Trump's horrifying record with women
From his terrible legal record to his long history of degrading women to the horrifying list of sexual assault allegations against him, Trump has an appalling record when it comes to women.
With one week until the election, let's talk about just *how* bad Trump has been for women.
From his terrible legal record to his long history of degrading women to the horrifying list of sexual assault allegations against him, Trump has an appalling record when it comes to women.
Let's go through Trump's abhorrent record with women, with Veep gifs to provide momentary comic relief in this otherwise really fucking bleak, depressing issue of Body Politics.
Trump has blocked and reversed laws that promote equal pay for women. He quickly repealed an Obama-era executive order that made large companies annually report wages to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ensuring companies pay fairly across race and gender. Trump labeled it as "unnecessarily burdensome," even though companies already keep this data. He has defended employers who pay mothers less than men, and called pregnancy an “inconvenience” to employers.
His administration dismantled the White House Council on Women and Girls, which existed to ensure agencies properly look into the needs of women and girls when policies are drafted.
Trump’s cabinet of 23 only has three women, making it the lowest number of female appointees since George H. W. Bush. His supporters point to women in high-profile positions, such as his daughter Ivanka or Kellyanne Conway. He likes to give the idea of women being included in his administration, but he prefers his women to be in flashy, feminine roles — not to do any of the actual policy work.
His administration has made significant changes to the Federal Title X family planning program, further eliminating access to women’s healthcare. Thanks to Trump, funds are no longer being provided to any family planning providers that also offer abortion services. This means millions in funding that provide birth control, screening for breast cancer and cervical cancer, and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, are being withheld. More than four million people rely on Title X annually, leaving women’s health in dangerous vulnerability.
Young women on campuses are now more vulnerable to sexual assault thanks to his administration. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued new rules on sexual misconduct, bolstering protections for the accused, not the victims. She also relieved schools of some legal liabilities. The reality of these regulations is that justice will become even more elusive for campus sexual assaults. This means we will return to an era when rape and harassment in schools were ignored.
Trump’s Justice Department, without any warning, significantly changed the definition of domestic violence, making it more limited and less informed. It now effectively denies the experience of survivors of abuse by casting it as an exclusively criminal crime. His definition has completely eliminated nonphysical violence such as psychological, emotional or economic abuse, and deleted critical components that experts have labeled to be domestic abuse. Now, only harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour crime is domestic violence.
Trump not only implemented a Global Gag Rule on reproductive rights — which is a policy that prohibits U.S. aid from going to any foreign nongovernment organisations whose family planning provides any services related to abortions, even if it’s justinformation — but dramatically expanded his implementation of the policy. His policy expanded to nearly all U.S. funding for global health. That's restricting an estimated $8.8 billion in global health assistance, including funding support for family planning, reproductive health, maternal health, child health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, infection disease, neglected tropical diseases, water, sanitation, hygiene programs, and more.
His administration gutted funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which provides family planning and reproductive services to more than 150 countries, citing the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which blocks U.S. aid to organizations the US determines could be involved in involuntary sterilization. There is absolutely no evidence showing UNFPA supports coercive abortions. What it does do is expand access to contraception. Meanwhile in the U.S., mass involuntary sterilizations (aka, eugenics) have been reported at ICE detention centers, which is blatant eugenics. Trump’s isn’t pro-life when it comes to all fetuses.
Trump has successfully stacked the Supreme Court in order to overturn and block laws that support women. Now that his latest Supreme Court nominee, literal handmaid Amy Coney Barrett, is confirmed (in a fucking SHAM of a confirmation), conservatives have a 6-3 majority. This means women are in the firing line to be stripped of even more rights.
So far, Trump’s Supreme Court has already managed to roll back rights for women’s access to birth control. Employers can now legally opt-out of covering birth control, which could result in as many as 126,000 women losing contraceptive coverage.
Trans women’s rights are at a higher risk than cis women’s. His administration erased protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance. This has been the latest in a broader effort to narrow protections so they exclude transgender people, spanning across education, housing, employment, and military.
