Apparently, the Republican presidential nominee has Really Done It This Time. It may be true that with this latest scandal, Donald Trump has finally seized modest defeat from the decayed jaws of America. What is not true is that these remarks on “pussies” rank among his most offensive.
To be clear — apparently we have entered a murky twilight of reason where one must state what is already clear — trivialising sexual assault is a terrible thing. But so is mocking the speech of a person with a disability. So is the claim that young black Americans “have no spirit”. So is the claim that the US Mexican immigrant population hosts a greater proportion of drug dealers, criminals and rapists. So is the claim, by this draft deferrer, that another man’s active service record was meaningless. So is all the hand-me-down Sam Harris tosh he has offered on the intrinsic evil of Islam; a religion that will, he says, be subject to the process “extreme vetting”, which sounds to me like the name of Satan’s favourite game show.
Again, to be gracelessly clear, the comments on women were reprehensible. I would prefer not to add my own accounts of assault to the many in reply to journalist Kelly Oxford — public group therapy’s just not my bag — but let’s say that ownership of a “pussy” is reckless. There are men in any Australian city of number and arm span great enough to grab every “pussy” or secondary sexual organ around. Not all men — another obvious thing that, apparently, now must be said — but men sufficient to grab most of the pussies unasked.
So, we could say that Trump Has Really Done It This Time by marginalising his nation’s least marginal group. It is an exceptional woman whose body has not felt the patriarchy’s trotter — a swinish touch, which manages to convey both “I own you” and “You have no special value” at once. Women — again with the now mandatory obvious statements — are not the only class of persons to bear the reminder: you are my worthless property. But they are unified in this experience, as the millions of respondents to Oxford’s plea for openness attest. Trump’s tape was never going to be received well.
[Rundle: Trump boasts of ‘grabbing pussy’, GOP ducks for cover]
But it’s not just the ignominy shared by women that may have Really Done It This Time for Trump. There are two other factors at play here.
Let’s do the easy one first. The revelatory nature and timing of this tape’s release is key. Any “gate” or hot mic moment still functions moderately, even 40 years after Watergate. We voters cling to the belief that our liberal democracies are not rotten to the core but simply host to a few bad apples. Ergo, we can continue to believe that it is “crony capitalists” and not capitalism itself that is ruining the joint or that there is a Nixon figure hiding terrible secrets, even though terrible policy is formed in plain sight.
Post WikiLeaks, a revolutionary project that demonstrates the systemic and non-human nature of corruption to anyone with an internet connection, “gates” have lost their ability to resound. But, for a character like Trump whose USP is “I call it like it is”, concealment is of special concern. Some undecided sexists might be wondering, “If he likes grabbing pussies, why couldn’t he say that in public?”
Now, let’s do the one that is more boring, less likely to be read and much more likely to produce the claim that its author is a terrible sexist who doesn’t care about all the grabbed pussies in the world, not even her own. Women are a territory over which wars and other contests are regularly fought. One can fight for “women’s rights” without really fighting for them at all.
Lord Cromer, fin-de-siecle British Consul General to Egypt, was a right tool. He was opposed to suffrage for women in his home country, but terribly keen on reforming the “Oriental” practice of female covering. Scholar Leila Ahmed unveiled this hypocrisy in 1992. Crikey correspondent Shakira Hussein gave the Western need to “liberate” Muslim women a post-9/11 update this year. In both Australia and the USA, the bodies of (sometimes fictional) white women were used to make the case for the detainment, torture and murder of black male bodies. The savage black or brown man is an invented monster that haunts the decolonised present. It’s to the great discredit of mainstream feminism that there has not yet been frank discussion about the likely disproportionate number of false rape accusations made against black and brown men.
[Rundle: second Clinton-Trump debate a joyless slog]
All women, so the contemporary liberal wisdom goes, must be believed when they make a claim of sexual abuse. And, of course, women, who do suffer this pain in unthinkable numbers, should not be treated as suspects. This is true for the liberal press right up until the moment that these women are supporters of Trump. A woman, like Alicia Machado, who claims to be a victim of Trump’s sexually charged chiding is to be uncritically believed. A woman who claims to be a victim of rape by Bill Clinton must be held to account when she changes her story. Even though changes to a story are inevitable in recounting one’s own trauma.
