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The War on Women Is Back
It’s been nearly a week since the Access Hollywood tape helped to persuade key parts of the nation that Donald Trump might have a character problem. “Would you vote for a sexual predator?” asked New York Magazine. “Donald Trump Versus Hillary Clinton: Choose Your Sexual Predator” headlined The Federalist.
Yet, while rumors are flying that other shoes remain to drop, only a few women have so far come forward with stories of loutish behavior by the Republican standard bearer. Natasha Stoynoff’s is the most disturbing. She alleges that she had visited Mar-A-Lago for a People Magazine spread on Donald and Melania (who was then pregnant). While Melania left the room to change her clothes for a photo shoot, Stoynoff recounts, Trump pushed her against the wall and “shoved his tongue down my throat.” He backed off only when the butler announced that his wife was returning.
While it’s possible that many more women will come forward with similar accounts, my guess is that Trump’s actual gross conduct is probably some fraction of his claimed gross conduct. You have to apply the Trump-adjuster to every statement. Assume that 90 percent of what he claims – even when he’s boasting of unpardonable behavior – is false.
Some of us have argued for the past year that Trump’s candidacy, and his presidency, if one were to transpire, would do incalculable damage to the Republican Party and to conservative ideas.
We see one aspect of that mutilation playing out now. In 2012, Democrats invented the absurd “Republican war on women” theme. It was so over the top that it began to fray and dissolve in 2014, when Sen. Mark Udall was mocked as “Mark Uterus” for overdoing it. He lost to Cory Gardner.
But with Trump heading the Republican ticket, the war is on again. Nothing is too extreme to allege about Republicans now. Donald Trump lives down to every crude stereotype that the left has ever conjured about the right. If Clinton mad scientists attempting to create the only candidate she could defeat had concocted him in a laboratory, he could not be playing his role any better.
The damage goes far beyond an electoral defeat. Conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, who have rallied to Trump have squandered their own integrity and tainted the reputation of conservatism. They signed on for all of this when they saluted smartly and, in effect, acknowledged that all that character talk about Bill Clinton was so much gas.
Across America, college students are being instructed that “traditional” masculinity is to blame for the rape “crisis.” Young men are taught that, until feminism came along, their sex had been cruel and even criminal in its understanding of and treatment of women. The website MenCanStopRape, for example, seeks to “Promote an understanding of the ways in which traditional masculinity contributes to sexual assault and other forms of men’s violence against women.”
Conservatives saw the world differently. They argued that the sexual revolution had freed men from the responsibility to treat women respectfully. If sex was “no big deal,” then the old rules no longer applied and women were left more vulnerable. Traditional masculinity, while it may have had some disadvantages, also had its virtues. Men who were raised to be gentlemen, or whose religion required sexual restraint, attempted to live by a code. They didn’t always live up to their own standards, but they had standards. Gentlemen didn’t cheat at sports or cheat on their wives. There were lots of rules about how to behave with women. None of them included groping or unwanted touching. They didn’t use foul language in front of women or speak disparagingly about them behind their backs either. They didn’t treat women as “pieces of a—“ to quote Donald Trump, or if they did, they didn’t boast about it.
The sexual revolution was a project of the left, not the right. Yet the man who now represents the right is a pure product of the left’s cultural inheritance. Trump, a lifelong Democrat, learned about women, he told a friend (who recounted it to PBS’s Frontline), from Playboy. It shows. In fact, his critique of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was that Clinton did not choose a “really beautiful woman of sophistication.”
Trump is a user and abuser of people, not just women. But his disgusting behavior fits a narrative the left is spinning about sexuality and masculinity. He’s the poster boy for “toxic masculinity,” and every conservative who justifies or excuses him is digging the grave of conservatism even deeper.
Published in General
I agree with every word @monacharen writes. Nevertheless, I will be voting for The Donald, purely as a matter of damage control.
I stand amazed at the convenient embrace of traditional mores by leftists who fifteen minutes ago were using state power to force women and girls to allow men to join them in public showers and restrooms, and a little further back were dismissing White House sexual assault as a private matter.
Yes, Trump is a cad and a lout–he is easily my 17th choice among the original slate of Republican candidates. But Hillary is ever devoted to securing and wielding power for the purpose of hastening our long Progressive march. Speaking personally, I reckon the latter to be the more pressing danger.
Yes Mona, you are correct. But I am voting Trump to prevent Hillary from taking over.
Let’s pretend that we all boycott this election, and we don’t vote for Trump because of his offenses against women. Let’s pretend that so few people showed up to vote that it was like failing to get a quorum at a New England town meeting. The election was cancelled due to lack of voter participation.
Or even a less-drastic scenario: Just the Republicans don’t show up and Hillary is elected by some sort of crazy default. She won because we didn’t show up to play the game.
