The train was like the Hogwarts Express, but for feminists. Amtrak 141 left New York City at 9.35am on Friday, bound for Washington DC, and on the morning of Donald J Trump’s inauguration it was full of women wearing trainers, because they were women going to Washington to walk. Four years ago, this train must have been full of people heading to DC to celebrate Barack Obama’s second inauguration. And there must have been a Trump supporter somewhere in the crowd.

But this train was filled with people skipping the inauguration, which takes place while we’re onboard. Trump may be a native son of New York, but, by and large, New Yorkers don’t like him and most of the people on the train were heading south for the main event on Saturday: the Women’s March.

My American life has been one in which I always understood that I was on the right side of the argument

Like so many other middle-class, white people on the left, living in the bubble of New York City, I think I believed I would not have to invest that much time in speaking truth to power once Hillary Clinton ascended to the presidency. Like everyone else, it was late in the evening of 8 November when I realised that the 45th president would be a person who had overwhelmingly demonstrated a profound hatred of women. A bullet point on the list of all the other groups of people who he and his supporters loathe.

Born in the early 1980s to a white, middle-class family, it has been my privilege throughout most of my life to not know institutionalised bigotry against people like me. I’ve experienced my fair share of sexual harassment and occasional antisemitism, but my American life has been one in which I always understood that I was on the right side of the argument, that there was a kind of national understanding that it was not OK to be a bigot. That I was allowed to object and that I’d be supported.

The victory of the bigot-in-chief has made me realise my naivety too late. Trump’s presidency is an endorsement of bigotry: he gives bigots permission. Women of colour have known of this permission long before Trump’s ascent; women like me need to listen better and learn from them.

Donald J Trump is a man who doesn’t like women’s bodies – is disgusted by them, describes them as disgusting – unless he wants to have sex with them or the body belongs to Ivanka Trump. So, the physical massing of women who oppose him feels like one of the most appropriate ways to stand against him. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend.

There were many twentysomethings – the people I’m used to seeing at demonstrations – but also many women with their teenage daughters and even kids of primary school age. Lots of pink “pussy” hats, including on one of the train conductors. “Why are you wearing that?” one of his colleagues asked in passing. “For women!” he cried.

I was most surprised by how many older women there were, in their 60s and 70s. I sat in a foursome of seats with three baby boomers. Two immigrated to the US: one from Australia, one from Northern Ireland. Two were retired teachers. Two went to Catholic school; one still practises the religion. All of these women voted for Hillary Clinton, who’s their peer, but they spoke less about her loss and more about their horror of Trump – the conversation has moved from a stolen election to the fear of the future. “Politics and religion are the two things that we were always told not to discuss,” said one of the former teachers, “and those are the two things that oppress people. Especially women.”

I changed trains in Baltimore and reached Washington at 2pm. Union Station is a short walk from the mall, where the inauguration had just wrapped up. The queue for the ladies’ room in the station was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but the main station concourse was full of white people wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats without any irony at all. They looked satisfied.

Jean Hannah Edelstein is a writer and editor



