News

Actions

Trump supporters tweet to #Repealthe19th

Posted at 12:31 AM, Oct 13, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-13 00:31:31-04

NEW YORK — Make America … go back to 1900?

In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. And this week, in 2016, an actual trending hashtag on Twitter is #Repealthe19th.

On Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight published maps of projected outcomes of the presidential election. One showed what could happen if just men voted (Donald Trump would emerge victorious), the other if just women voted (Hillary Clinton would be the first female president, by a landslide).

A similar map was touted in a Trump campaign email on Wednesday morning asking for donations from supporters: “We’re making huge gains against Crooked Hillary that you can see for yourself,” it read.

The maps seemed to have sparked an idea among some Trump supporters — what if the 19th Amendment were repealed? And a hashtag was born.

But far outweighing the number of tweets in support of a repeal were those outraged by the very suggestion.

It wasn’t lost on people that #Repealthe19th comes on the heels of another gender-charged hashtag, also created with Trump in mind. Last Friday, New York Times best-selling author Kelly Oxford started the hashtag #NotOkay in response to a 2005 tape that surfaced of Trump making profoundly offensive and misogynistic comments about women.

Trump’s comments exemplified rape culture, the act of normalizing and overlooking violence against women.

And Oxford started getting women to talk about their stories of sexual assault. As of Wednesday morning, Oxford tweeted that more than 30 million people had read or contributed to the #NotOkay hashtag.

Since the 2005 tape came out on Friday, at least four more women, including a former People Magazine reporter, have publicly said that Trump made inappropriate physical advances.