It seems inevitable that a book of essays about feminism in Trump’s America would be called Nasty Women. You will recall that this is how Trump referred to Hillary Clinton during the third presidential debate almost exactly a year ago. (That wasn’t the stalking debate, but the one after, when they returned to podiums.) Feminists immediately adopted the term as a point of pride. There were T-shirts and tote bags. We were sure we would be vindicated on November 8.
One group is conspicuously absent, however, and that is Trump supporters, including the 53 percent of white women who voted for him.
On tour, Mukhopadhyay and Harding have discovered that Chung’s essay, which was previously posted on Longreads, struck a chord with a lot of readers who find themselves in the same predicament. “Change takes time,” says Mukhopadhyay. “But we can petition and organize our own families. People have the relationship and history and knowledge to do that with their parents.”
But those disagreements they can handle. The book includes essays by writers who were not Clinton supporters. Collier Meyerson excoriates Clinton and other white feminists for ignoring women of color. Sarah Jaffe writes about how disconnected Clinton and other white liberals were from the working class, who ended up voting for Trump. One of the goals of Nasty Women is to start people thinking about what kind of country they want to live in, and how we can work together to get it.
