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.
