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OF MISOGYNY, MUSK, AND MEN  
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Clara Jeffery
November 15, 2024
Mother Jones
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_ Women are not okay. We’re furious...Trump’s margin of victory
was powered by men, who voted for him by 55 percent—a few points
more than went for him in 2020. Trump made gains with almost every
type of man, especially younger men and Latino men. _

Group of women with one woman crying, holding her hand over her
mouth. Supporters get emotional as US Vice President Democratic
presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at Howard University in
Washington, DC, on November 6, 2024., Photo credit: Brendan
Smialowski/Agence France-Presse(AFP) // Mother Jones

 

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
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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
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polls in 10 historic battleground states indicate
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women there favored Harris by 8 points overall—less than the margin
for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020—resulting in a
21-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 preelection 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
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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
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“c-word”), about science—to his more than 204 million
followers. Who can forget his promise to impregnate
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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
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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
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sued the center in 2023; a federal judge tossed the case, ruling
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was an obvious attempt to both stifle criticism of X and bankrupt the
organization.)

Musk gave
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directly and through super-PACs, about $200 million
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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
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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
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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
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good example of that came immediately after the election, when
neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes
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famously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) posted “Your body, my
choice [[link removed]].”
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
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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
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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
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The feminist movement of the 1970s led to big gains—we finally got
those credit cards, ladies!
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then to a backlash, as Susan Faludi famously chronicled
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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
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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
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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
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doctors are too afraid to provide lifesaving care. What else do the
“pronatalist
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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
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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
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“If his ballot was red, his balls stay blue,” posted one woman.
(And guys? Project 2025 wants to come after porn
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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.

_[CLARA JEFFERY is Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones and recipient of
a PEN America award for editing. You can follow her on Twitter
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* Women
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* women voters
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* 2024 Elections
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* Kamala Harris
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* Donald Trump
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* abortion bans
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* abortion rights
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* MAGA
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* Take America Back Again
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* Male voters
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* misogyny
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* Elon Musk
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* X
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* twitter
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* young men
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* voter algorithms
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