America has chosen, and it chose the pussy-grabber
Sarah Ditum in the Independent:
America has chosen, and it chose the pussy-grabber. The guy who said his daughter was a “piece of ass”. The guy who has been accused – in multiple, mutually corroborating accounts – of sexual assault. The guy whose ex-wife accused him of rape in a divorce deposition. So tell me again how a rape accusation ruins a man’s life. Please, I am all ears for your sympathetic descriptions of the terrible injustice done to men when they’re named as the suspected perpetrator of a violent crime in exactly the same way that suspected perpetrators of violent crimes are always named.
We just elected a known (though not convicted) rapist president. We elected him even though we’ve heard him bragging that he sexually assaults women.
Tell me more about how misogyny is not a thing.
Why would it count as a crime, if the people it’s committed against don’t matter? If they’re not even fully people, but just women? During this campaign, so many women have made the extraordinarily brave decision to come out publicly with allegations against Trump. And they were not listened to. Their voices did not matter. The final word on sexual assault in this election is Trump, caught on tape, laughing about everything he could get away with as a powerful man. And now he’s the most powerful man in the world.
And we in the US have just put ourselves on a par with the Germany that elected Hitler.
Possibly with a Stalinesque taste for purges. I hope Obama has Air Force One standing by to get Hillary out of the country.
The comments that respond to Sarah Ditum’s article in the Independent tell her to “Calm down, dear” and highlight the sufferings of men, apparently extremely numerous, who are falsely accused of rape.
Oh dear god.
The trouble with the misogyny argument is that Trump did almost as well with white Republican women as he did with men, and even won among Independent women. According to CBS News,
“Surprisingly, given all of the attention to Trump’s attitudes and behavior toward women, he did virtually as well among white, Republican women (91 percent support) as he did among white, Republican men (92 percent). Clinton was more competitive among white independent women than men, losing to Trump by a 49 to 41 percent margin among independent women.”
So unless the US is full of “self-hating” women, something other than misogyny better accounts for Trump’s win and Clinton’s loss.
@Michael Dempsey Yeah, the comments on that article made me want to throw things.
I said this after Brexit and I’ll say it again now – how did we get here? After WWII, people asked how Germany, a civilized modern country, could fall off the cliff into horror and depravity. I fear we have part of the answer now.
Sam Day @ 4 – oh but the claim isn’t that misogyny got Trump elected – it’s that it didn’t prevent him from getting elected.
Misogyny was only one part of the picture. It was larded with a heavy load of racism, which can inflict women as well as men, especially when women are being told (without evidence) that immigrant men are violent rapists. Too many people don’t know how, or care, to check out the truth of statements like that. If they did, they might discover that the biggest risk is probably someone they know.
@Sam Day at 4:
Misogynistic cultures affect women by teaching them not to fight against the dominant class. How many of those Trump-voting women come from a crazy evangelical “the man is the head of the household’ religious culture? Do you think women are born resisting misogyny? Do you think we automatically recognise and reject harmful doctrines that we can be enmeshed in from birth? No. We have to have great courage to fight, especially when we know what happens to women who do. Self- hating? No. Afraid. Toeing the line. Complying.
There were women who were against female suffrage. There are women who are against reproductive freedom. That shows how deep misogyny runs.
It’s obvious that racism plays a part. The KKK came out and endorsed Trump- not exactly a dog whistle.
But women voting for Trump is not evidence that this wasn’t about misogyny.
I have just read Hillary’s concession speech. I am so sad. She was so strong as she stared down Trump’s ugly aggression there for everyone to see at the debates. She has run such a great campaign. I have been so hopeful. Now I hope she can go off and live in her Malibu mansion and never have to listen to anyone criticise her ever again. F*ck Trump and what he is going to let his Republican sycophants do to health care and women’s rights and gay rights and workers. I am avoiding reading anything where someone blames HRC for what has happened. Kitten pics 4TW.
And, just like Germany, the Left were too busy stabbing each other in the back over pointless factional contests to make any difference at all.
@John the Drunkard This. So much this. We stand together to fight or we fall apart. I understand that people are angry and maybe we need a little time to breathe and regroup. But we must regroup, not allow ourselves to be split into splinter groups and riven by purity drives.
One of the things that really strikes me about this election is Trump won in many states with fewer votes than Mitt Romney lost those same states. Turnout was really key to the result of this election and it seems that many Democratic voters did not turn out. In some states, I’m sure voter suppression played a major role (North Carolina I am looking at you) but there are other “blue wall” states that do not have this excuse.
There was an article this morning in the Guardian by Hadley Freeman where she talks about the white working class and the narrative that is emerging that Trump won because the white working class didn’t feel like anyone was listening to them. Her point was, what makes them such special snowflakes? Other groups, such as the black working class get told to shut up and stop complaining and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but somehow we have to tread more carefully around white working class (mostly) men, because otherwise they will rage and vote for assholes like Trump. Or stay home and sulk.