Misogyny Is Baked into MAGA for a Reason

"He's selling a warped fantasy of submission as liberation"--Susan J. Demas

Credit: Janusz Kaliszak

If you’re not a political junkie, it might be hard to suss out the deeper gender war aspects in the current state of presidential campaigning for the 2024 election.

On a positive note, candidate Kamala Harris is promising actions in line with the desires of many women, including child tax credits and including senior home care as part of Medicare.

On the negative side, Donald Trump must lay awake at night thinking of ways to denigrate  women and boost his ego. 

Sure, Donald Trump hurls insults, right? Everybody (even supporters) knows he is prone to overkill when it comes to his rants, but that’s politics these days. He’s just being entertaining,,,

Or so the justifications go. 

To watch one of Trump’s rallies is to hear insults and defamations weaved through the hours-long sales pitch of the wannabe contender.. The Trumpettes and Trumpanistas might even think they’re true. Not everybody’s buying what he’s selling, as visual accounts show people steadily leaving his arenas.

What’s going on in those rallies is just the ragged tip of the misogynist movement. Its body below the sight line is one side of the gender gap between two philosophies.  One is accepting and empathetic, the other is sadistic and paternalistic.

As embodied in Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, there’s a method to this madness; build up the Bros and keep the girls low, except as sex objects or incubators.

"She said she worked like a dog at McDonald's" (Trump quotes throughout)

Susan J. Demas of Michigan Advance assessed “the deal” that the shoe salesman is offering to women:

• Trump has always presented himself as a master showman and dealmaker, first in business, then on reality TV and finally as a politician. And he really seems to believe that he can sell women on full-blown patriarchy this election.

• It’s a fascinatingly disturbing tactic to win over women even as America is on the cusp of electing its first female president. Recall that in 2020, Trump lost women voters to President Joe Biden by 15 points, per exit polls.

• Trump’s 2024 campaign comes after he was found legally liable for rape; he’s lost his best female surrogate, his oldest daughter, Ivanka, who put a glamorous face on his vicious policies; and 1 in 3 women have lost access to abortion. The gender gap could be even wider in his matchup with Harris, with a recent NBC poll showing him trailing with women by 21 points.

• But Trump isn’t even attempting to feign respect for women as he tries to win their votes this time around. Instead, he’s selling a warped fantasy of submission as liberation.

"Someone said, 'you should be nicer. Women won't like it.' I said, I don't care ... the women want safety."

The authors of Project 2025 consider the independence of women as the crux of society’s problems. They’re not pulling this out of their asses; they’re responding to what’s seen as the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

The American family looks different now. Marriage rates are declining. The majority of children are raised in “nontraditional” homes. Two-parent families, with one father, one mother, two kids, and a suburban home are (and no “otherized” neighbors), to their way of thinking, integral to the American Dream.

“Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts,” they write.

Strip away all the right wing rhetoric over the years and things like unaffordable childcare, not having a choice in reproductive care, attacks on “government” schools in favor of homeschooling, and limiting SNAP/Medicaid benefits are all aimed at returning women to their caretaker roles.

Here’s Lyz at Men Yell At Me:

• This is why JD Vance (and David Brooks and Ross Douthat) are obsessed with your uterus, because when you can cut off social safety nets, disinvest from public schools, and restrict reproductive rights, you can force women out of public life. It’s misogyny, pure and simple, that sees free women choosing lives outside of marriage and having children as a threat to American society.

• Otherwise, why be worried that women are choosing to be single? Singlehood is not a moral failing. Being a single mother isn’t a moral failing. The “nontraditional” family isn’t cause for alarm unless you are afraid of women being free to choose and not choosing you.

"We think you're a horrible person. We think you're a liar. Right? We think you're a liar. We think you're not a smart person, and we're tired of having stupid people run our country."

Focusing on San Diego for a moment, the new survey results from a University of San Diego study re-confirm the gender bias extant in the rising percentages of women in leadership roles who report being harassed monthly : 69% (female) vs 38% (male). And 50% found those threats to be serious enough to involve law enforcement.

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There’s another gap going on in the presidential selection process, namely the difference in the ways Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are treated in many major media outlets.

Trump on The View: "The other one asking the question is dumber than Kamala. She's a dummy. That is one dumb woman. Sorry, women -- she's a dummy."

Both candidates are choosing to interact with non-traditional communicators, appearing on podcasts, speaking to niche outlets, and acknowledging influencers in social media.

While Donald Trump is now openly hostile to conventional news outlets (he called them enemies of the people again yesterday) and promising government persecution, the self-appointed arbiters of punditry are stuck in a loop complaining of Kamala Harris’ mass communications choices.

The near-constant whining whining by the likes of Alex Shepard at The New Republic about the Democratic candidate not speaking to the “middle” is really about male egos, hurt by their irrelevance to her campaign.

Her choices are smart, reaching out to the real humans who are indifferent to or alienated from the political process. And the self-importance of the yoohoos at outlets like the NY Times and Politico doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in terms of potential reach. 

Let’s see, the Vice President could sit down with a Politico reporter who will use Republican talking points as the basis of their questions and reach a total audience that’s already politically aware (and declined by 20 million visits over the past three months), or speak to audiences totaling more than 30 million people who wouldn’t see her otherwise.

