Article: Donald Trump hates women

[jeaniebueller]

(duh?)

www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/donald_trump_has_one_core_philosophy_misogyny.html

D
onald Trump holds one core belief. It’s not limited government. He favored a state takeover of health care before he was against it. Nor is it economic populism. Despite many years of arguing the necessity of taxing the rich, he now wants to slice their rates to bits. Trump has claimed his nonlinear approach to policy is a virtue. Closing deals is what matters in the end, he says, not unbleached allegiance to conviction. But there’s one ideology that he does hold with sincerity and practices with unwavering fervor: misogyny.


We have been collectively blithe about this fact. On its face, Donald Trump’s hateful musings about women and his boastful claims of sexual dominance should be reason alone to drive him from polite society and certainly to blockade him from the West Wing. Yet somehow his misogyny has instead propelled his campaign to the brink of the Republican nomination. Each demonstration of his caveman views—about Megyn Kelly’s menstruation, about Carly Fiorina’s face, about the size of his member—produces a show of mock-horror before Trump resumes his march to the nomination. It fits a familiar pattern. Trump rose to fame on the basis of our prurient interest in his caddishness and amusement at his vulgar provocations.

Trump wants us to know all about his sex life. He doesn’t regard sex as a private activity. It’s something he broadcasts to demonstrate his dominance, of both women and men. In his view, treating women like meat is a necessary precondition for winning, and winning is all that matters in his world. By winning, Trump means asserting superiority. And since life is a zero-sum game, superiority can only be achieved at someone else’s expense.


This was a view etched in Trump from an early age. He was the archetypal brat. His father, himself a successful real estate developer, endlessly expressed a belief in his son’s greatness. “You are a king,” his father would tell Donald, according to his biographer Michael D’Antonio. His son took that to mean he could set his own rules. In elementary school, he gave one teacher he didn’t like a black eye; others were pelted with erasers. At birthday parties, he would fling cake.


Not even Trump’s father’s wealth, nor his father’s faith in his son’s destiny, could save Trump from incessant discipline. At the age of 13, he was shipped off to the New York Military Academy, which employed brutal tactics for the remaking of delinquent character, even resorting to violence to assert control over the boys. “In those days they’d smack the hell out of you. It was not like today where you smack somebody and you go to jail,” Trump has recalled. The struggle for domination permeated the culture of the place, especially the manner in which boys treated one another. According to one NPR report, Trump would tear off the sheets of boys who didn’t make their beds properly; he would laugh while his classmates spoke, putting them in their place.


But Trump’s primary method for asserting dominance was sex. The school’s yearbook—the perfectly named Shrapnel—anointed him the official “ladies man” of the class. He began his lifelong practice of advertising his bedroom exploits as a means of demonstrating his authority over the rest of the locker room. Decades later, he’s still trumpeting his sexual exploits. When Tucker Carlson once mocked him on air, Trump called the pundit and left a voicemail: “It’s true you have better hair than I do. But I get more pussy than you do.”
Such boasting is an essential part of his patter. In 2001, he phoned into The Howard Stern Show to discuss his feats of cuckoldry. The occasion for the call was the guest appearance of a gossip columnist from the Daily News named A.J. Benza, who was shilling for his book, Fame, Ain’t It a Bitch. The tome included the admission that Benza’s girlfriend had left him for Trump. Most men who would go on to become major-party nominees would have run in the other direction from such a spectacle; Trump couldn’t resist. “I’ve been successful with your girlfriend, I’ll tell you that,” Trump told Stern’s audience. “While you were getting onto the plane to go to California thinking that she was your girlfriend, she was some place that you wouldn’t have been very happy with.” It was
characteristic bit of braggadocio. As he wrote in The Art of the Deal: “If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller.” It’s an entirely Darwinian view, where the alpha male has his pick of females, both as a perk and a means of flexing his power over lesser men. It’s the mindset that made his assertion of his penis size in a national debate almost an imperative—if he let the attack on his manhood slide, his entire edifice might crumble.


