President Trump: A Vote for Racism, Misogyny and Islamophobia?

The Motherload® brings together women from all different backgrounds and today we are united in our horror at the election of Donald Trump as President of The United States.

A vote for Donald Trump, is a vote against women, a vote against religious acceptance, a vote against people who have black or brown skin, a vote against open minds and open hearts. 

We asked The Motherload® bloggers to write about what the election of President Trump means to them, and they didn’t disappoint…

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So today, America did what we knew they would do, but hoped they wouldn’t because we thought maybe, just maybe common sense will prevail. They voted for a sociopathic guy to be their next POTUS. To be honest, I really can’t even bring myself to say the words ‘President Trump’. The thought, the words, just make me feel ill.

Rewind to 2008.

I remember the early hours of that November morning back in 2008, as a young woman, just embarking on a great relationship with an amazing man, no kiddies, watching President-elect Barack H. Obama, this dynamic orator walking up to the podium with his family to give his acceptance speech having just made history as the first African-American to be elected the President of the United States. To be honest, as a black woman, the fact that he was black wasn’t the reason that I was bursting with happiness and pride. It was the fact that his campaign and message was one of inclusion and one of moving forward into the future and possibly, just possibly he could be instrumental in building a post-Bush united free world. It was a big ask and an even bigger reach. But he tried. He really did try.

Back to 2016.

In the last eight years, so much has happened to the world, the UK, the USA and on a personal level, to me. In the last eight years, I got married, had a daughter, got divorced, reached rock bottom and managed to start to rebuild and become the strong woman that I am destined to be. It wasn’t coincidental that I gave birth to a girl. I truly believe she was given to me to strengthen me to become the warrior mum that she deserves. I am aware that I am raising a child in a new landscape.

Social media has meant that nothing really is off limits and what was once uttered in whispers in the corner of the room is now being shouted from behind a computer screen, smartphone or whatever device these trolls use as their method of mass destruction. Racism, intolerance, homophobia, sexism – in fact any form of ‘ism’ or ‘phobia’ has reached new levels of hysteria. Anonymity means people get to say what they want without the fear of being found out. Obviously, the social media age has meant that EVERYTHING gets documented and recorded, so some solace that not everything that is said and done in the dark stays there.

We are living in scary times, where a man can use his privilege, can lie, can be sexist and misogynist, can be racist, can be as corrupt as he wants, not pay taxes, did I mention can lie? Shoot, he can even admit to sexually assaulting women and get away with it and then he gets voted in to hold the highest office in the western world. While that is scary in itself, what is scarier for me as a mum, black or otherwise, is the fact that there are people out there, average people like you and I, who agree with his rhetoric and poison because the UK is not exempt from this – Brexit was fundamentally based on immigration fears and ‘protecting our borders’.

Honestly, I don’t know what lies ahead for the UK and for the people of the USA. I can only pray that I am equipped with the tools to raise a daughter in a new, harsher version of the world we live in.

By Natalie D. Marshall

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“Mummy! Donald Trump is a very naughty man, but now he’s gone away!” Those were the first words my three-year-old son spoke to me this morning as I sat, head in hands, listening to the US Election results come in. He has been obsessed with Trump for weeks now – mainly because everyone is talking about him – but last night I told him we hopefully wouldn’t have to worry too much about him in future. Oh dear. Not easy to explain that away this morning, as I watched The Donald make his acceptance speech. 

I have had a feeling, deep in the pit of my stomach for weeks now: studying the polls, following every twist and turn of the bitter campaign, watching with increasing horror. What if Hillary Clinton being the “lesser of two evils” wasn’t enough to convince people to vote for her? America stood on the brink of making history by electing its first female president, the most qualified person ever to run for the White House. Instead, the people chose a self-confessed sex pest who wants to build walls and ban Muslims, along with a Vice President who believes homosexuality can be cured. Oh 2016- what have you done?

My husband is Muslim and we have two sons. Before the election, we joked with an American friend that we should have taken the boys to visit her in New York earlier this year, because we wouldn’t be welcome under President Trump. “Just imagine if that actually happened!?!” she replied. We’ll probably hold off on booking the plane tickets for now.

But there is no going back now: the people have spoken and the result can’t be changed. Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again,” spoke to millions of disenfranchised voters across the US. They, unlike me, will be celebrating today, convinced that Trump has the answers they have been looking for. Let’s hope for all our sakes that he starts coming up with some actual policies – and quickly. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

By Geraldine Cooper

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I’m a young white mother with two boys and a girl that I’m trying to raise in the best way possible. We’ve seen that Trump has won the election and I have to say this makes me sad. I feel like as leading countries, hell the whole world, we are supposed to move forward, to develop and to progress.

