Guest post: The abused are taught to fear their abuser
Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on When euphemisms won’t do.
Whether he’s (still?) fucking her or not, Trump certainly displays an unnatural obsession for Ivanka, first displayed (as far as I can tell) in that flesh-creepingly sinister photograph of them as the teenage child cups his chin and gazes at his face (not into his eyes, he’s leering straight at the camera), and with his left hand placed uncomfortably close to her pubic region.
The more I see that picture the worse it looks. There has always been something about it, apart from the obvious, that has bothered me that I could never quite put my finger on, but the penny has finally dropped – it’s Ivanka’s face.
As a former emergency foster carer I have worked closely with Social Services and other child protection agencies, but what I am about to say applies equally to adults in abusive relationships.
The abused are taught to fear their abuser, and part of that is to not show open contempt or hatred in public or else! When put in the position of having to be in public with their abuser the abused will try to pretend that all is well, but very few people possess the acting skills to carry this off perfectly, and photographs are often the best place to spot certain tells.
The abuser will be perfectly happy and natural in a posed picture with their victim, but the abused will not; their stance will often look rigid with the body held slightly away from the abuser, the smile -if there is one – will often look forced, and so-on.
In that famous photograph I look again at Ivanka and she looks uncomfortable; there’s no smile on her face, she looks frightened, ‘haunted’ almost. She certainly doesn’t look like a daughter happy to be posing with her daddy.
I’ve got a thousand photographs of me with my daughters – admittedly none posed like that one! – and I can guarantee that in none of those snaps are my children looking at me like Ivanka is looking at Donald.
I have, however, seen a lot of pictures of abused with abuser, whether the abuse is sexual, physical or otherwise, and whether the abuse is parent-child or partner-partner, and I have seen Ivanka’s face in so many of those pictures.
So, what is my point here? I’m not entirely sure. Was Donald abusing the young Ivanka? Maybe she has evidence and is using that to get whatever she wants from him, or he is keeping her close to him to keep an eye on her and keep her from spilling the beans. Hell, maybe she even managed to ‘normalise’ the abuse as so many victims do, and now a relieved daddy is throwing privileges at her.
Or maybe I’m just letting the horrors from my past cloud my judgement of the present.
Whether he was technically abusing her or not, we know enough about him to know he wasn’t an excellent loving sensible responsible parent. We know he’s a god damn mean bastard; we know he made a point of refusing to have anything to do with the work of raising his children; we know he once punched Donald 2 to the floor in front of D2’s friends; we know he likes to brag about how hot Ivanka is. We know enough.
Note also the way he has his right hand on her hip, pulling her toward him, or at the least preventing her from pulling away from such ontimate contact, and how he has her clasped between his thighs, again to maintain contact. Ugh!
Thank you for the guest post, Ophelia. I only wish the topic were something…..lighter.
Trump with a rich man’s toy.
Oh, and a sports car.
(Now, I’m squicking myself out.)
Damn you, Acolyte. Until you posted this I was somehow blissfully unaware of this photograph. Now I can’t stop being SQUICK’D by it. I have not paid the slightest attention to any of Trump’s children so I wouldn’t have recognised the girl in the picture as Ivanka. I would have been revolted by it, though, for all the reasons you mention, even without knowing that the girl in the picture was his fucking daughter.
But I am revolted also by an additional point: look at Trump’s expression. It’s a “look what I’ve got” expression. It’s not the sort of expression you want to see on a Mall Santa when your child sits on his knee. It’s not the sort of expression you’d welcome seeing on a family friend. It’s sure as shit not one you want to see on a parent.
And on top of everything else, I can’t stop looking at the rapey parrot.
Trump and the photographer have placed Ivanka in the role of a sexually available woman, adoring him. She is owned by him, belongs to him. She is a prop. He views her in the same way as his wife, random beauty queen, any woman. She is a doll, meant to please him.
