If Donald Trump’s previous administration taught us anything, it’s that women’s bodies do not matter. The autonomy of those bodies, the frequent injustices and abuses inflicted on them, are of little consequence to a far-right misogynist administration that is – unbelievably to some – back in power after an all too brief period of reprieve, if not change. Women’s bodies are also of little consequence to the people who voted for Donald Trump.
Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, I saw Regina Spektor playing at the Royal Festival Hall. She sat down at a piano and sang her song Ballad of a Politician. “A man inside a room is shaking hands with other men,” it opens: “This is how it happens / Our carefully laid plans.” The almost physical weight of sadness in Spektor’s performance, and that of the women in the audience, is something I have never forgotten.
