Jill Filipovic is correct about these white men who voted for this twisted example of exaggerated maleness, but don't forget all those white women who swooned over their own twisted preference and marked Trump at the polls.
4
"Most men also continue to fall short when it comes to household responsibilities," THAT MAY WELL BE, BUT....
WHO'S DOING THE MEASURING?
1
This is one of the best Op Eds I've read. Though I've never checked, I'm guessing the NYT could hire a few more female staff writers to balance out their writing staff. Offer Jill Filipovic a position as a NYT columnist. I would like to hear a lot more from her.
9
If only people other than me actually read pieces like this....
4
Today President bone-spurs had the audacity to speak in front of US soldiers in Japan about American interventions abroad - in front of a flag the size of a football stadium. (He wanted to impress Erdogan, I think, who likes to impress with aircraft carrier size flags.) His speech was so pathetic, as a Veteran my heart shriveled. He also got it totally wrong. Vietnam was a disaster. Afghanistan is a disaster. And Iraq / Syria are disasters - and that's true even from a war hawk perspective.
9
“White American men loved it [Trump’s ‘aggrieved manhood’].”
With such sweeping certainty, Jill Flipovic actually sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.
The approximately 10 million white men in rural counties all over America who helped tip the balance in favor of Donald Trump voted four and eight years earlier for his opposite, Barack Obama. So do you think something other than gender might have been at work?
If men talked about white American women as if they were one undifferentiated mass of Stepford Wives, we’d hear about it. The world is complex, gender issues are complex. Feminism is just one lens to look at ourselves. It doesn’t have all the answers, especially about men.
2
Trump won 53 percent of white women voters. Why are women still colluding with male principles that are so antithetical to their lives?
10
I marched in January, at the (completely peaceful) women's march in los angeles, at Pershing Square. I am 63 years old. I have never marched before except against the Viet Nam War. Then, I said, "War Is Wrong!" Now I say, as my sign that day in LA said, "I Will Not Be Bullied." Both are moral precepts.
25
like a knife through butter, just a razor sharp rational feminist take on what's up. I cannot imagine anyone saying it any better.
3
Whoa now, let's get things right here. Your headline is incorrect. Donald Trump doess NOT think. He emotes, he bloviates, he spits out whatever lie that pops into his head but you can't call that thinking. If he could think he wouldn't be in the mess he's in right now and which will only get worse going forward. We can only hope he doesn't find an excuse to create a war with somebody, anybody, that will allow him to take over the country and get rid of Mueller because right now that is his only goal.
3
I have to admit that I found this too nauseating to read to the end. To state that there are two versions of American masculinity-- Trump on the one hand Obama on the other is garbage. I would not assert anything about "types of femininity" and if I did, I'm sure Ms. Filipovic would have something to say about it. Donald Trump is a disaster because he's Donald Trump not because he's a particular type of man. Is his press secretary a disaster because shes a particular type of woman? His campaign manager? I am so fed up with this torrent of male bashing. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to start a rant about the neologism 'mansplaining.' How different is that term from 'colored people time' or 'he jewed me down?' Why is manspread or manspread OK?
I'll give you another version of American masculinity. It comes from the horrible shooting in Las Vegas a few weeks ago and the story of the men (one who lost his life) shielding their wives from the barrage of bullets that rained down from the Mandalay Bay Hotel. This is not at all to say that women are not heroic. But it is to say that nowhere in the world would you see a woman protecting her husband that way. And you know what, to most men, that's OK.
Let's stop wasting time with sophomoric theories of masculinity and and instead focus on the horror of Mr. Trump. Ms. Filipovic, you will need us to help get rid of him and, god forbid, to shield you with our bodies the next time a deranged individual starts taking pot shots.
4
Trump is what many white men would like to be and they fantasize being like him by putting him in power and feeling the power themselves when he trashes women, humiliates others and talks any nonsense that comes to his mind. They can’t do it but they nonetheless enjoy watching him do it for them
4
I also observe that he mistakes fear for respect. That is another of his "masculine" ideas.
