A cat lady’s survival guide for the second Trump administration

For days and weeks to come, there will be endless analyses of how Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who fomented an insurrection and was found civilly liable for sexual assualt, still somehow won another presidential election. There’s racism, right-wing propaganda, a failing information environment, and perhaps an American death wish. All those were big factors, but we cannot overlook how much the Trump campaign was built around a pitch to men that he would finally bring women to heel.

Yelling “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” on social media is one of the millions of things Trump has done that should have disqualified him, if only on grounds of idiocy, but the underlying sentiment — disobedient women need to be punished — was unmistakable. The result is a nauseating gender gap in exit polling, showing a majority of women in every age group voted for Kamala Harris, yet the vice president could not crack 50% even with the youngest group of men.

What is remarkable about Trump and the MAGA movement is how visceral and personal the misogyny is. These aren’t the conservatives of old who hid their woman-hatred behind a Bible and condescending talk about “family values.” Trump and his allies channel a palpable anger at individual women for having the gall to walk around like full citizens. We see it in Trump’s inability to stop defaming E. Jean Carroll, a woman a civil jury found he sexually assaulted in the 90s. We see it in Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, and his obsession with “cat ladies.”  We see it in the bizarre impregnation fantasies of billionaire Elon Musk and in MAGA influencer Ben Shapiro setting Barbie dolls on fire. In the face of this, there’s been a lot of pressure on women to do more to soothe fragile male egos. There are endless articles about the “male loneliness epidemic,” which are well-intended but overlook how too many men follow leaders who openly encourage antisocial behavior. We talk endlessly about creating healthy masculinities to compete with the toxic kind but sidestep how women can’t actually make men want to be better. Pundits have even flirt with the suggestion that if women just, you know, threw a little more sex in the direction of terrible men, that would calm them down. (Stormy Daniels tried placating Trump with sex, and that didn’t work, y’all.) 

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I don’t know about y’all, but after the majority of men voted to put a screeching sexual predator back into office, I’m feeling like it’s time to wind down this era of hand-holding and hair-stroking. Taking inspiration from Taylor Swift, it’s time for a new era: one where being a giant sexist pig has consequences. If MAGA men are half as strong as Joe Rogan tells them they are, they can toughen up and accept women’s rejection. There’s even ways for progressive men to participate in the “suck it up” program. We can all join hands and tell the guardians of toxic masculinity to kiss our collective rear end. I have some ideas on how we can, in our daily lives, resist the efforts of MAGA men to colonize women’s bodies and minds. But please, feel free to come up with some of your own!

Divorce your Republican husband

Those ads showing women secretly voting for Harris were cute, but, in retrospect, too gentle. Look, MAGA men know that they are becoming ever more impossible to live with, which is why Vance and his allies are making noises about ending no-fault divorce. There’s no time like the present to kick your Trump-voting spouse to the curb. If anything, you might want to move quickly, before they come after that right, like they did the right to abortion. It’s been 9 years. He’s not going to see you as a person deserving full rights. Cut him loose. 

And yes, I’m aware that plenty of women voted for Trump, too. They should also be unceremoniously dumped, but odds are most of them are already married to another Trumper. But you can cut them off, as well. Consequences can be for all genders! 

Never date a Trump voter

There’s chatter on social media about the “4B movement,” a South Korean movement of women who are boycotting men. It’s a radical idea that includes not just rejecting marriage, but all heterosex and child-bearing. Maybe I’m spoiled by knowing so many genuinely good, Harris-voting men, but I’m not quite ready to go there. Plus, for those of us who are exclusively attracted to men, a life without sex is just punishment. The point of this is to punish sexist men, not ourselves.

But refusing to date Trump voters? That’s an easy one. Don’t waste a single moment of your one precious life on such men. Use your freed-up time to volunteer with pro-choice or environmental groups, which adds the bonus of meeting new friends. Or, if you really want to stick it to Vance, join a cat rescue group. 

There are already MAGA men fanning out on social media, declaring that this election means women no longer have the right to reject them. 

The good news is a swipe left or the word “no” punctuated with a laugh will relieve them of this delusion. 

Put off getting married — or avoid it altogether

I’m skeptical of the sex-free agenda, but what’s great about not getting married is it’s usually much easier than getting married. You just have to keep not planning a wedding, which leaves more time for that cat rescue work. It was already true that straight marriage is, statistically speaking, a raw deal for women. It’s a direct transfer of free time hours from a woman to a man, due mostly to men being able to foist housework off on women. But with Republicans escalating their threats to take away the right to divorce, marriage may be too big a risk to take right now. 

Trust me: I’ve been not-married for nearly two decades to the same guy, and it was so easy to do. We just kept never getting around to it. Procrastination is rarely a virtue, but in this case, it’s an excellent way to stick it to the patriarchy. 

