Feminist Tweets to Trump: How to Find Commonality in Diversity

The 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and first year of the Trump presidency have defied conventional politics in multiple ways. Among the many shocking deviations from modern political normalcy has been Donald Trump’s appeal to a sizeable minority of the American electorate, especially in rural and post-indus-trial areas, to hitch their hopes for American greatness on stressing racial, class, religious, ethnic, and gender differences among citizens and pitting the interests of immigrants and foreign powers against those of a genuine (white) America. At this moment, it seems crucial to strategize ways to mend America’s shredded social fabric. “Feminist Tweets to Trump” offers models for pursuing that goal from an unexpected source: feminist theory and activism. There are few social movements or theoretical perspectives besides feminism that can offer so many robust examples of paradigms, frameworks, and mechanisms for conceptualizing and actualizing connections among groups and for seeking common purpose, both despite and through substantial differences in identities, experiences, and social locations. Feminist connection strategies include: (1) challenging rigid binary thinking about sexuality and gender difference; (2) recognizing how racial divides map onto hierarchies of power and status and undermining both through non-oppositional identity politics, intersectionality, and mestiza consciousness; and (3) finding commonality across nations and geographical regions by exposing shared structural relations and the invisible political histories that link people who otherwise share few life experiences, practices, identities, or cultural values.