The weekend after the presidential election, Mariah*, 33, went to a friend’s wedding. She was still grieving President-elect Donald Trump’s win and felt nervous about the inevitable political conversations that would come up with other guests. But rather than downing mixed drinks or hiding in the bathroom to cope, Mariah channeled her anxiety toward a specific goal: She wanted to get laid.
“I felt deeply in my bones that I needed to f*ck a man,” she says. “I didn’t want to care who he voted for, so I made an active choice not to think about it.” She spotted her target at the welcome drinks event: a harmless-seeming man in a vest who joked about voting for Trump — at least, she’s pretty sure it was a joke (she didn’t inquire further). She propositioned him that night, but he stayed out to party and told her, “We’ll do it tomorrow.”
The following night at the wedding, they kissed during the reception — “our first makeout was in the photo booth” — and she went back to his hotel room for a drunken hookup and morning-after sex. She didn’t have an orgasm, but she didn’t care: He was hot, she’d wanted to f*ck him, and her wish had come true. “There was something kind of satisfying in that,” Mariah says. “It felt like, ‘I’m going to go to town and use this man for his body.’”
In the wake of Trump’s re-election, the dating discourse online has been combative and furious. As several states continue to roll back reproductive rights, many women want to use their bodies on exactly their own terms. For example, South Korea’s 4B movement is going TikTok viral as some progressive Americans vow to swear off men.
But another set of young women are processing their frustration a little differently: by having lots of sex with whoever they want, election depression be damned.
A DNC-Induced Hand Job
“It’s hard to care about things at the moment,” Mariah says. Her feral streak started this summer when Vice President Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee, “which was exciting and empowering, but also terrifying because we didn’t know what was going to happen.” During a walk after a flirtatious drinks date, she gave the guy an outdoor hand job because she felt like it. “Just fully on the side of the street, how ridiculous?” she says. “Nothing else ever happened between us.”
Now, she’s feeling the itch to wield her sexuality for her own benefit more than ever. “I’m bi, so I sleep with women too, but this energy feels specifically about having agency over men because [reproductive rights are] being taken away [in some states],” Mariah says. “It’s definitely a control thing.”
A Stacked Left-Wing Roster
In an uncertain world, some women are Samantha Jones-ing their power back. Shelby*, 30, felt a lot of “pent-up anxiety” in the months leading up to the election, and wasn’t dating much. Now that it’s over, she’s back on the apps with full force, hooking up with guys as often as possible “to combat the loneliness that a Trump presidency makes me feel,” she says. (She vets their political alignment first.) “The more we can be touched and be celebrated — that cannot be a bad thing in this equation.”
She supports 4B but also worries that it ultimately denies women pleasure. “Think about the physical touch piece alone,” she says. “It begs the question of whether it’s truly more feminist to deny ourselves this thing that we need.”
A Booty Call With Benefits
For Anna,* 31, having casual sex feels like reclaiming her desire after a few months of looming anxiety. “It feels like an act of slight rebellion to be like, ‘F*ck this. I’m going to do whatever I want and get pleasure where I can,’” she says.
In mid-November, she answered an early-morning booty call because he lived by Trader Joe’s and offered to call her an Uber. “I used that to my advantage,” Anna says. “I showed up with my reusable bag so I could get laid and then go grocery shopping.”
Embracing The Chaos
All three women I spoke with acknowledged the privilege of living in New York where, at least for now, they’re able to have sex without worrying about the loss of abortion access or birth control. In the wake of an election that has left her feeling unmoored and bitter, Anna is cherishing safe, controlled chaos in her personal life. “I get to choose who touches me and how,” she says. She’s telling men exactly how to get her off. “At the very least, you can care about my pleasure.”
For Mariah, it’s about living in the moment. “Maybe at some point in the future I won’t be able to have carefree sex. Let me enjoy my life while I can,” she says. Shelby plans to keep being feral for as long as she’s able. “Once a hoe, always a hoe,” she says. “Donald Trump does not take that from me.”
*Name has been changed.
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