Postelection Thoughts on Rachel and Feminist Solidarity
If Rachel were here, she would’ve told white women about themselves (again) after the 2024 election. I know this because it mattered to her to use her privilege, as a white woman, to amplify the work and voices of women who weren’t white. She did it for me. The number of editors who reached out to me, at her behest, introduced my writing and work in spaces that had otherwise been closed. I met the agent who breathed life back into my writing career and got to publish my first book because Rachel thought it not robbery to extend her community and network toward me. One of one, she was.
… or is she? In so many ways, Rachel was doing all she could to ensure that women, white women especially, understood the assignment — which is to smash the patriarchy that is within us. In another essay, called “We Need Feminism … ,” Rachel laid out the case for the necessity of feminism in the world. With pointed simplicity, she outlined the harm girls and women experience around the world and how our commitment to equality — which is what feminism is — would eradicate that harm. Written in 2014 for the #WomenAgainstFeminism campaign, the piece could have been written yesterday. Girls are still going missing at alarming rates, and though nobody eats at Hardee’s anymore, fast food chains still seem to objectify women to sell us a spicy chicken sandwich.
I write this days after Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. He was found liable of sexual abuse in civil court, found guilty of thirty-four felonies, impeached twice, and then won in a landslide victory with 52 percent of white women voting for him. I also write this ten years after Rachel wrote her case for feminism, and my heart is broken because it’s clear that not enough white women read it.
Like many, I met Rachel on Twitter (now known as X). Following the election, I became part of the mass exodus of people leaving the platform and grieving what it has become. Purchased by the Trump and Hitler-idolizing billionaire Elon Musk, it’s not the space where we would watch Rachel gather those who intentionally misrepresented her work and words. She held up the light for so many of us, believing God calls us all to make this world better. And she is right: We need feminism.
We need feminism because Black women need to experience the same kind of allyship, with more white women, that I shared with Rachel. We need feminism because we are much stronger for this fight when we are united. Rachel knew that. She told us then, and if she could, she would tell us now. Yet her words from ten years ago still ring true. She that hath an ear …
Excerpted from “Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith.” Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyrighted © 2026 by Rachel Held Evans.
