Why I’m Not Surprised Women Voted For Trump

After posting my initial reaction to Trump's election, I spent a lot of time thinking, talking, and, most importantly, listening to people who voted for him. Especially people who voted for him reluctantly. And especially people who weren’t “supposed” to vote for him.

Women, Latinos, black people, Muslims, groups that Trump had repeatedly and openly disrespected, what made them decide that he was a better option than Harris?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making the case for why people in these groups, many of whom actively dislike Trump, still decided to vote for him. It’s long past time that people on the Left thought about this in more nuanced terms than calling them racist or sexist or “deplorable.”

So, without further ado, I present the first in the series:

Here’s why I’m not surprised women voted for Trump.

On November 9th, nestled amongst the outrage and analysis surrounding Trump’s election, a two-minute-seven-second clip on CNN captured the frustrations of 50.1% of a nation. 

Political analyst Shermichael Singleton pointed out that “there are a lot of families out there who don’t believe boys should play girls' sports...”

One of the other guests, Jay Michaelson, cut him off immediately, “THEY’RE NOT BOYS!! I’m not going to listen to transphobia at this table. I am not gonna listen to you call a trans girl a boy…when you use a word that’s a slur, I’m gonna interrupt.”

The host, hoping to soothe the trauma inflicted by the word, “boy,” asked that Singleton limit himself to terms that are “respectful.” 

And the palpable exasperation on Singleton's face was shared by every sane human being on Earth. 

And it's not just that people like Michaelson can’t even explain the difference between a boy and a trans girl, it's not just that describing the word “boy” as a slur is so ludicrous, it’s that Singleton is right.

Most people, even people who know a transgender athlete personally, don’t believe boys should play girls’ sports. Because this has nothing to do with hate or “transphobia,” it’s just a simple recognition of reality.

And while Michaelson trotted out all the usual cliches about trans issues being a "canard" and how they only affect "a tiny sliver of the population," the fact that he believes this, the fact that a significant number of Democrats believe this (or pretend they do), is a blind spot that Trump skillfully exploited.

Because our ability (or lack thereof) to admit that women exist and are different from men affects 51% of the population. Especially when we remember that those differences are why we have things like women’s sports and women’s bathrooms and women-only rape crisis centres.

Our ability to recognise, as the Geneva Convention recognises, that female prisoners have a right not to be locked up with (usually violent) men affects some of the most vulnerable people in that 51%.

Our ability to understand that women with disabilities or who are recovering from surgery have a right to request intimate care exclusively from women affects another vulnerable portion of that 51%. 

But of course, Michelson misses all this. After all, he's not sure what a woman is.

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For years now, I've been beating three interconnected drums. 

1. You don't have to lie to be kind.

2. Lying is not kind to trans people or women.

3. Trying to force the public to lie is going to backfire horribly on trans people.

But sadly, even though Trump's victory is very likely the beginning of stage three, people like Michaelson still haven’t got the memo. 

And the worst thing about all this is how easily we could have avoided this mess by telling the truth.

We could have told boys with gender dysphoria that they are boys, but that some boys like dresses and makeup and growing out their hair. We could have worked towards a society where we move past gendered stereotypes instead of measuring the “spectrum” between "boy" and "girl" from Barbie to G. I. Joe.

We could have told girls with gender dysphoria that they are girls, even if they cut off their hair or their breasts. We could have dealt with the epidemic of violent porn and sexual violence and limiting stereotypes that made so many suddenly want to escape that reality when they hit puberty. 

We could even have invented new, unambiguous terms to describe people who felt uncomfortable with gendered terms, just like Thai people did for Kathoey or Southeast Asian people did for Hijra or South American people did for Muxe. None of these gender-diverse cultures tried to deny women's existence as they adapted to broader forms of gender expression. 

But instead, trans activists told such an appalling, incoherent, painfully obvious lie that they had no choice but to bully people into accepting it. 

They told children that their biology was a “birth defect,” that their “true selves” could be attained by denying everything about themselves, from their names to their body parts to their natural hormones. They told them that anybody who didn't play along didn't want them to "exist."

People lost their jobs for refusing to tell these lies. Women were demonised and ostracised, girls who expressed discomfort with competing against boys were threatened with bans, parents lost custody of their children or were sent to jail.

Meanwhile, the news media published headlines gaslighting the public into believing that male rapists were female, or claiming that a pervert flashed “her” penis at unsuspecting children. 

Corporations sided against women who complained about men getting undressed in the changing rooms of health spas and gyms. In several cases, the women who dared to speak up were, again, barred from their own spaces. Others were subjected to abuse and death threats and real-world violence. 

I could go on and on and on.

And all of this was enabled and defended by the political Left.

Kamala Harris argued several times that women's rights were on the ballot. That women's reproductive rights were on the ballot. That, if the worst of Project 2025 comes to pass, women’s employment rights were on the ballot. She was right.

But she failed to mention that what a woman is was on the ballot as well. 

I'm in no position to judge how women balance these terrible options. I don't know how it feels to have to choose between people who think your rights don't matter and people who think you don't exist.

But I'll say this: I don't blame a single woman who looked at the options and decided, “I'll take my chances with the side that still knows what a woman is. Even if it's just so they can grab me by the pussy.”

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