Donald Trump’s election victory has unleashed an online assault on women by some of his male supremacist supporters, who have been publishing threats of violence to their millions of followers. One of the most viral posts, Nicholas Fuentes tells women: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” Another promises: “They’ll be bred willingly or unwillingly.” Another says: “Women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say.” Some posts promise the attacks will begin on January 20 — the day Donald Trump will again be sworn in as president. Others suggest not slowing down as women cross the road. In the days following the election result, this dangerous rhetoric exploded online, but experts and feminists say it has been permitted as part of the mainstream Republican campaign. And when the majority of Americans endorsed that campaign and Donald Trump as president, the men behind the misogyny were “emboldened”. Some women have waded into the threads to respond, with one saying: “The masks are fully off now.” (…) On January 6, 2021 as Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building, within the mob were symbols and one of the most prominent was a gallows scaffold, an apparent reference to the white supremacist book about a fictional insurrection called The Day of The Rope. “I think that there is probably a connection between the sort of fantasy of there being a Day of The Rope where all of the progressives, leftists and feminists are literally lynched to threats around January 20,” Dr Ebin said. She said Donald Trump’s win had “sparked” a new wave of threats, but his time in American politics had created a space for these ideas to grow and to be validated. “I think we need to anticipate people taking this sentiment of being emboldened by the Trump campaign, by the mainstreaming of misogyny over the last — not just three months of the campaign — but really over the last eight years since Trump entered the mainstream political discourse,” Dr Ebin said. “They don’t just feel emboldened, they don’t just feel empowered, but they actually are the majority. And that is not insignificant. I think that it is absolutely going to show up in the kinds of actions that people take.”
via abc.net: As Donald Trump won the election, his far-right supremacist supporters sparked a wave of misogynistic abuse
