Madonna’s lewd offer to Trump voters is body blow for feminism
Being a woman doesn’t make the Queen of Pop’s crude locker-room talk any more appealing, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
RAUNCHY female performers such as Madonna and Beyonce are often held up as examples of strong independent women, and anyone who dares to criticise their hyper-sexualised personas is dismissed as a prude who wants women to dress like nuns and save themselves for their wedding night.
Now what does Madonna do to show the detractors that she’s more than just the sum of her body parts?
She publicly offers to perform sex acts on anyone who doesn’t vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump in the US presidential election.
“If you vote for Hillary Clinton, I will give you a blow job, OK?” she told the crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York last week. “And I’m good, I’m good,” she added, warming to her theme. “I take my time and I have a lot of eye contact.”
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to feminism 2016.
Of course she didn’t mean it. Sheesh, can’t anyone take a joke any more? Except that jokes are never just jokes. They have a context, and meanings that can be decoded.
Imagine, after all, that a female celebrity had offered a blow job to anyone who did vote for Trump. Does anyone seriously believe that Hillary Clinton’s cheerleaders in the US media would laugh it off as a harmless prank, or would they see the fact that the offer was made, even in jest, as symptomatic of the way that Trump sees women, and call on him to dissociate himself from the crude declaration?
If it wouldn’t be acceptable if a Trump supporter said it, it doesn’t magically become acceptable because a Clinton supporter said it. It certainly doesn’t become OK because Madonna said it, and, what’s more, did so only as a “joke”.
Because the joke didn’t come from nowhere. When Robert De Niro said of Trump that he’d “like to punch him in the face”, it reflected part of the actor’s personality.
He’s no more going to physically assault the Republican candidate than Madonna is actually going to come round to your house and give you the night of your life, but his mode of expression spoke of something inside him that was particular to him and recognisably male in character.
Madonna’s choice of words was equally revealing. By reducing what she had to offer in this election to a question of sex, Madonna was reinforcing the idea that this is what women are ultimately good for — providing sexual favours to men in return for stuff.
Not only is this as bad as anything that Donald Trump has said about women, it’s actually the exact same thing that he’s said about women.
He sees them as ornaments and trophies whose bodies are provided to men as rewards for some favour. Use them as you will. You’ve earned it, hombres. That was literally the substance of Trump’s controversial recorded comments in which he told of his past efforts to get the American TV host Nancy O’Dell into bed.
“I did try and f *** her,” he was heard to say. “She was married. And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping... I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture’. I moved on her like a b **** , but I couldn’t get there.”
It’s not the lewd language nor the fact that she was married that jumps out of that exchange, so much as the idea that a woman is there for the taking merely in exchange for being taken shopping. As if they’re unable to be presented with an array of material possessions without immediately offering themselves up as willing concubines in return.
Isn’t this the same subliminal message that Madonna is peddling — give women what they want, and they’ll give you sexual favours in return? But no one will call out the erstwhile Queen of Pop for it, because she’s on the “right” side in the election, and that right now is all that matters.
It’s not the same at all, Madonna would no doubt retort, because she is in control of her own sexuality and can choose what she does and does not do with her own body; but there is nothing empowering about what she was offering. It was entirely submissive.
Not the act itself, but the reasons why the act was being offered up. In her scenario, it was little more than a payoff. There was no desire or pleasure for the giver in the imagined exchange. It was the payment of a debt.
Our daughters have got the message loud and clear about Donald Trump. He’s a coarse, unreformed, misogynistic ape. Talking to teenage girls, they understand that completely. They’re not fooled. They see through the excuses about “locker-room” banter.
But what sort of mixed messages are they getting from Madonna, and how are they meant to unravel them? What are they supposed to make of her offer? Are they immediately expected to recognise its irony, or is there a possibility that they could see it as containing a kernel of truth about a woman’s place?
Madonna has a complex relationship with feminism; she’s been adored and condemned in turn her entire career; but it’s sad to see her come to this sorry, sordid pass.
Long gone are the days when American writer Camille Paglia could say of the pop icon that she was “the future of feminism” because she “taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives”. This isn’t control. It’s not emancipation. It’s demeaning to women.
To criticise any woman for her sexual behaviour is to immediately be accused of “slut shaming”. This has become the great no-no of our time. Women own their appetites and physicality, we’re told; they should be free to do whatever they want with their own flesh without being judged.
Sometimes that’s true. When Madonna went out earlier this year in a dress that bared her butt cheeks, she was widely mocked. She tried to claim subsequently that it was a political statement, designed to show how “we still live in an ageist and sexist society”, adding: “If you have a problem with the way I dress, it is simply a reflection of your prejudice.”
There was something ludicrous about equating a celebrity’s desperation to remain relevant with the civil rights movement; but, ultimately, she was right. She’s 58 years old; she’s paid her dues; she can wear what she likes.
To suggest that offering sex to any man who votes for Clinton should be applauded as a radical political gesture is utterly ridiculous, though. Men get judged for the way their sexuality expresses itself all the time. They’re “dude shamed”, if you want to put it like that, and rightly. Sometimes their language and behaviour is unacceptable.
Women’s can be too. If telling Madonna that her comments last week were objectionable is slut shaming, then maybe a bit of slut shaming is exactly what she needs to make her realise that she can’t expect to get away with saying stupid things just because, as the title of a recent release put it, B **** , I’m Madonna.
Locker-room talk does not suddenly become appealing when it comes from women’s rather than men’s mouths.
‘What mixed messages are young women getting from Madonna?’