A Trump presidency is not the end of feminism

Well, dear reader, today is the day we have been insurmountably hoping would never come — Inauguration Day.

For the past 72 days, I have tirelessly searched for a glimmer of hope in the alarmingly dim reality of America’s political future. I think it was around day 15 or so that I found the saving grace I was so desperately hoping to discover.

As an aggressively nasty woman, I, like so many of my liberal cohorts, was fully prepared to welcome an era of feminism and female empowerment following Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s election. As such, I was fully devastated when I woke up Nov. 9 and saw the election results.

However, after about 15 days of licking my wounds and surrendering in defeat to the misogynistic miscreant that will soon be leading our nation, I realized abdication of my ethical integrity and acceptance of a desolate fate for the feminist agenda is the absolute last thing this country needs.

As harebrained as it may sound, I’ve come to the realization that Donald Trump’s presidency is not going to hinder the feminist movement. It is going to advance it at the hands of the wildly impassioned — and incredibly nasty — women who are eager to defend it.

The fact that Trump’s policy plans and overall character are so far from the feminist agenda is exactly what is going to push it forward. The nasty women of this nation are past their grieving periods and are starting to realize the same thing that I have: This presidency is our call to action.

If Clinton had won the election, so many feminists, including myself, would have celebrated for a few days and raved about the monumental victory we had just made, and that would have been the end of it. Sure, we would all have continued to support feminist ideas and to celebrate each piece of our agenda that Clinton pushed forward, but more likely than not, we would have felt no sense of urgency to actively continue our own efforts.

People, in general, become active when they sense a problem and when they think there is something they need to change. For a lot of feminists, our end-all-be-all was getting a female in the Oval Office. I had some sort of half-baked idea that if we could get a woman in the Oval Office, our job was done and everything would fall into place from there. We’d finally receive equal pay, Planned Parenthood would forever be protected and judges would start taking rape cases seriously.

As my far-fetched world of equality slips further away, my desire to fight and to defend the feminist agenda only grows stronger. I can see this fire building up in women and men — not only all across America, but all across the world.

Donations to Planned Parenthood have skyrocketed since the election. Protests, marches and sit-ins have popped up all over the country. People have utilized social media to get the word out about feminist issues and speak up against Trump’s misanthropic ways. Social media groups like Pantsuit Nation, a group now composed of more than 3 million people, allow women and men to post their stories and share news of opportunities to further the feminist agenda.

Much to Trump’s dismay, I’m sure his victory in the recent presidential election has awoken a feminist revolution in our country. Women, men and even children are already fighting, and they will keep fighting until equality is achieved.

This is not to say, of course, that a Trump presidency is something to look forward to or that if you’re a female, person of color or actually anyone other than a white male, you have nothing to worry about — you definitely do. We pretty much all have something to lose from a Trump presidency, but the feminist movement is not going to be stopped.

Abigail Miller is a UF journalism sophomore. Her column appears on Fridays.