The overturning of Roe v Wade shows exactly what some men think of women

Holly – not sure if you are aware but Chipotle is for people who are a shadow of their former selves. By the way, my neighbour thinks you are a misguided, self-absorbed, attention-seeking brat. I tend to agree with that statement after reading through some of your commentary. Have a great day.” This was an email I received on Monday morning, hours after I returned from a reporting trip to Washington DC.

When the news broke last Friday that Roe v Wade – the landmark legislation that made abortion a constitutionally protected right for American women – had been overturned, I packed up my Canon camera, my US press pass and my laptop and made my way to New York City’s Penn Station. Alongside our US video editor Julia Saqui and one of our intrepid news reporters, Rachel Sharp, I then boarded a packed four-hour train up to DC, so we could speak to protesters from both sides who were travelling from around the country to the Supreme Court.

I have written more extensively about what we encountered there elsewhere (and a mini-documentary that, among other scenes, features me chasing far-right agitator Jacob Wohl down the street with a microphone for Independent TV.) But I also shared snippets of what I saw on Twitter. I tweeted about how encouraging it was that so many men had travelled with their female partners or friends to protest (one man got up at 5am to take a train from Virginia to Washington with his wife. She was dressed in a rainbow tutu and a T-shirt that said “Pussy Power”; his shirt read “My girl can deadlift you”.) I also mentioned some of the more deliberately incendiary things Wohl said, such as, “Most of you women are too ugly to worry about getting pregnant anyway.”

As I prepared to leave DC after two days of back-to-back reporting – with my back covered in mosquito bites from hours of crouching in the long grass after sunset in front of the US Capitol – I saw an interesting juxtaposition. Standing on her own inside Union Station, contemplating the menu outside the popular fast-food Mexican food restaurant Chipotle, was a middle-aged woman dressed head-to-toe in the classic handmaid’s outfit from the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale (based, of course, on the world-famous book by Margaret Atwood.) Her large white bonnet and sweeping scarlet robes stood out among travellers in jeans and T-shirts. “Nothing says ‘modern America’ to me more than a handmaid outside Chipotle,” I tweeted.

I didn’t imagine I’d get much more than a couple of laughs from friends, so I was surprised when I received that email – from a man who identified himself only as “David” – the next day. It surprised me that he’d seen my tweet, disliked it, gone so far as to read some of my articles in rage, discussed me with his neighbour, looked up my email address, and then taken the time to write me an insulting email. I receive insulting emails from men all the time, but usually they’ve come directly from an article they disliked. They certainly don’t often involve their neighbours.

It’s important to remember that there are a lot of men out there like “David”. Though the world is mainly populated with fantastic men who support their female partners in their pursuit of equal rights, there are also many keyboard warriors who don’t just think that abortion should be banned but also think that women journalists are going too far by simply doing their jobs reporting on the news. When right-wing troll Wohl spoke to me outside the Supreme Court that Friday night, he repeatedly told me that the woman amassed there should “go home” (ideally “to the kitchen”.) He added that he was just exercising his American right to protest. I asked him why he didn’t think that the women had their own right to peacefully protest; why he thought they should be silenced when men like him should be able to turn up and shout them down through a megaphone. Surely both groups had an equal right to stand in the nation’s capital and express their views?

Wohl seemed a little confused by my question. He equivocated about the women being ugly or “morbidly obese”. He said they lacked “domestic skills”. It was a foolish answer, but a telling one: it showed how men like him see women like decorative objects or servants, not as fellow citizens. The Declaration of Independence famously states that “all men are created equal”. We are often told to receive that “men” as though it says “people”, but that’s not what it says – and it’s clear to me it’s not what the Supreme Court or people like Jacob Wohl or “David” believe either. In a country where there has still never been a female president, we have to take the rollback of women’s rights to bodily autonomy seriously. And we also have to consider the kinds of men who feel emboldened by decisions such as these.