tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post7799798949413416418..comments2024-03-18T22:21:33.261-07:00Comments on The Debate Link: Could Misogyny, Of All Things, Finally Destroy Donald Trump?David Schraubhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-76279644774242769002016-10-14T17:08:07.928-07:002016-10-14T17:08:07.928-07:00Whiteness. He bragged about assaulting a white wom...Whiteness. He bragged about assaulting a white woman. A lot of racism is about "protecting" white women Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03265235053636173508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-27632008673329280762016-10-08T09:48:52.442-07:002016-10-08T09:48:52.442-07:00Sure, Mordy. And I'm not saying that some indi...Sure, Mordy. And I'm not saying that some individual conservatives don't have higher standards. But the question raised is "why is this example of misogyny a step too far for his supporters"? Obviously, they don't consider racism or misogyny disqualifying. The guy has been a pig to plenty of other people. I think the only difference here is who he's talking about and how frank he's being about it.<br /><br />So yes, it's not a very positive interpretation of conservative moral standards. But it's the most positive one that I can fit to the facts. Consider, for example, all the conservative hysteria about how gay marriage is destroying families. I know GLBT people who are now married with kids, so it's obviously creating families. And when those same people couldn't get married, it put their family and their kids at risk of all sorts of terrible outcomes. So what could conservatives possibly mean?<br /><br />If you ask, they'll talk about traditional families, biblical families. But this comes out of a tradition where women are property. From at least the Iliad forward, women had a status below men but above livestock. Per the bible, they were war prizes, domestic slaves, bearers of children. But not actually people, not like men were. This patriarchal, tribalist mindset was part of the founding of America; the only voters were free white property-owning men. That is, plausible patriarchs.<br /><br />Now if you'd like to make the case that patriarchy ended on some particular date, I'd be glad to read your thoughts. But my take is that we're still disassembling it. I think it's still pervasive, although not evenly distributed. To somebody who still favors patriarchy, the obvious election choice is the dominant dude. They'll only repudiate him if he violates patriarchal norms. Which is exactly what a bunch of people did here. And many did it while explicitly talking about "their" women.<br /><br />Do I think this is conscious? Mostly not. One of the tricky things about defending tradition is that you don't really have to understand what you're defending. And I don't think that's necessarily bad. A lot of the past is worth preserving; even if you don't know how something works, you can know that it works. And the world is too complicated to go around examining everything all the time.<br /><br />But there are moments when I think it's worth looking very closely at something. And this election is forcing people to look carefully at race and gender in ways that normally don't get examined much. At least, not by people who get the upside of America's patriarchy and racial bias.Williamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08301434653929004584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-28390774988928104042016-10-08T08:08:43.064-07:002016-10-08T08:08:43.064-07:00Not that I entirely disagree, William, but you do ...Not that I entirely disagree, William, but you do understand that is the least good faith interpretation of conservative belief one can have. Many men and women believe that marriage is a sacred institution and that families are the basis for functional healthy societies. There is nothing inherently degrading towards women to believe that hitting on a married woman is a violation of all necessary social norms. In fact, one can believe (as I do) that assault is disgusting no matter who it is committed against, and that trying to bed a married woman is wrong on its own merits as well.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-80360686274322103272016-10-08T07:26:05.753-07:002016-10-08T07:26:05.753-07:00A number of women on Twitter pointed out something...A number of women on Twitter pointed out something that made this make sense to me. People now repudiating Trump often talked about their wives/daughters/granddaughters. The women responded that no, you should be upset about sexual assault because the victims are people in their own right.<br /><br />So I think this is getting such a strong reaction because Trump violated patriarchal norms. Him being a misogynist pig to beauty contest contestants was fine, because that's practically what they're there for. Him being awful to Mexicans and Muslims is also fine because they're not part of the tribe. Him being a misogynist pig to somebody's wife, though, that's not on. She's some dude's property. She's almost people.<br /><br />That's of course no longer the legal structure (although it was for centuries). But it's still a part of the social structure that conservatives are so energetically conserving. Very often when a conservative says that something is destroying "the family", you can substitute "patriarchy" and the sentence becomes much clearer. Williamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08301434653929004584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-89634635157479192682016-10-07T22:38:47.057-07:002016-10-07T22:38:47.057-07:00Because the only legitimate ethical core at the he...Because the only legitimate ethical core at the heart of conservatism is the sanctity of the family and of marriage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com