The Atlantic’s article addresses an emerging line of reasoning in the aftermath of the election that puts (mainly white) women at the crux of the issue. Why did so many women vote for Donald Trump? It feels like the ultimate betrayal, the internalized self-hatred of years of oppression; Samantha Bee’s segment was cited in the article, in which she eviscerates white women:
Bee’s message is harsh and unforgiving, but she fails to consider the entanglements of female identity that exist to complicate the issue (as The Atlantic argues). Consider Hillary Clinton’s prime audience during her historic run:
The fact that she won college-educated white women while losing white women without a college degree suggests that her campaign had more success winning over Republican-leaning women who fit a similar demographic profile to the candidate herself: white, highly-educated, and affluent.
But what about these women does not fit this profile? Or what about those who identify proudly with a more traditional gender dynamics? Personally, I know I underestimate the section of the female populace who are not actively engaged in the same conversations about women’s rights. I take for granted my place in this country, my location and my privilege. But I live in a liberal society. I was raised by feminist parents with graduate degrees (and I’m getting one myself now). My intersectionality mixes well with a Clinton administration. That I assumed the same was true for all American women was, in retrospect, naive.
This is not to say that I or The Atlantic believe that it is only uneducated white women who voted for Trump; to say that would be as reductive as saying only educated white men voted for Clinton. Rather, it’s a sad but important reminder that voters across this nation are not nearly as progressive about basic human dynamics, roles, and rights as the rest of the country:
Yet what women should strive for, how they should be treated, and even what they should have the right to do, are far from uncontested ideas in American society.
This breaks my heart all over again, but it doesn’t mean that the people, particularly the women, who voted for Trump are bad people. It means that we have to begin to reconcile the reality that our urban centers do not represent the basic foundational beliefs of this country as a whole.
The Atlantic article argues that the majority of women did, in fact, vote for Hillary Clinton. If I’m being honest (and maybe a little unfair), I think it is still hard to believe that any woman felt comfortable in her choice to vote for Donal Trump. And more than that, completely shattered from the election results, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking for people to blame. But can we really blame any one group of people or section of the country? Does this feel like the fault of a section of the nation or of the nation itself? I ask because I truly do not know.
What do you all think? Is it fair to blame anyone at all? Or is it time to come together to find what unifies us? What will make us finally stronger together?
Hillary Clinton and Beyond 
I completely agree with you, New York City is not a good representation of the world outside of our liberal bubble. I used to think (and I don’t think that I am the only one) that people would see through Trump and realize that he isn’t what America needs. I really believed that the American people, especially women would think his rhetoric to be ridiculous and full of discrimination. I’m sure many liberals and even non liberals feel that they have been let down by the American population given the current election. Like you, I want someone to blame but I don’t think that this is the time for that; I think that as a nation we have to own up to the fact that there is a reason as to why these women voted for Trump. We have to come to terms with the fact that his rhetoric gave them something that Hillary’s couldn’t; her message and her stance didn’t resonate with them. I really believe that these women (and men) who voted for Trump felt that Hillary couldn’t provide for them or their families and that they felt that they weren’t included in her plans for future America. I don’t think that it’s Clinton’s fault and I don’t think her rhetoric explicitly excluded these people. Nor do I believe a specific action led to this outcome. What I do think led to this was what she represents and what her party represents for these people, which made them feel like outsiders from their own country (if that makes sense).
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I really like how these articles are all building on top of one another in a way that is cumulative and a little healing in our collective post election disappointment and perhaps, trauma. I too, have had the luxury of a NY life of diversity and tolerance- for the past 20 years. That said, I did not grow up in a liberal bubble. As a native Pittsburgher, with an embarrassing dialect and occasional working class rage (I am a white working class woman) I too struggle to understand what motivated any woman to vote for Donald J. Trump. (I was very relieved to see the map surrounding Pittsburgh light up blue and my mother informed me that the only county in Western PA that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton was Allegheny- where I grew up.)
