Women in a Trumpian world
World markets took a frightful tumble when the US President-Elect turned out to be Donald Trump, something I found temporarily mystifying as you’d think they’d be elated at the prospect of a billionaire business man in the White House, what could possibly go wrong?
However, after months of repulsive orations President-Elect Trump managed a nano second of “statesmanlike” rhetoric, made possible, I believe, by the euphoric release of claiming victory after the mounting excitement of witnessing his electoral college votes accrue to the point of certainty.
Buoyed by this split second of Trumpian civility, the markets rallied. I’m guessing we can expect these wild fluctuations to become a regular thing over the years of Donald’s incumbency, given the man’s well-documented volatility.
All well and good for the markets, but what about the ladies?
Only moments after it became apparent Trump was on the road to victory, a marauding mob of young males in a Sydney University bar began chanting “Grab them by the pussy that’s how we do it.” There have since been many reports on social media of women in the US being intimidated by white males, inspired by Trump’s advice to treat women like shit.
There are hundreds of Trump quotes on women, including lengthy extracts from his interviews with Howard Stern, and they all demonstrate ways in which to treat women like shit.
Trump’s elevation to leader of the western world gives license to men who want to treat women like shit. This attitude was no barrier to him achieving his goal, and it confirms what we’ve long suspected: women are not believed to be as fully human as are white men. We are allowed to do more than we used to be allowed to do but how we are regarded and treated is not an issue important enough for many (including women) to consider when electing a president.
And whatever gains we’ve made, we’ve made because they allowed us to. Let’s not forget that.
(Trump also thought Muslims should be treated like shit, an opinion shared by enough Americans to be of little consequence in the electoral contest. However, I understand his master plan to ban all Muslim immigration has vanished from his website which must feel like a betrayal to Pauline Hanson and George Christensen, but there you go.)
The western world just became a much more dark and difficult habitat for women. It would be my hope that our own government will stand up for us against the new president’s misogyny. And then I look at our government and I see there is absolutely no hope of that.
We have a very long way to go before women are recognised as equal in western culture. We are blocked by the men who are threatened by equality, and who will take the opportunities legitimised for them by Trump to express their fear and hatred in university bars, on the street, in the privacy of their homes, in workplaces, in the world. Such men are unrelievedly ignorant and stupid; overtly and covertly brutal. They’ll be celebrating right now, as their leader prepares to move into the White House.
Trump’s ascension will have a ripple effect in every western country. We have already seen Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull shamefully search for similarities between himself and Donald. We are both business men, he said, and the new president will be pragmatic, as business men always are.
However, a true pragmatist would work to establish equality, because a true pragmatist would instinctively grasp the immense gains awaiting us in equality, rather than the abject losses of discrimination that are currently our established norms.
A true pragmatist would refuse to countenance the incomprehensible loss to society of treating women like shit. But we don’t have true pragmatists in charge. We have the men who treat women like shit.
Fasten your seat belts, ladies, & up your flaps. We’re in for a bumpy ride.
This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.
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Freethinker
Return to home pageThere is talk from pro-Trump groups who say that the Clinton/Obama administration will bring down the US economy and cite Trump as the cause.
The only attacks I see I must say are raining down from that side i.e. Clinton supporters; the media I noted during the election campaign are pro Clinton and have now turned on Trump with a vengeance. How dare those male yankees think they know what they are doing!!!
I just love the way that those who rail against political correctness are the very ones who say we must respect people like Trump and Hanson and Bernardi and Christensen.
Call Bernardi a homopobe or a denier and he has a hissy fit.
Call Hanson a racist and she gets really angry and storms off.
Call Trump a misogynist and watch women leap to his defence – just a bit of locker room banter they say, implying that it is quite ok to think that way about women, that;s what all the boys do….apparently.
I have no respect for any politician who all of a sudden starts toadying up to Trump or Hanson. Obviously they won their elections and have a right to take their place – they do not automatically win respect and should be called out at all times for their despicable views. We cannot concede that this confected fear and hatred is ok.
The world was expecting the first female US president. Instead it got an aged frat brat in a bad wig who boasted that if you are a star like him you can grab any woman “by the pussy”! https://pazzoredento.wordpress.com/2016/11/10/president-donald-grope/#more-1226
For gawd’s sake Jennifer Wilson…. What a vile & bitter piece of sensationalist crap you spout!
Do you really think for one moment that obsessively repeating “treat women like shit” is going to score you any brownie points outside of the camp you choose to reside in?
…and then, in a pithy attempt to support your argument, you choose to reference an isolated incident in a Sydney Uni bar of a group of “marauding” young men – viz: young & in a bar quoting Trump in 1992 ….does that not suggest the likelihood of immature & intoxicated? – hardly representative of the attitudes or behavior of the vast majority of western men!
I note you supply no detail of just who this group where marauding…or do you excuse your use of “marauding” purely for dramatic effect?
It very much appears that you’ve chosen the recent topical – but boringly repetitive – examinations of Trump’s ascention, as an excuse to indulge in a rant on female equality or lack thereof.
Had the horror of seeing a comment on Facebook under where this post was linked. The comment contained phrases such as “grow up you whiney bitches”, “learn to be tough” and “get over it, they’re only words”. I can’t help but imagine how this idiot would feel if another man came up and grabbed him on the cock. So Jennifer is correct, the election of Trump has legitimised this sort of behaviour in the simple minds of aggressors.
Here I was just waiting for this Trump thingy to be over with and it has only just started.
Good grief!
I recall all sorts of anti-Obama demonstrations when he was first elected and the ongoing campaign against him for the past two terms.
