No. We’re not. Things have gotten worse for women since his ascension to power.

We’ll be able to recover lost ground easier most likely but we’ve lost a lot.

Problems with misogyny exist beyond the political realm, though that realm is tethered to others.

(†)Men look to leadership on how to behave more than women do, maybe it’s more correct to say in a different way than women do. When a blatant, unrepentant misogynist is elected to the presidency, he “oks” misogynistic behavior in the social and corporate realm as well as emboldening legislation that is bad for women or stifling legislation that will help women. Our lives do revolve around more than reproductive rights and equal pay.

Ever wonder why women and feminist groups always always always make a “big deal" of sexual misconduct in the political realm? We know if those men are put into positions of power, then we will be less safe, we will have to be ever more vigilant, there will be more pressure on our space and pushing against our successes. And everything that goes along with it—exhaustion, anxiety, stress, isolation, diminishment from public space, etc.

Its not a Republican or Democratic thing either. I was safer as a woman, experiencing less professional misogyny and street harassment, fewer acts of aggression or inappropriateness on dates, better public interactions overall when men like Obama and Bush Sr., were president than men like Clinton, Reagan, or W. Bush were in the chair.

The difference is in how they behaved around women, on camera, in front of all the world to see. Milder of manner rather than blustering and often “fronting” a ramboesque display of masculinity.

It takes living long enough to see the pattern, but it’s there.

Since Trump announced his campaign I’ve had a slushy thrown at me and obscenities screamed at me for ignoring a man offering me $500 for a blow job while I was walking into Burger King. He was high, homeless, and had been talking to someone not really there. Two guys took a (loose) shot at me while I was walking my dog at night in my neighborhood. I assume they were bored and felt like terrorizing me with gunfire was a good way to alleviate their boredom. I was denied an earned raise and then found out a man, junior to me, got a larger one than I asked for without having to do anything extra to ‘justify’ it because, “he’s gonna be a dad". When I pointed out that I have a family to support too, I was told, “yeah, but you can go on welfare.” Obviously, I shouldn’t have to and keeping your word shouldn’t be 'an option' just because you make it to a woman rather than a man. I went on a blind date with a man who gladly told me, after talking with me for about an hour, that marrying me would be very helpful to get him into heaven because he’d be redeeming a fallen woman (because I’m a single mother). Turns out he was an evangelical, men I usually avoid like the plague for just this sort of reason and I don’t really need those sorts of favors. I’ve been followed 3 times by strangers and maybe stalked once by someone I knew in my own neighborhood. One of those guys followed me from the train after I had worked an extra half shift (so it was late, the last train) but first he sat across from me in an otherwise empty train car and started masturbating. Just right out there in the open and moaning. I got up to get off at the next stop and he started screaming that he loved me and begging me not to leave him and then followed me off the train. A man visiting one of my neighbors stopped me to ask about my dog and then said he’d have sex with me if I wanted but first he needed to knock back some more beers so he could perform better. I declined, rather politely out of confusion (you don’t always know just how to respond when the social contract is trounced), and as I was walking away he said, “hey bitch! You owe me restitution for slavery!”. He was drunk but it makes you wonder. That was just a weird kind of random, you know? My accent, maybe?

And that’s just the more jarring, out there, WTF stuff. Just this week, while I’ve been walking my dog some man—total random Barney, beer in hand, on the staircase of my apt building screamed at me to smile and two guys in a black truck— just this morning— squealed into an access road just to harass me while walking the dog. I couldn’t hear what they said over water running in the culvert but apparently it was hilarious. That’s nice. So glad to be an amusement.

There are some through lines you may have noticed in these events. Alcohol and drugs. Grievance, blame, boredom, and a kind of existential unease or loss of self/identity and the ensuing mental breakdown.

There is a correlation between leadership stoking grievance and the use of inflammatory, divisive, aggressive, and violent rhetoric and the harassment of women. I cannot imagine any of the above happening while Obama was president. There was harassment, there always is; but not this kind or level of crazy.

Men are spiritually broken because their entire sense of self definition has been cultivated around the wrong things. Entitlement instead of service. Men in such a crisis state tend to become more violent when a leader provides them a pressure valve for their discontent. Hatred of women is really low hanging fruit because gender is the first divide of one sort of human over another. A quick and easy way to (falsely) restore some sense of pride. But true male pride or restoration of masculinity will never occur by harassing women or brutalization of anyone in general. That’s no way to maintain pride in being a man as it does not serve family, nation, or God. Keeping yourselves in check and preserving public space does.

So, I’m armed when I walk my dog now, any time of day. I’ve never felt the need before. I do now.

My dog is terrified of the dark now. She hides when it’s time to go out before bedtime. I have to carry her out and she shakes and cries. We stay in the courtyard instead of making a loop around the neighborhood after dark because she won’t go willingly and I don’t want to force her when she’s clearly terrified.

How bad do you think the social realm/public space has gotten for women when the dog has developed PTSD?

So that’s where we are. It’s not all on Donald Trump. All the men and women who have enabled and pandered to him have, by extension, also enabled and pandered to all the men above. Leaders need to be held to a higher standard for a reason. Even the dog doesn’t feel as safe though the harassment hasn’t been leveled at her and she only gets the bits of it from walks and time in the park.

†My daughter just put this difference between men and women more succinctly. Men look to leadership to define (at least in part) their moral boundaries. Women look at the (sexual) morals of a candidate to see if they’ll be a good leader. It’s a flip of perspective and it seems to be somewhat innate.