Trump’s victory is a loss for women and an emboldening win for incels, ‘the Manosphere’ and everyday misogynists

Since Donald Trump’s election victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, online abuse, harassment and hate toward women has soared. Phrases such as ‘your body, my choice,’ promoted by white nationalist and Holocaust denier podcaster Nick Fuentes, saw a 4,600% increase on Nov. 6, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a non-partisan organization monitoring online extremism. 

Fuentes’s post on X has been viewed more than 90 million times and reposted more than 35,000 times. The same study also points to posts calling for repealing women’s right to vote in the U.S., surging 663% compared to the previous week. 

Well-known misogynist, “self-help” guru and TikTok influencer Andrew Tate — a man who thinks women should “bear responsibility” for rape, shouldn’t vote, are men’s “property” and who’s been charged with sex with a minor and human trafficking — was celebrating after Trump’s win with a bizarre video proclaiming “We’re back baby!” featuring an array of clips from Top Gun, Tate working out bare-chested with a cigar in his mouth, Trump’s private jet landing and a foreboding quote: “The best thing about being back is that you can make it better than it was before.” 

The deep insecurity that men like Tate and Fuentes must be plagued with to insist so hard that they’re Alpha Men, of course, makes them case studies in projection, but with their legion of followers being mostly impressionable young men, one can’t afford to laugh. 

Trump’s win is a loss for women

Trump’s win has emboldened influencers from the so-called ‘Manosphere,’ a collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny and anti-feminist beliefs. These extremist sites are not only known for their hate of women, but also associated with far-right conservative views and conspiracy theories, as well as hate for LGBTQ, trans and nonbinary communities. These people see Trump’s win as an implicit loss for women’s reproductive rights, gender equality and a weakening of any and all protections afforded to minority groups. 

Fuentes’s post on X, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” made my skin crawl. While there are numerous documented cases of young women in the U.S. bleeding out and dying because doctors were too terrified to help them lest they be arrested, these young men are mocking women’s fears and revelling in the fact that they now have fewer reproductive freedoms than their mothers did. “Your body, my choice” clearly shows the anti-abortion movement has never been about the “sanctity of life” and the “protection of babies,” but only a strong desire for power over women’s bodies and women’s choices.

I’ve seen people laughing off women’s concerns, trying to deny that Trump’s win represents a serious step backwards for women’s rights. “Economic insecurity” and people “tired of leftist self-righteousness” (what Elon Musk’s followers keep referring to as the “woke mind virus”) were the main reasons, many insist.

After all, a man who appointed a woman Chief of Staff — even if he’s on record saying he can “grab them by the pussy” and calling female opponents “pigs” — can’t possibly be a misogynist, right? 

All I know to be true is this: you are your followers. If people like Tate and Fuentes are rejoicing over your win, you’re not a defender of women and you don’t have women’s best interests at heart. 

Online hate doesn’t stay online

Of course, misogyny, rape culture and everyday casual sexism existed before the U.S. election, and certainly before the internet. None of this is new. But Trump’s election clearly unleashed something in certain men who are weak, insecure, lacking in skill and opportunities (whether in their dating or work lives), giving them permission to be extra vile. And this resentment doesn’t remain solely online. It translates to real-life hate that has often proven to be deadly for women.

I’ve written before about the threat of incels and the Manosphere that paints feminism and the fight for equality as looking to trample all over men. The MeToo movement has often been depicted by these same groups as a vindictive movement out to get any man showing the mildest interest in women, as if women are incapable of distinguishing between sexual assault and sexual interest. As if gender-based violence isn’t real, as if the overwhelming percentage of rape victims aren’t women and the overwhelming percentage of perpetrators of rape aren’t men. As if every 11 minutes, a woman or girl isn’t killed by an intimate partner or a family member around the world. As if the femicide epidemic and rape culture were things entirely made up by “hysterical feminists” and not statistically documented around the world. And yet, even here in “progressive” Quebec, pundits like Richard Martineau are equating feminists like Martine Delvaux with rapists like Andrew Tate. The old “both sides are the same” argument has truly proven beneficial to society!

French talk-show Tout le monde en parle recently created a controversy when it decided to invite a made-in-Quebec self-proclaimed men’s self-help guru and “businessman” who parrots a more toned-down version of Tate’s misogynistic rhetoric, look and lifestyle. Julien Bournival’s grift? For the bargain price of $20,000 per year he says he can teach young men how to be an “Alpha” male too. Many were understandably upset that Bournival was invited to discuss a recent documentary on the Manosphere, Alphas, because it normalizes his dangerous rhetoric. 

