When Donald Trump was caught on camera talking about grabbing pussy, many thought it would end his campaign. They thought even solid Republicans would back away.
But I was doubtful. So many Republican men are filled with misogyny, and hearing Trump talk about women like they were merely objects of sexual gratification endeared Trump to them. These men are jealous that women are finally starting some headway in society (think Rush Limbaugh and his endless "feminazi" rants). They are afraid of women.
Now there's a study that quantifies this. Incredibly, Republican men think women today are better off than men. A typical Republican man thinks like this:
Dennis Halaszynski, 81, is a retired police captain in McKeesport, Pa., and a registered Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump. “It’s easier being a woman today than it is a man,” he said in an interview. “The white man is a low person on the totem pole. Everybody else is above the white man.”White men are the low person on the totem pole? What percentage of CEOs are women or minorities? Members of congress? Governors of states? President?
Women “should be highly respected,” he said, but they are no longer unequal: “Everything in general is in favor of a woman. No matter what happens in life, it seems like the man’s always at fault.”
Everything this man says is nonsense: women get paid less than men for doing the same work. Women are not represented equally in management positions, government leadership, and generally in any kind of high-paying profession.
Women are constantly talked down to, belittled, objectified, solicited for sex, grabbed, sexually assaulted and raped. The vast majority of men will never suffer these indignities. When a woman walks to her car in a darkened parking lot it's like Russian roulette, but men never think twice about it.
Most women have to work the same number of hours as men, yet they have to do most of the cooking, cleaning and child care. When there's a divorce, women are stuck with the kids, making them the single head of the household. Republican men think this is because the courts treat men unfairly, but -- putting aside political correctness, which Republicans despise -- most men are simply not competent to raise children alone: they lack the patience, devotion, sense of responsibility and compassion to be primary caregivers.
This has been the case for at least the last 100 years, mostly because women had to enter the work force during the world wars and the Depression. There was a slight lull during the 1950s and 1960s, but as expectations for material things increased starting in the 1970s, a single bread winner could not pay for all the creature comforts that Americans think they need. Thus, most women in America need to work. And with marriage rates down overall, this is only accelerating the need for equal pay.
Over the last 50 years, the position of women has in fact improved: they're getting paid more than they used to (but still less than men). They're actually getting more education than men now. Women and girls are generally more temperamentally suited to class room situations, and that puts men and boys at a disadvantage, because well-paying jobs in the future will all require college degrees.
And that's the crux of the problem: Republican men see that women are making progress, and starting to catch up -- though women are still nowhere close to men in most things -- and it scares Republican men to death. They see everything in life as a zero-sum game: if the lot of women improves, men will lose.
Frankly, Republican men are deathly afraid that when women have equal pay and opportunities, women will no longer need to put up with the abysmal treatment that Republican men heap on them.
They will not be able to find girlfriends and wives who will put up with the sort of treatment that my father has dished out to my mother for the last sixty years, treating her like a servant.
And that really scares them. Because they can't even take care of themselves . . . .
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