He is the new US president. She has been the British prime minister for six months. On Friday they will meet in Washington, making her the first foreign leader to visit President Donald Trump, exactly a week after his inauguration.

They will talk about a post-Brexit trade deal, Nato and immigration, but when Andrew Marr asked Theresa May on television last weekend if she felt torn between the wish for “a good deal” and the urge to speak truth to power about women’s rights, she replied that while she disapproves of some of Trump’s comments, for now her priority is to identify common ground, and prove herself: “I think the biggest statement that can be made about the role of women is that I will be there as the female prime minister of the UK talking to him about the interests we share.”

Organisers of last Saturday’s Women’s March in the UK want marchers to write to May asking her to reaffirm the UK’s commitment to human rights. Those who marched were motivated in part by their anger that the new US president was filmed in 2005 boasting that his fame meant he could grab women by their genitals. Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 24 women. So what should British women, and others who care about women’s rights, think or feel about May, our second female prime minister, being the first leader to congratulate him in person, in the White House?

Call for Women's March on London protesters to write to PM about Trump Read more

Judging from the mood of the buildup, we should be grateful. The nightmare of the golden elevator has been averted: Nigel Farage, pictured grinning with the president-elect just a few days after November’s result was declared, is not the new British ambassador to the US, as Trump suggested he should be. Kim Darroch, who got the job only last year, has hung on to it. And the Tories, rather than Ukip, are still in charge.

The former foreign secretary William Hague sounded plain thrilled. “In foreign affairs, symbolism matters,” he began a piece in the Daily Telegraph, going on to boast of the “intimacy of the ties between London and Washington DC”. Does the May-Trump tête-à-tête suggest that in these perilous Brexit waters the so-called special relationship could count for something after all? Trump and May seem even to be flirting with the idea of upgrading it, with both of them calling it “very” special this month.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘As campaigners concerned that the warm glow of Saturday’s marches may swiftly dissipate have pointed out, it is more galvanising to be angry.’ Protesters in Canada. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

But pride at this British PR coup is not confined to Atlanticist Tories, as the Independent columnist and erstwhile Hillary Clinton supporter Jane Merrick declared herself “cheered” by the prospect of May, “a female politician – and a British woman at that”, meeting the most powerful man in the world “on equal terms”. Merrick used her column to attack those who believe conservatives can’t be feminists, and she’s right that you can be a feminist, as May has said she is, and still decide not to take the stand on behalf of women in a given meeting, on a given day.

But you don’t have to declare that May is not a feminist to think that the appropriate reaction to this week should not be triumphal, but rather a national sense of shame. Imagine the outrage if a rightwing and anti-immigration French president, or a climate change-denying Canadian one, had been granted this first meeting, which promises to flatter Trump as much as anything else, with a visit to Buckingham Palace dangled by various commentators as the ultimate treat for this vainest of men (wait till he sees our gold decor!), and a sure way to seal the deal with this new and super-special mate.

But for feminists, men as well as women, the week has a particular sting. On Monday misogyny made its expected return to US foreign policy, with the “global gag rule” first instituted by president Ronald Reagan brought back into force, forbidding any US government-funded NGO from providing abortion advice or information.

Theresa May reluctant to challenge Trump's 'unacceptable' sexism Read more

It’s not yet clear whether May will challenge Trump on this. In the past she has voted to reduce the time limit for abortions in the UK, and said in 2012 that her “personal view” was that it should be cut to 20 weeks. Whether she or her development secretary, Priti Patel, have views on abortion in the world’s poorest countries – where complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the second leading cause of death in girls and women aged from 15 to 19 – I don’t know. But the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which marks its 50th anniversary this month, has among its stated aims for the government “to stop giving public funds to global abortion promoters”. It’s not just US conservatives who seek to limit women’s reproductive freedoms internationally.

In which context, and combined with the utterly appalling way in which Hillary Clinton, the first female US presidential candidate, was systematically targeted with sexism by Trump and his supporters last year, it’s hard to muster anything but deep dismay shading into fear. Then again, and as campaigners concerned that the warm glow of Saturday’s marches may swiftly dissipate have pointed out, it is more galvanising to be angry, and to organise. So let’s do that.