Thank You, Donald Trump

By SUSAN CHIRAOCT, in New York Times, 21/10/16 2016 (In the pic: Protesters outside of Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday. Credit Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

(Note:The presidential candidate Trump went abysmally low — too emotional, impulsive and unqualified for high office – when he called Hilary “a bitch, a nasty woman” and she showed herself to be a manly woman when she took it all with a head held high and smiling. That definitely is one thing that makes her presidential.

We wish she carries that trait till the voting on Nov.8th to capture the jackpot of US presidency as the first Lady President of USA. After a first black president, it is now James Kottortime that world’s oldest democracy gets at least  its first  white lady president,  who won’t be repeating more blunders of e-mail leaks. Once bitten, she should be doubly shy to repeat it. A manly woman is a better choice than a womanly man. james kottoor, editor)

Donald J. Trump could well go down in history as a feminist hero. For decades, feminists have tried to stir outrage about how women are routinely groped, belittled, and weight-shamed. Yet Mr. Trump’s words and boasts have shown millions of voters, including people who believe feminism is a dirty word, what women endure every day.

This was supposed to be an election where Hillary Clinton had to convince voters that a woman had the fitness and temperament to be president. Yet instead of worrying whether a woman is too emotional, impulsive and unqualified for high office, voters have been weighing whether that’s true of the man running to be president.

In debates that drew the largest audience in television history and rallies featuring signs taunting Hillary Clinton as a bitch and worse, viewers saw live, visceral demonstrations of misogyny in action.

When Mr. Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” when he repeatedly interrupted her, when he said he’d had a chance to view her from behind and didn’t like what he saw, women heard the echoes of the boorish boss and the bad boyfriend. When he talks about a woman being a 10 or a 4, when he says “look at her” as a way to deny a groping accusation, he wounds every woman who ever wondered if she was pretty enough.

When Mr. Trump was caught on tape boasting about how he could force himself on women, it prompted legions of women to go publicabout when they were groped – and to prompt men to ask the women in their lives what might have happened to them.

Indeed, Mr. Trump is not just a gift to feminists – he is breathing renewed life into a movement to redefine just what a real man is and ought to be.

A man who prides himself on being a red-blooded embodiment of masculinity – with bodacious women there for the taking, big hands and more, political correctness be damned – has unleashed a wave of revulsion about that vision of manhood.

Men have begun asking themselves what they can do to intervene in cases of sexual harassment or denigration – how not to stand by silently. Mothers and fathers have been asking how to raise sons who do not act like this.

The Access Hollywood tape induced a stream of defections from high-level Republicans who had not broken with him over the attack on a war hero’s family, the impugning of a judge of Mexican ancestry, or his threats to ban all Muslims from these shores.

Even if their defense of women was based on outdated Victorian notions of chivalry, there was something about Mr. Trump’s unvarnished male entitlement, that droit du seigneur, that many Republican men could not stomach.

Many Republican women, meanwhile, have deserted Mr. Trump. Suburban women – the vaunted soccer moms who have helped Republicans bridge a longstanding gender gap – seem largely out of his reach. The latest CBS poll of probable voters, conducted a few days after the release of the tape, counted 60 percent of women supporting Mrs. Clinton, compared to 24 percent for Mr. Trump.

This has turned out to be an election in which many of the old dog whistle issues about women – working motherhood, single mothers, a woman’s ability to be commander-in-chief, women’s assertiveness and self-confidence – have not seemed to resonate.

Mrs. Clinton, who shied away in 2008 from the historic nature of her candidacy and was wary of presenting herself as an advocate for women, has changed course this time. She is unabashedly speaking out about her commitment to families and children and her identity as a mother and grandmother. Her full-throated rallying cry for women’s control over their own bodies in the debate Wednesday night was unusually blunt and expansive. She did not shy away from defending late-term abortions – often a political minefield.

It’s an open question whether the election of the first female president would prompt an even more blatant and toxic display of sexism, as the election of the first black president forced American racism even more to the surface. But if Donald Trump’s embrace of sexual swagger and hyper-masculinity alienates enough voters to elect a woman, feminism will be in his debt.


Susan Chira (@susanchira) is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times. Join her on Facebook.

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