There are still different rules for men and women.
Rules which make it possible for men to win and for women to lose. Rules which make it possible for a man to become president but not a woman.
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Women shocked by Trump win
Women across the United States voted for Hillary Clinton in hopes of elevating the first woman to the presidency. They were later met with disappointment when Donald Trump triumphed instead.
Here are the rules for men. If you seek higher office, your history can include incitement of violence and abuse towards women. Your history can include the kind of racism and bigotry which echoes Hitler's rise to power. Your history will include running businesses which are still refusing to pay those who worked for you.
You can be as post-fact and as post-truth as you like because the population will not judge you. Your history can include a rejection of equal rights for the LGBTQI community. You can even intersect a couple of those, by demeaning Ghazala Khan, the mother whose son died fighting for the US.
![Hillary Clinton pauses while speaking in New York where she conceded to Donald Trump.](/web/20161125082025im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/l/v/w/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsm6lr.png/1478773597294.jpg)
Yet no one has put it better than Amelia Paxman, a 27-year-old documentary film maker in Queensland, who tweeted yesterday: "Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career".
Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career
— Paxmee (@Paxmee) November 9, 2016
Because, much more terrifying than electing Trump as president, more serious than that, is the permission this gives to treat women in a particular way, as sluts and whores, as Miss Piggy and Miss Housekeeping, as commodities.
This was not the traditional political confrontation, of right versus left, or even of Right versus Left. This was about a decent flawed woman versus an indecent highly flawed man, a man who could tap into all the anxieties felt by those whose lives are changing around them.
![Democrat voters in Melbourne react to the election result.](/web/20161125082025im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/l/s/1/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsm6lr.png/1478773597294.jpg)
We knew that Clinton's mistakes were made in the course of her career as a public servant, political transactions taking place in a political arena. Trump, on the other hand, hates people who are not like him. Women, blacks, Hispanics, gays and lesbians. And when he dismantles America's fledgling attempt at universal healthcare, he will target the sick, the elderly and those living with a disability.
But right now, Trump's target is women. They are the majority, and they are also deeply divided. For weeks we heard that evangelical and conservative women would vote for Clinton yet the figures tell us that many of those women voted for Trump. Maybe they thought violence and abuse was better than a woman who supported Roe v Wade.
Clinton's womanhood has always been considered fair game for public commentary, considered either unwomanly or not a good enough woman. Her steely ambition to reach the top job is in stark contrast to the expectation that women are compliant and accommodating. At the same she has been reviled for being too accommodating, too Stand By Your Man, shamed for not leaving her philandering husband.
Clinton shows us that women can never get it right. If women want to succeed we are coldly ambitious. You have trouble warming to us. We aren't authentic. Sometimes, we are shameless sluts and whores, sometimes we asked for it. Sometimes we didn't say no loudly enough, often enough.
And yesterday for men, some men, many men, the defeat of Hillary Clinton was their dream come true, the ever-lasting buck's night, the moment in time when big swinging dicks proudly emerged to celebrate the death of another ambitious woman's dreams.
Powerful men are pussy-grabbers yet powerful women pussy-whip their men. This is still the world in which we live. There are different rules and different ways in which women are held accountable. Men have excuses, women are constructed as evil.
When Clinton won the nomination – as my women friends told me it would be all right, that I was over thinking things, that times had changed – I did what I always do: I worried. Worried that the US was not ready for a woman to lead; and that entrenched sexism and misogyny would destroy Hillary Clinton in the same way it had destroyed women before her.
Hillary parties? I wrote about them but I didn't go to any (was that it? Should I have gone? Please excuse my magical thinking).
And now it's done and so is she, the most qualified person ever to have stood for president.
When Amelia Paxman asks, "Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career" I can only reply that it won't. And it may not ever.
I read this from Clinton this morning: "To the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable & powerful & deserving of every chance to achieve your dreams."
And those of you sitting on the sidelines, lips pursed, commenting about how this isn't about sexism and misogyny, race or class, please f--- off.
Or get off your behinds and join with people who want change; women's groups, human rights groups, environmental groups, anti-racism groups, unions. Yes, unions. Join with people who want your daughters and your sons to live in a world where even the poor, the black, the disenfranchised, hell yes, even the women, have a chance to shape a better world. Stop being divided and defeated. Build unbreakable coalitions for the good of the many. Please, please, as so many have said before me, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
And in the meantime, never tell me to be grateful – and to appreciate – how far women have come. We have not.