Would this mean that the Republicans would regain the moral high ground it had when it first prosecuted Bill Clinton? Such that we could then go after him for these same crimes?
Because Donald = Bill.
I don’t understand the guidance that I am getting from the press right now. What do you want us to do?
You are absolutely correct, Mona, and I am voting for neither of the two major party candidates. Living in the Peoples Republic of Western Washington, my vote wouldn’t make any difference, but I could not vote for Trump anyway. I have known him for too many years, and what has been made public this past week is nothing that surprises me in the least. As for Hillary, I detest Bill Clinton and think of her and nothing more than less talented MiniMe of him.
Is it true?
I just cannot see how people like Hannity, a religious and deeply conservative person, could ever get behind this guy. I am simply amazed. Laura Inghram is another. I cannot see how they will continue to have media careers after the disaster (which will be before Nov. 8th).
Even without the crudity that Trump demonstrates, I could never see him as a viable candidate.
Full disclosure: as a young man of 18 or 19, and very liberal (early 70s anti-war type), I was probably a crude person at times. By the time I was 24 and married, I was much different. Trump was 58 when he made those comments, he was not an immature young man, but a very immature old man. He cannot change.
I agree with every word and cannot imagine ever voting for Trump (or Hillary). My vote means something to me, if no one else. It is an endorsement of sorts. I can endorse nothing about this man. He’s not a conservative. He’s not disciplined. He’s not committed to any semblance of character. It is not enough to merely say, “He’s not Hillary.”
“Binary choice”? If my daughter asked me to help her choose between marrying a mobster or a drug dealer, I would decline–even if I knew it was inevitable that she would end up marrying one or the other. After the wedding I would do all within my power to protect her and reform him–exerting all the pressure I could on him to be the man and husband he should be. Similarly, if malefactors broke into my home, overpowered me, and said they would kidnap one child or the other, my choice. I would refuse to choose. Instead, when free, I would devote my life to recovering the lost child.
So, on election day and I vote for McMullen, knowing that barring a miracle either Trump or Clinton (probably Clinton) will be elected president–but without my blessing, my imprimatur. Does that matter to anyone except me? Maybe not. The next day, however, I will work to recover my lost country and exert whatever pressure I can on the next president to do the right thing and to govern conservatively. God save America.
The NYT is interviewing women and publishing stories about grouping, inappropriate grabbing, etc.. It will start on CNN in a day or so. So it might be. Trump says the NYT piece is a lie.
If Clinton mad scientists attempting to create the only candidate she could defeat had concocted him in a laboratory, he could not be playing his role any better. Naming the frankenGOP candidate Bush would make it better.
Donald has some very unsavory habits and he bothers me a lot. He is what the left claimed McCain and Romney were regarding women.
And the day after Hillary’s ascendancy, the NYT will snap back to type: once again unceasingly promoting our descent into state-mandated libertinism.
Donald Trump as the nominee of either major political party is inconceivable absent the Left’s success in redefining sexual morality in the 21st century. And now the tattered remnants of the former standards are being invoked to elect the candidate committed to their utter destruction.
Delicious irony, no doubt, for the social justice warrior contingent.
Never mind that the “War on Women” started during the candidacy of the morally pristine Romney. We wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore if not for the crudeness of Trump! Yeah, right. I’m sure they would have found a “binders of women” comment to broadcast 24/7 no matter who our nominee was, and instead of the entire news cycle being dominated by multiple allegations it would have been dominated by just one. And most likely to the same effect.
Republicans will “fight a war on women” so long as we oppose abortion. Period.
Still, as bad as Trump’s allegedly (we forget that the media perpetually lies about Republicans–when it’s about Trump we can believe them) behavior might have been, I’m not aware of any accusations that he’s forced women onto a bed and viciously bit her lip while forcing sex on her, nor that his response to “I’m in grief because my husband just died” was “maybe I can help you out if you let me fondle you”, nor that he has racially-mixed offspring that he refuses to acknowledge exist. He’s never gotten oral sex while orchestrating bombing raids, nor has he lied under oath to exonerate himself from suffering consequences for laws he’s inflicted on the rest of us.
But despite the overwhelming evidence, we still naively assume that we can keep spurious allegations from sticking if only we have dignified nominees like Romney.
Martel, I agree with you to a point. Of course the media will attempt to scandalize every GOP candidate and point to them as anti-woman. Par for the course. But those attempts largely failed against Romney (especially with respect to white women voters). Although Romney lost women (overall) by 12 points (Trump is losing women by over 30 points), Romney won white women by 14 points. It’s a matter of scale or degree. No one with anyone common sense thought Romney was a secret women-hater or women abuser. The “binders full of women” comment was funny, but had little effect on the election.
