Donald Trump, disgust and precarious manhood
It was predicted that Donald Trump would volcanically erupt after being disgraced in Monday’s debate, and he did, more bizarrely than anyone expected. “This is unhinged . . . even for Trump,” Hillary Clinton tweeted.
He had attacked, as usual, a woman. Alicia Machado was peripheral to the debate, mentioned by Clinton as one example of the many women mocked by Trump for her appearance. But suddenly the 1996 Miss Universe was a creature with a “terrible past” including a sex tape, which Newt Gingrich mysteriously referred to as the new “Benghazi,” although it appeared to involve no nudity.
But her real crime had been what he called her “massive” weight gain, of which again I can find no evidence. It now seems that anyone Clinton mentions will be attacked by Trump; she will have to think hard before she uses a proper name again.
More examples of Trump’s historic misogyny appeared post-debate. Another Trump joke about sleeping with teenage girls emerged. He was 53 at the time. He once called a woman “disgusting” for having gone into a private office to pump breast milk during a legal deposition. Managers at his California golf club had to conceal female employees when Trump visited lest he fire them for not being pretty enough. Women who were fat, or older, or had acne were terrified, sometimes to the point of tears, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“What kind of human being is this?” asked Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
Here’s a theory: bullies hate others for what they see in themselves, and Trump’s yawning insecurity makes him bully vulnerable people. In his world, who’s more vulnerable than a woman? They have no serious money, hold no senior positions, their desire to be equal to men is new in human history, their beauty is fragile and yet, he needs them, which makes him angry. They literally disgust him.
Trump is disgusted by many things, including fat women, non-fat women, foreigners, abortion, aging, sweat, people who aren’t white, journalists, losers, menstrual blood, height limits on buildings and flagpoles, baldness, bathroom breaks, taco trucks, taxes, statistics, NATO, “bad people,” and even more things than that.
In her book Purity and Danger, the anthropologist Mary Douglas defined dirt as “matter out of place.” Trump sees Clinton thus, a woman in a man’s place. It repels him.
Trump once described shaking hands as “barbaric.” “I am a clean hands freak,” he wrote. “I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”
Has a politician ever been so uncomfortable with pressing the flesh? How he must have suffered having to shake Clinton’s hand as the debate began.
One would expect female Republicans to call a halt to this nonsense, even if the male ones won’t. Even women who are habitually hostile to other women — perhaps currying favour with misogynistic men — must see that they should find common cause with good men and end this. My brand of feminism includes men. There is no other way to move ahead except in tandem with the rest of the human race.
My point is not to object to people voting based on hate — this will not end — but to advise them to take a hard look at themselves and their motives. It’s often a check to one’s own behaviour but also offers the rather beautiful sensation of understanding a lifelong puzzlement.
I am writing about the possibility of Trump winning, which makes smart people shudder. But what if Clinton wins? The backlash will make life worse for women — not just Americans, but in the West— just as the election of Obama arguably made life worse in the interim for American blacks. Racism will shift to misogyny.
The journalist Peter Beinart in The Atlantic this month quotes a Public Religion Research Institute poll that said 52 per cent of American white men held a “very unfavourable” view of Clinton, “a whopping 20 points higher than those who viewed Obama unfavourably in 2012.” Titled “Fear of a Female President,” Beinart’s perceptive piece is dispiriting, referring to the “precarious manhood” theory of social psychology in which womanhood is seen as natural and permanent but manhood must be “earned and maintained.” This might explain Trump’s disgust at losing to a mere woman.
It is punishing for female reporters to attend Trump rallies, New York magazine has reported, especially when he attacks them personally, by name. “I think you don’t realize the emotional cost of every single day, twice a day, being in rooms where the norm has become people shouting out, ‘Hang the b----,’ ‘Kill her,’ ‘C---,’ ” one said of the attacks on Clinton herself.
This mindset will go nationwide whether he wins or loses. Good people, there are dark times ahead, and I don’t just mean the next debate on Oct. 9, which will need a tough moderator.
He or she will have to throw a net over Trump, or perhaps wall him in.
It will be destructive and ugly. It will disgust us. hmallick@thestar.ca