It is easy to understand why so many women are currently recounting their abuse experiences online in response to the triggering tapes. It is difficult, even ugly, to concede that the way in which these voluntary accounts will be used is exactly as involuntary accounts have been in the past — or are still being used to justify war in the Middle East.
To tie the experience of sexual abuse to a particular political power is not always wrong — as anyone who has a memory of the Bosnian horrors will concede. To tie the antidote for the experience of sexual abuse to a particular political power is, however, always fraught. Lord Cromer. John Howard. Hillary Clinton. Step up and claim your place in history as those who won a political war with the weapon of an abused female body.
Hey Helen, if you can introduce me to a self-declared feminist who has made a false rape accusation against a black or brown man, I would *love* to have a frank feminist discussion with her about it! I’m not sure if I’m important enough to count as a “mainstream” feminist, but I too have been assaulted, and I have a couple of close friends whose stories about being raped I believe 100%. In other words, I’m a real feminist woman, with real experiences, and real friends who’ve been raped … and I’m ALSO very angry about the gross over-incarceration of black and brown people, but I don’t understand what that has to do with ordinary women who are JUST TRYING TO BE HEARD.
To be clear. I wrote, ” It’s to the great discredit of mainstream feminism that there has not yet been frank discussion about the likely disproportionate number of false rape accusations made against black and brown men.”
So there is no implication that accusations are made by feminists. Not all victims of abuse are feminists.
I am also not telling anyone to hush up. I am saying that it is unfortunate that such a necessary cry happened to arise within and become a tool of political power. As it has so often before.
I understand that this is an unsettling topic. But, I didn’t say the things you said I did. Thanks.
He’s done it all right; he has secured a great victory for the right.
Republican outrage at Trump’s tape remains unremittingly patriarchal: “Women are to be championed and revered” (Paul Ryan), “As a father of daughters…”(virtually everyone else). Meanwhile, most other commentators ignore or at best minimise Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Bill’s accusers, as they have been doing for decades. “I just don’t care,” said Steinem. But Bill’s past behaviour is as relevant as any prospective first lady’s, and Hillary’s defences of it as relevant as Trump’s 11 year old tape.
In the second debate, Clinton could not answer the charge that she had attacked her husband’s sexual victims*. Not just did not, not would not, but could not. Invoked St Michelle and said she was going high. But there some of them were – up high – sitting in the gallery. She never got going after that – Trump gained in confidence. I suspect she was shaken and off her game. Whatever, the Breitbart right loved it, as they did the whole Trump performance. He was saying to Hillary’s face what “the right has been waiting for decades to hear”, to quote more than one exultant columnist.
The debate was a significant moment and a victory for Breitbartian Trumpism. Not because he’ll win – he won’t – but because their agenda, their brand of political talk, is now out there warts and all, mainstream, prowling on the loose, solidly proudly backed by 40% of voters. After the election, Trump will set up his news agency media company and away they will go: jail Hillary, reduce taxes, screw the Mexicans, freedom for all billionaires, muslims strangle kittens, possess more pussy! And all to a much, much wider audience.
Meanwhile, the consequences of Clinton’s failure to deal with her past attacks on those women were that she could not land a glove about the issues that should matter, for example health care, where Trump’s absurd comments about Canada’s system were allowed to stand, and taxes, where she could not adequately defend her voting record nor even make the obvious point, “What sort of a business man loses a billion dollars in one year? Either you are a cheat or a loser. Take your pick, Donald.”
I’m not able, as you are, Helen, to place gender issues in a coherent, compelling left analysis, but I do think that the Clinton past has not been dealt with adequately by the left. Now, partly as a consequence, the rabid right, which has made huge gains via Trump’s candidacy, are home free for the foreseeable future to consolidate the normalisation of their hitherto extremist views.
*I trust that it also “goes without saying” that of course Hillary Clinton would not have to defend those accusations, nor be haunted by them, if it weren’t for Bill’s Trumpian behaviour. It’s not her fault – and the consequences are a failure of the left.
With frendz like la Klingon who needs the Drumpf? Why are so many women their sisters’ worst enemy?
Given that. Lot of good points are made, I wish Razer would curb her generalisations more.
