Demeaning Women

Susan Estrich on Sep 26, 2024

"I am your protector. I want to be your protector ... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You're not going to be in danger any longer."

That's Donald Trump talking, the man who was found liable for sexual assault by a jury of his peers and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages -- now claiming to be "women's protector." "Women really like me," he told the crowd in Pennsylvania. Not according to the polls.

Half the population is not a monolith. There are certainly many women who support Trump. But the gender gap in this race is large and growing. The day before Trump claimed that women like him, a new NBC poll found that women voters support Kamala Harris by a margin of 58% to 37%, an increase from the 50% to 39% support for Harris that the July poll asking that question found.

"You will no longer be thinking about abortion," Trump said. "It's all they talk about -- abortion -- because we've done something that nobody else could have done. It is now where it always had to be -- with the states and (the) vote of the people."

Hogwash. One in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban. The former president refused in his debate with Harris to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if one came to his desk. Claiming credit -- more like blame -- for turning the question of women's freedom to the states is hiding behind the label of "states' rights," the longtime cover of those who favor discrimination, a version of phony federalism that has long been used as a weapon against disadvantaged groups in need of federal protection.

Has he forgotten that slavery was defended as a matter of states' rights?

Does he not know that the opponents of the protection of workers in FDR's New Deal couched their opposition as a matter of states' rights?

Can he just ignore the fact that the racist and sexist opponents of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 couched their opposition in terms of states' rights?

Giving states the power to discriminate against women and minorities and to deny workers fundamental freedoms is not what federalism is all about.

Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika, in a statement responding to Trump's remarks, said he "tries to tell us what to think and what we care about. Women know better -- and we will not be silenced, dismissed, ignored or treated like we're stupid. We will vote like our lives depend on it this November."

The way Trump talks about women is deeply offensive. Days before he promised to be our protector, he called MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle a "dumb as a rock bimbo" for trying to convince conservative columnist Bret Stephens to vote for Kamala Harris on Bill Maher's HBO show. It's the same way he dismissed Megyn Kelly back in 2016, when her crime was asking him tough questions in a debate. Dismissing women who are critical of him as "bimbos" is particularly appalling when coming from a man who bragged of grabbing women by their private parts in an effort to use his celebrity to have sex with them. What do you call that?

Trump has normalized sexism. Demeaning women is a new and accepted element in the Republican playbook. On Friday of last week, Bernie Moreno, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, castigated suburban women as single-issue voters who should not care about abortion rights if they are too old to have children.

"It's a little crazy, by the way -- especially for women that are like past 50. I'm thinking to myself: I don't think that's an issue for you." The crowd laughed. Is there something funny about the idea that we care about our daughters and granddaughters, and remember the horrors that faced women before Roe v. Wade?

And that's not even to mention J.D. Vance, who continues to defend his attacks on childless cat ladies and characterizes post-menopausal women as meant-to-be babysitters.

Promising to protect women by taking away their freedom to control their own bodies? Characterizing women who disagree with you as "dumb," which he routinely does with Kamala Harris, and as "bimbos"? Maybe Trump's base is solid enough, or inured enough to his rhetoric, that it doesn't matter to them. But in an election that will turn on a small sliver of undecided and low-propensity voters, demeaning women is a strange strategy, to say the least. And a dangerous one for all women.

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