Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it seems that it’s only becoming more difficult to exist as a woman lately. And I’m not just talking about big US political events like the overturning of Roe v. Wade or Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent election loss. There’s something deeper happening, even if confined mostly to marginal, fringe spaces.
I recognize that this is hardly a new or revolutionary feeling. In fact, this isn’t even the first time I’ve experienced some version of it.
It’s something I felt growing up with the rise of incel, or involuntarily celibate, culture (for lack of a better word) and the sudden growth of figures like Andrew Tate. It’s something I felt when I learned of Kansas City Chiefs player Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College, where we heard that all-too-familiar rhetoric about women’s roles as mothers to their children, wives to their husbands, and homemakers to their families. It’s something I felt when the phrase “your body, my choice” became prevalent online (used by white-supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes, amongst others) following the re-election of President-Elect Donald Trump.
But I witnessed another vile iteration of it unfolding in the past few weeks on Twitter/X, starting with a simple, lighthearted post from Cambridge student Dr. Ally Louks on November 27th. “Thrilled to say I passed my viva with no corrections and am officially PhDone,” it read, with an attached image of Louks holding a copy of her literature thesis, entitled “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.”
The unassuming post amassed millions of views, now sitting at over 118 million at the time of writing, and many thousands of interactions. The response was mixed, to say the least. Along with encouraging, curious, and analytical comments were many not-so-positive reactions. Some called Louks’ work ‘useless’ or ‘wasteful,’ with others broadly disparaging women in academia (even as women are outnumbering men in university enrollment in both the US and the UK, where Louks attends Cambridge) for neglecting their supposed duties as wives and mothers. There were even threats of violence made towards Louks.
Though this situation could be seen as a mere fluke, it’s hard to ignore that it coincides with the growing presence and acceptance of misogynistic rhetoric from major figures around the world. For example, in the US, the incoming President Donald Trump (who apparently will protect women whether we “like it or not”) and Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance (who has disparaged child-free women, calling them “cat ladies”).
These standards for women are nothing new. Knowing that, however, doesn’t make the leveling of sexist attacks against women any less horrifying.
The vitriol directly targeted at an educated woman stuck out to me, as a fellow young woman who also wants to pursue my education in a humanities sort of field (political science, if you couldn’t tell from some of my previous articles). Even if its existence wasn’t surprising, the intensity and blunt nature of the criticism was striking, and only seemed to be a continuation of today’s increasingly misogynistic trend.
Though Louks has said that she’s “unfazed by the vitriol” herself, the backlash she received is just one example of the discouragement that many women face in pursuing their academic aspirations. This extended culture-war crusade against “wokeness” might very well have increasingly significant, widespread implications in the next few years of a second Trump presidency.
I can’t claim to know where this trend will take us as a country, or even globally. After all, none of this is limited exclusively to the US, either. In South Korea, the feminist 4B (Four “Nos”) movement originated in response to similar sorts of gender divisions, advocating for women not to date, have sex with, get married to, or have children with men.
But, I do know one thing: We can begin to fight this trend by just being ourselves. It can be as simple as believing in our own dreams, despite what others say we’re capable of achieving. It may not (and, most likely, won’t) end misogyny, but it will let us celebrate our accomplishments in the face of a sizable group that wants to take them away from us.