Get an IUD — or sterilized

Both Vance and Musk spend much of their waking hours complaining that the uteruses of (white) America are not full enough. Vance, lying, has even argued that Democratic leaders tell women not to have children because of climate change. But Vance and Trump’s policies and cultural grievances are exactly why it is an increasingly bad idea to have kids. They are making a world so scary and degraded that it’s perfectly understandable not to want to inflict it on a child. 

Plus, just as with marriage, the risks of getting pregnant are rising rapidly. Not to bring the mood down too much, but the stories are piling up of women killed or maimed because of abortion bans. Trump will likely ban abortion nationwide, which MAGA leaders are admitting out loud now that they’ve won. Maybe this will be over in a few years and having kids will be safe again. Or maybe you can drift into your menopause years as a fun-loving bohemian auntie, instead of “Grandma.” But in the meantime, sticking to the childless part of the cat lady lifestyle is one way to deny the jerks a victory. 

No patience for MAGA male whining 

Cut all those men right out of your life who have made being a whiner their “manly” identity. Men complain about way too much these days: Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, women who swipe left on Tinder, “Barbie” or other movies with female leads, pronouns in social media bios, pumpkin spice lattes, whatever Joe Rogan is telling them to be angry about. If they are such manly men, they need to practice some old-fashioned masculine stoicism. “Suck it up, crybaby” should be the standard issue response to all male complaining (unless it’s about real stuff, like abortion bans killing women). 

The beauty is this is one progressive men can do as well, if not better, than women. If you have a male friend who is throwing himself a pity party because he didn’t like what some liberal lady said on Twitter, one swift way to deal is telling him to eat some crackers. Then block his number. The male loneliness epidemic is not your problem to solve. Get yourself less awful friends — there are even platonic female friendships available! 

Dress how you want

At the very tippy top of pointless reasons men voted for a fascist, the outrage over women who have blue hair and tattoos beautifully illustrates how broken their brains are. The amount of carping by dudes on MAGA social media because some women don’t try to meet their L.L. Bean fantasies of bland feminine beauty is truly astounding. Being mad about blue hair and tattoos takes up approximately 85-95% of their waking hours. Even cat-owning doesn’t rate as high as an “outrage” as women styling themselves in ways MAGA men don’t like. 

If you were considering a dramatic change to your appearance, such as dying your hair a loud and unnatural color, there is no time like the present. Or if you’re ready for that first tattoo, go for it. I recommend a picture of a cute cat or a riot grrrl punching a groper in the face. This is also a fun activity that men can partake in. MAGA men may be too cowardly to indulge a longing to wear glitter or paint their fingernails, but you don’t have to be. Wear pink clothes and skirts, if you like! If these men can’t leave the house without being triggered by someone else’s appearance, they deserve to suffer.

Adopt cats

You’ve now freed yourself of having to care about men who can’t even take care of their country, but there is one more step on the road to living the true cat lady lifestyle: Cats!

Unlike men, who have agency and could have called a therapist instead of following Elon Musk on Twitter, lonely and needy cats are innocent and deserving of your love. When you engage one of the many excellent rescue groups around the country, you will find there are clingy cats or aloof cats, energetic cats or lazy cats, stubborn cats or people pleasers. But what you don’t have to worry about is if your potential new pet voted for Trump or secretly believes Jordan Peterson makes good points. Cats are 100% MAGA-free, which automatically makes them better than most men. Even if you go a little wild and get “too many” cats — say 3 or 4 — you can comfort yourself by remembering that’s still fewer than the number of children that MAGA wants to force women to have. 

This is one more men can participate in. Men can and should be cat ladies, too. Don’t let the sexist cat-haters scare you off, my dudes! A cuddly feline friend is always and forever better than having toxic men in your life. 

Obviously, much of this is tongue-in-cheek, but there’s a serious point here. As writer Soraya Chemaly told my Salon colleague, Mary Elizabeth Williams, women are “quiet quitting from heteropatriarchy” already. They’re pickier about who they date. Slightly over half of women aren’t married. The childbirth rate has steadily declined for years, and did not pick back up after the pandemic and subsequent economic recovery. Nearly half of the childless adults under 50 say they will never have kids, and not because they can’t afford it. Most say they just don’t want to. 

There are responses to this that could have been productive. Men could regard women as equals and act accordingly, in ways big and small, from respecting a woman’s right to keep her last name to respecting her opinions to picking up after yourself. Many men do this, and as some of them are my friends, so I can tell you they don’t shut up about how well they clean up on the dating market because of it. Yet a whole bunch of men are throwing a tantrum and voting for a party that makes empty promises that they don’t have to learn to be better because women can be forced into compliance. The sooner they find out that is not true, the higher the odds that they give up the dream of male domination. So turn up the volume on that quiet quitting and make it a hell of a lot louder.