Trump considers himself such a virile example of masculinity that he’s qualified to serve as the ultimate arbiter of femininity. He relishes judging women on the basis of their looks, which he seems to believe amounts to the sum of their character. Walking out of his meeting with the Washington Post editorial board this week, he paused to pronounce editor Karen Attiah “beautiful.” When he owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, he would screen all the contestants. His nominal reason for taking on this role was to make sure that his lackeys weren’t neglecting any beauties. His real motive was to humiliate the women. He would ask a contestant to name which of her competitors she found “hot.” If he didn’t consider a woman up to his standards, he would direct her to stand with her fellow “discards.” One of the contestants, Carrie Prejean, wrote about this in her book, Still Standing: “Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after [Trump] left, devastated to have failed even before the competition really began ... even those of us who were among the chosen couldn’t feel very good about it—it was as though we had been stripped bare.”


Humiliating women by decrying their ugliness is an almost recreational pastime for Trump. When the New York Times columnist Gail Collins described him as a “financially embittered thousandaire,” he sent her a copy of the column with her picture circled. “The Face of a Dog!” he scrawled over her visage. This is the tack he took with Carly Fiorina, when he described her facial appearance as essentially disqualifying her from the presidency. It’s the method he’s used to denounce Cher, Bette Midler, Angelina Jolie, and Rosie O’Donnell—“fat ass,” “slob, “extremely unattractive,” etc.—when they had the temerity to criticize him. The joy he takes in humiliating women is not something he even bothers to disguise. He told the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, “My favorite part [of the movie Pulp Fiction] is when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: ‘Bitch be cool.’ I love those lines.” Or as he elegantly summed up his view to New York magazine in the early ’90s, “Women, you have to treat them like shit.”

When presented with the long list of his demeaning comments, Trump has responded, “I respect women, I love women, I cherish women.” Indeed, he has hired and promoted women within his companies. “They’re among my best people,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal. The line reveals more than he intends. He’s perfectly comfortable with female underlings, his people—less so when women question him sharply, as Megyn Kelly has, or compete against him, as Carly Fiorina did. He’s perfectly blunt about this power dynamic. In a 1994 interview with ABC News, he explained, “I have really given a lot of women great opportunity. Unfortunately, after they are a star, the fun is over for me.” He means it. He brought along one his deputies, Carolyn Kepcher, to appear on The Apprentice. But he couldn’t stand her growing fame, and fired her for becoming a “prima donna.”


Women labor under a cloud of Trump’s distrust. “I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye—or perhaps another body part,” he wrote in Trump: The Art of the Comeback. Working moms are particularly lacking in loyalty, he believes, and thus do not make for good employees. “She’s not giving me 100 percent. She’s giving me 84 percent, and 16 percent is going towards taking care of children,” he told Mika Brzezinski. (Further evidence of his dim view of working moms: Trump once notoriously blurted that the pumping of breast milk in the office is “disgusting.”)


This is one reason that evangelicals, both men and women, gravitate to Trump, despite his obvious lack of interest in religion and blatantly loose morals. He represents the possibility of a return to patriarchy, to a time when men were men, and didn’t have to apologize for it. While he celebrates his own sexuality, he believes that female sexuality has spun out of control and needs to be contained. The best example of this view is a reality show called Lady or a Tramp, which Trump developed for Fox but never aired. The premise of the show was that Trump would take “girls in love with the party life” and send them off for a “stern course” on manners. “We are all sick and tired of the glamorization of these out-of-control young women,” he told Variety, “so I have taken it upon myself to do something about it.”


How will Trump cope with a general-election race against a woman? We’ve seen hints. Describing Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary loss, he resorted to a crude metaphor—she’d been schlonged by then–Sen. Obama. As always in Trump’s world, sex is power. When Clinton suggested that Trump has “demonstrated a penchant for sexism,” he fired back by invoking the sins of her husband: “She’s got one of the great women-abusers of all time sitting in her house, waiting for her to come home to dinner.”