What I do know is this- my formative years were spent on a bus riding forty minutes to and from a mixed race middle school across the street from the Heinz factory- set up to do just that- mix and balance race relations in the counties. My best friend was a Korean girl named Aimee. My other best friend was a girl named Zaikaya Abraham. Our class president was named Mystique Thomas. We all got along just fine, genuinely. My point is, exposure to other women who were different than me made me an open-minded person which is something that I didn’t know at the time because I was a kid, but thankfully, my parents encouraged me to be kind and friendly to everyone since I was always a bit shy and awkward myself. (Which, if you’ve never been, people always say about Pittsburghers, “They’re so friendly.”)
On the one hand, I do think people need to make an effort to explore more of their country, more of their world. I’ve traveled to over 15 countries on waitressing tips, I’ve learned more about the world in that way than any other way, and trust me, most of us can save $35 a week for a year and take a decent trip or travel on a budget, every year! I’ve worked since I was thirteen, and I’m a not ashamed of my upbringing, though deep down I knew that I would never see all that I wanted to see or know staying in Pittsburgh… so I moved… to New York.
On the other hand…
What of the women who did not grow up around people that were different, or were told to fear them? Or those who can’t afford to pay for the internet, let alone a trip to wine country? I consider myself lucky, yet what of the women with two kids, two jobs, lead in their water pipes- what do we say or do for them? Do we blame, condescend, leave them behind? If I’m honest with myself, I want to pass the buck too. I want to ‘tsk- tsk’ some of these women for being duped by Trump’s nonsense and feel better about myself for not being a sucker. I think we all want to make ourselves feel superior sometimes, rather than think outside the box for creative solutions and just retire in defeat (or victory) to our respective bubbles. I believe Hillary banked on our higher selves, and intelligence, to not vote for this clown, but now we have four years of a bunch of clowns in a car about to run this country, and I feel righteously angry too.. How could we have known that his viscious rhetoric would blow up the system? That he stepped on a hornet’s nest of anger and fear and that Dems may have ignored, or even worse, dismissed the human suffering and depth of pain (much of which I feel is economic) some that voted for him were feeling? But… we are always too quick to self-blame.
I think we are still at the pinnacle of our power, despite this setback and Clinton’s loss, and though we still have work to do to unite… I do hope we bring our diverse talents and shared interests and especially our differences to the table, whatever they may be, and pass the baton to all women who feel this way and empower them, just as Hillary did for the woman who will someday become the first female president.
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The election results were a clear indication of how people in the country are divided into two sects : one who is open-minded , tolerant , progressive and the other who is anti-diversity , anti-progression and certainly lacks tolerance. It is not the question of ‘ Who to Blame?’ , although I believe some women did fail Hillary , but it is how insightful Trumph’s victory was.
Waking up from the dream of Hillary’s shattering victory to the truth of how many implicitly resonated with Trumph’s rhetoric and waited for the election day to declare it . Those voters are fully aware of his anti-minorities’ call and although it goes against all what the American Constitution embeds , yet they did approve of it and played an active role in having him become president.
As to your questions ” Is it fair to blame anyone at all? Or is it time to come together to find what unifies us? What will make us finally stronger together?”, I think these shocking results force us to think of the reasons behind Hillary’s unpredictable defeat. One of these reasons as the article mentions “The fact that she won college-educated white women while losing white women without a college degree suggests that her campaign had more success winning over Republican-leaning women who fit a similar demographic profile to the candidate herself: white, highly-educated, and affluent.” She had to appeal in her rhetoric to those uneducated women who felt marginalized and different from her demographic profile . Those women simply didn’t feel that Hillary was representing them and this gap widened and widened before the election s. However, this doesn’t mean that those 62% uneducated women were the main reason behind her loss , so the blame doesn’t actually fall totally on them. In my opinion , Hillary’s rhetoric didn’t seem genuine enough compared to Trumph’s projected image of being ‘blunt but truthful’.
Finally, the question of how do we manage to be stronger together is now a problem that only the Republican party has its answer and everyone else has to wait and react accordingly. I really wish we were talking now of how successful Hillary was in becoming the first American president.
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The issue here is not finding someone to “blame.” I personally found the Samantha Bee clip to be ridiculous. Women shouldn’t be voting for Clinton just because she is a woman, there must be other aspects of her candidacy. Those other aspects, I believe, are what turned white women away. I am slowly realizing what Trump means when he refers to “forgotten people” these are people who Clinton’s campaign did not work to appeal to.
