Hillary’s Trump Card: The Woman’s Card

This was a few weeks ago, but it still makes me laugh. The presumptive Republican candidate for President (*shudders*), Donald Trump, recently made headlines when he stated that the only reason Hillary was succeeding was because she was playing the “woman’s card” and that if she were not a woman she would only be getting 5% of the vote.

The complete nonsense of the premise behind his statement has been broken down in many places, but I’d like to focus this piece on the power of humor.

One of my favorite WaPo bloggers, Alexandra Petri, won the internet in my opinion with her excellent piece Play the ‘woman card’ and reap these ‘rewards’!. I don’t even feel like I can quote from the article because every single line is so good. I’ll wait here while you go read it before continuing.

Within hours (minutes?) of Trump’s statement, #womancard was trending on Twitter:

And it still is, weeks later:

Women across the country have united against Trump’s outright sexism and misogyny and have proudly proclaimed their support for Hillary (see also #imwithher). A Kickstarter campaign for a deck of cards with famous women has raised almost $120,000. Hillary’s campaign is selling an “Official Woman Card.”

While the Bernie Bros’ #HillaryDropOut and #NeverHillary campaigns are a frustrating distraction (see here for an excellent take-down of the privilege inherent in the #NeverHillary camp), the overall tone on Twitter and elsewhere has made me proud and happy to be a part of the Internet generation. For once, a social media campaign by women, on behalf of women, has succeeded. The key, I think, has been humor. I hope that the success of the #womancard campaign inspires Hillary and Democrats to continue working the meme-scape into November. Because the only way to fight Trump (and win the youth vote) might just be to point and laugh at the absurdity.