The Populist Appeal of Trump's Sexism to Working Class Males

[TomCADem]

Lyndon Johnson once said: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." You have seen how Trump has used racial and religious resentment to garner populist support among the white working class.

Well, Donald Trump also uses this to consolidate support among white men. You could update Lyndon Johnson's quote as follows: "If you can convince the lowest man he's better than the best woman, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

For Trump, the easiest way to take down any woman is to just make a disparaging remark about their appearance. Thus, in Trump's eyes, he not only insults the woman, but he asserts that the value of a woman is in reference to their sexual appeal to him. It does not matter their level of education, professional achievements or success. It just comes down to their value as a vehicle for sexual gratification for men. Consider Trump's comments during the campaign:

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279132-trump-women-get-it-better-than-men

Speaking at a rally in Spokane, Wash., Trump was railing against the criticism he gets for accusing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton of playing the "woman card."

“I mean all of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore. We may raise our voice,” he said. “You know what, the women get it better than we do, folks.

“Look, we’re living in the real world. This political correctness is killing our country.”

For many working class men, this idea that America is being held back by "political correctness" in terms of recognizing women as equals resonates among his base. This is why Trump's base is so energized when takes down a successful women and demeans then as a mere object of sexual gratification.

[yallerdawg]

1. It's really astounding how the Trump surrogates...

can say in front of women that this misogynistic lifelong pattern of hate targeted at women who have the audacity to question HIM is just the culmination of equal rights and HIS brand of straight-shootin' rejection of political correctness - and is the breath of fresh air his supporters craved!

When everyone -EVERYONE- knows:

"A pig is a pig, and that's that!" - Wendy O

[Hekate]

2. Excellent observations. May I add the following?

Tinyhands not only goes after women's appearance and sexual attractiveness (to him) as a way to denigrate their achievements, but he repeatedly returns to the topic of his "disgust" over every female bodily function, from taking a bathroom break, to nursing a baby in another room, to menstruating.

Make no mistake, women disgust and frighten Donald J. Trump, and of all the things women do that set off really sick mysoginists, menstruation is at the top of the list. Every reference to "blood" coming from Trump is a not so veiled reference to that.

What a sick sonovabitch.

[BigmanPigman]

3. Misogyny is alive and thriving in the US.

Look at how Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Hillary of course are treated by the GOP whenever they speak. I still can't believe Justice Thomas is a judge.

[Docreed2003]

4. According to Thom Hartman today, trump received 54%

Of the votes of white females.

Now, I have no idea how to explain that, but it's true, apparently

[Raster]

5. Hillary received about 54% of the overall woman vote...

...tRump* received about 54% of the white woman vote. Obviously, women of color did not buy the misogynist shit he was selling.

[dalton99a]

6. It also had to do with education

[Docreed2003]

8. Nice breakdown, thank you!

[politicat]

16. I have looked at that breakdown a lot over the past 6 months.

I still don't have a solid, testable sociology for it, but this is my guess: the white, under-educated women were raised by other white, undereducated women to be mothers and housewives and submissive to Church, Child and Husband in an economy that allowed it. Maybe they're fundamentalist/evangelical, maybe they're just culturally part of that subset. (If all your friends and cohort say and believe something, most people go along with it.) When correlating by all three of age, race and education, the biggest gap is among white women born between 1945 and 1965, the classic Boomers, who went hard right again. (They did so in 1980, when all but the youngest of the cohort were of voting age. Also 84, 88, 2000 and 2004.) These women were promised something implicitly in childhood that hasn't been paid, and they resent that broken promise.

I think there's a narrative that white little girls get that non-white little girls don't get in the same way. It goes something like this -- you can do anything you want and the very best thing is to be a good proud mother who takes care of her children and supports her husband and keeps a nice home. We get it through sitcoms and movies, in fairy tales and just gossip. Little girls of color don't get this message the same way, because they see a different reality. They know from a very early age that the men in their lives may be taken away -- deported, jailed, killed -- and white girls don't get as forcefully hit with that reality. It changes a child's sense of self-reliance to know that the people she can depend upon are primarily her female elders, and that alone sets an expectation of who she will become. And there's still a lot of the softer eugenics talk running through white culture -- that being a mother is a duty and our purpose, which goes right back to the 1920s and 30s eugenics movement. (Having children was previously less a duty than an insurance policy, and an economic net gain rather than a drain, despite the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth.) Eugenics was very much an upwardly mobile, aspirational philosophy, so it stuck as a means of improving oneself and one's lot.

