It’s not the economy. It’s the misogyny.

What is there to say? My heart is broken. I stayed up past midnight on the west coast heaving, crying in the dark, dreading talking to my children, to my friends, fearing what will happen in the years ahead. I thought I may as well write to all of you because if you’re in this community, you’re likely feeling the same.

Yesterday and in the days leading up, I felt unmoored by every person I encountered who was not seething. I did not want to believe this was going to happen. But I had a feeling.

My daughter woke up yesterday with a fever just as she did when he won in 2016, and when Roe was overturned. I did not want to believe it was a sign, and I’m not usually superstitious. But I also woke up bleeding. And after I put my daughter to sleep, just before the election was called, she fell out of bed in a fever dream. When I tucked her back in she bolted upright yelling, muttering, like she was defending herself, or fighting, I couldn’t tell which.

Once I got her back to sleep, I sat by the fire and embers leapt on to my sweater. I don’t know what else to say. It was in the air.

I knew what was coming, because we’ve known all along. I was already reliving 2016, except this time I wasn’t getting blackout drunk. I was wide awake, feeling the country’s energy shift.

It’s all but done now, and my numbness and rage has morphed into a deep and painful sadness for what this means for my generation, my children’s childhoods, and the women and trans people and Black and immigrant communities who will be torn apart by this.

At the time of writing, it’s too early to say exactly what happened. But it’s likely that young angry, lonely, entitled men turned out to punish women and hoard the power they perceive they get from a culture of say whatever you want, persecuted, Hogan-Rogan hypermasculinity. To be clear, I have very little tolerance for entertaining himpathy or even curiosity about such voters. We need a different tack. We’re all lonely and disenfranchised. This ain’t it.

This country clearly hates women and wants us to suffer under the thumb of men, alone in our homes pushing out babies and providing sex on demand, and we need to stop dancing around this long held American reality.

It’s not the economy. It’s misogyny, it’s racism, it’s patriarchy, it’s late capitalism. It’s the belief that one’s grocery bill and “pocketbook” matter more than women’s full citizenship, dignity and human life. I’m already beyond frustrated and fed up with those who will blame feminism or women for what is clearly a culture of misogyny and racism gone wild—and always already at the rotten core.

I hope this horror galvanizes us further, pulls us closer. But women’s feelings of betrayal, erasure, and fear won’t soon fade. We will carry this. And as I’ve said, I don’t think men and women’s relationships will ever be the same. I hope they are not.

So many people are going to kick into blame, attack, police, patrol, soften, normalize, hot take, lessen, rationalize—and try to rush us away from our anger and grief. I’m going to dwell in the pain and loss and obviously then I will keep going, as women always have.

We will strike in our bedrooms and in the streets. We will refuse. And we will keeping making art, and loving women, and getting divorces, and mothering, and talking, and feeling joy, and desiring, and having abortions, and taking care of each other—because we always have.

Photo by Jack Prommel on Unsplash

I’m not sure I’ll have much more to say this week, but I will be holding you all and my loved ones and friends close.

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