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Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Nasty Bitches, Delicate Fawns: Sexism, Gay Men, Conservative Religions and Trump

For months the media have been wondering how anyone could possibly support such an unqualified and intemperate candidate as Donald Trump. Are his vocal supporters worried about the economy? (They are, but they're mostly not personally hurting). Are they being left behind by the federal government? (No, they typically receive massive government subsidies of one sort or another). Are they authoritarians? (Some are, but some are libertarians.) Are they racists? (Oh, yeah, a whole lot of them are -- but not all of them.)

In a recent interview Barack Obama touched upon what may the biggest reason: sexism. That's a kind of "Well, duh..." observation, given that Clinton is the first serious female presidential candidate. But it's more than that.

According to a recent study, Trump support is highly correlated with hostility towards women. It turns out there are two kinds of sexism: hostile sexism -- the outright hatred based on the idea that women are inferior, conniving and untrustworthy; and benevolent sexism -- the idea that women are weaker, though morally superior, to men, and must be cherished and protected.

Hostile sexism portrays women as nasty bitches, while benevolent sexism portrays women as delicate fawns. Neither type of sexism is good for women -- or men, no matter how well-intentioned the benevolent sexists might be.

If you look at Trump supporters through this lens, things start making a whole lot more sense. Trump has splintered the Republican Party largely along these lines. When you line them up, it's clear that the woman-haters and -abusers are all in the Trump camp: Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and so on.

The Republicans who consider women to be fawns have disavowed Trump, or at least condemned his behavior while holding their nose as they vote for him. These include men like Mitt Romney, the Bush men, Norm Coleman, Vin Weber, Jon Huntsman, Ken Mehlman, Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, etc.

It's most telling in the support Trump enjoys from men who you wouldn't normally consider Republican: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks (who has been accused of rape and is on an anti-woman tear), and Libertarian Peter Thiel (who believes that women should never have gotten the right to vote). 

Assange has been working with Russian hackers to sabotage Clinton's campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin is another Trump supporter, whose government constantly attacks and undermines women in Russian society. Putin notably threw the women of Pussy Riot in jail for two years for singing a song critical of him in a church.

Thiel is known for cofounding PayPal and his Libertarian fantasy to create island countries (seasteads) in the Pacific Ocean. His other claim to fame was his crusade to destroy Gawker: Thiel secretly financed Hulk Hogan's invasion of privacy lawsuit against the gossip website. Why? Because Gawker outed Thiel as gay. But Thiel's misogyny and homosexuality may be intimately intertwined.

Just as there are two kinds of sexism, there are two ways to be gay: some gay men just happen to like men, while some gay men simply hate women. Milo Yiannopoulos, who has written for the alt-right website Breitbart.com (whose editor is running Trump's campaign), is a notorious misogynist. His hatred of women is, according to the man himself, why he is gay: "I mean, look, I don’t mean to be rude, but most of the reason I went gay is so I didn’t have to deal with nutty broads." (Is it any surprise that only nutty broads would go out with Yiannopoulos?)

Clearly Donald Trump and most of his lackeys like having sex with women. The question is, why do they hate women so much? Maybe it's these men's own weaknesses.

As Trump himself has stated, when he sees a beautiful woman, he can't control himself. That gives women a great deal of power over him. Trump resents that power, so he tries to put them down and minimize their power by bullying, insulting, threatening and assaulting them.

The identical dynamic is at work in the Taliban and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia: they cover women's bodies and keep them locked away because these men simply cannot control their own lusts. Some forms of Christianity and Judaism have the same mindset: women are temptresses so they must be covered and locked up and controlled to prevent them from tempting men.

The obsession with sex is obvious in the most conservative religions, Wahabbi Islam and old Mormonism: they allow men to take multiple wives. As with Donald Trump, it's all about pussy.

Clearly, the problem isn't women: a man like Trump is so weak and morally corrupt that he can't control himself. Instead he blames women for his own weakness.

It's like an alcoholic blaming a liquor store for his drunkenness, or a fat man blaming a restaurant for his weight problem.

Yeah, some women are nasty bitches. Some are delicate fawns. But most are just normal people, who have the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else.

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