There’s a case for subjecting Bill Clinton to far harsher scrutiny, but Donald Trump is the last person with the moral standing to make it. The former Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III described Trump’s history of assault in his book, The Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. In 1989, Trump had returned home from a painful scalp-reduction surgery, intended to remove a bald spot. His ex-wife Ivana had suggested the doctor—and he blamed her for his suffering. He held her arms and began pulling hair from her scalp, then tore off her clothes. Hurt writes: “Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified … It is a violent assault. According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’ ” When the story resurfaced last summer, Trump’s campaign disavowed it. When Hurt was writing his book, Trump’s lawyers forced the author to include a statement from Ivana in the book, “A Note to Readers,” which softens the account but doesn’t disavow it: “As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”


The scene offers a graphic summation of Trump’s retrograde beliefs and real brutality. What’s worse, the same spirit informs his politics—the rampant cruelty, the violent impulses, the thirst for revenge, the absence of compassion. Misogyny isn’t an incidental part of Donald Trump. It’s who he is.


Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.

[aurora]

It's not a shock to me that he's losing among women.

The thing is, I am more worried about Cruz pushing laws that specifically target women than Trump.

I still think Trump's sexism is disgusting, I just imagine it will have a smaller impact on his policy.

[lurkingaw]

He is such a vile human being.

I take issue with the part of this article that asserts that he does well with evangelicals basically because he is a sexist pig. I've heard that he does well with people that identify as evangelical, but do not regularly attend church, read their Bible, or participate in their faith in other ways. If we have RINOs, I would call these people CINOs (Christians in name only). Polls have shown that Cruz does better with the other evangelicals.

Listen, I live the patriarchy. I am a submissive wife. But Donald Trump does not in any way, shape, or form exemplify what my husband and I believe are Biblical values. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing pandering to the uneducated and unchurched vote at best.

It's a strange world when a known adultering, lying reality TV star who built his empire making casinos can even be an option for the conservative Christian vote.

[smock]

It's so gross to read so many disgusting Trump comments collected in one place. I really can't understand how anyone could support him.

I'd bet that there's a gender divide in how men and women interpret Trump's behavior toward women. It seems like many men think the hyper-masculine sexual posturing isn't sexist, it's just manly or masculine. I'd also bet that more men would say Trump's comment on the appearance of the WaPo editor was "just a compliment!" instead of seeing it as sexism.

[sparrowsong]

This makes me so nervous for the next six months of shit Hillary is going to have to deal with.

He is absolutely unacceptable presidential material. He is sick.

[mrshandy]

Mar 24, 2016 8:21:00 GMT -5 sparrowsong said:

This makes me so nervous for the next six months of shit Hillary is going to have to deal with.

He is absolutely unacceptable presidential material. He is sick.

Yep. It's really going to be an ugly 6 months in America if we have to listen to his crap. Ugh. 

The whole Trump thing just makes me sad for the people of this country and embarrassed to be an American. 

[sparrowsong]

Mar 24, 2016 8:37:11 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

Mar 24, 2016 8:21:00 GMT -5 sparrowsong said:

This makes me so nervous for the next six months of shit Hillary is going to have to deal with.

He is absolutely unacceptable presidential material. He is sick.

Yep. It's really going to be an ugly 6 months in America if we have to listen to his crap. Ugh. 

The whole Trump thing just makes me sad for the people of this country and embarrassed to be an American. 

I hope she just positively beats him into the ground. But you know getting beat by a woman would just bring out his ugly behavior even more. That's horrible humiliation for him to come in second to a "pussy" he thinks he should be able to control and dominate.

[miniroller]

Just liking posts while nodding my head in agreement to pp's assessments of this disgusting tragedy taking place in our country

[sporky]

Mar 24, 2016 8:46:16 GMT -5 sparrowsong said:

Mar 24, 2016 8:37:11 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

Yep. It's really going to be an ugly 6 months in America if we have to listen to his crap. Ugh. 

The whole Trump thing just makes me sad for the people of this country and embarrassed to be an American. 

I hope she just positively beats him into the ground. But you know getting beat by a woman would just bring out his ugly behavior even more. That's horrible humiliation for him to come in second to a "pussy" he thinks he should be able to control and dominate.