4
Too many men only "get it" when it happens to someone they know, a friend, a colleague, sister, wife, daughter. They want the women they know to be successful in their careers, to not be groped or molested, to have equal opportunities and pay. What's more shocking to me is that women I knew who voted for Trump, they all have daughters, they all work although in fairly insular worlds of doctor's offices, private schools, but they've experienced sexism, yet, they found it so easy to ignore Trump's mistreatment, disrespect, even lack of respect for women. They couldn't see a woman leading the country. They hated Obama for his color, his strong marriage, his strong wife. They hated Clinton for doing everything to keep her marriage together, for being strong enough to be President. They chose the weak needy horrible abusive man-child who has no values, morals, or character over strength. That's says more about them then they'd like us to know.
7
Trump is pathetic, a weak, sniveling, aging fat guy with a big mouth, who but for daddy's hundreds of millions would have been selling used cars in one of the outer boroughs. His supporters are even worse - people who have completely lfailed at life but who keep pointing at "them" as the reasons for their failures.
4
What a refreshing article. Well said and written. The only critiques I might have is that the author neglected to mention the part when Howard Stern said Ivanka Trump was “a nice piece of ass” while interviewing Trump and her disrespectful father didn’t admonish Stern and agreed. And how about the occasion when Trump suggested he’d marry Ivanka if she had not been his daughter.
As a man and human being, Trump is trailer trash personified. I can’t insult the animal calling him a pig. He’s not worthy of the office he occupies for the present should Congress find its balls to show him the door in disgrace.
7
Brilliant and insightful! Jill Filipovich's column, Nov. 5. So appreciated.
2
"Trump-style masculinity, in other words, is less John Wayne and more Tucker Max — and a revealing insight into American male anxiety."
More Tucker Carlson.
3
First, I am a left-leaning liberal who voted for Hilary Clinton. My late father possessed more integrity and character in his right pinky than Donald Trump. Still, it's frustrating that highly talented writers such as Jill Filipovic continue to Trump bash. Trump's knee jerk reaction to criticism is to attack the critic, regardless of the veracity of the critic's claim. For example, if someone calls Trump a liar, even with solid evidence, Trump ignores the accusation and calls the critic a "loser" or "overrated." This form a deflection, to a certain degree, has worked. The issue goes back on the accuser, who is bashed relentlessly. It has worked so well that Trump critics have assumed the mantel of Bashers themselves. This serves only to de-fang the finger pointers. As a pragmatist, I would prefer that Trump's critics would keep their focus and restrain their vitriol, however justified, and work on getting the president out of office.
1
Clinton may have been the most qualified presidential candidate *on paper*, but she had many shortcomings nonetheless. Case-in-point, Obama is a great example of someone who lacked a depth of experience but who was a very successful president.
Perhaps if Clinton, her campaign and her supporters had relied less on simply pointing to the checked boxes on her resume, and instead tackled Trump head-on? She would have demonstrated an important character trait and one which the vast majority of us can relate to: standing up to a bully. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Trump supporter. But Clinton was a poor alternative.
4
DJT ( I refuse to use his illegitimate title), is the embodiment of every bad cliche about the male species. He's Ralph Kramden, Archie Bunker and every TV land stereotype minus the charm.
He thinks that speaking in that outer borough accent and tough talking to anyone he considers weak , such as female adversaries or Gold Star families makes him powerful. He's a joke, a loser and a disgrace to every principle that modern men in our society have evolved into. Bragging about sexual conquests and short changing business associates, and tap dancing around tax laws and bankruptcy loopholes puts him more on a par with some laughable Damon Runyon 1950's mobster than a powerhouse.
12
Ms. Filipovic writes a great opinion piece that aptly describes the toxic masculinity that's surrounding us. On the heels of yet another mass shooting by a white male perpetrator, this time in Texas, there is something obviously sick and wrong about this chat-room, Trump-inspired, entitled white male hate.
