I Believe in Women (to Elect Kamala Harris)

There are positive signs from huge gender gaps in early voting that, yes, we are going to carry this.

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This weekend, in the run-up to Tuesday’s historic election, many people in my progressive circles are feeling trepidation and even despair. I understand and I sympathize. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part, but I am feeling unusually optimistic. The reason is simple: I believe in women to get this thing done, and to elect Kamala Harris on Tuesday. 

I’m in a long line of people to call this the gender election, a referendum on gender, and similar. It is, of course, a moment for women to vote our anger in having been deprived of crucial reproductive rights in a way that has been accelerated by, but by no means began, with the disastrous Dobbs decision. Reproductive rights, once overwhelmingly considered a personal matter rather than a political issue in this country, have in fact been under attack for the past several decades. The attempt to engineer a moral panic over abortion was a deliberate campaign on the part of Republican political strategists to make poor working class whites, especially Southern Evangelicals, vote against their interests and break with the Democrats. This wildly successful Astroturf (as opposed to grassroots) campaign in the early 1970s was never about preserving life or protecting children, as the health care landscape after Dobbs has made distressingly apparent. It was always about controlling women, and tapping into the misogynistic resentment of our newfound social freedoms. 

Now, after Dobbs, women are dying and going septic in parking lots after being denied life-saving care in case it constitutes an abortion. From the perspective of the campaign against reproductive freedom, this is barely even a problem. It is arguably a feature rather than a bug to those who want to make us beholden to our bodies once again and reliant on the fickle sometime benevolence of men and male-dominated institutions. The cruelty may not quite be the point; but certainly, control is.

Equally, however, this election is about men and two competing visions of modern masculinity: the wholesome, gentle, helpful Dad energy epitomized by a Tim Walz versus the paternalistic broody and bumbling creepiness of a J.D. Vance and the anachronistic crude leering domination of Trump, who—I am never not going to remind you—has been legally declared a rapist. He can’t even manage to do chauvinism competently: “I will protect women whether they like it or not,” Trump threatened on Wednesday, to the collective forehead-smacks of his handlers.

And the election is about gender in another vital way too: the state-sanctioned violence towards trans and non-binary folks, whose right to humane, gender-affirming, and life-saving care, is being attacked and destroyed. A goal which Megyn Kelly went so far as to declare her single issue as a conservative dedicated to reinforcing the gender binary and upholding rising bodily fascism. 

I know, I know, I know. Women like Kelly, and the spectacularly poor showing of white women like her who voted for Trump in 2016 might make any easy reliance on women’s voting patterns seem like an exercise in dangerous naiveté on my part. But it’s worth noting that even the usual figure—that 52% of white women who voted broke for Trump over Clinton—is somewhat exaggerated. A more careful Pew analysis, long after the cruder exit poll ballpark lodged in the popular liberal imagination, showed that the figure was more like 47%. That is still shockingly high, of course. But it is not a majority (it was a plurality, with 45% of white women who voted going for Clinton; a tie, in essence).

More importantly, there are signs that women—yes, even white women—have gotten a little wiser to misogyny since then. The gender breakdown of likely voting patterns in this election reveals stark differences between men and women in every demographic: with women supporting Harris 53% to 36%, almost precisely the mirror image of men’s preferences (they supported Trump 53% to 37% in the same poll). The disparity between young men and young women—in many cases, new voters—is particularly staggering. Young women support Harris by 33 points; young men by just 2 points, according to an NBC News poll, which is essentially a tie.

Image credit: Getty Images

And, in the end, I believe in women and non-binary folks far more than men to turn out on Tuesday in sufficiently large numbers. We are, after all, still the people tasked with umpteen forms of familial and professional and civic caretaking responsibilities of a basically thankless kind. We are still, in our allegedly post-patriarchal world, the ones doing more than our fair share of the housework and carrying the mental load and juggling work and childrearing and care for the community. We are going to be the ones who are keep on doing better than men at the thankless civic housekeeping task that is voting in federal elections. In a society without mandatory voting, it matters that women are typically far less lazy than their male counterparts. Conventional political wisdom has it that, especially in a tight race, turnout is crucial: and already, in early voting patterns, we are seeing huge gender gaps in several key swing states. We’re talking a 14-point difference in Pennsylvania, a 10-point difference in Michigan, an 8-point difference in Wisconsin, and an 11-point difference in North Carolina. That is extremely encouraging. 

Yes, white women are going to vote for Trump in numbers that will shock the progressive conscience. But some of those who did so in 2016, for better and for worse, have learned something since: that mortgaging your reproductive freedoms for white power is truly a devil’s bargain. White women who aligned themselves with white supremacy in 2016 and even 2020 were not by and large voting against their interests, as Lyz Lenz has recently argued. Rather, they were manifesting the fact that their material well-being and health care felt relatively secure; they could hence concentrate on airing their racial resentment and consolidating the white supremacy that white women benefit from enormously. In the post-Dobbs landscape, things have become more complicated. If you thought you and yours would always be fine, able to get a safe abortion if you needed it, you might just have gotten a little bit savvier. Some white women may even have gotten radicalized. 

And of course, above all else, white women are not exhaustive or representative. Women of color, especially Black women, have been organizing and voting in ways that Democrats have long benefited from far in excess of their degree of gratitude or, frankly, deservingness. Relying on Black women to save us is not, and has never been, fair. But as long as white women are unreliable at best and politically treacherous at worst, our side will keep incurring a debt to Black women that Democrats urgently need to begin repaying. 

So yes, white women are a problem. And yet I still believe in women as a collective to deliver this election. We are not, despite the tempting rhetoric, just as bad as men when it comes to perpetuating misogyny. And while I’ve long acknowledged that we share and perpetuate some of the same gender biases, we are also not nearly as guilty of the kind of domineering, violent, and feckless actions that some men continue to practice. Men like Trump, for one salient example. Sure, not all men commit actions like rape and sexual harassment and strangulation—one would certainly hope not. But the fact that it is almost only men who commit such acts of misogyny is revealing and worth stating. And the fact that so many men—especially white men—support Trump in all of his ignominy (he is now up 21 points with this demographic) should not be forgotten or forgiven, even if white women do wind up disappointing. Holding us to higher standards and forgiving our male counterparts is, after all, just another exercise in misogyny.

None of this is inevitable and none of my predictions here feel remotely secure. Maybe the Midwest Dad contingent who show that men can be helpers and holders will channel Tim Walz and carry this election for Kamala Harris. Quite possibly white women will revert to type and help to return Donald Trump to the White House. Polling is obviously tight and much stranger things have happened. But I am cautiously investing hope in women as a collective to do better this time. And if I had to put my trust in one group to carry this election and prevent political disaster, yes, it would be women. The world is counting on us, and, within reason, I trust us. 

For other pieces of my election coverage, see here. And, as always, the best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, which is now on sale for a 20% discount. Thanks!

July 22 2024: We are going into Battle against Trump. Here’s How to Fight for Harris

August 1 2024: Why Harris Will Win

August 7 2024: Men Could Care More

August 15 2024: J.D. Vance Illustrates Five Lessons in Misogyny

September 11 2024: Harris Wiped the Floor with Trump. That’s Actually a Problem (Plus, an Announcement)

October 28 2024: Jezebels, Witches, Robots, and Fakes: Four Misogynistic Tropes to Fight as the Election Approaches