(Apologies to Conan the Barbarian)
In the middle of the Civil War a colonel named Robert McAllister from the 11th Regiment of New Jersey tried to improve the moral fiber of his men. A Presbyterian railroad contractor in private life, he lobbied and preached against profanity, drinking, prostitution and gambling. Some of the line officers in the regiment, from less genteel backgrounds, rebelled. They formed an organization called the Independent Order of Trumps. In sort of a mischievous, laddie way, the Trumps championed boozing and whoring, cursing and card-playing. In her book “The Gentlemen and the Roughs,” Lorien Foote notes that this wasn’t just a battle over pleasure. It was a contest between two different ideals of masculinity. McAllister’s was based on gentlemanly chivalry and self-restraint. Trumpian masculinity was based on physical domination and sexual conquest. “Perceptions of manliness were deeply intertwined with perceptions of social status,” Foote writes. And so it is today.
Historically, I’ve not been a fan of David Brooks. His focus on morality is something I’ve found boring, but his recent riffs on modern culture, particularly as it relates to politics and the current election cycle, has piqued my interest. His latest column, “The Sexual Politics of 2016,” is an interesting examination of our current view societal view of masculinity vis-a-vis the decimation of civility, kindness, and respect that is the Donald Trump campaign.
Read or watch the news on any day ending in “y” and you’ll more likely than not be shown graphic evidence of Trump’s total disrespect for social norms and expectations regarding how people- especially the distaff half of the population- are to be treated.
Trump may find Brooks’ observations and commentary to be mean-spirited and inaccurate (a reaction one could reasonably expect from someone who displays so little in the way of self-awareness)…but from where I sit, they’re not inaccurate. If anything, Brooks may well be overdoing his inclination to wrap his personal criticism in velvet words and phrases.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a revolution in manners, a rejection of the civility codes of the educated class. As part of this, he rejects the new and balanced masculine/feminine ideal that has emerged over the past generation. Trump embraces a masculine identity — old in some ways, new in others — built upon unvarnished misogyny.
Trump’s misogyny is not the historical moralistic misogyny. Traditional misogyny blames women for the lustful, licentious and powerful urges that men sometimes feel in their presence. In this misogyny, women are the powerful, disgusting corrupters — the vixens, sirens and monsters. This gynophobic misogyny demands that women be surrounded with taboos and purgation rituals, along with severe restrictions on behavior and dress.
Trump’s misogyny, on the other hand, has a commercial flavor. The central arena of life is male competition. Women are objects men use to win points in that competition. The purpose of a woman’s body is to reflect status on a man. One way to emasculate a rival man is to insult or conquer his woman.
Brooks’ penchant for $10 words aside, his point seems valid. Politics is a fundamentally male competition, one which Trump treats as if we lived in ancient Rome. The arena of politics is a brutal, no holds barred competition fought to the death sans rules. No quarter is asked, and none is given.
As with any such competition, to the victor goes the spoils. To Donald Trump, that often breaks down to bragging about his sex life, which, depending on one looks at it, seems borderline creepy for a 69-year-old man.
When the commentator Tucker Carlson criticized him, Trump left voice mail bragging about how much more sex he gets. He told an interviewer that you have to treat women like dirt.
Women are trophies, possessions, prizes to be claimed once you’ve vanquished your opponent. Because they’re property, the spoils of war, a man is under no obligation to treat women with respect, kindness, or dignity. In fact, doing so may under some circumstances be seen as an indication of a personality gone soft, weak, and no longer able to compete in the brutal hand-to-hand combat of everyday life.
It’s not quite right to say that Trump is a throwback to midcentury sexism. At least in those days negative behavior toward women and family members was restrained by the chivalry code. Political candidates didn’t go attacking their rivals’ wives based on their looks. Trump’s objectification is uncontrolled. It’s pure ego competition with a pornogrified flavor.
In this way, Trump represents the spread of something brutal. He takes economic anxiety and turns it into sexual hostility. He effectively tells men: You may be struggling, but at least you’re better than women, Mexicans and Muslims.
Trump claims to love women, and in his own way, I suspect he believes that he does. Women reaffirm his manhood and potency; possessing them reassures him that he’s still a vital, powerful man whose masculinity hasn’t diminished with age. In the same way he’s viewed business as hand to hand combat conducted by more civilized means, his political views and machinations have come to resemble the manner in which he conducted himself in the business world. Kill or be killed. Show no mercy, for the inclination towards mercy is a chink in the armor that could in the end leave a man vulnerable.
Once a man has vanquished his prey…utterly destroyed and ground them into dust…he will ignore the lamentations of his opponent’s women and take them as his own.
In Trump’s worldview, where women are property, equality of treatment and opportunity aren’t required. A man of stature and gravitas doesn’t concern himself with how he treats property; he steels himself for the next conflict and conquest, for battle is never far away and one must remain forever vigilant. Self-preservation is the Prime Directive. Strength must be met- and defeated- with superior strength.
Mercy is the province of the weak.
