"Your Body, My Choice": Gen Z Women Are Feeling Unsafe at College and Online

Averyann Guggenheim and Reagan Hirchag both tuned into election night coverage feeling cautiously hopeful. Two undergraduate students with law school ambitions, the women each hold leadership roles at their school's respective chapters of College Democrats of America: Guggenheim is the president at Texas State University, while Hirchag runs outreach and programming at Auburn University in Alabama. Neither managed to stay up for the final results, but by the time they went to bed on Tuesday, 850 miles apart, the final outlook was already grim.

Not 24 hours later, a jubilant MAGA parade whooped its way through Auburn's campus, while members of a likely neo-Nazi group posed with "Women Are Property" signs at Texas State.

President-elect Donald Trump surprised analysts Tuesday when exit polls showed gains among Gen Z voters ages 18-29 — up 11 percentage points from 2020. Some commentators have attributed this to the radicalization of young, white men who watch and engage with alt-right internet personalities by the millions.

In an episode of the New York Times podcast "The Run-Up," host Astead Herndon attended a University of Wisconsin–Madison tailgate and interviewed groups of frat boys, attempting to investigate the gender divide between young men who are supposedly getting more conservative and young women who are getting more liberal.

Several of the Trump-voting interviewees admitted to getting all their news from Twitter, as well as from figures like Charlie Kirk, Joe Rogan, and other right-wing and alt-right influencers. Political TikToker JeysusChrist posted a video this week about this exact phenomenon — what she calls the "propaganda machine" that's "targeted our young men."

"We have an entire generation of little boys that is being raised on the propaganda that Andrew Tate and Elon Musk are pushing right now, and we're cutting it down to, 'Oh it's just internet trolls, that's all it is,'" she says. But, she warns, it's about to get "a hell of a lot worse" with Trump back in power.

At Texas State, Guggenheim noticed an "influx of hateful rhetoric" pretty much immediately after the election results came in. Between the presence of neo-Nazis and the slew of racist "plantation" text messages that have targeted Black students at her school and across the country, her campus feels bleak. "It's been very hateful and somber for sure," she says. "It's scary to think about what's gonna happen next."

At Auburn, Hirchag said she's contacted the university multiple times just this week after learning about different instances of hate speech and the desecration of Pride flags. "Certain people from the LGBTQ community and people of color are scared to leave their dorms or apartments; people have been calling them slurs," she says. "We have pro-life organizations on campus, and for women specifically, [their messaging] is sometimes thrown in your face. The list goes on and on of people feeling unsafe."

Similar intimidation attempts are coursing through the internet, affecting young women on and off college campuses. After alt-right extremist Nick Fuentes posted a celebratory pro-Trump video gleefully advocating for sexual assault, the catchphrase "your body, my choice" has surged in the comment sections of women's TikToks.

Hannah Cor, a 27-year-old somatic practitioner at SHEchiatry therapy center in Nashville, posted a TikTok highlighting the troubling trend, which she'd observed in the comments of other women's videos. But once she spoke up, she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of the same threats and harassment.

"I wasn't on TikTok much leading up to the election, to protect my peace, but this just [was] a complete and utter gates-open, free-for-all, whatever you wanna call it," she says. Mixed in with the more graphic comments were messages like "men won," "men are always winning," and "men win again."

Cor, Hirchag, and Guggenheim all cite reproductive freedom as a main reason they voted for Harris, and the results of this election throw doubt on the future of this issue and many more that stand to impact women specifically. Guggenheim, who has PCOS and endometriosis, worries about continued access to birth control and IVF treatments, as well as the fate of friends and family members who are immigrants.

Hirchag, who says she's always wanted to be a mom, wants to know that if she has a daughter, she'll "be able to make her own decisions."

She thinks about that every time she sees the MAGA-wear that's infiltrated her campus. "Trump's following has been equated to cultish. Young, white men have been brought into this, and it's not just like, 'Oh I agree with a few of his points,' it's like a ride or die," Hirchag says.

The night of the election, Cor had to quickly run to the store for something. She instinctively threw on her camo Harris-Walz hat, but then paused at the door, realizing that it might not be physically safe to wear it out by herself. That constant hum of vulnerability is something most women are already familiar with, but has sharply intensified for some in the last several days as sexist rhetoric has taken on a more violent tone.

It's a bully mentality, Cor says — modeled by what she calls the "professional bully" who was just elected to the White House.

As Herndon of "The Run-Up" said in that same episode about Wisconsin students, "These guys knew Trump offended women in their lives, and not only was that not a deal-breaker, that was the point."

It's easier to brush off that attitude on a playground, in a middle school hallway, or between a teenager and their parents. But when it shapes laws that are the difference between life and death for millions of women, it's hard to see it as anything but pure disdain, Cor says.

"This experience has allowed people to hate women more out loud than they have for a really long time," she says. "But we have to stick together. Our love for each other can far outweigh their hate for us."

Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she's covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.