Misogyny amplified

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“Hey Grandma, blankety blankety-blank!” a dude yelled from the open window of a passing car. Me, I was peacefully walking around Lake Harriet, wordless in the aftermath of last week’s election debacle. I looked around. No one else was in sight. The young man was yelling at me. Misogyny never stops.

Without thinking, that was my first reaction after the election results came in. The week before, someone told a local friend at his Tennessee high school reunion, “I ain’t voting for no Black woman.” That same week before the election, I was wrong, oh so wrong. Listening to the extreme denial in my gut that assured me Vice President Kamala Harris would be our first woman president. I couldn’t fathom former President Donald Trump rising again.

An unexpected reaction landed in my mind. Misogyny will reign across this land, more so than ever before: rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, subjugation of wives, pregnant women dying of sepsis. That was what I was feeling as Trump won, against all odds of decency. I wasn’t thinking about the possible downfall of democracy.

My friend Claire, in Maine, told me about a man she saw standing on a Main Street corner of South Portland on Nov. 6. Holding an American flag in his hand. Wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Kamala Harris on the front, an arrow pointing to her face, accompanied by the disgusting C-word.

Our next president is immune from everything. Unbridled misogyny is a hallmark of his personality. Might his testosterone-poisoning contribute to his rising support among those young dudes? Finally, a real man in charge? Or “Her body, my choice,” a disgusting meme circulating online?

I have felt the fear of misogyny my entire life. As most women have since they were girls. The only nightmare I remember having as a young girl with dark eyes and braids, was about a boy whom I heard liked me. He pushed me into a shadowy corner of the playground. He plunged a big red arrow into my big red heart. As blood spurted out the boy who supposedly liked me ripped open my pure white blouse. Buttons popped into the wind before falling to the ground.

Or the summer my ex-husband and I lived in Norfolk, Va. I was in my early 20s. Walking down the street close to our apartment, I was wearing a halter top with short shorts. A truckload of working men sitting in the back drove by, pointing at me, laughing and talking among themselves about what they would do if they caught me.

I may have given them the finger, then started running toward our apartment. The truck turned around, heading slowly toward me.

My hand trembled as I unlocked our apartment door. I locked myself in the bathroom. Shaking. No cellphones back then. Men could break the flimsy door down at any moment. How would my then husband find me on the floor of that bathroom? Bloodied? Dead? Terrified?

I stayed there, slumped on the floor for at least an hour. I emerged. Breathed a sigh of relief. I was safe that day. A survivor of misogyny.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve never been raped, abused or physically assaulted by a man. But I’ve been afraid. Very afraid. Like all women.

When I was young and cute, walking by a construction site down Boston’s Tremont Street, I felt my heart clench. Whistles, cat calls, occasional obscene comments followed me. That scene most likely followed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other young women on any given day.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,” noted the author Margaret Atwood. And now, I fear those young dudes who voted for Trump. Good men can’t get what it’s like for women in this still misogynistic world. That truth for women is only one of the assaults we will suffer during the next four years, perhaps longer. Or perhaps for the rest of this grandma’s life.

It’s more than a week after the election. I no longer feel like throwing up. But I still feel like crying.

Sheila Wilensky, of Minneapolis, is a freelance writer and editor.