Having never in my life thought sexual assault anything but wrong and incompatible with sexual love as opposed to sexual release, I wonder whether there are enough men who objectify women to result in most women being sexually assaulted some time in their life.
Nor would I say that only exceptional women “have not felt the patriarchy’s trotter”. True, all women still live within a patriarchal society and have felt it’s effects but patriarchy is crumbling and I would say it’s full effects, especially the touch of its trotter, is nowadays not felt by most but only by a still all too substantial minority.
Nor do I see the point of saying that his comments to say he has sexually assaulted women are not his worst. Trump’s racist comments and attacks on the disabled are all revolting but they do not amount to a confession of criminal assaults. This is why the comperes pressed him on whether he had in fact grabbed women’s pussies without consent and why, after much evasion, Trump had to say he had not done these things.
Nor do I see why all women should be believed when they make a claim of sexual abuse, according to contemporary “liberal wisdom”. All such complaints should be taken seriously but enough women demonstrate that vices are not exclusively male to make it silly to believe all claims.
And that aplies to the woman who claimed to be raped by Bill Clinton. Whether she is to be believed or can legally take action against Clinton is one thing but the disgraceful opportunism of bringing her forward before a debate involving Hilary Clinton is clear.
Finally, it may be that false claims of sexual assault to have non whites stacked or even lynched should be discussed more in feminism but it is not clear to me that it is discredited by less than enough talk in this, unless Razer means the version of feminism that makes all men evil and women pure victims, which Razer dabbles in herself.
It’s not possible to quantify the number of women who have been groped by a bloke. But do rest uneasy, it has been most of us, whatever truth you’d like to believe. And all your blather about my misandrist dabbling aside, I was very clear when I said that the enthusiasm of the gropers (not all men, I said this clearly) extends to all women. It just does. It’s unpleasant, but true. There is no woman of my acquaintance who has not been groped, flashed at or grabbed by a bloke at least one point in her life without so much as a by-your-leave-ma’am. Again. As I said. It’s not all blokes. It’s probably not even the majority of blokes. It’s a small group of blokes, let’s say, who are very productive. Whoever they are, all us ladies have been their target. Would that it were not so.
What I also clearly didn’t say is that all women should be automatically believed. I said that this was the conventional liberal wisdom. And this is not a generalisation but one informed by the dominant liberal culture, which is obvious I am critiquing for its contradictions. The prevalent view expressed on the matter is that women rarely accuse falsely. I make the suggestion, which will shortly have me killed by the no-compromise feminists for which you mistake me, that there are times where false accusations are made (not necessarily by the purported victims themselves) in the case of an alleged attacker being brown or black. How did you miss that?
But. Seriously. You’re telling me that the overwhelming majority of women have not been assaulted in exactly the way Trump described (calling this an admission is a bit much). Good luck with that, son.
Me? I have called all men evil? Where, precisely? Where in an article that urges against the public disclosure, in this case, of assault?
Read again.
Helen, if you cannot quantify how many women have been groped in the way the star Trump claimed he could get away with anything, then why claim that most most and then all have been groped in this way? I concede all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could go.
But I do not think this is the same as suffering a “star’s” grope, which has nothing to do with with sexual exploration but is part of continuing practice of not caring at all what women get out of what they do to them. Sexual exploration, however misguided, is not sexual assault.
I was aware that you claimed it as “conventional liberal wisdom” that all women’s claims of assault should be believed. I just doubt that it can be conventional liberal wisdom. I think of myself as a liberal (nothing to do with “Liberal”) though probably not at all “conventional” but I can’t think how it could be wise for a liberal or anyone else for that matter to believe all women’s claims of assault.
Also, it was clearly quite commonplace for women in the US south to claim, when required, that they had been attacked by black men and no doubt the same thing happened, if less often, with brown men, in British India.
In other circumstances, such as contemporary Australia, I do think it unlikely that an accusation of assault would be made falsely, because there is a cost in making such claims and not very often an incentive, such as revenge, or racism, as would often been there in the US south. But surely it is an exaggeration to say that conventional liberal wisdom claims that all reports of assault be believed.
I don’t think the overwhelming majority of women have not been assaulted in the Trump way nor did I say it. I only doubted whether most women had been, and indicated that I think an all too substantial minority has been assaulted in the Trump way, which is criminal assault.
