Pantsuit Nation draws liberal women and allies in divided US
The secret Facebook group sprung up in the final days of the 2016 presidential election, bringing together Hillary Clinton supporters who simply wanted to champion their candidate among fellow enthusiasts. Now numbering just under four million members, Pantsuit Nation is a space for progressive women and their allies to share personal stories - many uplifting, others heartbreaking-in a nation divided under President Donald Trump.
“It’s easy to get hopeless as supporters of Secretary Clinton, as liberals and Democrats, (and) to feel alone,” founder Libby Chamberlain said. “We have so many members who live in communities or families where they don’t have like-minded individuals... they can’t go next door to commiserate with the neighbor about what’s happening at the national level, but they can go to this space online.” The 33year-old runs Pantsuit Nation from a spare bedroom in her home in tiny Brooklin, Maine, a coastal town of 800 residents primarily known for boat-building.
She started the Facebook group on October 20, while working two part-time jobs at nearby high schools. Her idea was to encourage Clinton supporters to wear pantsuits-the Democratic former secretary of state’s go-to outfit-to the polls on November 8. Overnight, the group ballooned to 24,000 people as members added friends, who then added their friends. By November 5, Pantsuit Nation had grown to a million members, reaching 3.1 million by the end of Election Day.
Photos of exuberant pantsuit-clad women at polling sites quickly gave way to posts brimming with anger and despair following Trump’s electoral win. These days, Pantsuit Nation’s content centers around Trump’s conservative agenda, with members describing the real-life effects of his moves to restrict immigration, tear up health care laws or remove protections for transgender people. “I think there is a hunger in this country for personal stories that humanize the impact of policy that is happening at the national, state and local level,” Chamberlain said. “It feels immediate and human and it allows people to hold onto something,” she said.
‘Double whammy’
Darla Barar, a 30-year-old marketing copywriter in Austin, Texas, wrote on Pantsuit Nation about her late-term abortion and voiced opposition to a measure in Congress seeking to define human life as beginning at fertilization. “This bill really hit us hard because the wording is such that it would essentially put a ban on IVF procedures as well as abortion,” said Barar. “It was a double whammy for us.” She was expecting twins, conceived through IVF, when a scan at the midpoint of her pregnancy revealed one of her daughters had grave issues including a neural tube defect that was allowing brain matter to leak out of her skull. —AFP