As others have mentioned elsewhere, bothsidism or false balance can be dangerous because, in an effort to present both sides equally, it gives credibility and respectability to views that are either scientifically baseless or ethically repugnant. While false balance aims to provide the appearance of rational and fair retrospection, it in fact provides equal space to dangerous theories like climate change denial or vaccine sceptics or men who claim that women are inferior and should be treated as such. 

The fight for reproductive freedom continues

It’s not accidental that Fuentes and others are co-opting the phrase “my body, my choice,” which has long been associated with the women’s equality movement and used as a rallying cry in the fight for reproductive rights. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal right to an abortion in 2022, women’s groups have been fighting hard to reinstate that right in the U.S. 

While a Harris win would have accomplished that, activists on the ground in 10 U.S. states, fearing a Trump win, cast votes on ballot measures to protect or expand abortion access. In seven states, the measures for abortion rights won, bringing the total to 13 states approving abortion rights referendums. But there are still dozens of states, like Florida and Idaho, where total or near-total abortion bans continue to exist, putting the lives of women in danger. 

And the person who made it possible for women’s bodies to be controlled, who’s said he would protect women whether “they like it or not,” a man who’s been accused by at least 26 women of rape and sexual assault since the 1970s, was just re-elected. The misogyny, the sexual assaults, the desire to control women’s reproductive choices… Apparently, none of these were dealbreakers for those who voted for him. That certainly says a lot about the world we live in.

Here in Canada, while Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre insists he’s not anti-abortion, there are many who worry, including a former Conservative MP who claims that the anti-abortion movement has influence inside the CPC. The party has to “publicly reject calls to legislate abortion while making room for people within the party who are working hard to restrict it,” said former Conservative MP, Alain Rayes who now sits as an Independent. 

“Even if party leaders don’t attend anti-abortion rallies on Parliament Hill, Conservative MPs often do.”

Denying misogyny is a problem can be deadly for women

Many will try to downplay women’s dismay at Trump’s re-election, just like they did the first time around in 2016. They’ll also say teenagers making TikTok videos in their bedrooms or Incel keyboard warriors aren’t really dangerous. They’re just loudmouth brats seeking attention and aren’t in control of any policymaking. 

But people’s lives are affected by far more than just legislation. Misogynistic rhetoric being normalized and repeated, championed and supported by the Trumps and the Elon Musks of the world are emboldening creeps, would-be rapists, abusers and certainly our everyday casual sexists tired of women who “just can’t take a joke.”

Those trying to explain or minimize the Incel movement and people like Tate, insisting they cater to disaffected young men and their insecurities about their roles in this confusing world, aren’t helping either. Curiously, young women — also often lonely and figuring out their lives — somehow haven’t succumbed to the temptation of committing mass murder after being shot down by a romantic interest. Only men appear to have this notion of entitlement to things or people’s affection. Certainly not all men, but mass murderers are most certainly almost always men, and rage and resentment are almost always at the core of their actions.

“Your body, my choice” is more than just the patriarchy at work and a rebuke of progressive values. It’s the normalization of rape culture and an extension of a belief system that encourages even more male entitlement and more possessiveness — and as a result more violence against women. That violence takes many forms: femicide, physical or psychological abuse, criminal harassment and stalking, or voting in laws that prevent women from making their own decisions about their bodies and their lives. 

Let’s try to connect the dots

So many women I know are shellshocked right now, as they relive the same emotions and the same fears from 2016. It’s been a heavy few weeks for those concerned by the erosion of women’s reproductive rights in the U.S. and the rise of Manosphere influencers who peddle their misogynistic grift that preys on insecure, immature young men.

In the meantime, while some continue to debate how much the proliferation of this rhetoric actually affects women in their everyday lives, and while others patronizingly advise us to “just ignore it,” women continue to be killed. 

Earlier this week, a 29-year-old woman was found murdered in her Candiac home, on Montreal’s South Shore. Her partner, a 36-year-old man previously charged with death threats and released on bail, is now charged with her murder. Guangmei Ye is “the 23rd woman to be murdered in Quebec so far this year, and the 13th to die in the context of possible domestic violence.”

Women keep dying and some keep wondering whether rhetoric that encourages violence against women, control over women, the subjugation of women’s bodies and reproductive rights to someone’s backward ideology might have a little something to do with it all. 

Let me make it clear for those still confused: “Your body, my choice” is hate speech. ■

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Read more weekly editorial columns by Toula Drimonis.