The presidency of Donald Trump could turn out to be the best thing that has happened to the women’s movement in decades, according to feminist thinkers visiting Australia for International Women’s Day.
That is because Mr Trump's sexist and racist rhetoric, his evident ignorance of most areas of US policy and hostility to progressive social agendas has acted as a wake-up call, they told SBS News.
“Donald Trump being elected was a game changer around the world,” conservative US author and commentator Sophia Nelson told SBS News.
President Trump's open contempt for women, his boasting about “grabbing them by the pussy” - it is “pretty jaw dropping”, Nelson said. “Women thought, man, if he can beat someone like [Hillary Clinton] and be president… we better start running for office. He’s ironically been this spark, sparked a movement that I think will ensure we never see another Donald Trump.”
Author and commentator Sophia Nelson speaking in Washington, DC in 2015. Source: WireImage/Getty Images
Trump's sexism provokes backlash
Sophia Nelson's optimism finds some backing in the Women’s March movement which began as a reaction to his presidency. On the day after Mr Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, the Washington DC Women's March was the biggest single-day protest in the US at least since the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and 70s, dwarfing the crowds that turned out for his inauguration, according to the New York Times. Millions of women marched on the same day in cities worldwide.
Ms Nelson, who describes herself as a moderate Republican, said Donald Trump had brought an ugly underbelly of persistent sexism out into the open.
“I supported Hillary Clinton, particularly after the [pussy-grab] tape came out. She was the most qualified person we've had run for president easily in 50 years. She was a senator, she’d been secretary of state, first lady… she’s brilliant, she’s well educated, well-spoken, a good command of the issues. She ran against a guy who hadn’t even been a dog catcher. He had never held a public office.”
People gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the Women's March on Washington 2018 on January 20, 2018 in Washington DC. Source: NurPhoto/Getty Images
But Ms Nelson, who wrote a 2017 book about “reclaiming the founders’ vision for a united America”, E Pluribus One, said she was optimistic the Trump experience would ultimately - and despite the President's best efforts - change the country for the better.
“When America started slaves and women were chattel,” she said. “It was really white men who had equality, not the rest of us. But the beauty of the vision of the founders was that the Union would be perfected over time. Slaves were eventually freed, women got the right to vote, we’ve had this amazing melting pot of all kinds of people."
“I think that Trump is a good thing because it will force us to take a look at who we are, what do we really believe, who do want to be? So as much as I don’t care for this presidency, I’m grateful for it, because it’s the difficult things that test us.”
Trump a 'catastrophe for all human rights'
British transgender musician and activist CN Lester was also cautiously hopeful that the Trump presidency, which Lester called a "travesty," would galvanise feminist activism.
“Trump has been a catastrophe for all human rights, not just one section of the population, not just trans people, not just refugees, Muslims, Jewish people, women. He is a catastrophe for all people who aren’t just like him,” said Ms Lester, who is also in Australia to speak at the All About Women festival ahead of International Women's Day on March 8.
Transgender rights activist CN Lester. Source: CN Lester
“I think it should function as a wake-up call that we’re not in this cosy progressive future that a lot of us would like to think we are. All I can hope is that we have a fire lit underneath us to make sure he doesn't succeed, and this doesn't take hold as a new way of being.”
Trump helps spur #MeToo movement
Francesca Donner, an author and the director of the New York Times Gender Initiative (which focuses on closing the gender gap at The New York Times), told SBS News that President Trump’s election was a key precondition in the rise of the #MeToo movement, as much as her newspaper breaking open the story of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s predations on actresses.
Hundreds of people march in Los Angeles to support victims of sexual assault and harassment. Source: AAP
“The #MeToo movement has changed a whole lot,” said Ms Donner, who spoke on a panel at the All About Women festival in Sydney on Sunday with Sophie Nelson and Fran Lebowitz called Women in the Age of Trump.
“But it didn’t spring up completely on its own. It really evolved out of the women's marches, and those evolved out of the election of Trump.”
Asked about the practical implications of #MeToo, Ms Donner said “it’s changed the whole conversation and backdrop against which we work and how we think about life and the culture that we’re in."
“It’s a collection of all these individual stories that might have been whispered from someone to a colleague or trusted friend... and suddenly you have this huge collection of stories that take on a life of their own, it becomes a roar.”
Francesca Donner Source: Sydney Opera House
Isolated victories for women
But despite isolated victories for the women’s movement in some places in the past year - such as women gaining the right to drive in Saudi Arabia, or New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that she was having a baby in office, there is still a way to go to translate the momentum of #MeToo and the Women's March into real change.
“It’s complicated,” Ms Donner said. “Something [positive] happens in one country and something else happens that brings women backwards somewhere else. It’s one step forward two steps back.”
