Originally published at: Chart of women registering to vote after Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade spells trouble for GOP | Boing Boing
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That helps to tell the story of how the Democratics had less-bad-than-expected midterms in November of 2022, but the GOP still managed to take the House in that election. So don’t look at that chart and assume that it means a guaranteed victory in any future elections.
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This is good news, but it’s frustrating that people weren’t taking the clear and present threat sufficiently seriously to prevent it. Unwinding a SCOTUS decision takes decades or even generations. The GOP was very very clear this was their intent all along so it’s not like all these women didn’t have a chance to vote sooner.
If some sort of fascist state takes over, it’s going to be too late for everyone to suddenly say, “Oh hey, I didn’t want that! I’ll show you! I”m gonna go register to vote right now! Where do I do that? Anyone? Who are those men with guns?”
I’m sorry if this is victim blaming. That’s not my intent at all. It’s just frustrating that this is what it takes to motivate people to vote.
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As some one currently living and experiencing this at one of the social epicenters of the Nat-C movement I can tell you it HAS been… “frustrating.” I like that word, it’s good for when you’re not allowed to be angry and lemme tell you as a woman in Texas no matter what happens to you, you are NEVER allowed to be angry.
That being said the amount of gaslighting and denial in the past 4 decades that I have personally experienced, on- and offline, even from “allies” when it comes to how women, including myself, are treated… it’s remarkable.
What can I say? The fact that fish don’t see the water makes it easy to poison fish?
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Nice of them to finally, finally decide to care. Apparently it’s still not enough to get the same reaction from their male counterparts. I will never understand or respect people who choose not to vote (as opposed to people whose vote is suppressed by various means, of course).
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Nothing is “guaranteed,” ever; every fucking day is a constant fight to keep from sliding back into the dark ages.
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Frustrating but also there’s lots of noise about all the bad things happening (and they’re very bad) but very little about “here’s a real actual thing you can do to fix it without being a billionaire yourself”. Even voting feels pointless at times for so many reasons.
Not saying you’re wrong, I wholeheartedly agree that we should never have been here, but it’s an uphill battle both due to things that were baked into the system 300 years ago plus a serious ramping up the last 40 or so years to benefit a specific demographic to get to this point.
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Totally hear you on that one. Honestly, and maybe this makes me a hypocrite, I left the US rather than becoming a citizen and trying to help fix this stuff. I decided it wasn’t a fight I wanted and I wanted to skip ahead socially 50 years and live somewhere less broken. I have my doubts the US is fixable until it gets rid of partisan gerrymandering, the electoral college, and Citizens United. That said, if I was born there and moving wasn’t an option, you bet I’d fight.
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The Malevolent One won 55% of white women vs Biden…so…?
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It’s sickening that people believe having a majority will matter in an election battle with today’s GOP. They don’t care who has the most votes. They just have to cry “fake news” and bring their claims to the SCOTUS. With the NY Times tripping over itself to be supportive of “both sides” instead of the truth and with CNN leaning hard right, I am not sanguine about democracy’s chances.
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That kind of ‘White women who voted’ tend to act differently when it’s actually their necks that are on the line.
Sounds like you’ve already given up fighting.
I’m a woman and Black, I don’t have any choice but to fight until the very end.
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Believe!? Some things are worth doing even without faith. Even if the end is the same it feels unforgivable to have given up without trying.
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That doesn’t make you a hypcrite; it makes you a realist.
It’s good you had that option.
So, not fixable any time soon.
And probably not without bloodshed, given the proclivities of the christofascists/qanoners/etc, etc.
Interesting times we live in…
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But it’s so easy to blame women!? And everything else is hard.
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It’s always ‘our fault’, going all the way back to that damn ‘apple’; because it’s not like Adam had free will or agency over his own choices, or anything.
/s
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Yep.
I remember it like it was yesterday, election night 2016. I was in CA, so results were coming in while we were all still awake. We heard the bad news at our little election cookout and the first words out of one guy’s mouth were, “How could all those women vote for him?”
I don’t get it either, but was so mad. How dare you blame us? How about look at your own demographic for a bit?
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Here… I was exhausted. Clinton was demonized locally by conservatives and also by the Sanders style “liberals” in the city I found myself living in. I felt lost and completely defeated well before early voting started. Demoralized. Alone. Absolutely without hope for the future of this country.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only woman who felt this way in this increasingly disenfranchised bloc of voters.
I didn’t bother reading anything about it. I felt hopeless. Isolated. Targeted. Hated. I’m not surprised a lot of women might have just given up that election cycle realizing there was no candidate they could safely vote for. Damned if you do damned if you don’t no matter what. Clinton, realistically, is not a woman who has had many women’s backs either. So it’s like “lean in or lay back but either way fuck you B*ches” was the message I felt.
And to you liberal leaning men in cities I want you to understand that for women voters your behavior towards women in the prior year in real life and in your communicated ideologies also translated into Trump winning. Chew on it for a while because it’s true.
Your behavior matters too and some of y’all really showed us who you are in 2015.
Remember also it can be hard to hide how you vote from your family for some people who may not be accustomed to lying.
All said, It was a shitshow and I am horrified to see that it has so far turned out worse than my worst fears in 2016.
So it really burns me… it really does…
that the lesson some people take from this is not “misogyny hurts us all” but instead “it’s women’s fault…”
because it’s been doing soooooo much good for us. / 
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I served as an election official a week or so ago, for the local school board elections. In my opinion these are the most important elections; certainly they are elections where an individual voter can make a lasting difference for a lifetime, which is not true of presidential elections in my state (we’ll landslide Democrat regardless of how you vote).
Anyway, I did see a slightly higher number of women voters than I expected. Unfortunately, I did not see a higher proportion of progressive or even liberal women voters. Quite the opposite. I am praying that what I saw will not be true nationwide.
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