And at this point, not just him, but the the angry mob followers he has as well. 

[Skyesthelimit1212]

Every time I read or hear Trump say he loves woman, the first thing that pops into my head is Barney and Ted from HIMYM, Barney "I love women." Ted "I've seen what you do to them, I really don't think you do."

[jeaniebueller]

I mean, this is what we are dealing with at this point. Very presidential, amirite?

Attachments:

[lurkingaw]

Mar 24, 2016 9:20:39 GMT -5 Skyesthelimit1212 said:

Every time I read or hear Trump say he loves woman, the first thing that pops into my head is Barney and Ted from HIMYM, Barney "I love women." Ted "I've seen what you do to them, I really don't think you do."

It reminds me of him saying "I love the uneducated!" Sure he loves them for what they give him - unquestioning votes. He loves them until they start questioning him and then they are all losers. Same with women. He lives thrm when he is getting something out of them. As soon as they question him they are just menstruating, PMSing, ugly bitches that he has zero respect for.

I can't believe people buy into him. It's so discouraging it makes me want to cry and hug my babies tight. I weep for their future as this Idiocracy can only get worse.

[ttt]

He is vile.

[jeaniebueller]

Mar 24, 2016 9:26:39 GMT -5 lurkingaw said:

Mar 24, 2016 9:20:39 GMT -5 Skyesthelimit1212 said:

Every time I read or hear Trump say he loves woman, the first thing that pops into my head is Barney and Ted from HIMYM, Barney "I love women." Ted "I've seen what you do to them, I really don't think you do."

It reminds me of him saying "I love the uneducated!" Sure he loves them for what they give him - unquestioning votes. He loves them until they start questioning him and then they are all losers. Same with women. He lives thrm when he is getting something out of them. As soon as they question him they are just menstruating, PMSing, ugly bitches that he has zero respect for.

I can't believe people buy into him. It's so discouraging it makes me want to cry and hug my babies tight. I weep for their future as this Idiocracy can only get worse.

That is just it! Do any of his supporters think that Trump gives a flying fuck about them or the issues that affect them? He has no humanity whatsoever.

[ttt]

Mar 24, 2016 9:23:05 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

I mean, this is what we are dealing with at this point. Very presidential, amirite?

It takes a truly horrible and disgusting person to make me want to defend Ted Cruz.

[lurkingaw]

Mar 24, 2016 9:28:48 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Mar 24, 2016 9:26:39 GMT -5 lurkingaw said:

It reminds me of him saying "I love the uneducated!" Sure he loves them for what they give him - unquestioning votes. He loves them until they start questioning him and then they are all losers. Same with women. He lives thrm when he is getting something out of them. As soon as they question him they are just menstruating, PMSing, ugly bitches that he has zero respect for.

I can't believe people buy into him. It's so discouraging it makes me want to cry and hug my babies tight. I weep for their future as this Idiocracy can only get worse.

That is just it! Do any of his supporters think that Trump gives a flying fuck about them or the issues that affect them? He has no humanity whatsoever.

Exactly. Do you think he would have ANYTHING to do with the voters he attracts in his normal private jet flying, expensive suit shopping, reality TV show filming billionaire life? He would pass by these people without even seeing them as people. Yet they are eating it up like he is going to be their savior. I am at a loss. I just don't understand.

[aurora]

Isn't it true that people with narcissistic personality disorder really have trouble loving anyone because they have such difficulty thinking beyond themselves? So Trump may truly believe he loves women and the uneducated, etc., but not be capable of practicing that love.

Not a mental health expert, just thinking about what I've read.

[2curlydogs]

Mar 24, 2016 8:00:16 GMT -5 smock said:

It's so gross to read so many disgusting Trump comments collected in one place. I really can't understand how anyone could support him.

I need a shower just reading this. Ugh.

[emilyj]

If it can out that he raped a woman, I would not be shocked.

He's VILE.

[claudiajean]

Probably bad that my response to the title was "And in other news, water is wet."

