Your body, my choice: Trump win brings anti-women rhetoric out of woodwork

'Don't let the bastards grind you down. Be wise and survive.' - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

As United States President-elect Donald Trump emerged victorious, Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist podcaster infamous for his long history of antisemitism and misogyny, wrote on X: 'Your body, my choice. Forever.

And he's only one of many. Republican candidate Trump’s election victory against Democrat vice-president Kamala Harris this week has emboldened several influencers from the ‘manosphere’.

The interconnected misogynistic online communities see Trump's win as a repudiation of reproductive rights and gender equality, said ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue), a nonprofit that advocates against extremism.

According to ISD, slogans such as 'get back to the kitchen', and the most popular 'your body, my choice', have exploded on X, TikTok and Instagram.

Twisting the feminist slogan “my body, my choice” originally popularised by feminists defending reproductive choices as rights in the 1960s, the phrase has now been co-opted by those presumably seeking to 'make America great again' (MAGA).

In 2022, the three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump during his earlier stint as president ruled in favour of reversing Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision where the court held that the Constitution of the United States protected a woman's right to have an abortion.

While Trump’s victory has been a focal point for communities which support restricting women’s reproductive rights, there was a spike in misogynist content in late October, with a significant rise in posts focused on repealing the 19th Amendment (which gives women the right to vote), ISD said.

ISD’s findings come after an election that saw gender play a key role in both Trump and Harris’ campaigns — painted as a competition between the sexes. Harris took up abortion rights as a cornerstone issue in a bid to draw the support of women. Trump, meanwhile, counted on men, leaning on the cachet of billionaire Elon Musk, podcasts popular with young men, and 'locker-room' talk.

Researchers tracked narratives targeting women and the discussion within those narratives between 4 and 6 November across X, TikTok, Facebook and Reddit. The use of derogatory and misogynistic language was already rife among well-noted manosphere and extremist communities on these platforms, and this activity has only gained steam in the past three days since the election.

Similarly, calls to repeal the 19th Amendment, which previously spiked on X on 22 October, resurfaced online and increased by 663 per cent. The top 10 X posts at the time calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment received more than four million views collectively.

Subsets of the narratives threatening women with sexual assault and calling for 'rape squads' or 'rape', had 18,000 views.

Infamous manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, in an X post on 7 November, stated: “I saw a woman crossing the road today but I just kept my foot down. Right of way? You no longer have rights.” The post received 688,000 views in under two hours.

Another X user stated: “women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say”; the post has received 10 million views. 

Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 27 women in the past, and a jury in a civil case in 2023 found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.

A clip of him boasting about groping women in a now-infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked a month before the 2016 presidential election, drew national attention to misconduct allegations against him.

In response to the violent misogyny, some posts online called for women in America to adopt the '4B' campaign, which has its roots in South Korea’s feminist movement. The four tenets of '4B' are:

• No sex with men

• No dating men

• No giving birth

• No marriage with men