Every half-way sensible person knew that Romney was a decent chap, mostly conservative, and would be a good administrator. He was actually a good candidate in many ways (until he decided to “lay low” the last few days before the election). He actually came pretty darn close to winning and would have if he had not been running against a unusually effective (though evil) candidate.
cont’d below
2/2
But can you not see the difference in the media manufacturing an “anti-women” head-wind, and the GOP candidate serving up such “red meat” to them on a silver platter. No sensible person could watch the “grab ’em” tape and conclude anything but Trump is a wretch of a man-the kind of guy that needs his teeth knocked in by some husband, father, or brother–not given the leadership of the free world.
Yes, Bill Clinton was just as bad (or worse). But I didn’t vote for him either. I cannot now vote for the same kind of guy just because he has an R on his jersey.
Romney won white women, but not unmarried white women (which was the reason for the attack).
And I don’t believe that the left isn’t perfectly capable of manufacturing memes that stick regardless of truth. Neither Palin nor Reagan were morons, Republicans don’t hate blacks, women, and the poor, nor do we love war or oppose abortion just because we want to restrict women sexually, yet these have all become conventional wisdom among vast swaths of the American public.
Also, as an Army veteran, I’ve worked alongside countless men who were willing to lay down their lives for their country who repeatedly talked like Trump did in that video. Perhaps you’d like to knock some of their teeth in.
Good points all (although the jury’s still out on Palin). I love my army friends too. The ones I know are gentlemen around decent women, at least in my presence. But if they had talked about my wife or daughter like that and I found out about it, yea ,I would have tried to knock their teeth in (although frankly I would have been the one headed to the orthodontist).;)
Mr. Conservative, you’ve made my day!
The Clinton campaign staffer reads Ricochet, and smiles…
I always thought Bill Clinton wouldn’t have lasted the day if Monica Lewinsky’s father had marched to the white house and demanded a meeting with him, calling him a cad and also a coward if he was too chicken to face a protective father. I know I am old-fashioned, but where are the men who should be standing up to behavior like that of Bill (and Trump).
I agree. There are 10,000 posts about bad Trump. It is assumed, sub silentio, that Hillary is also no good. So what do you want us to do? I don’t even care how the poster is going to vote, I want to know, since the poster went to all of the trouble to post about it (frequently) – what do you want us to do? If you don’t have a recommendation then why are you posting? And furthermore, why are you posting all the time about it?
I’m shocked to find out Mona actually read any of the comments. I’ll admit I don’t read every comment for every post she writes (although I come close), but I don’t think I’ve seen her reply to a comment for about a year.
Well then, this blogging thing is sometimes worthwhile.
They’ve abandoned it in the name of women’s sexual freedom.
Clinton abused his position of authority regarding Lewinsky, but Monica didn’t exactly behave like a lady herself.
We can criticize and stand up to cads all we want, but so long as women respond to cads the way cads want them to respond, and as long as we put all the blame on the cad and none on the woman every time they interact, nothing’s going to change.
I gotta run but here’s my parting shot. Yes, the so-called sexual revolution and the changes it has wrought have left many in its wake. The causes are legion and we cannot go into all that here. But yes, I hold a older married man more responsible than I do a 20-something impressionable intern. Bill “skated”compared to the life Lewinsky was left with (although no situation is unredeemable).
What did Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey do to deserve their treatment?
Seriously, gotta go, enjoyed our chat, Martel.
There is no Ricochet requirement to tell other people what to do (although it is done frequently.) People post on Ricochet to let others know how they think and feel. They read Ricochet to see how others think and feel.
“More responsible” is perfectly justified; exonerating Lewinsky completely and utterly not quite. Either women have moral agency or they don’t, and I’m tired of being told that women have every right to their choices but the moment they screw up it’s always somebody else’s fault. Bill was awful and should have suffered the consequences, but Lewinsky let him be awful.
Absolutely nothing. I said “so long as women respond to cads the way cads want them to respond”, and both of these women responded with appropriate levels of self-respect.
Same here.
That’s great. I am well versed now that Donald Trump is not a fit candidate. Message received loud and clear!
Why do you think you should tell other people, effectively, “Sit down and shut up?”
You are still telling people what you think, right?
They tell us all the time constantly, what would be the point. To paraphrase Claire Berlinski “I really want to know”. I didn’t say any such thing. That’s what you are reading into it.
I don’t think that. I want to know what the point is. To paraphrase Claire Berlinski “I really want to know”.
I have a great deal of respect for Mona. But (you knew that was coming) I have observed that she does not like to mix it up with people who disagree with her on the right. And by “right” I don’t mean people who really like Trump and Trumpism – I mean real conservatives; people who now see him — after the primaries were decided, as the lesser of two evils. It seems she does like to mix it up with the NPR crowd. For which I salute her.
I do wonder why that is. I wonder why she and Jay don’t talk to conservative (reluctant) supporters of Trump. I think we’d all benefit from that conversation.