[heyjude]

Mar 24, 2016 9:23:05 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

I mean, this is what we are dealing with at this point. Very presidential, amirite?

Are you kidding me?!

[elleblue]

Mar 24, 2016 10:31:00 GMT -5 emilyj said:

If it can out that he raped a woman, I would not be shocked.

He's VILE.

He did, his ex-wife. Though she later walked it back. But I believe her original version and she describes an encounter I would call rape. Unfortunately I suspect there are many people who still think you can't rape your spouse and then others who will just flat out think she's making it up. 

I also doubt it's the first time he's done such a thing but I'm sure any victims out there don't want to endure the scrutiny that would ensue with coming forward. I know I wouldn't. 

[mbcdefg]

How do you all respond to the people who retort back with "Bill Clinton did the same thing!"? Because "He's not the one running right now and also you're a fucking asshole" doesn't seem to be cutting it for me.

It just boggles my mind that people are willing to vote for Trump simply to spite Hillary. I don't care if people don't want to vote for her, but you can't possibly be so stupid as to think Trump is better

[aurora]

Mar 24, 2016 11:35:58 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

How do you all respond to the people who retort back with "Bill Clinton did the same thing!"? Because "He's not the one running right now and also you're a fucking asshole" doesn't seem to be cutting it for me.

It just boggles my mind that people are willing to vote for Trump simply to spite Hillary. I don't care if people don't want to vote for her, but you can't possibly be so stupid as to think Trump is better

I've not heard that Bill raped his wife. Is that what they're saying? Because philandering is not the same thing as rape. Maybe try that.

[eponinepontmercy]

Mar 24, 2016 9:29:09 GMT -5 ttt said:

Mar 24, 2016 9:23:05 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

I mean, this is what we are dealing with at this point. Very presidential, amirite?

It takes a truly horrible and disgusting person to make me want to defend Ted Cruz.

Seriously.  I've been made to feel sympathy for Ted Cruz, Megyn Kelly, and a Breitbart reporter.  We are in the End Times.

[heyjude]

Apparently the "beans" are that cruz's wife had a bout of depression.

What a fuck face Trump is. He's the shit that gets stuck on your shoe right before running into a meeting at work.

And yet Cruz still won't say that he won't support Trump if he wins.

[claudiajean]

Mar 24, 2016 14:13:06 GMT -5 aurora said:

Mar 24, 2016 11:35:58 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

How do you all respond to the people who retort back with "Bill Clinton did the same thing!"? Because "He's not the one running right now and also you're a fucking asshole" doesn't seem to be cutting it for me.

It just boggles my mind that people are willing to vote for Trump simply to spite Hillary. I don't care if people don't want to vote for her, but you can't possibly be so stupid as to think Trump is better

I've not heard that Bill raped his wife. Is that what they're saying? Because philandering is not the same thing as rape. Maybe try that.

There are several accusations that he raped someone, not his wife.  I don't know much about them; I've just heard it referenced a few times.

[laterbloomer]

Mar 24, 2016 7:41:41 GMT -5 aurora said:

It's not a shock to me that he's losing among women.

The thing is, I am more worried about Cruz pushing laws that specifically target women than Trump.

I still think Trump's sexism is disgusting, I just imagine it will have a smaller impact on his policy.

I'm surprised that any woman at all votes for him.

[laterbloomer]

Mar 24, 2016 9:13:49 GMT -5 sporky said:

Mar 24, 2016 8:46:16 GMT -5 sparrowsong said:

I hope she just positively beats him into the ground. But you know getting beat by a woman would just bring out his ugly behavior even more. That's horrible humiliation for him to come in second to a "pussy" he thinks he should be able to control and dominate.

And at this point, not just him, but the the angry mob followers he has as well. 

As much as there is still a lot of bigotry, racism and sexism around, there is a lot of progress in getting rid of it. I think this backlash is the sign of the rats backed into a corner. It's more important than ever that anti bigots, anti racists and anti sexists don't back down to this show of "force". I think if we stay the course and SHOW UP TO VOTE we are on the cusp of great progress in these areas.