| by Victoria A Brownworth

Trump Hates (Fat, Ugly, Slobs, Dogs, Lesbian) Women

Blogger,
Trump_Misogyny

And many men agree with him.

A few days have passed since Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump faced-off in New York on September 26. With each successive hour, the narratives about who won that debate – or didn’t – have continued to shift. As I file this story, the new conventional wisdom (from majority white male pundits) is Clinton didn’t win so much as Trump lost.

Oh.

I wish I were surprised.

I’m not.

The negatives about Clinton’s fairly stellar debate performance began almost immediately. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said Clinton was “over prepared” – as if that were possible when the job at stake is president of the United States. And then there was this:

There has never been a moment since I started covering this election in April 2015 where Clinton has gotten credit for a single accomplishment. Every aspect of her candidacy has been framed in the negative – no other candidate in the primary or general election has been asked the question Clinton was asked at every debate and town hall: “Why don’t people like you?” We heard repeatedly about the “enthusiasm gap” between her and Bernie Sanders during the primary, yet what better metric is there for enthusiasm than people actually turning up to vote? Clinton didn’t barely win: this was no reprise of 2008 where she won the popular vote and then-Sen. Obama won the delegate vote by a slender margin. This was a 1980-style blowout, where the difference in votes and delegates between her and Sanders was massive. She crushed him.

Enthusiasm gap? Not so much.

Yet this is the narrative that still pervades reportage of the election. Many of us women journalists have joked that when Clinton actually wins the presidency, there will be some equivocating headline. “Clinton First Woman President, But What About Those Emails?” Or, “Clinton Wins Election, But Does Anyone Really Like Her?” Or, like now: “Trump Loses: Clinton To Be Next President.”

If it’s wearying for reporters and Clinton supporters, one can only imagine how exhausting it is for Clinton herself. Yet she keeps on, and one can see why President Obama, Vice President Biden, the First Lady and even her former rival Sanders and her shadow rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are her biggest cheerleaders: Clinton is the hardest working politician in America and has been for a very long time.

The relentlessness of the negative spin is something we have seen repeatedly: When women rise to power, men freak out. Sure, #NotAllMen – but far more than any of us wants to believe. In Donald Trump many men see the man they want to be: the man who gives an accomplished woman a creepy nickname and dismisses her as unpresidential when it is he who’s unqualified. A man who talks over and through a woman who is prepared and calm and ready to lead while he sniffs and blusters and just flat out makes things up. A man who isn’t afraid to suggest a woman who has gotten in his way should be, well, killed.

This kind of misogyny is not just the purview of right wing men in this election cycle – the first time I was called the c word on social media was last year after I covered Netroots Nation 2015. It was self-declared progressives calling me that because I reported on Black Lives Matter activists challenging Bernie Sanders and his very bad response.

That continued. When Clinton won Iowa it was “barely,” so it didn’t count and Sanders refused to congratulate her. When Clinton won the Democratic nomination – making American history – some newspapers actually had photographs of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, under the headline of her historic win. And her win – in the widest margin of any primary since 1980 – was viewed by many, due to Sanders’ complaints that the white male system was somehow “rigged” against him, as illegitimate.

Throughout the primary, misogyny ruled. It was as blatant on the Left as it was on the Right. But for those of us on the Left, far more disturbing to have self-declared progressives using the b word and c word in their discourse not just about Clinton, but also her supporters–particularly women and men of color.

Once the DNC was over, Trump’s attacks on Clinton ratcheted up – and it was ugly. Within a month’s time, he had called for her assassination twice. The day after the debate, he did it again, using the same semi-oblique language he used before:

“We have to get rid of her. We’re going to get rid of her.”

Get rid of her?

And then there are Trump’s supporters. The bulk of Trump’s support comes from white men without a college education. (Trump is the first Republican in years to not have the white college educated male and female vote. In 2012, Mitt Romney out-bid President Obama by 20 points in that demographic. Clinton is beating Trump by the same percentage in 2016.) Trump has a large contingent of misogynist Alt Right supporters–the people Clinton referred to as the “deplorables“. Trump’s campaign chair is Steve Bannon, an Alt Right mentor.

These people are disturbing and indicative of the Pandora’s box of racism/xenophobia/Islamophobia/homophobia/misogyny that Trump has torn the lid off. A few days ago I was trolled relentlessly by Trump supporters and it made my skin crawl.

Clinton challenged Trump on his misogyny at the debate. She turned the mansplaining tables on him and threw his attacks on women back in his face. He was sputtering, then snide. He lost total control while Clinton remained calm and relentless in her barrage of Trump’s own words at him.

