives, of course), from fighting “toxic masculinity” and voting for a woman because she is a woman (as long as she’s not conservative) to “reproductive freedom” and challenging the Democratic party platform, which “is not progressive enough.”
Presiding over it all like Banquo’s ghost was Trump, “who has done things that are evil.”
Nicole Chung discussed ”the limits of empathy” in dealing with Trump voters. Incredibly, a member of the audience reveals (55:10 mark) that she has a problem with her “little bit racists” uncle, an ex-cop who voted for Trump. “He’s the reason I was able to go to law school,” she says, then agonizes over having to tell him at Thanksgiving that “the way you are thinking about the world is wrong.”
She might put it this way: “Thanks for sending me to law school so I could get a good job then come home and harangue you about Trump.”
There’s even a cameo from Woke White Dude (the 32:44 mark). “Standing here as the white cisgendered male -what is marginalization? I don’t know- what can I do?” he says. “We are currently the people for whom society has for so long catered to and operated as though we’re the status quo. That power not going to be conceded without a fight…What can I do to convince my fellow me’s that other people can yield power to and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it comes at the expense of us?"
Thank you for supporting MRCTV! As a tax-deductible, charitable organization, we rely on the support of our readers to keep us running! Keep MRCTV going with your gift here!