A power structure on which he knowingly capitalizes
James Hamblin at the Atlantic points out that “graphic” sex talk is a good thing. That’s not what Trump was doing.
The thing about the Republican’s words isn’t that they’re explicit or graphic. It’s that they’re misogynistic, coercive, abusive, and dehumanizing. And as my colleague David Graham notes, illegal: The candidate is describing forcing himself on women, bragging that they’re disinclined to object because of a power structure on which he knowingly capitalizes.
Framing this as lewd, even extremely so, is a reminder of the frequent reluctance to name sexual assault. Explicit conversations are a different thing, a part of life central to mature sexuality.
Precisely. Mutual (in other words consensual) sex talk is a very different thing from what Trump was doing. He was talking about women the way he would talk about a hamburger if he hadn’t eaten in hours. Mutuality had nothing to do with it. The woman is a thing, with legs that make him shout “Whoa! Whoa!” and a mouth he’ll just start kissing and a pussy he can grab. He’s the one who grabs, and she’s the thing who is grabbed.
Like Trump, ever more Americans seem to feel that masculinity (as they understand it, narrowly defined) is threatened. It’s threatened specifically by “PC culture,” often used as a sweeping indictment of any attempt at decency. My colleague Molly Ball spoke to some of these men recently at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, men with chin-strap beards and novelty t-shirts calling Hillary Clinton a bitch because “it’s funny.”
Some guy on Facebook yesterday posted about Trump’s rapey blurts, but he prefaced what he said with “Sorry, ladies, but this is how men talk.” No it isn’t. It’s how a lot of men talk, but it’s not how men in general talk. We don’t have to normalize it and we certainly don’t have to put up with it.
I’ve been seeing this a lot, too, and it infuriates me. I have never talked that way, and neither have any of my friends, to my knowledge. Assholes like that do NOT get to represent me or any other man.
It’s so obnoxious to both women and men. It infuriates me too.
I have many men who are friends (not to mention a husband) and in my experience, this is how assholes talk, not men. Men don’t need to talk this way. Only assholes talk this way.
This is what we get when we raise boys to believe they are entitled to women, and that they are superior to women. For those who believe there is no rape culture, they should sit up and listen. If they are defending Trump, they are rape culture, even if they themselves have never, and would never, sexually assault a woman.
Obviously SOME men talk like that. In my experience, they don’t do so where they might be overheard by me, or any other man who’d cringe in disgust.
But, thanks to the magic of the interwebs, they can find each other and create social networks where they can normalize their attitudes and amplify the messages. So the PUA/MRA crowd are pre-indoctrinated audience for this. The greed-driven libertarians/republicans can acknowledge one of the driving motives in their pursuit of ‘star’ status at the expense of the rest of the world.
The #notallmen ‘thing’ is cheezy and feeble. Perhaps a better slogan would be: #ANYmenistoodamnmany.
I’m grateful that men-who-aren’t-arseholes are finally speaking up, giving strength to other men-who-aren’t-arseholes; hitherto, they’ve all felt outnumbered by men-who-are-arseholes, because when an arsehole starts pontificating and all the men around him start laughing (and nervously planning their escape before the arsehole starts targeting them), it’s impossible to tell who actually doesn’t agree with the arsehole.
The arsehole, of course, assumes that everyone agrees with him, even though nobody might – but when everyone else is too scared to be the one to say “Stop being an arsehole!” they might as well be applauding the behaviour.
Hence the misconception amongst arseholes that their behaviour is universal, normal ‘masculine behaviour’.
I spent ten years as a taxi driver in South East England during the 90s, and the largest demographic amongst my passengers was, by far, young, drunk men. Fewer than one in twenty was an arsehole. They’re outnumbered – although they don’t realise it – and, if encouraged, the decent men around them will pull them up on unacceptable behaviour. I’ve had whole busloads of young men verbally piling on the arsehole in their midst, when I pointed out that I wasn’t going to put up with his bad behaviour and if they wanted to get home, he’d better grow up.
Keep on speaking up, men-who-aren’t-arseholes. We need you to swing the perception the other way.