I can’t help but feel that this conclusion puts us back 60 years. Are we saying with this decision that’s it’s ok now to be racist, to literally put up a wall between nations? That it’s okay to talk about women in the way he does, that we’re not equal and valued? That lying and bad-mouthing opponents is the way to succeed?

Sure, the American dream is that you can be anything, if you want to run for President, go for it, you can achieve anything you work for – but this? Surely this is some kind of sick dream? What he stands for is the complete opposite of how I want my boys to behave, it’s the wrong message to send my daughter. Trump isn’t a role model, he’s a joke. 

Let’s just hope he doesn’t fuck everything up for the rest of the world as well as his own “great nation”.

By Liz Stout

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Trump isn’t the problem anymore – he’s a businessman. Knowing that he says things for effect, rather than out of true belief is strangely reassuring. The realities of being the US PRESIDENT might make for a little more pragmatism than we’ve seen so far.

The White House’s new Caliph is about to have a reality check. It’s not just talk anymore, decisions will have to be made, and soon he will have an actual political record to judge him on.

But as a women of colour, of immigrant origins, whose child has refugenes – the so-called free world is, frankly, becoming a hostile place. The outright lies and distortions that swill about online and out of the mouths of successful politicians makes me wonder what I’ll tell my son. How can I teach him not to lie? What’s the point of an education if we live in a world where facts are routinely thrown under the bus, and reasonable, logical arguments rooted in hard fact apparently have no value? When he turns to me and points out that path to power, to influence and to success seems to lie with LIES? Worse, lies that are exposed as lies yet are still believed, with a passion? What the hell am I supposed to teach him? Where are the examples he can follow?

The reasons for Trump winning and indeed Brexit are a lot more complex than we often think. I understand people are dissatisfied with their lives, with the world they see around them. But do I have to tolerate intolerance and a fashionable lack of compassion? Do I have to accept a world where everyone, right, left and up and down seems to be hunkering down to their own version of reality? The people have apparently spoken, but one day I hope someone, somewhere will climb out from their bunker and explain just what it is the this diverse group known as “the people” actually said.

By ‘Nina‘

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I’m a white, English woman with a young son and daughter. When I fed my daughter at 2am and saw that Trump was leading, I was angry. But this morning, now his win has been confirmed, I’m mostly sad. That a man who should be in prison is, instead, going to be in the White House, in a position of extreme power. That so many Americans must think it’s acceptable for women to be degraded and assaulted. That we’ve seen such a terrifying swing to the right in both British and American politics. I don’t want my children to learn that threats and bullying will get you what you want. I will do everything in my power to teach them otherwise, despite what’s going on in the world around them.

By Laura Pearson

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In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, there’s a scene where main character Offred questions her trust in chauffeur, Nick:

‘I act like a dunce. I should know better. I make of him an idol, a cardboard cutout.’

And there lies the danger. Humans should know better but political campaigns are like sex: a temporal state of disassociation – the seductive adrenalin rush of the chase – animal instincts which incite rivalry – the serotonin release. Then there’s the rarely mentioned bit after. The living with each other bit.

America might be a long way off a totalitarian regime, but in the wake of this morning’s dystopian horror, Trump’s got his role as Commander and if his past statements about deportation, Muslim registration, punishment for abortions, detonating countries and assaulting women as a social extra are anything to go by, the theocratic Republic of Gilead is closer than ever before.

By Rachael Smart

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As a mother of a little girl today my heart is heavy for America. As a Hypnobirthing practitioner every day I tell women they are enough. They are warriors, they are life-givers. Not objects.

I cried this morning. Land of the free, home of the brave. But only if you’re a white male.

Fuck you Donald Trump. President of reality TV. How long before you build a wall and incite more hatred?

What happened to progress? What happened to hope? What happened to unity? The scariest question of all what happens next?

By Amelia McCarthy

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There has been nothing but talk of Trump today, and my head and heart hurts the same way it did when the “Brexit” became a reality that day in June.

What I have come to learn is there are lots of angry people in the world at the moment, and people with power want to make us afraid of each other. Pointing fingers of blame at people that they are calling different. Thinking they have the right to treat people in a nasty way.

For reasons I can’t quite fathom he has won. But we cant let the culture and attitude he has portrayed win. We are masters of our own minds. For my two daughters, I will just keep looking for the good people.

By Clara Wilcox

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Rachael Smart, Amelia McCarthy, Geraldine Cooper, Laura Pearson, Liz Stout, Clara Wilcox