No more sex with Trump supporters?
After the election in the USA: a mood picture as I experience it.
Supporters of the election winner Trump don’t need to be asked about their mood so soon after the election. There is an enthusiastic mood of optimism on social media. The opposite is true for Democrats. And now Joe Biden is authorizing Ukraine to deploy long-range missiles against Russia in the last days of his term of office.
Recently I was in Austin for a few days and went hiking with a group of Harris voters, i.e. Democrats. All super nice and educated and relatively wealthy people, either already retired or still in a well-paid job - and, as far as I could tell, all more or less of the same opinion. Meaning: Donald Trump is a danger to democracy. A mendacious, criminal, corrupt, homophobic, racist and sexist wannabe dictator who is only out to get revenge for the defeat he suffered in the 2020 presidential election. On a personal vendetta. If he makes good on his announcement and deports millions of “aliens”, i.e. illegal migrants, with the help of the military, the US economy will collapse. Because without migrants, nothing would work, especially in the construction, catering, cleaning and harvesting industries. Then, according to a fellow migrant, companies would have to hire US citizens or legal immigrants for this work - at much higher wages. Consumer goods and services would automatically become more expensive.
I am not surprised by the assessments of my fellow hikers. I've been hearing or reading similar things since the election. Here in Austin, only in concentrated form, because in Austin you can feel the “woke” pulse of conservative Texas. “Austin is young and rich,” a friend says to me. Because of the many IT companies that have set up shop here in recent years. The University of Texas in Austin is among the top 40 in the world rankings, most of the students are politically left-wing to far-left, I hear. One evening in Austin, I see an AI-controlled, self-driving car for the first time. (Unfortunately, the image quality of the photo is poor.)
On our hiking trail, someone brings up the subject of Bernie Sanders, who sits as an Independent in the US Senate, where he has joined the Democratic caucus. Sanders, who locates his political home in “democratic socialism”, accused the Democratic Party after the election of being to blame for its own electoral defeat. It had been too little worker-friendly - and that is why so many from the working class had voted for Trump, he argued. On X, Sanders wrote: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.” He later reiterated his position on CNN. My fellow hikers brush off this rant. It's not the Democrats who are to blame for the election defeat, they say, but the voters. “People believe Trump when he says he's one of them - but they're in for a surprise,” says one man.
I listen to the discussions and opinions as we walk and sometimes agree and sometimes disagree in my mind. As a German and European, I am currently being stirred up by a completely different piece of news: Outgoing President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to deploy US long-range missiles against targets in Russia. Officially, Biden is reacting to the deployment of North Korean soldiers on the Russian side. The range is said to be up to 180 miles. Moscow is more than 500 miles as the crow flies from the Ukrainian border. Nevertheless, this step can be read as an escalation. And hadn't the Biden administration proclaimed that it would ensure a smooth handover of office to his successor Donald Trump? Who had announced during the election campaign that he wanted to end the war in Ukraine quickly. However, if the war were to escalate further, it would of course affect Europe - and Germany, where the USA still has significant military bases. It irritates me that I don't hear a word about this burning issue on the hike. Maybe I just missed it, I think, and later ask a fellow hiker. “No, that wasn't an issue,” he replies. Once again, I say what I have said to Americans before - that I have the feeling they are only interested in domestic politics, in what is going on in their own country and affects themselves. “Yes, that's true,” he confirms. “Maybe the Middle East is an exception?”, I interject. He says: “I doubt that most Americans would find Israel on a map.”
The Middle East conflict is actually the only area where criticism is being voiced on this hike. Everyone is unhappy about the way the Biden administration has handled the current Gaza war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will certainly listen more to Trump, says a Jewish fellow hiker. Perhaps there will even be a deal: a further rapprochement between Israel and its Arab neighbors for mutual economic benefit - under the premise of a “two-state solution”. How are the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are physically separated by Israeli territory, supposed to become a sovereign state?”, I ask. “You could build a bridge,” replies my Jewish interlocutor. “Or a tunnel.” We both stiffen when he says this. A macabre idea in view of what actually happened. After a moment of silence, we laugh: never mind.
Above all, she is disappointed in her fellow citizens, says a woman when we make a break and receives nods from the bystanders. The fact that half of her fellow countrymen had voted for “this lunatic” and fallen for his slogans and empty promises also stunned the others in the group.
Disappointment, anger, sadness, fear, helplessness. “Let's not talk about politics, the shock of the election result is too fresh. It's still getting me down,” my hostess had said over dinner a few days earlier. “It doesn't affect you as an outsider, but it does me. I'm just devastated. The idea that this madman is going to turn our country into a dictatorship is THE BLANKEST HORROR!” Another hostess also quickly breaks off the topic of politics. “If I keep talking, I'll just have to cry again,” she apologizes. “After the election winner was decided, I cried for days.”
Female Democrats are especially concerned that Donald Trump's election victory might mean even more restrictions on abortions. This is despite the fact that the US Supreme Court has delegated the decision to the states. Texas, however, has one of the strictest abortion laws. One woman reports an incident a few days ago when she was driving her car. She has a bumper sticker promoting the right to abortion. The sticker next to it says that she voted for Kamala Harris. At a traffic light, two young white men came to a halt next to her, she tells me. One of them rolled down the window, pointed at her sticker and shouted “Trump, go!” with a big grin. When she waved him off, he shouted after her as she drove off: “You're killing our babies!” The rumor from social media that Democrats would support abortions up to and even after birth is persistent, she says. After Trump's election victory, the supporters of the Pro-Life movement have apparently become more and more on the offensive.
Trump opponents are also going on the offensive. The movement is called “4B”. It began in South Korea. The basic idea: women swear off heterosexual marriage, dating, sex and childbirth to protest against institutionalized misogyny and sexual abuse. The name “4B” refers to these four bans, which begin with the letter “B” in Korean, or so I was told. The mainly online movement started in 2018 with protests against revenge porn and evolved into South Korea's feminist wave, similar to #MeToo. After Donald Trump's election victory, young women in particular took up the method. Before the election, experts had predicted a clear gender divide, and the first exit polls confirm this prediction: according to them, women aged 18 to 29 voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris, while Trump gained ground among male voters compared to 2020.
The idea of the sex strike as a political tool has a historical precedent: in ancient Greece, during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the comic poet Aristophanes proposed an unusual strategy against war: Women should refuse their husbands sexually until they end the war. In Israel, the band “STRIKE!” produced an electro-opera based on this story. In 2015, director Spike Lee staged the satirical film “Chi-Raq”, in which women initiate a sex strike against Chicago's gang wars. And in the 1960s and 70s, feminist groups of the second wave of the women's movement, such as Cell 16 in the USA, advocated celibacy and separation from men.
Back to the post-election Trump USA of 2024: Activists shave their heads and call on other women to join the 4B movement. They demand: no more sex, no more dating, no more marriage and no more children with men who voted for Donald Trump. On X, some women claim that they won’t have sex with Trump supporters nor even kiss them. On Tik Tok, some activists' actions take on bizarre characteristics. One of them can barely get a word out for crying. She’s scared to go on dating apps because she can get matched with a Trump supporter.
Despite all the head-shaking that comes over me at some of what I’ve heard and seen: I think about the fact that there will probably be early federal elections in Germany in February because the coalition of three governing parties has collapsed. Who knows how I shall feel after the election results. One thing I already know is that I won't be in an enthusiastic mood of optimism like the Trump supporters. I won't burst into tears either. I am convinced of one thing: we are all in for tough times. For many reasons. As a German and a European, I hope that war will not be one of them.
This text was first published in German on my website.