Nor did I say that you Helen had called all men evil but only that you seemed to dabble (lightly touch) in that sort of feminism that makes all women seem victims.
Having said you made a lot of good points, my only complaint is that some claims seemed exaggerated.
Seriously? You are saying unless you have hard data on a widespread ill that can only ever be estimated and never actually recorded but is consistently reported, you’d better hush up?
And you’re saying that sexual assault is only sexual assault when Trump does it? And that what many women face, and you acknowledge that they do, is not sexual assault but the result of them being young and hanging around with the wrong man?
FFS. You’re embarrassing yourself.
Read what I said again.
My most memorable gropes (I’m a 51 year old female by the way)
1. Four years old, standing waiting with my mother outside a public phone booth to make a call as we didn’t have a phone when a masturbating male exhibitionist pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
2. Leaving a cinema with my mother after a late screening we’d won tickets to, we were both accosted and groped by a group of young, probably inebriated young men. We’d been to see “Audrey Rose” and I was 11 years old. My mother told me years later she had been truly and deeply terrified for us both. The street was dark and deserted. There was no safe place to go within running distance.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
3. 18 years old, standing in a cue to buy drinks on a girls night out, pussy grabbed from behind- hard and savage, it hurt – by a nameless, faceless stranger. To this day, I have no idea who it was. He hid in the crowd, and although someone in the crowd MUST have seen him the crowd hid him, too.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
4. Jobs where bosses have copped a feel by rubbing up against me “accidentally” or “accidentally” brushing their hand against my breast.
Three.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
5. Jobs where the boss pushed up against me from behind regularly?
One.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
6. Jobs where bosses talk about their sex lives in particular and about sex in general in a which was apparently meant to be seductive but just forced me to quit two good and four crap jobs?
Six.
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could “? Nope.
Evidence that some men regard women as prey, and there is a power imbalance between the genders which negatively impacts women? Absolutely!
Oops! I forgot one!
7. 30 years of age, married with children, on a girls night out. Two of us went to the jukebox to put music on and were accosted and groped by the group of young men standing around the jukebox. We complained to the bar manager, who shrugged his shoulders and said ” They always do that. That’s why they stand there. Just don’t go near the jukebox.” We left the bar and never went back. It closed for good a few years later. I wonder why?
Evidence that ” all women might have been groped at some time, especially when young, when they got involved with boys who wanted to know how far they could”? Nope.
Evidence that some men regard women as prey, and there is a power imbalance between the genders which negatively impacts women? Absolutely!
Are we in some kind of transition period between the time when most of the horrible nature of power and rule was hidden sufficiently from the common volk that they just shrugged and got on with hoeing the row, and the time when instant global communications and universal leaking expose it all to the sunlight and the populace demands better. Or is world fukt just like it’s always been fukt?
I don’t think Hills and the Donald between them represent every single thing that is wrong with the world, but they (and the surrounding media, both social and dead kinds) must represent the best effort of the world so far to put it all in one pile since Stalin and Churchill shared a napkin. What a terrible choice to have to make.
Thanks for biting the bullet and stating what *should* be obvious here Helen.
Some kind of transition? Hope so – that’s a good glass-half-full take.
Yeah, but… what?!? Ms. HRH has taken advantage of the fact that (finally) the media have woken from their slumber to call out Trump as a nasty piece of work? And this is her exploiting women, how now? If this is the only piece of mud that can stick to the Teflon that is The Donald, wouldn’t you ride that pony for every last micron it could muster? No one seems to care that Donald’s reforms to Obamacare are (in detail) “we are going to have plans that are SO good” (ahh, SO good, I see now). If the only thing that can wake the RNC and the millions of “anyone but Hillary” voters (bless their shrunken evangelical hearts) is a decade old tape featuring The Trump Towers revelling in his inviolable right to grab a lady person by the genitals, well, heck, take the money and run sweetie. ‘Cause that’s the only thing standing between His Execrableness and four years of him loosening his bowels upon these United States and any nations in close enough proximity to catch the flecks. Is Hillary a feminist liberal who will deliver sweet justice and liberty to those who deserve it the most? Hell no. But at least there will be some small chance of Armageddon being postponed long enough for both sides of the cluster intimacy that is Washington DC to make a pact to Never Allow This To Fecking Happen Again. Thankyou, and goodnight.