A key moment in fight against sexism
Has woman-hating, more delicately couched as sexism and misogyny, finally come of age as a pivotal issue in political and social discourse?
My guess is that thanks to Donald Trump, it has. My hope is that American women and the men who support their equality will definitively defeat a terrible man — and by extension a party — that denies women respect, autonomy and equality.
We already knew that Trump, apart from being a bigot, a liar and a xenophobe, was a sexist and a misogynist, on record as viciously calling women pigs, dogs and slobs, rating their bodies and making crude sexual references to his own daughter Ivanka.
We already knew that the official Republican party platform wants to take away a woman’s reproductive freedom, not only by denying her the right to have an abortion (another unwanted hand on female genitalia) but by criminalizing the act itself. Trump at one time mused during an interview that women themselves “have to be punished” for having an abortion, but eventually walked that back.
But the release last Friday of an 11-year-old hot mic recording, in which the Republican nominee bragged to a television personality while riding on a bus that because he was a star he could do anything he wanted to a woman, including “grab her by the p---y,” went well beyond sexism and into sexual assault.
The result was a firestorm of disgust as already morally compromised GOP leaders hypocritically took to the fainting couch, citing their “wives and daughters” and social media lit up with pure rage, especially because Trump, after a half-hearted apology, dismissed his disgusting words as “locker-room talk.”
Public awareness of what sexism — and sexual assault is — has never been higher. Even professional athletes weighed in, saying bragging about sexually assaulting women was not a staple in their locker rooms.
All of this tumult led up to the second presidential debate last Sunday, another “mano a womano,” as New York Times commentator Maureen Dowd has called it, which turned out to be as depressing and infuriating a political spectacle as I’ve seen.
For women like me, who have lived their entire adult lives as feminists, understanding that as women moved into the workforce and broke new ground, there would be jubilation and support but also a furious hate-filled backlash, it was a heart-sinking night.
Thanks to Trump and his reality show shenanigans, Hillary Clinton the first female presidential nominee of a major party, a candidate with more hands-on experience to be president than any other candidate, was forced to deal with a humiliating pre-show nightmare: Trump had organized a press conference/photo op that featured four women, three of whom had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misdeeds, and all of whom tellingly spouted how much they supported Donald Trump.
These women, whose cases were well-publicized years ago, were also in the hall for the debate. According to several media reports, the Trump campaign had planned for the women to sit in the Trump family box before the debate commission intervened.
As the brilliant author Rebecca Traister wrote in New York Magazine, if Clinton ultimately wins the election, her victory “will be attributed to Trump’s flame-out. Little thought will be given to a woman who, on her way to the White House, was forced to publicly confront the spectre of her husband’s alleged sexual misdeeds.”
I had similar thoughts on debate night as I watched live coverage of Clinton getting out of her car and walking toward the door, with her daughter Chelsea’s arm firmly around her and her brilliant but errant husband Bill, the “big dawg” loping slightly behind.
How was she mentally coping, I wondered? She was about to go onstage live with an opponent who had signalled his intention to humiliate and slime her personally by not only suggesting her husband was the “worst” abuser of women in presidential history (doubtful, but why would it be her fault anyway?) but by accusing her of enabling him by attacking his complainants.
Was this worse than facing an 11-hour hostile congressional hearing on the events in Benghazi? Probably not, because one involved defending her job as Secretary of State and life and death decisions, and the other just involved her whole personal life and private pain.
Trump, his campaign not dead by any means but certainly in tatters, objectively lost the second debate (as he had the first) by presenting as a bully and blowhard, who prowled the stage, insulted the moderators, whined about his unfair treatment, and most shockingly, threatened, like some tinpot dictator, to put his opponent in jail once he was elected.
Clinton remained calm but looked uncomfortable. It was inevitable that the first woman to have a solid shot at the American presidency was going to come with a complex narrative. But Clinton’s is more fraught than most, with enough baggage to fill an entire airport carousel.
She has, after all, a famous husband whose presidency was both successful in economic terms and shameful personally — and a bio that saw her, after he survived impreachment, determinedly reach for the political brass ring herself. Senator. Secretary of State. President.
Polls currently indicate that she is, but for the next few weeks of “unknown unknowns,” tantalizingly, almost there.
I watched the debate thinking of something bigger than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
This election is the moment when we find out whether sexism, personified by this ugly rapacious man, truly matters to American voters.
What a moment that will be. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.
My hope is that American women and men who support their equality will defeat a man who denies women respect, autonomy and equality