TRUMP: "I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist
but when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof, okay?"
Donald Trump's misogyny is obvious.
It's part of his brand. It's one of the reasons why he's so famous in the first place,
and I'd argue that nearly everybody already knows it.
But while some perceive Trump's sexism as horrifying or dangerous,
millions of others don't really think it's that big of a deal.
It's the difference between seeing Trump like this –
– versus something more like this:
JACK: "Fire her and don't ever make me talk to a woman that old again."
And that rather stark difference in perspective is, I think, at the heart of why Trump's sexism
didn't derail his bid for the White House in the way that most political pundits predicted that it would.
Now we'll return to our friend Jack from 30 Rock in a moment –
JACK: "We have a chance to make this country great again!"
– but first we have to talk about how the next President of the United States
views women.
HOST: "I see, so you treat women with respect?"
TRUMP: "I can't say that either." HOST: "All right, good, all right."
It's not an exaggeration to say that Donald Trump sees women as pieces of meat who primarily
exist for male pleasure or as trophies to elevate men's social status.
This mentality even extends to his own daughter.
TRUMP: "I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps, I'd be dating her, you know."
He projects a casual disregard for the idea of consent.
TRUMP: "She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, it was incredible."
This is a man who incessantly links the inherent worth of women
to their physical appearance and to little else.
TRUMP: "Now, all of a sudden, she's gained, I mean literally,
she went up from about 118 to about 170 pounds,
it was incredible!"
All of this is, again, obvious
and uncontroversial.
So what's going on in our culture when a man can say things like this:
and then millions of Americans, both men and women,
just shrug it off and support him anyway?
Now I don't think the 60 million people who voted for Donald Trump,
did so because they agree with his sexist behavior, at least not consciously.
Sure, some certainly do, but the vast majority don't. Most people are not internet trolls.
During the 2016 election cycle,
we saw dozens of Republican leaders trying to distance themselves from Trump's misogyny,
yet for most of them, it still wasn't a deal breaker.
So we have to ask why. Why wasn't such blatant and unashamed misogyny a deal breaker?
The answer, I'd argue, has a lot to do with the ways that our culture
normalizes sexism.
In the sociological sense:
It's the cultural process through which we come to expect and accept
something as natural and as, well, normal.
The cultural process of normalization is, of course, multifaceted.
It operates within many different institutions simultaneously.
In families and schools, in workplaces and churches, in government and entertainment.
ANNOUNCER: "Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump!"
But it's that last one, entertainment,
that I want to focus on here.
On the ways in which mass media frames misogyny and sexism
because, as Bell Hook says:
Donald Trump is a reality TV star. He is first and foremost
an entertainer. He revels in making a spectacle of himself
in a society that rewards him with endless media attention
TRUMP: "Nice set of hair, I'll say that."
for his outlandish behavior.
It's clear to me that Donald Trump is always performing,
always putting on a show for an audience.
And his overt sexism is an important part of that performance.
DONALD TRUMP: "We get along very well, and there's not a lot of disagreement, because ultimately,
Ivana does exactly as I tell her to do."
HOST: "See, wait a minute..." IVANA TRUMP: "Male chauvinist!"
HOST: "Donald? Donald?" DONALD TRUMP: Right? Right, men, is that right, huh?
In fact, Trump's brand of misogyny is so unapologetically over-the-top
that it feels very much like a television caricature.
JACK: "Maybe I could help her realize some other life goal,
to become a doctor's nurse or a lawyer's mistress,
or even the President of the United States'....
shopping association."
"I want you to get better
because, and I mean this,
I'm tired of talking this much to a woman I'm not having sex with."
This lovable misogynist archetype is found everywhere in pop culture.
BARNEY: "That's right, Barney Stinson is back on the market.
Mothers, lock up your daughters!"
"Ted, the only reason to wait a month for sex, is if the girl is 17 years 11 months old."
SHIRLEY: "You have been sexually harassing me since the very first day of class."
PIERCE: "Sexually harassing?
What? That makes no sense to me. Why would I harass somebody who turns me on?"
HOWARD: "There's the house! I found America's Top Models!"
RAJ: "Are you sure?"
HOWARD: "Look, on the roof, Anaïs and Giselle are sunbathing!
European style..."
LEONARD: "You can recognize people on Google Earth?"
HOWARD: "Of course not, I got a buddy of mine at NORAD to have a spy drone fly over."
