Guest post: It just doesn’t compute
Originally a comment by Noxious Nan on It’s the sense of entitlement.
We’ve received the hard sell for accepting Trump voters as good people who were tired and wanted a change. It’s been such a hard sell, that I’ve really tried to visualize tolerant people driven to such a point that they would vote for Trump….It just doesn’t compute.
As someone defending these voters, Skeletor, please explain to me how it computes! Every line I try leads to eventual conscious racism or misogyny on the part of the imagined voter.
As a woman I experience misogyny every single day, albeit most of the time it is limited to small, subtle demonstrations and messages. These demonstrations come from loved ones almost as often as from anywhere else. It’s so goddamn disheartening that sometimes I just want to stop breathing! People I love voted for Trump. Nobody wants to go down this rabbit hole when this is about real people that we know and see and love every day, voting for someone who would have us live in the world Trump wants to create. It breaks my fucking heart!
They love me enough to tell me there are other reasons for that vote, like wanting a change, but that doesn’t distract me from the fact that they knew what it could do to me and millions of their fellow Americans. I’m not going to be quiet about that anymore. Maybe this happened because I was quiet and polite about it before it came to this.
Maybe I have to speak up every single goddamn time I am 2nd classed by family, friends and peers. I don’t even know if that’s possible. But I do know I’m done giving these people a pass, and I was done WHEN they voted for Trump. That was my apocalyptic alarm. That was the day they lost all benefit of the doubt that I ever had to give any of them, utterly and completely.
The problem with that is that every time a woman speaks up, even if she’s never spoken up before, people sort of roll their eyes and say, “Yes, of course, you would see sexism everywhere.” The only times I’ve spoken up I have been called a Feminazi or told that I am misunderstanding something because of my “warped” view of the world that sees sexual harassment in little things that are just part of the normal interactions between men and women.
I still speak up. No one listens (unless they already agree). But maybe more voices will make a difference? Or will they all just be dismissed as shrill?
Wow, I’m humbled Ophelia, thank you.
Iknklast, I think it’s a true no-win situation. But I’m the original Don Quixote, so I’ll keep getting knocked down.
Noxious Nan – I’d be inclined to ask them exactly what kinds of changes were they hoping for that was worth the damage their vote might do to people like myself? And I’d keep after them until they gave you an answer.