When I finally went to bed late last night, there was a small part of me that hoped I would wake up this morning to find that Donald Trump’s improbable victory had been nothing more than a very bad dream.
Barring that, which I knew was a bit of a long shot, I hoped that I would at least wake up with the inklings of a plan for what to do about this catastrophe. I hoped I could write a rousing blog post sketching out my thoughts on the road ahead– for this blog and for the anti-Trump movement as a whole.
Alas, that didn’t happen either. I’m still processing the bad news, emotionally and intellectually. And I know a lot of you are doing the same.
And that’s ok. Trump will not take office until the end of January. There will be plenty of time to come up with ways to fight back against the orange one.
Right now the important thing is to take care of ourselves and those around us. Give yourself however much time you need. Avoid stress. Don’t beat yourself up for what happened, and don’t take out your anger on others on our side. Turn off the news if need be. Do whatever you need to do to clear your head and keep yourself safe.
In the comments here, feel free to continue the discussion that started in the “VOTE” post yesterday. And please share any self-help and self-care strategies you have — even if all you’ve got at the moment is pictures of cats and videos of hedgehogs.
If trolls show up, or if there is anything else that pops up in the thread that I should know about, please send me an email about it.
We can fight this thing. We can beat this thing. But first we need to get ourselves centered.
@Belladonna,
There are plenty of great commenters here, but Scildfreja is in a class of her own for sure 🙂
@Trollaquin
I don’t see a single quotation in your post. VAWA does not concern Sweden, btw. You fail spectacularly.
@Jack
Yup. With all the right wing fairy tales about Sweden floating around in cyberspace, I could be a full time debunker if someone would pay me for the trouble.
I’ve posted here several times about various rape cases where the perpetrator walked, precisely because we have the same impossible-to-convict laws as most other countries do. The only real difference compared to most other countries is that we have a broader definition of what legally counts as rape.
TW for specific rape case
We recently had a case in which a man raped a severely intoxicated woman and then took naked pictures of her afterwards. He was convicted of rape, because there was plenty of physical evidence, but the pictures were deemed fully legal.
The law says that it’s only illegal to take nude pictures of someone if they were not aware that they’d had their picture taken. The court acknowledged that the pictures were taken without the woman’s consent, and that she was too drunk to stop the rapist from photographing her. But, since she reported the photographs to the police, this proves that she was at least aware of the pictures, or she wouldn’t know of their existence. Therefore, the pictures are legal.
That’s the kind of fucked up nonsense that we deal with over here in feminazi Sweden were allegedly any woman can have any man thrown in jail by just pointing at him.
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
Interesting comment. Not so weird when you think about it, in some ways, though. Isn’t this just another manifestation of the same types of unconscious biases that infect us all if we’re not really careful (well and even when we are, but that the best people try to fight against). I mean the biases that create the privilege that people don’t believe in because they aren’t self-aware enough to realize they may have these biases, because they don’t think of themselves as racist or sexist or whatever-ist.
@Belladonna
Yeah, you’re right. I guess what I’m thinking of is the really, REALLY weird stuff. Like did you know during, I think, WWII or the Korean War, people spread the idea that Asian women had sideways vaginas. And people believed it. People still believed it. I heard this shit in highschool, and I don’t know if the dude was joking when he said it, but…
http://66.media.tumblr.com/ec1e8883d9400b4c4841c6b76c51df94/tumblr_o7qsyv6VkF1ujuk5ho1_540.gif
It’s, like, how? How can you believe that?
(Well, I mean, he was a Christian fundamentalist and didn’t believe and refused to understand evolution, so that might be it. I hope that boy grew out of that.)
I mean, that’s some of the bigger, obviously pulled out of someone’s ass shit, but it shows the strangest side of xenophobia and racism. White people need to get out of the house more.
@Belladonna
Sorry about that. I agree that Jessica should probably not have been jumped on that hard.
Not aimed at anyone in particular:
Right now, I’m in the “nothing we do can fix this before Trump screws it all up” stage, so when people say things like “maybe some good will come of Trump”… ouch.