The thing about Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock and the many other characters just like him,
is that everybody knows they're sexist.
The characters know it, the show knows it, the audience knows it.
Across the board, these characters engage in outlandishly sexist
and sometimes downright misogynist behaviors.
ALEX: "What did I do?" SHELDEN: "What, you don't know? Oh, you poor dear.
Your ovaries are squirting so much goofy juice into your brains,
you don't even know which way is up."
JACK: "He's got a little something going with one of the girls here, maybe it's that Russian dancer with the tattoos,
which is the crazy sex trifecta."
BARNEY: "Wide-eyed farm girl would get off the bus with big dreams of Broadway,
no idea what a casting director could legally ask her to do, hold or lick during an audition."
But at the end of the day,
they're still framed as lovable, well-meaning guys.
LILY: "An amazing guy. He's fun,
one of my best friends,
and he landed this hottie!"
ROBIN: "He's a good guy."
By the end of each episode, all has been forgiven again,
but no life lessons have really been learned.
BARNEY (Voiceover): "And it...
is...
on!"
For these characters, sexism is never presented as serious enough
to permanently jeopardize their friendships,
or their relationships,
or their jobs.
In other words, it's not a deal breaker.
This is one of the ways that our culture works to normalize sexist behavior.
Not by denying that it's sexist, but by acknowledging it,
and then framing it as mostly harmless.
LEONARD: "For the record, what you guys are doing is really creepy."
HOWARD: "You know what? If it's creepy to use the internet, military satellites and robot aircraft
to find a house full of gorgeous young models,
so that I can drop in on them unexpectedly, then fine – I'm creepy."
JACK: "It's a younger man's game, lemon. But I can't say that I don't miss it.
You'd be in your office late at night. The new girl would come in with some flimsy excuse to be there –
– 'Oh, Mr. Donaghy, I forgot to give you the factory worker death rates!' –
– then she'd laugh at your lame joke, a touch of the arm...
[inhales deeply]
and you take your reward."
Now, to be clear, I don't believe the writers and producers of this media are intending to help normalize sexism –
– I think they clearly intend to satirize it –
but when misogyny is consistently framed as a light-hearted joke,
it signals to viewers that sexism
isn't something all that serious.
I'd argue that this provides us with a clue as to why Donald Trump's misogyny isn't taken seriously either.
If we add a laugh track after Trump's statements about women,
he becomes virtually indistinguishable from another TV sitcom character.
TRUMP: "I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist
but when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof."
But in all honesty, we don't need to add a laugh track because Trump's audience
provides one for him already.
TRUMP: "And he referred to my hands – 'if they're small, something else must be small' –
– I guarantee you, there's no problem. I guarantee you.
Just like a TV show.
I think we have to face the hard truth that for millions of people,
Donald Trump' sexism is not seen as harmful
because it's seen as just more entertainment.
Trump excels at exploiting a media landscape
where misogyny is framed as just 'guys being guys'.
And as something that doesn't make those guys dangerous or scary.
When Trump or his surrogates are occasionally forced to respond to his most egregious sexism,
they do it like this:
TRUMP: "This was locker room talk."
Notice that statements about locker room talk are not a denial of sexism,
they're an excuse for it.
They're an acknowledgment that, yes, Trump's statements may be sexist,
but it's mostly harmless.
It's just not that big of a deal.
But, of course, misogyny is that big of a deal.
Misogyny is dangerous, especially to women,
on both an interpersonal and a public policy level.
And Trump's presidency promises to bring with it an attack on women's reproductive rights
and a dismantling of protections against gender-based discrimination.
INTERVIEWER: "Do you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes, or no, as a principle?"
TRUMP: "The answer is that...
there has to be some form of punishment."
INTERVIEWER: "For the woman?" TRUMP: "Yeah."
The important thing to understand is that trump and his brand of toxic masculinity
do not exist in a vacuum;
he doesn't exist separate and apart from the world that you and I inhabit.
His rise comes in part because we have failed to challenge a culture
that tolerates sexist behaviors even while acknowledging
that they exist.
Donald J. Trump might be a misogynist
but in a society that reduces sexism to a joke,
he's widely seen as a lovable one.
So if you enjoyed that video, please consider sharing it;
you can also go over to my patreon page right here
and help back the project. Even just a few dollars a month really helps me out a lot.
I will see you all in a few weeks with another video critique.