I happen to think we need to look at Clinton’s campaign and see where it fell short. Her own party was divided during the primaries and perhaps she didn’t work hard enough to unite Democrats. She didn’t appeal to the American family that struggled under Obama.
That being said New York may be different. My own parents are historically Republican and voted Democrat for the first time in over 20 years because they felt abandoned by their party under Trump. It’s not just Democrats that are bleeding – it is our entire political system.
How can we heal? I honestly don’t know. I think it starts by being honest with ourselves about the threat a Trump presidency poses. I have to think we will be ok…
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I agree with you here. I think that despite the need we have to blame, we have to look past that and address the reasons behind the election. People, especially white women who voted for Trump looked past his flaws because they felt that Clinton’s campaign and her potential presidency wouldn’t have benefitted them. It might be that they felt forgotten and that her presidency would have left them in the same position that the Obama presidency did. It’s important to address these issues in order to start the healing our nation needs. Just as your republican family felt underrepresented by Trump, these voters felt underrepresented by what’s traditionally their own party.
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I also think about the “forgotten people” who were neglected by the liberal agenda, and I don’t think it’s just that Clinton’s campaign didn’t appeal to them but that these “forgotten people” were being actively pissed off by the liberal elite agenda. I think it’s important to ask ourselves what made these people feel forgotten, and who.
I think liberals, myself included, need to accept some responsibility here. Regardless of whether we were justified, we used similar tactics of dismissal that Trump used against Clinton; we refused to take them seriously, we were supercilious, and we were justifiably derisive but derisive nonetheless. As a matter of tactics, it doesn’t seem too different from the rhetoric of Trump and his followers; it’s the same sort of self-righteousness we despise in them, and we failed to see it in ourselves because we were so sure we were right.
And, I think, we were right that we were right. But we were jerks about it, so nobody else cared that we were right. The whole election had nothing to do with who was right and everything to do with who could be more of a jerk, and it turns out that they are way better at being jerks than we are.
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Totally agree. I hated the Samantha Bee clip. It was extremely reductive in its stance on women and how and why they are voting. Yes, its true, Clinton did not win non college educated white women. We, the people the privilege to engage in this type of analysis have to look at why and do so with an open mind, not a one sided elitist view of people and their ideological perspectives.
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I share your wonder as to how and why so many women voted for Donald Trump? Was it because Hillary couldn’t win them over? Is it that so many women simply abandoned her? Or that they just sold out and betrayed not just the woman who tried and almost did shatter a glass ceiling, but all women worldwide? While I continue to mourn, I can take some solace in the fact that party identification really is the key indicator of voter choice. So there’s that. I’m mostly wondering about the data that has come out that nearly 1/2 of eligible voters did not vote in this election. (46.9%). Could this low voter turnout be part of the reason for the surprising outcome?
Would be so interesting to poll this group and ask if they had to vote, who would they have chosen? And would the end results have gone in a better way?
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Trying to place the blame on someone/some group is a completely normal psychological reaction borne out of anger, and I share the belief that it doesn’t help emotionally or practically. Trying to understand where the non-voters or Drumpf voters are coming from and addressing their fears, desires, and economic needs is indeed how we should now proceed.
Knowing that humans make decisions based on their emotions, I can see why some women may have chosen to overlook Donald’s questionable character in favor of voting for change, any change in American politics that would recognize the economic struggles they face in their daily lives. They were weary of political correctness and eschewed it for someone who gets to the point when he speaks, broadly and incorrectly, but always self-assuredly. Just as Donald prefers to gloss over details for the big picture, his constituents glossed over the individual words he was speaking for the overall message with which he was pandering to them: “Make America Great Again.” He gave the people what they wanted and he was good at working the media to his advantage. His campaign was built on big, easily-digestible ideas and heaps of word salad that made us laugh but also got us to pay him attention. Those who were attracted to Donald himself may have been drawn to his distinctive brand, which he has built over many years. For all of his glaring flaws, he became a twisted source of security for people when they lost faith in the government and its ability to keep citizens safe from terrorist attacks.
Out of the dismal voter turnout, the electorate that voted him into office consisted largely of working-class whites without a college degree, showing the limits of predictions based on demographics. Instead of centering around ideology, this election became about people wanting change and thus voting against “the establishment.” Looking forward, Democrats have to figure out how to win back the millennial vote, and I hope our class finds creative ways to do that through our final projects.