Trump tried the “just Rosie O’Donnell” ‘joke’ he’d attempted at the first GOP debate last August when moderator Megyn Kelly assailed him with the same words Clinton used.

This time no one was laughing.

Are people onto Trump? Are they as tired of his abusive bullying of women as many women are? It’s hard to say. The latest polls have Clinton up and she will likely get another bounce from the debate, but many are married to Trump for just this kind of sexist language.

Which should disturb us all. Trump’s misogyny is as bad as his racism. His de-legitimizing of Clinton in advance of her winning the presidency is no different from his relentless promotion of birtherism, which First Lady Michelle Obama said, unequivocally, in a campaign speech for Clinton in Philadelphia on Sept. 28, had been a source of constant pain to her husband and her family throughout the five years Trump had promoted it.

Yet we are only really talking about misogyny now because Clinton forced the issue at the debate. Yet it’s not only not new, it’s like Trump’s years-long promotion of birtherism: it’s one of the reasons voters support him.

Trump had the opportunity to choose a moderate running mate to lure in more centrist voters. Instead he chose a virulently anti-woman/anti-gay running mate in Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Pence is anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-repro rights of the barest minimum, like birth control and the morning after pill. Pence closed down Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana and sparked a small epidemic of HIV. He’s reaffirmed his desire to overturn marriage equality and promotes conversion therapy for gays.

Pence and Trump both spoke at the Value Voters Summit 2016 – the first GOP candidates to ever do so because it’s so far right (even Sarah Palin demurred in 2008) and is sponsored by a registered hate group, the Family Research Council, which has extreme anti-gay politics.

Trump chose Pence because he wanted a partner in hate crimes against women and gays.

The origins of Trump’s misogyny aren’t clear, but rather than back-pedal on his anti-woman bias, the day after the debate, Trump was doubling down after the exchange with Clinton. It was Trump’s attack on Gold Star father Kzir Khan all over again.

At the debate Clinton had asserted, “One of the worst things [Donald Trump] said was about a woman in a beauty contest….He called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado, and she has become a U.S. citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November.”

Trump spent his time on the morning shows talking not about policy or demurring about his poor performance the night before at the debate, but talking about how hugely fat former Miss Universe Alicia Machado had been.

Seriously.

According to Trump, the Latina beauty queen gained half of her body weight after winning the title.”She was the worst we ever had,” he said. “She was the winner, and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.” He claimed she had gained “55, 60 pounds” when she had weighed 120.

Machado says she was publicly shamed by Trump in a new spread in Cosmopolitan and in an ad for Hillary Clinton.

Machado said, “I felt really bad, like a lab rat. Long after, I was sick with eating disorders. I wouldn’t eat, and would still see myself as fat, because a powerful man had said so.”

Actress Salma Hayek and performer Jennifer Lopez have also been fat-shamed by Trump. (Hayek, who was born in Mexico, has been a strong supporter of Clinton and an equally strong critic of Trump, appearing on numerous talk shows discussing Trump’s anti-Mexican racism.)

In tapes that have surfaced since the debate, on the Howard Stern Show, Trump even fat-shamed his third wife, Melania, a former model, after she gave birth to his fifth child a decade ago.

Sen. Claire McGaskill (D-MO) said on Sept. 28, that perhaps it was Trump’s turn:

Trump has a long history of body shaming women – his long feud with Rosie was in part about his body shaming of another beauty pageant contestant. As a woman who regularly discussed her struggles with weight, O’Donnell was an easy target for Trump.

Why does the fat-shaming matter? Because it’s one of the ways men keep women under their control. After Trump’s doctor alleged that Trump only weighed 236 lbs, which would have made him pretty svelte at 6’3″ and ten pounds lighter than his much shorter VP’s medical records – tabloids claimed Clinton had gained between 30 and 100 pounds. Given Clinton is about the same height as Pence – around 5’6″–this is an incredulous statement.

Yet all women have experienced this. If women are street harassed and don’t respond appropriately by smiling on command or chatting with the man in question, the tone turns ugly fast: “You’re fat anyway.” “Cow.” “Dog.” And of course the ubiquitous “Dyke.”

During the primary, Trump called the one female contender, former CEO Carly Fiorina, ugly. Who could look at that face, he queried. In recent weeks he’s repeatedly said Clinton doesn’t “look” presidential.