My parents voted for Trump, and I live with them right now. Every time politics come up, I wind up trying to think up how to survive with no job, no money, and no place to live because I don’t particularly enjoy living with people who think Trump will be just fine as a President.
At least some of that is irrational, because they’re not kicking me out for voting Hillary.
parenthesis-of-thank-you:
(@Scildfreja, thank you (inasmuch as I was trying to be calm and coherent and offer a reference and say something (in my case very 101-ish) as clearly, simply and relatably as I could instead of just cordially inviting the troll to fuck off, I was kind of trying to channel … um, you actually).)
I told this would happen, and it did.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/11/if-you-voted-for-trump-because-hes-anti-establishment-guess-what-you-got-conned/?tid=ss_fb
@Skiriki,
And yet, still there are headlines like this from people who should know better:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UNVbA-z4c_w/WCTHv1bmEGI/AAAAAAABKTk/BomLoxWZ8vwAOSRvdcvYHuTquD9K2JiZQCK4B/s1600/oz%2Bsplash.jpg
‘team of outsiders’, pfft. Outsiders to what?
It’s been 72 hours since Orange McTurdnugget became an elect. 48 hours since I last worked on my novel for NaNoWriMo because I lost my momentum due to recent events. 12 hours since I blocked “friends” on FB due to their privileged bashing of the antiOrange McTurdnugget protests.
I’m still under the impression that I am having a delayed emotional reaction to the horror of it all.
It’s also been a hundred days since I last stepped foot into the forum that I used to frequent for the past three years before I found out that a couple of my former friends, one of whom I confided in with so much personal issues, who turned out to be Trump supporters.
It’s only Day 4. Four fucking days since my life, along with millions of other’s lives, has been ruined. I can’t….
I apologize if I sound like I’m making my problems seem blown out of proportion.
@weirwoodtreehugger
a lot of the people who voted for Trump probably thought it would shake things up in Washington (ei, somewhere else, without really affecting them) and that it would make feminists and members of the black lives matter movement to shut up and go away (because we totally shut up and went away at the first hints of opposition during the struggle for the abolition of slavery, civil rights, and struggle for women’s suffrage /s)
@Kylo Ronin
No need to apologize, these problems are real to you, and this election actively disrupted your life and your social network. If you want to you can still do that novel, it might give you something to do to keep yourself together.
Yeah it’s never a fun time when you find your mates being terrible people, especially when they’re your closest.
@Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy — I know, the fuck are they thinking?
@opposablethumbs, daww, thank you. You do a better job than I do!
More ponies, though. You need more ponies.
@Kylo Ronin, no apologies! This week’s been a sack of crap for pretty much everyone. This is where you can let your frustrations out, so don’t hold back.
http://iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/tumblr_m1f70a2Mgl1rripibo1_500.gif
… er, well, yeah :3
We have your back, don’t you worry about it.
This is the first time since the election that I’ve managed to go an hour without breaking down in tears, and it’s a near thing. I feel empty and terrified and I just don’t know what to do anymore.
Take your time, @Dalillama. You know we’re on your side. When I’m having a hard time like that, I try to concentrate on breathing – not too deep, not too fast, not unevenly, nice and steady. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It won’t make the situation better, but it might calm your fears enough to function.
I checked to see whether I’d be able to get deliveries of hormones across the border, no luck :\ looking to see if there are other avenues now.
You aren’t alone.
I don’t even know where to begin.
First: I know VAWA doesn’t concern Sweden. I mentioned it as an aditional example, it’s more like a failure in my writing.
Second: The elevator issue, fine, let’s suppose that it does happen ALL THE TIME like you said, there are some devices called CAMERAS that can bring solid evidence. No need to act on accusations alone.
Yes, i understand that many women will feel frightened, but i think it’s unfair to treat every man as a threat. I don’t criminalize people of color or anyone for that matter.