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Nice touch on calling him Drumpf.
One of the grievances that Drumpf’s supporter’s expressed was feeling abandoned – so my questions are: if that sense of abandonment is from loss of jobs [which are not likely to return because they went overseas or were eliminated altogether, thanks to automation or a depression in that industry], do you encourage a return of those jobs or a redirection/training?
If that sense of loss is because the country doesn’t look like it did 50 years ago, how are we supposed to appease that idea?
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That Trump supporter’s quote (the one about groping) certainly gave me a headache after reading… Yikes!
Pointing fingers is a common reaction to loss. It represents anger, fear, and rejection. In other words, any given community does not want to take the fall for a tragedy or disaster. However, can we really blame women for Hillary’s loss? I don’t think so. Can we really blame anyone for Trump’s victory? It’s hard to say. I agree with you—it’s hard to believe that any women would have voted for Donald Trump. Unfortunately, as we have seen from results, they did, and again, it’s hard to say why.
In any case, I don’t think placing blame on any one group is the solution. We can be frustrated with specific communities, but I think our focus needs to be on trying to unify ourselves as a country in order to move forward.
I was raised by very liberal and progressive parents, their views more or less in line with the Clinton administration’s. But my situation does not apply to everyone’s. There are educated white women who voted for Trump. I recently learned a number of my high school teachers, all white women, voted in support of Trump. Of course that’s a small percentage, but it’s still a percentage.
I think we need to look back on Hillary’s campaign and where she faltered. I think from there we can take the next step forward towards the healing process.
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Your point that pointing fingers is a comment aspect of experiencing loss is really interesting, and so true. It seems as if the nation is going through the stages of grief, with people seeking blame, experiencing denial (pushing for a recount), attempting to make deals for a better outcome (petitioning the electoral college), and feeling anger and depression.
At the end of grief, though, is acceptance. However, rather than the grief that people feel in the wake of losing a loved one or undergoing personal trauma, this is an outcome that many are pushing that we as a nation refuse to accept, or normalize. I agree that part of going forward involves looking back, trying to retroactively understand where the Clinton campaign, the Democratic party, the media, and the constituents who opposed Trump and/or wanted Clinton to win faltered.
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When you write, “it’s a sad but important reminder that voters across this nation are not nearly as progressive about basic human dynamics, roles, and rights as the rest of the country,” I’m reminded of the sentiment that’s come up inn class a couple times that Trump is not anything drastically new; he’s a walking hyperbole of a much older ideology.
Also, I enjoy your attention to why a woman would possibly vote for Trump, and your inquiry into the political consciousness of women who do not meet the profile of liberal high-society. For those who identify proudly with a more traditional gender dynamics, I wonder why. I agree that this demographic is not to blame for the results of the election, but I do wonder about what seems like an epidemic of Stockholm syndrome, as if they are birds who have come to love their cage. Or, perhaps it is a sort of fear of the unknown, and because their own subordination is familiar, it’s not so much a love for their cage but rather the perceived safety of it.
As to your question of whether it is fair to blame anyone at all, it’s hard to see an argument where one group can be justifiably held accountable, and even if it’s justified I’m not quite sure how assigning blame could be productive unless it leads to some serious self-reflection on the part of the blamed. That said, after the election a friend posted a status that resonated with me: “Liberals need to won this. We have blow off the working class and every serious concern they face in favor of our own boutique issues. And guess what, the working class just told us to go fuck ourselves, and we deserve it. If we start our response by saying ‘you guys are backwards and wrong’ they’re gonna reject us even more than they already have.”
I think it’s fair as a liberal to hold ourselves accountable, and there’s a lot to unpack here that might be considered unpopular opinions in an academic milieu, but perhaps by opposing this evil we fed its flames.
But to blame women? I don’t think so. That just seems like a convenient way absolve oneself of responsibility; it’s blaming the oppressed for their own oppression, for perpetuating/being ignorant of the status quo that oppresses them. In that way it’s pretty much victim blaming.
