Dr. Mary Bucklin said she was hoping that someday her job would be obsolete.
But Bucklin, a women’s and gender studies professor for over two decades, has found herself busier than ever in the aftermath of one of the most historic elections in the nation’s history.
In the days after the election, Bucklin has played moderator and transformed her classroom into a space that is safe for discussion.
“I had to come talk to my students to really feel better myself,” Bucklin said.
Regardless of the diverse pool of students in each of her classes, Bucklin said she always tried to keep students from casting blame.
“I was lucky enough to be able to create a safe enough space that Trump supporters talked as well, and I really like the idea of being able to talk from both sides … if we can’t have that conversation, we’re only going to stay divided,” Bucklin said.
Bucklin, who is also co-director of the women’s and gender studies program, believes privilege played a huge role in the election.
“I think it’s about privilege, the difference between groups and how they voted,” Bucklin said. “It’s about privilege and groups’ different feelings about their own privilege, or their lack of having privilege.”
Bucklin said it is difficult for some groups of people to give up some of their privilege in order to better society as a whole.
“We’re not evil people. We’re voting for what works for us,” Bucklin said.
Bucklin said she was not surprised Trump won the election, but she found it interesting that a lot of the dialogue was not centered around Clinton’s gender.
“Even though she was the first woman to actually be nominated by a major party, the discussion has not been around gender,” Bucklin said. “It’s been around hate speech. It’s been around the division in the country.”
Along with division in the country, Bucklin said she is concerned that Trump may try to challenge some of the rights women have.
“If president-elect Trump is able to reshape the Supreme Court to the point where they overturn Roe v. Wade, then women can no longer get birth control, they can no longer have abortions, and they no longer have control of their bodies,” Bucklin said.
Bucklin said she is also worried about how diversity will be impacted under Trump’s leadership, specifically the backlash against minorities and immigrants.
“There’s a whole social sense of our country that we are a diverse country, and that it’s good to be diverse. If we lose some of that, if we go back to, ‘You’re different than me, I don’t like you,’ that’s a concern of mine,” Bucklin said.
She also said some of her students have come to her with concerns about their identity.
“They’re concerned about, ‘What box do I check when I’m asked my gender,’ a little bit more than they were before,” Bucklin said. “People are sort of scared. They’re sort of afraid of what the ramifications would be to be their own person.”
She worries the kind of language Trump used throughout his campaign will normalize the kind of thinking that is degrading and discriminatory to women.
“It ‘OKs’ bigotry and violence against women, and women are concerned that his role, his modeling of being bigoted in his speech encourages others to not be silent when they want to say something,” Bucklin said.
But she said she is hopeful Trump’s rhetoric will help remind the public of the danger of bigotry and how to promote understanding.
“We haven’t solved sexism. We haven’t solved racism. We haven’t solved homophobia and all this other stuff, so it might remind us that we still have work to do,” Bucklin said.
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