As well as the birther conspiracy, the proposed detention centres he was going to build and the demonic possession angle from the Evangelicals, the most memorable was the accusation that Michelle Obama was really a transgender man and that comedienne Joan Rivers was assassinated when she leaked “the truth” in the form of a joke.
It wasn’t a throwaway gag – it was treated seriously in many parts of their local media.
It’s a national sport over there and they have it down to an art form.
If this is their idea of reasoned debate, they really deserve everything that’s coming to them.
I suggest we all stay calm and enjoy the circus for what it is.
Michael….can we deal with the wider world here instead of a pedantic reference to/ quotes from just one Facebook post you’ve seen? Horror, horror indeed!
Contrary to your assertion, Trumps election legitimises..nothing.
He hasn’t even sat in the chair yet & only time will prove whether he will warm it for long.
Maybe, just maybe, the corrupt DNC installing a career criminal as presidential nominee over the party’s popular choice had something to do with the result?
It’s sad how truly you write when you say “the opportunities legitimised for them …to express their fear and hatred in university bars, on the street, in the privacy of their homes, in workplaces, in the world. Such men are unrelievedly ignorant and stupid; overtly and covertly brutal. ”
I suggest you need to reconsider the “by Trump” I hid with the ellipsis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djx3T9IEc1A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkmG6YWxgyU
We were all hoping it would have ended two days ago, but there’s at least another four years of him yet. And I’m guessing that during those four years he’ll be giving us something to talk about.
Greg, can I not comment that I was disappointed to see it? After all, this is what the post is about.
On returning to the page – if I may mention it – I was also disappointed to see that it was dominated by such language. It is not the language I like, but that’s just me.
You say that Trump’s election legitimises nothing. I’ve heard hundreds of women express the opposite view. I would think they’re the ones best to judge.
Michael Taylor
I have to go and lay down. It’s a pity they don’t make Bex anymore.
Cheers.
Political correctness is a hypocritical slogan invented by the right to shut down real debate.Instead of debating the issue at hand,it’s turned into a shut down insult of you are “being politically correct” – No If I think you are a racist and ignorant.Then I think you are,and going to say it.
It’s sad that Clinton who was more qualified to be president,but instead the world gets Abbott MK2.
I agree Jennifer, that if a self-confessed groper can have enough standing to become President of the USA, what does this say to 51% of the population (female)? It seems that the so-called civilised world has regressed two decades where the physical powerful, those who can bully most effectively have put all others back in their place.
H’, this may come as a surprise to you, but Trump’s election win is fairly big news. ?
Michael from here on it can only get worse .
Apparently it wasn’t just the Muslim master plan that ‘disappeared’ from his page.
“So too did a list of Mr Trump’s potential Supreme Court justice picks as president and certain details of his economic, defence and regulatory reform plans.”
“Links to Mr Trump’s policy proposals, including the Muslim ban, are now working again.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-11/trump-muslim-ban-website-glitch/8016112
Whilst the ‘Muslim ban’ is cause for concern, his frequent reference to stacking the Supreme Court bench and both his and his VP’s anti-abortion ideology is cause for alarm.
The increase in race and religious hate crimes in London post Brexit is a matter of fact and record. The initial spike was about 41% and, whilst it is decreasing, it is still recorded as significantly higher than pre-Brexit rates. Naturally, there is a prospect of under reporting, given the nature of the crimes.
“But strong anecdotal evidence supports the view that there was also a genuine rise in crimes targeted at ethnic minorities and foreign nationals: the Brexit vote appeared to unleash something in people – they felt they had a licence to attack Polish migrants and insult Muslims.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37640982
There is more than circumstantial evidence to suggest that the careless utterances of imbeciles in public office empower the disenfranchised to commit these crimes. We see it repeatedly here in ‘Straya, where the microphone is given to the imbeciles and those advocating for the victims they are creating are largely not promoted.
Penny Wong tweeted some months ago;
“Nobody needs to defend Ms Hanson’s right to speech. The people that need defending are the people she is attacking.”
Bill Shorten posted on his facebook page overnight.
” This isn’t a time for weasel words.
We are not yet at the point of the United States but unless action is taken, it is the direction in which we are headed.
This is no time to aggravate inequality and division or to appease those who peddle prejudice.
Whenever there is a vacuum in leadership, it will be filled by extremism.
Labor will not be retreating.
We will not lower ourselves to the politics of fear or play the race card.
We will not marginalise the poor, the sick or the vulnerable for a grubby political dividend – we give more credit to Australia than that.
We think more of this country, what we can achieve and where we can go.”
Naturally, Bishop spent yesterday trying to criticize his ‘anti-Trump’ stance.
Go figure. We are, indeed, in for a bumpy ride. All the way back to the fifties. Bette Midler in a movie called ‘The Rose’ had a line in one of her songs;
“What are we ladies? What are we? We are waitresses at the banquet of life! Get into that kitchen and rattle them pots and pans – and you better look pretty good doin’ it too, ‘else you gonna lose you good thing.”
Thank you, Ms Wilson. Take care
Sadly Trump has legitimised mysogeny racism and bigotry. Already there is graffiti everywhere spouting Trump hate speech. They have been emboldened. This article is correct.
Who was Trump most recent campaign head who help lead him to victory?
I do believe that a number of Trump’s proposals may be un-Contitutional. For example, the First Amendment states that there shall be no law which prohibits the free exercise of any religion. It can be argued that restriction of movements of people of the Islamic faith is a restriction of that faith.
Greg has obviously never walked the earth as a woman. How fortunate for him to never have had to see or experience casual misogyny and hate speech. Thank you, Jennifer for speaking the truth about our status in this male- dominated world.
Deanna, unfortunately a large proportion of woman do not share that views, they like a misogyny leader, 53 % of the white woman in USA voted for Trump.