'I Hope We Choose Love' - Editorial
“Your body, my choice. Forever.”
That is one of the more-haunting messages we have seen in the past week, but it is unfortunately just one of many more pieces of discourse that have shaken loose in the wake of the election.
Young girls are coming home from school and reporting hearing the phrase lobbed at them by male classmates. The Institute For Strategic Dialogue has already done an entire media report on the rise of the phrase and other misogynistic sentiments online following the election—that is how much content in this vein is on the internet right now.
Depending on what online circles you run in, you have seen it, too—thinly veiled “jokes” about the loss of more rights that hang in the balance for women—and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Black Americans in states across the country have shared that they’ve received anonymous text messages that, to be blunt about it, address them as slaves and give them a “cotton-picking assignment.” It is horrifying on all fronts.
What we cannot stop asking, though, is why? What is all this chest-beating for?
Within 24 hours of the election results beginning to take shape last week, the phrase and similar ones saw an increase of 4,600 percent on X, formerly Twitter—a site owned by Elon Musk, who staunchly aligned himself with and rallied his audience around Donald Trump ahead of the election. That being said, considering the cast of characters and high stakes surrounding this election, we can’t say we are too surprised. We are, however, severely disappointed in the stark turn the political rhetoric has taken.
Are these the messages the American people voted to endorse? Is it all bravado, to flex the muscle of the winning side? These are messages that, consciously or not, we apparently have co-signed. Millions of voters last week decided that the things these messages are steeped in—rampant misogyny, racism and authoritarianism, to name a few—were not deal breakers.
What does that say to our daughters? What does that tell our sons? And how are we, as a united nation, meant to bridge a gap in who has power and who is worthy of respect and humanity that 70-plus-million of our neighbors voted to carve out?
This hateful rhetoric will get us nowhere. A victory lap after such a tense election is one thing, but using the outcome as a green light to voice hateful, harmful and outright dangerous statements—such as implying female bodies are, now until forever, under the governance of American men—is deplorable. America was founded on freedom, but freedom of thought does not and should not trump the American dream of forming a more-perfect union. Fear and division do nothing to promote domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare. These things help no one, save maybe the ruling class, and do nothing to help unite this country.
This editor recently finished “I Hope We Choose Love,” a book of prose and essays written by Chinese-Canadian author Kai Cheng Thom. In the title essay, she muses on various thoughtful solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, vengeance and forgiveness. She discusses the need to find a better way forward, and for people living under democracy everywhere to resist the trap of political divides and meet each other where they are. We are with her—we need to find a way to come together and heal, for we fear what may happen if the opposite persists.
But fear cannot persist in the face of understanding, of humanity, of neighborliness, and of love. To quote Thom: “We can choose to consume each other or we can choose love. Even in the midst of despair, there is always a choice. I hope we choose love.”