These cases shows the utter danger for women’s rights when Trump and the Supreme Court work hand-in-hand. With an even larger majority now, the conservative justices have made clear they have their sights set on a few crucial women's freedoms.
They will likely completely eliminate the entire Affordable Care Act, which could leave 21 million Americans without health insurance. This will allow insurers to decide whether to cover women’s health at all, and if so, at what additional premium. Maternity care could even be denied.
Republicans have been proudly gunning for women’s reproductive rights. They have threatened that contraceptive such as Plan B and birth control pills / IUDs could be even harder to get, treating them like abortion pills rather than preventative measures. For anyone confused on the difference, Plan B and birth control pills literally prevent a sperm fertilizing an egg. It is not, in any way, an abortion. That's science bitch.
Overturning Roe v. Wade is so important to the Trump administration that it’s listed as a key element to the Trump Republican Platform. In 2016, he promised to pick Supreme Court judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe. Trump has expressed support for a complete ban of abortion. Trump has even suggested punishments for women who have abortions.
One in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Despite the extreme commonality, there is a huge stigma around it. There are so many reasons people get abortions: Not financially prepared, it was unplanned, partner-related reasons, needing to focus on other children, interference with educational or work plans, not being emotionally or mentally prepared, health-related reasons, wanting a better life for the baby, not being independent enough for a baby, it's-none-of-your-business, and so many more. Another reason is because the baby that won’t live to full term, resulting in later-term abortions - something the ultra-conservative have focused on lately, spreading disinformation about late-term abortions to rile up their base.
But no matter the reason, abortions are ultimately, completely, simply about body autonomy.
Remember, you don’t have to get an abortion to be pro-choice. You don’t want an abortion? Don’t have one. It’s about not stripping away other women’s right to choose. What if your best friend, or your sister, came to you and said they needed one? Would you really deny it to them? Religious extremism has successfully attached morality to the rhetoric around abortion in an effort to continuously deny women their body autonomy and restrict women’s societal role to child bearing and rearing, but that’s a lengthy conversation for another day.
Even if Roe isn’t fully overturned, Trump’s administration aims to restrict access to safe abortions. Criminalizing abortion does not stop abortions. It just makes abortions less safe. This is why attempts to ban or restrict abortions does nothing to reduce the number of abortions, it just forces people to seek out unsafe abortions. Criminalizing or restricting abortion prevents doctors from providing basic care. Criminalizing abortion is discrimination. Access to safe abortions is a human right.
It is very worth noting that Trump has not always been anti-choice, but has become so in his pandering to the extreme religious right. This shows it is not remotely a moral concern for him, but rather an issue he thought he could win on.
Trump’s utter disrespect for women is notoriously demonstrated in his personal life.
The President is infamous for his constant derogatory language about women. Whether he’s bragging about grabbing them by the pussy, mocking bodily functions, or calling them “horseface” or “fat, ugly”, he has always degraded women. His dehumanization of women shows he believes they exclusively exist for his pleasure. If they don’t meet his standard for “first-rate pussy,” he attacks them, degrading them in a different way in order to dismiss them and their worth to him.
Some may say there are 'more important things’ than the President’s remarks. But psychologically speaking, his comments are insidiously harmful to the way our society treats women. Objectifying women leads to aggression and a decreased moral concern for the objectified, literally endangering women. Furthermore, his rhetoric has meant a rise in hate speech and hate crimes in America.
Trump isn’t all talk. Our President has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. At least 26 women have come forward to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct. He takes advantage of our culture’s tendency to distrust survivors of sexual assault and blame them for their assaults. He once defended himself by saying one of the women was too ugly to rape. Innocent people do not defend against rape by saying a woman “wasn’t his type.” If you don’t inherently believe women when they come forward in cases of assault, that shows your internal misogyny. Supporting Trump is supporting an accused rapist. It tells the world that a woman’s body doesn’t mean as much as a man’s ambition.
Trump has boasted that he has done more for women than other presidents. He’s partially right -- he has indeed done "more". More harm, that is. Trump is bad for women, it’s as simple as that huns.