Filipovic ends on a hopeful note, and I concur, attitudes are generally progressing and will progress further towards equality. This toxicity masculinity is a response to the consciousness that to be white and male with a heartbeat is no longer enough on its own to make you successful in this world, you have to work hard and earn your success. Women and minorities have known this for eons. I am lucky to be married to one of the progressive white males, who's in the kitchen whipping up a vegan chili from scratch without feeling that this is a threat to his masculinity. He is modeling what it means to be a healthy, well-adjusted, competent, and confident male to my son and daughter. And God is that sexy!
2
Ms Filipovic. You generalize and stereotype to the extreme with the American male. I and many, many other white males are some of the one's You think are what You describe in Your one sided article. You are completely wrong. Ask my Daughters and Grand daughters. I am proud to say that all my life and I suspect many other white males were, are now, perfect gentlemen with all women we love and endear and all women. You do a grave disservice to the good in a lot of us.
4
Trump could not have won without white women voting for him.
This suggests that either the author doesn't understand that plenty of women _like_ some form of what she considers negative male aggression, authority and power or that there are other reasons people voted for Trump that have little to do with the feminist lenses through which she views every little thing.
If men as a group earn more money or do less female defined housework then that is a problem but if women are earning more college degrees then that is a good thing according to the author. How does that work?
Perhaps this sort of double standard might explain why some people voted for Trump?
But yes it would be entertaining at the least to get just _one_ piece in the NYT written by a heterosexual man explaining exactly what is wrong with women and how women can solve this "problem" by acting more like men./Sarcasm off.
Is this a trick question?
Everybody knows that groping skills are paramount for him.
1
The line, "... a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues," stopped me cold: "almost none"? Which virtue of stereotypical masculinity does Donald Trump possess?
2
Filipovic identifies a key element of aggrieved manhood in this moment - resentment that white men are asked to be responsible citizens, colleagues, and family members even without getting the unchallenged rewards they used to - better known as white, male supremacy. And her observation that it has produced a sense of nihilism - if I can't have exclusive rights over all the good stuff - then I'm going to make sure that no one has any of it - rings true. So many political decisions being made by white men right now are quite obviously self-destructive.
1
My read from most of the comments is that white women from high school dropout to college educated put Donald Trump in the White House. My question is: Why did the majority of white women vote for Trump instead of Clinton?
1
And what are we going to do about it?
2
What it takes, he thinks, is to move on her like a bitch.
2
Brava giornalista!
2
Mr Trump represents what is the worst part of all of us in the human race. He is waking us up to what is the ugly part of being human and in human society. We can now be aware of it and maybe realize that all we really are is love and not hate. We are all one and all the same. Do we have to annihilate each other to eventually find this truth? When will our insanity end?
1
You say,
Character, she wrote, is “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life."
Given this perhaps it is you that should accept the responsibility for Hillary's defeat. She was a flawed candidate with an unpopular husband. Bill Clinton oversaw the imprisoning of half a million people yet Hillary seemed to believe that there would be no consequences to that act. Also there was the issue of Bill's long string of lies.
You also say
"a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office"
The quotes I heard were that many were willing to accept a women president but "not that woman".
Yes Trump is a disaster but it was Hillary that put him there. If Bernie had run as the people wanted he would be president today.
Thanks for noting Trump's unlikeness to e.g. John Wayne. Trump is the complete antithesis of the old-style masculine hero: blustering, bullying, insecure and self-obsessed.... And he never stops talking. Hardly the strong, silent type who risks his own life to defend vulnerable others.
1
I don't see all that much difference between John Wayne's characters and Donald Trump or a dozen other white male archetypes, most of whom I worked for. I despise all of them. I used to think they'd die off and life would change but time has only hatched nestlings that are even more despicable.
I've been fortunate in my personal life; I've known so many truly fine men
1
Donald Trump's disgusting lack of character, empathy, decency, truthfulness, and trustworthiness...as well as his complete unpreparedness for this job of President...stem from one thing, a thing that is neither male nor female.
That is, he is the laziest person on the planet. Everything the author states is true...but the most important "ingredient" that has gone into the making of Donald Trump (which the author does not mention here) is his blatant, uncaring, and unapologetic laziness...and laziness is at the root of his "style" of masculinity.
