Rachel Marsden: Trump is sparking a great girlfriend exodus

VANCOUVER, British Columbia There’s a quiet feminist revolution currently taking place under U. S. President Donald Trump, just as American men are getting more “alpha” and “badass” than they’ve ever been in the entire history of the Republic. And that has the bros very confused. Which is why your sister in conservatism is back again with a friendly explanation of why young American women are now actively considering crawling out the bathroom window of the country like they’re trying to escape a bad date. Nearly half of all women, aged 15 to 44, want to permanently quit America, according to a new Gallup poll. The cause? An erosion of institutional confidence, we’re told. But the data suggests that it all kicked off with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade in 2022, depriving young women of critical reproductive health choices and placing their entire lives and destinies in the hands of state governments. It’s not like women suddenly just decided to become whimsical nomads. They’re fleeing a system that can’t decide whether they’re citizens or broodmares, and that enjoys the support of a boisterous segment of society that feels increasingly empowered to refer to them as such. This was Trump’s doing. He was saying as far back as 2016, before he was even elected to a first term, that he would deliberately appoint justices to overturn Roe. Even though back in 1999, he described himself as “pro-choice,” explaining that “I just believe in choice.” His campaign donors didn’t, though. So women ended up getting treated like collateral damage, much like show-bombed Iranians in Trump’s current term after a $100 million campaign investment by Israeli-American megadonor Miriam Adelson. Money talks in Washington. And women are tired of arguing with it. The overturning of Roe was a turning point in a systemic crisis of confidence. Women no longer trust the fundamental social contract. Trump campaigned on the promise to clean up institutional corruption, and he has done that to some extent. Gutting the massive USAID slush fund was a great start. But abusing the terrorist label like an average neocon warmonger in order to bomb what look like fishing boats under the guise of “fighting narco-terrorism,” all because you want to grab Venezuela by the assets is a joke. And no one sees any effective institutional checks and balances there. Not a day goes by that there isn’t some kind of drama about airlines not operating properly, or federal services being unavailable due to government shutdown, or American businesses and consumers being slammed with price-spiking tariffs, or masked guys from “immigration and customs” showing up in city centers, or some crony getting a pardon or an appointment, or some sworn enemy getting investigated. It’s like permanently living inside a telenovela directed by Caligula. And when Trump evangelist and fundraiser, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated during a debate on a college campus in September, women all across America had to endure weeks worth of rhetoric, in homage to Charlie, about how they should be living their lives, mostly vis-à-vis men, like it was the 1950s. It echoed the well-worn rhetoric of Kirk and his organization, Talking Point USA, around obedience, submission and traditional roles. Because apparently they figure that women are just like household appliances they might seem broken, but it’s nothing that a return to factory settings couldn’t fix. Anyone who has scrolled social media recently can plainly see what young women want these days: mostly to live an independent life over which they have agency with or without a partner, or kids, (or cats). Instead, they get influencer bros, emboldened by MAGA rhetoric, telling them how they need to live in order to be happy. Usually that involves women’s lives orbiting around some dude’s and catering to his worldview. Nothing sends a young woman running for the border faster than a bro mansplaining “traditional femininity.” Look, the facts of life are conservative, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said. And ironically, this is exactly why women are now rebelling. What they want are the most conservative values imaginable: freedom, stability, autonomy. That means that they want the government out of their lives, not for it to just be hijacked by Trump, as he plops himself into the driver’s seat and makes loud proclamations about how he’s the “fertilization president” or the “father” of in-vitro fertilization. Or about how his policies on such things are “goodies” for women, adopting the lingo normally associated with creeps in ice cream vans. It only reinforces women’s perception that their autonomy is under threat by paternalism masquerading as conservatism. If women can’t get some peace and quiet in their lives if Trump can’t tone it down with the nonstop drama and noise then they’ll just move. To Canada, according to Gallup’s findings. Or New Zealand. Or Japan. Because if the people you’re living with won’t stop yelling at you and trying to boss you around, then you get a new apartment. Or country. By embracing a freedom-centered conservatism, Trump was supposed to reduce constraints for everyone. Instead, he has instigated a cultural shift. Women in growing numbers are adopting the independent, self-determined lifestyle options that second- wave feminists popularized in the 1970s. And the hallmark of this shift is the unconventional choice to go somewhere they feel they can achieve that lifestyle. Women are keen to abandon a system that has become overbearing. They’re rethinking conventional scripts. These aren’t feminists in an ideological sense, but rather by necessity. And unless Trump can stop running the country like a reality show and encouraging the evolution of manospheric jackassery into a national pastime, women are increasingly likely to pass on the opportunity to stick around and watch the circus unfold in a system that denies them the most basic rights and respect. (Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at ©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
https://www.courant.com/2025/11/20/rachel-marsden-trump-is-sparking-a-great-girlfriend-exodus/

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