We all know of men who differentiate between Their women and Other women: they expect their mothers, daughters, sisters to be afforded a level of respect by other men. We know of men who can’t handle the idea their daughters will have sexual experiences. Trump doesn’t feel any of this. He feels no discomfort with displaying his daughter as a sexual object, nor of claiming that sexuality as his own.
I can’t tell from that photo what Ivanka feels. I can say the photo shows a man who doesn’t see women as people, not even his own daughter. He thinks women exist to glorify men with their booty bits. There’s a photo of him and Melania: she is draped over a piano doing sexyface. It’s exactly the same message.
I have never seen a photo of a father and daughter as creepy and inappropriate as that. I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable posing for a photo like that.
@learie
The exact thing you said.
To Trump, everything and everyone is a commodity.
Yes, that was the impression I had too. I am not sure if I see fear in her face, but she has definitely been instructed to show adoration while Trump simply looks down the barrel. This is not a ‘father daughter’ photo, it is a Trump PR photo in which he is posing with a prop.
It is an unbearably creepy picture. But it really isn’t possible to read all that much from it, of itself.
Much more telling to me, and probably influencing the way I see this one, was the way she cringed away from him at some event when he closed in on her for a photo-op hug/kiss. About 3 seconds of video spoke volumes.
I too don’t see what Acolyte sees…but then Acolyte cites relevant experience that I don’t have. At any rate the photo is more than revolting enough to be worth knowing about.
Actually that video segment showing her cringing away from him was debunked almost immediately: what really happened is that she recognized someone else, who was off camera, and was responding to that person at the instant Donnie went in for the photo op.
They may well have a cordial relationship. Cordial isn’t the same as healthy.
The question is, who the hell thinks it’s appropriate to have a daughter pose *romantically* with her father? I can guarantee you, my family photos did NOT look like that.
There is a test psychologists use to see how people interpret the emotions of others by showing a series of photographs of peoples’ faces and asking what they think each person is feeling or thinking.
I know the signs are subtle, and the whole picture can obscure them, but it makes it easier if you can isolate Ivanka’s face by covering the rest of the picture. With the context removed, look again and ask yourself those questions above.
As I said in my original comment, I might be letting my former experiences cloud my judgement, but then as others have said, this is obviously not a normal, healthy father-daughter relationship. The question is how unhealthy is it?
I asked one of my own daughters today what she would have done had I told her, back when she was 14-15 (the age Ivanka appears to be in the pic) to pose with me like that. She said that she would have punched me into next week and called the police.
The RIGHT answer, in my opinion.
Samantha @11,
I was about to say that you could probably find similar photos on articles about “daddy-daughter dances” and such in some conservative Christian circles. But then I did a Google image search and, while I still find the concept of daddy-daughter dances to be a little gross, the photos that come up don’t strike me as having incestuous overtones.
Which I guess I should have anticipated. The conservative Christians “only” want to suppress their daughters’ sexuality; Trump wants to bask in it.
Yeah, the daddy daughter dances have the trappings of romance, but stylized in pretty specific ways. The face-cupping thing is a very different stylization of romance, and one that is more… meaningful? It’s hard to express, but there are things that are abstract symbols like rings and flowers, that are then built on (a son giving his mother a corsage, for instance, does not seem incestuous). To use a symbolic *physical gesture/facial expression* combo, that is a thing that hasn’t been… cleansed by becoming a general cliche emotional bonding, but is supposed to still be meaningful, and meaningful in a specific sexual-attraction way. Trump and his photographer are telling her to pretend to find him sexually fascinating, basically, and that creepy.
Just out of interest, I’ve heard of someting called ‘father-daughter date nights’ supposedly becoming a ‘thing’ in America. Is this actually true, would anybody know?
Ew, god, I hope not. I haven’t heard of that – but then I’m a nerd, so there’s a lot I don’t hear of.
I recently tried one of those emotion-reading tests (showing only eyes) and did surprisingly (to me) well.
‘I might be letting my former experiences cloud my judgement’ Actually I would have said your former experiences give you sharper perceptions than those of us who haven’t been through what you have.