To wit: 

—Call Her Daddy: 5 million
—60 Minutes: 10.5 million
—The View: 2.45 million
—Howard Stern Show: 10 million
—Stephen Colbert: 3.2 million

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There is a theological basis for the anti-Harris sentiment, reflected in self-righteous ministries associated with the far right. 

•  Vice President Kamala Harris is also being called a “Jezebel spirit,” most notably by Trumpian “prophet” Lance Wallnau, a key figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. He’s the guy who popularized the “seven mountain mandate” and the claim Trump has been ordained by God to be a Cyrus-like ruler. Last month, Wallnau argued the 2024 election is “Trump vs. the Jezebel spirit.” After pushing whey protein products for people to buy, he explained why he thinks Trump will still win and why he thinks Harris is a “Jezebel spirit.”

• “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination — especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth — you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit,” Wallnau said. “So with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination, and manipulation.”

The “Jezebel spirit” phrase is not from the Bible, says Brian Kaylor at A Public Witness:

• The use of “Jezebel” as an insult against women is not new. The term has especially been used against Black women since the time of slavery to claim they were hypersexual. This was used to justify the raping of enslaved women by arguing they actually wanted it. The racist and sexist trope continued during Jim Crow and beyond.

"Tampon Tim -- you know why they call him that. Because they sell tampons with special legislation in boys locker rooms."

This misogyny encompasses men who would have themselves be allies for independent women as seen in the quote above. They’re all supposedly sissies, according to certain Real Men.

These Real Men would love to overtly attack LGBQ+ humans, but know their existence –for now– has been normalized in mainstream culture. The “T” normally found in that alphabet shorthand for non-normies stands for Transsexuals, who Republican consultants think are fair game.

Trump regularly includes an anecdote at his rallies about a male school child coming home after classes as a female. Little does he know that battle’s over; according to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 3% of high school students in the United States identify as transgender, and another 2.2 percent are questioning their gender identity.

Republicans have created a video ad attacking Harris with what their consultants are calling a “triple play” involving her approval of transgender surgeries in prison of illegal aliens. 

It’s being aired in East Coast markets during the baseball playoff games currently in progress.

I don’t think we’ve seen peak misogyny from the MAGA-maniacs yet.

The ultimate vision of a more “Godly” society can be seen in side by side 1970s/2000s photos of women in many Islamic countries. Think that's too weird for the United States? Let me tell you about the women on a Spirit Airlines flight who recently were kicked off the plane for wearing crop tops after the conditioning failed.

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News You Outta Know

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How insurance companies could stiff the victims of Hurricane Milton  - How DeSantis made it more difficult for Florida policyholders to get paid at Popular Information

• In December 2022, DeSantis signed SB 2-A into law, a “105-page rewrite of the state’s property insurance laws” created during a three-day special session requested by DeSantis. The law reduces the time period available for policyholders to file claims with their insurance companies and makes it harder for homeowners to “win extra compensation” from insurance companies that act in “bad faith.”

• The law also removes a policyholder’s right to “one-way attorney fees,” which required insurance companies to pay the policyholder’s attorney fees if the policyholder was successful in suing the company. The change makes suing insurance companies more expensive for policyholders and makes finding adequate attorneys a challenge, as attorney fees now need to be paid out of pocket. The change means that even if a policyholder succeeds in suing their insurance company, policyholders still have to “spend money meant for home repairs on legal bills,” investigative journalist Jason Garcia reported. 

• Additionally, the law grants insurance companies the ability to offer “new policies with mandatory binding arbitration agreements” for a discounted price. Customers who purchase the discounted policies forfeit the right to sue the company. The law also removes the option of Assignment of Benefits, which allowed policy owners to “hire a contractor who [would] battle directly with their insurers.” When signing the sweeping bill, DeSantis championed the legislation, saying it “reins in the incentive to litigate” and will “make a huge, huge difference.” 

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‘Fox & Friends’ Are Real ‘Mad’ Kamala Harris Drank a Beer With Colbert by Janna Brancolini at The Daily Beast

• The Fox & Friends hosts looked somber as the clip ended.

• “Now she wants to be a leader until it’s time for us to have leadership,” co-host Lawrence Jones said, adding that going on late-night shows in the middle of a crisis “just doesn’t look good.”

• Ainsley Earhardt agreed that if a mudslide took out your house and trapped your husband in a drainpipe, and then you saw the person running for president drinking beer on a late-night show, “It makes it look like you don’t care what is happening in North Carolina.”

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Growing Cannabis and Opium Poppies May Be Key to U.S. Supply Chains by Peter S Goodman at The New York Times

• From a distance, the greenhouses shimmer like an oasis. Up close, they feel like a remote prison complex. The dusty expanse is ringed by a high security fence and monitored by security cameras. Once the plants are installed, the grounds will be patrolled by a round-the-clock security force.

• All of these are conditions of the company’s D.E.A. license, the means of preventing thieves from penetrating the farm and stealing the crop.

• The federal department vets and approve all hires at the site. Inside storage sites are constructed like bank vaults and armed with vibration sensors.