Carly Fiorina/Credit: Gage Skidmore
Carly Fiorina/Credit: Gage Skidmore

It was these statements that moderator Lester Holt asked Trump about at the debate. Trump kept referring to Clinton’s “stamina,” even as Holt pressed him, but she was holding up far better than he at the debate and went to after-parties while Trump went home.

Women knew what Trump meant and Holt was trying to tease it out of him: Only a man can look presidential.

It isn’t just the looksism, though. It’s the simple fact of femaleness. Why did Trump fixate on Rosie? Because she’s a woman who has succeeded irrespective of men. Whatever your opinion of her, Rosie is her own woman. And as a lesbian, men are peripheral to her personal life.

Trump was thrown by not getting the wild laughter he received last August when he referred to O’Donnell as a fat pig and a slob at the debate – likely because at Trump’s rallies, the kind of abuse of women that he’s evinced throughout his career is on full display. Between chants of “Lock Her Up” and “Kill the Bitch,” there are simple statements like this, posted by reporter Dominic Holden:

Pollster Frank Luntz ended up trending on Facebook when he posted this:

Does shaming women about their looks matter? Yes, It. Does. It reduces women to mere bodies and suggests that as a leader, Trump would have little concern in his policies for what women face – irrespective of or even because of their looks – because of their gender.

We know Clinton gets it because we’ve seen her fight it her entire political life and because she has pledged to turn the Cabinet 50 percent female: an historical game changer.

Women who have been abused also recognize Trump as a bully. He interrupted Clinton 58 times, more than 20 of those in the first half hour of the debate. Clinton continued to speak, undaunted, despite Trump’s repeated declarations of “Wrong!” when she cited statements he had made about issues from the Iraq War to climate change.

Yet this is a classic abusive model that men use against women in real life every day – at home, at school, at work. It is a standard warning sign of domestic violence.

And Clinton has borne the brunt of this assertion, not just by Trump but by the white male pundit class as well, that somehow she is deficient solely based on her gender. She’s weak, she’s damaged, she’s fragile, she has no stamina–none of which is true, but all of which get repeated until it has the ring of truth.

Yet Trump is a liar and the fact of his lies is part of what he has used to abuse and denigrate Clinton, attempting to de-legitimize her and diminish her. Mainstream media has perpetuated the “both sides” narrative, but Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact ranked Clinton as most consistently truthful of all the candidates throughout the primary and general election and Trump the least. As Everyday Feminism noted, “PolitiFact conducted the most comprehensive fact-check of presidential candidates in the 2016 election, found that Trump has more statements in the notorious ‘pants on fire’ category than all 21 other candidates combined.”

EF also noted that “”The New York Times called Trump ‘Lord of the Lies.’ The Washington Post wrote that ‘Donald Trump must be the biggest liar in the history of American politics, and that’s saying something. Trump lies the way other people breathe. We’re used to politicians who stretch the truth, who waffle or dissemble, who emphasize some facts while omitting others. But I can’t think of any other political figure who so brazenly tells lie after lie, spraying audiences with such a fusillade of untruths that it is almost impossible to keep track.’”

Among Trump’s lies is his new-since-the-debate assertion that Clinton is responsible for everything that has gone wrong in Washington, DC for the past 30 years. But 30 years ago Clinton was an attorney in Arkansas and working with the Children’s Defense Fund. Clinton wasn’t actually in any government position until she was elected senator from New York in November 2000 and took office in January 2001. She stepped down from her position as Secretary of State in 2013. Neither her role as senator nor as Secretary of State would have put her in a position to control the entire U.S. economy as Trump suggested at a rally in Iowa on Sept. 28:

Trump will continue to repeat this lie – along with his many others – until his supporters start repeating it as well. “Clinton says she cares about women and children, but because of her and her alone, 70 million are in poverty.”

Trump has threatened to raise Bill Clinton’s previous affairs, the most recent of which was 25 years ago, in the next debate. This isn’t policy, this is misogyny. Women aren’t responsible for their husband’s actions. Trump – now on his third marriage – hardly seems the right person to be raising issues of personal fidelity when his current wife is the woman he cheated on his previous wife with while they were still married.

The goal posts have shifted because we’ve never had a woman within striking distance of the presidency before. Trump knows – or at least the majority of serious politicians and voters in America know – that Clinton is over-qualified while he is under-qualified for the job of commander in chief. There are 40 days left and two more debates until Election Day and Trump is going to try all of the tricks he has used to shame women throughout his adult life against Clinton.

We saw how well that plan worked at the first debate. Misogyny is alive and well in America, but it’s quite possible that many Americans have had enough – and won’t be voting for it come Nov. 8.

 

X
X