Third: the PDF, yeas, i agree on most of the points, (most of the graduates in my country are females, and most of the jobs aplications are FOR females ONLY) but try read this:
http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/women.cfm
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2002/03/when_parents_kill.html
http://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx
Of course, female privilege is a myth. Of course i don’t have to worry about being raped (unless i’m in prison, of course), i’ll give you that.
And sorry for TRYING to participate in the topic.
@Jack
That is totally weird shit. I’d never heard that before, and I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with similar examples. I don’t know if I’m just clueless, or if I’ve ignored such preposterous thing, or if (please no) I have some weird unexamined ideas of my own. I can only join you in wondering how people could possibly believe such things. I do know that, as someone who grew up during the cold war, I occasionally have to fight off irrational fear of Russia and Russians. Right now, it’s especially hard to distinguish the rational from the irrational in that area, though.
@JS
No need to apologize! I think we were both just defending different people, who probably all deserved our consideration.
I’m sorry to hear about your living situation. I think that would be really, really hard to deal with right now. I’m having a hard enough time thinking about having to speak with anyone who doesn’t live with me and supported Trump.
@Trollaquin
You are still not providing any evidence that Swedish law gives a woman power to get a man locked up through accusation alone. Nor have you pointed to any individual case where this has happened. Will you apologize for lying about this?
@Imaginary Petal
It really boggles me how many times this particular claim needs to be refuted. Like, fuck. If it happens in Sweden, you’d think that the evidence would be easily found all over the ‘net, and if someone goes “but it is in Swedish”, well freakin’ hell, we got Swedes who are perfectly capable of translating it into English.
So what gives!? Where’s the fucking evidence!? Link to the actual story!
Or is this some sort of weird mashup of Rebecca Watson’s elevator encounter combined with Assange’s rape accusations?
@IP
I’d say he effectively did the opposite. Men should be afraid to get into elevators with women because false rape accusations always stick. Women shouldn’t be afraid to get into elevators with men because even if they do get raped, elevators have cameras so they’ll have evidence.
Of course, never mind the fact that THEY WILL ALREADY HAVE BEEN RAPED by then. Nothing to be afraid of.
Oh, no, you absolutely have to worry about being raped. I think the statistics are that 1 in 5 women get sexually assaulted and for men it’s 1 in 7. Both of these numbers are likely woefully underreported due to the stigma against rape victims, along with the notion that “men can’t be raped” because they like sex “so much”, especially when the assaulter is a woman.
There’s an overwhelming amount of rape in both men and women’s prisons, unfortunately, and it has to do with a lot of how society views prison (feeling the people in there “deserved it” and thus do nothing to help prevent it) and how society views rape (again, many people “deserve it” because of the way they acted, their intoxication, what they were wearing, think they’re lying, etc.).
Men have a higher chance of getting raped than being falsely accused of it.
Willful ignorance and the ability to easy other people just because they’re different.
There’s also people who think Jewish people have sex through a hole in a sheet. I think it has to do with some confusion on some religious garments.
@Javier
If your response to people being scared of violence and taking steps to avoid that violence in ways that don’t harm you in anyway (eg, waiting for the next elevator) is to call it unfair to you, *Jeff Foxworthy voice* youuuu might be privileged
Bruh, how? Your 1st post was to be incredulous about how a Trump administration could possibly hurt feminism. Did anyone even mention that Trump is bad for the concept of feminism? Or did you introduce a complete nonsequitur (with the explicit caveat that you weren’t trolling *rolls eyes*) and are now tryna get around that by pretending that amounts to meaningful participation. I’m leaning toward the latter here…
@Jack
I think it just has to do with confusion, TBH. I’ve heard the same story about Amish and Mennonites, along with the one that says that Amish communities routinely ask men passing through to impregnated one or more women (through a hole in a sheet), because they need the genetic diversity.
What country is this? I’d love a better job and I’m a “female.” I wasn’t aware that there was a country where all the jobs go to women. I think it would be easier to get a cool job if I didn’t have to compete with men. Could you let me know where this is so I can move there?