But between the mid 1970s and the mid 1980s, the Two Income Trap became most people's daily reality, and that has continued to grow. The women who managed to stay home as stay at home parents were increasingly economically fragile, and most of the rest could not fulfill the narrative they'd been given because survival meant working, and working was the lesser option. A single working parent or a married working parent whose spouse doesn't contribute equally to the household labor can't keep up to the standards of a stay at home parent, so women raised by stay at home mothers often feel inadequate as parents, spouses and workers. But being undereducated, work wasn't satisfying and became harder over time as the factories left and more jobs required education they didn't have. Feminism promised a lot, but undereducated women who found themselves divorced from/abandoned by/the widows of undereducated men in places that didn't enforce child support laws, or from men who couldn't contribute much if anything, often found their lives were worse. And so the resentment grew. (And it still exists; I think we see a lot of it in mommy blogging as a means of self-support, which is strongly encouraged by some of the more distinct gender-role subcultures, like the LDS. Mommy-bloggers have to present a VERY strict, very two-parent, multiple children, blogging during nap time, happy-happy family of faith character to the world to be successful. Mommy bloggers who reveal challenges or defy the narrative lose their audience very fast, because their audience wants the aspirational fantasy of perfection.)

It's not that they want to burn everything down. It's that from their perspective, everything already looks burnt.

It's not a perfect guess, by any means. It doesn't apply to many Asian girls (for whom educational attainment is a cultural value that differs from the white narrative and the black/Latinx narrative).

[TomCADem]

7. Newsweek - How Trump Won: White Working Class Voters Motivated by Fear of Immigrants

You can't forget Lyndon Johnson's first point about racism. Basically, racism and sexism are a luxury good for the white working class. Sure, they may lose healthcare, Medicaid, and other working class protections, but you get the privilege of looking down on folks who different then you. Also, for men, its a twofer, and that Trump appeals to their sexism.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-voters-immigration-working-class-605930

It was not economic hardship that motivated the white working class to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a ratio of more than two to one, but anxiety over immigration, a new analysis has indicated.

Voters in the white working class who reported feeling a stranger in their own country and believed protections were needed against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to vote for Trump. The research, carried out by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic and released Tuesday, also found that voters who supported deporting undocumented immigrants were 3.3 times more likely to support Trump over Clinton.

Only identifying as a Republican was a stronger predictor of voting for Trump among the white working class.

Perhaps the most startling finding, however, concerned the economy. Voters in the white working class who reported their financial shape as being either fair or poor were actually 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton over the man who wound up as the country’s 45th president.

[Docreed2003]

9. Very interesting...Dismantles the caller that suggested the vote was "jobs" related

[Major Nikon]

13. LBJ is describing demagoguery

It's far easier to appeal to emotion and prejudice than intellect. History is full of how it's used to great effect. The trick is to know when you are being manipulated and many just aren't smart enough to figure it out, or don't care.

[athena]

10. For the n'th time ...

sexism is not a men-vs-women thing. I am so sick and tired of DUers arguing that something is not sexist because some woman out there thinks it's acceptable. Women can be sexist, just like men can be feminist. In fact, the vast majority of women, like the vast majority of men, are sexist against women. If you don't understand that, or if you are surprised by that, go do some reading.

The fact that so many people have such a childishly simplistic (mis)understanding of what sexism means is a perfect demonstration of how far this society has to go before it can claim that it is no longer sexist.

[Docreed2003]

11. Hey I understand that...and I'm on your side!

I just thought the point was interesting and frankly, since I'm a white guy, didn't feel like it was my place to make accusations as to why that happened! I'm sorry if my deference came across as childish.

[athena]

14. OK.

Sorry I misunderstood the point you were making. I'm just tired of the "Oh, but a woman said that, so it can't be sexist" argument, which someone makes almost every day. As in, "One of the people attacking Nancy Pelosi is a woman, so the attacks against Nancy Pelosi are not sexist." Or, "I have female friends who hate Hillary, so Hillary hatred is not sexist." Or, "White women voted for Trump, so Trump can't be sexist." I wish DUers would understand, once and for all, that one's gender has nothing to do with whether or not one is sexist.

The idea that "all girls are feminist, and all boys are sexist" belongs in kindergarten. DUers should be better informed about how discrimination works than to make such arguments. Discrimination is a fundamental part of the society we grow up in. We all absorb it. The question is not whether we are racist or sexist, because we all are. The question is whether we choose to fight our racist and sexist tendencies consciously.

The numbers posted above indicate either that non-white women are less sexist than white women, or that Trump's racism caused non-white women to vote for Hillary. I suspect the latter. There is no question in my mind that we lost this election because of sexism. There were other factors, too, but sexism was the strongest. An intelligent, competent, and experienced woman with an almost superhuman level of self-control ran against a bigot with zero experience governing and a personality disorder. She should have won in a landslide.

Thank you for being an ally.

[spooky3]

15. Because it is a patriarchal system that maintains

Sexist and misogynist attitudes and behavior. Everyone is influenced by this--not just men. For example, think of all the ads on TV for cleaning products. Most still show women using them, reinforcing the message that cleaning is "women's work." We all see these ads, not just men, and they are designed to influence viewers. It's just one example of how the system sends out messages and reinforces views of women and men in society.

[smirkymonkey]

12. +1000