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*”Liberals need to own this…”
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According to the article, if only women had voted in this election, then Clinton would have won [ despite the big number of votes from women that went to Trump]. Since there’s actual audio of Trump boasting about what he could and has done to women, and yet he was declared the winner, it doesn’t seem like his sexual assault conduct was considered a big deal – perhaps that’s one direction to consider when thinking about where to go from here – educate people into understanding why that is a big deal and then have a conversation about why he is not fit to lead this land. It seems to me that we’re not even having the same conversation: while some are arguing that women failed this nation by voting for Trump, others are saying he is honest and anti-establishment, which is what is needed for actual change, and others are apathetically espousing the message of ‘I don’t know, not him, but not her either.’
As inflammatory as Samantha Bee’s argument is, its message of why he’s the wrong choice is lost in translation among naysayers.
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In the episode following the results of the election, SNL did a sketch in which a group of Clinton supporters watched the votes roll in. As one character pointed out in shock that women seemed to be voting Trump, Chris Rock’s character replied with: “I don’t get you ladies. The country is 55 percent women. If the country was 55 percent black, we’d have tons of black presidents. I mean, Flavor Flav would be president!”
Funny as it may be, this dialogue alludes to the nuances in how strongly people feel bonded to their identities. Intersectional feminism has taught us that gendered issues are not JUST about gender itself, but also impacted but such statuses and identities as race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. Rock’s joke points out a phenomenon that, at first glance, is reflected in the election results: the bonds of womanhood are not as strong as those of race and ethnicity (if you agree at all with the assertion that white people voted for Trump in part because they explicitly or subconsciously felt their status or protection as a race was being “threatened”).
I’m glad that this piece in The Atlantic took the time to dissect and differentiate between demographics within “woman” to garner a deeper understanding of which women voted Trump or Clinton. While issues of “identity politics” and the potential for pandering have come under fire during and after this election, it is still important to understand why certain groups of people, be it white women, gay women, Muslim women, black women, disabled women, middle class women, etc, voted for who they voted for. More important still (and this is getting real specific, it’s possible I’m just asking too much of pollsters) would be to understand how, say, gay black women, middle class Muslim women, disabled white women, etc etc etc voted for who they voted for. What issues were more prevalent to women of intersecting identities during this election?
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In general, assuming that people will vote a certain way is always problematic thinking. Many of us in New York City probably assumed that women would vote for Hillary Clinton, especially considering how much Republican rhetoric is antithetical to the quest for equal rights – but then, we are assuming that women in other places want the same thing that women in New York want. I myself have spoken to women who feel better with the inequality, specifically because they, at this point, cannot be drafted. The feeling of “being protected” is still prevalent in some places, however backwards we ay think it is.
Assuming that women share a collective identity, even in votership, is dangerous. That logic, even if it is framed positively, is intrinsically sexist. This piece addresses an important issue that’s popping up, which is serving only to further divide people and have everything devolve into finger-pointing.
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I greatly appreciated this piece. I think it was a useful exercise to differentiate between different voting blocks of women and to examine Hilary Clinton’s candidacy as though it was any other Democratic candidacy for president. When you look at it from that perspective then it becomes clear that Hilary Clinton actually made progress with some groups of women that would normally vote Republican, which is a completely different spin on things than we typically get from more mainstream media sources.
The question of blame is a complicated one. I for one do not feel as though I am in the position to tell other women who are from entirely different circumstances than me how they should feel and who they should vote for. There is an air of entitlement to that type of rhetoric that has run rampant after this election. Who are these women (Samantha Bee is one example) to tell others what they should do, how they should feel and who they should support.
This entire election is a reflection of the fact that identity is not singular. Rather, it is a multiplicity. We all have many different parts of our identities. Being a woman is not the ultimate determinant of who and what all women are. It is just a piece of a larger whole. Depending on the issue, the pull of an individual’s identity as a woman may be a stronger than others. Sometimes the pull of race might be stronger, or age, or economic status. These are all parts of an individual’s collective identity that cannot be reduced or placed in an exact hierarchy, which is exactly what people are attempting to do when they say that white women betrayed Hilary Clinton. I am not saying that there is nothing to examine there, or no room from introspection on the part of these white women who did not vote for her. Perhaps internalized misogyny did play a large role, but that is not the only reason they did not vote for her and it is unfair to reduce the opinions of others to a singular, rather insulting designation as “uneducated.”
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