A refusal to lift a finger, a desire to be served rather to serve, results in his haughty bullying, indignant irresponsibility, crybaby feelings of unjust oppression, and boundless ignorance.
He is the patron saint of the modern white male: ignorant, white supremacist, anti-semitic, and misogynistic - precisely because what all these men have in common is their determination to blame their shortcomings on others, instead of putting in the elbow grease required to learn and achieve and - in the process - develop real character, real knowledge, real ability, and real humility.
It is no wonder that Trump's male supporters find it so easy to inhabit a world of "alternative facts" and assume an air of resentful hurt pride mixed with faux superiority; it is so much easier to blame others and believe the universe owes you something merely because you are white, or because you are male, or because laziness suits you.
2
Ms. Fillipovic, I doubt you have any idea of the "old-school of American males", yet you define all as brothers of the most despicable male of our time ! You must have suffered greatly ?
In a time you do not know of...it was the mother who dominated the lives of the young ones. Our home-maker moms shaped our characters of responsibility and ambitions. You assign no credit.
1
This column starts off with a false assumption right in the headline. Trump doesn't "think". Apart from that, this column reminds me of the old joke: "there are two kinds of people in the world, those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don't ". If there is one thing the election of the Orange One has shown us it is that if you patronize people they won't vote for you. The "deplorables" had their revenge. I guess some of us haven't learned that lesson yet.
3
A) Trump was elected in the same country that elected Barak Obama twice.
B) Trump defeated a large field of stunned GOP candidates before moving on to the general election.
C) Barak Obama may have been a great guy and good president who helped lead the country out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression but he was not a great leader of the Democratic Party from an overall nation-wide political standpoint. Democrats have been steadily losing seats in congress and state houses throughout the country over the past decade.
For better or worse, the USA is and will probably always be a center-right country. Even FDR couldn't get significant progressive domestic legislation passed after 1938.
Today a very large portion of the American middle is teetering and broke…one personal financial emergency away from insolvency. Both parties had a hand in this situation. Keep going on and on about Trump, toxic masculinity, gender dynamics, the role of men and power in society. Say what you want but from my perspective the Trump’s election was nothing more than a cleverly timed and detonated “primal scream” from an ever growing chunk of the “independent middle” that had simply become disenchanted with the prevailing neoliberalism of the “national stage” Democratic Party. Why bother campaigning in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin when you’re having so much fun hustling money from Wall Street.
1
And how do you explain the white women who voted for him, and the evangelicals of both genders?
4
Threads discussed here regarding white males are strikingly similar to current late night comedy skits.
1
Jill Filipovic's thesis is simplistic.
She does not account for the tens of millions of women who voted for Trump, and continue to support him.
Do these women know something Ms. Filipovic doesn't?
To charge them with "blindness" or "false consciousness" is to devalue their different way of thinking about Trump and men like him.
Ms. Filipovic needs to complicate her thesis.
The question remains: why do so many women support Trump?
As far as I can tell, no one has yet answered it convincingly.
2
Trump, a man? Who is kidding whom? An idiot, a moron, yes. But not a man.
PS: Obama is a man.
3
You know, Jill, I want to take without a critique, whatever you have to say about POTUS. That's the closest I can come to identifying this monster as a human being.
Actually I am not in the least bit respectful of what he thinks of anything, especially not of what he thinks it takes to be a man (small 'm' intended).
Not to disregard your argument but I have to wonder what it is that allows you to permit yourself to be so potentially poisoned, corrupted, by such an unreasonably close proximity to such a toxic death cell.
1
I don't disagree with most of this. But 52% of white women voted for Trump, a result I still can't fathom. Am I to surmise that these women must agree to some extant with Trump's view of what it means to be a man? That's an odd thought in light of today's outpouring of outrage against sexual harassment.
Your column convincingly explains Trump's appeal to a category of voters - disaffected white men. But to the extent that you imply that his appeal to that group is the reason he is in the White House, it seems to be a gross oversimplification. Unfortunately, many highly educated, sophisticated, un-Neanderthal men voted for Trump, despite all of his terribly offensive shortcomings. And what about the millions of women who enthusiastically voted for this misogynistic, insecure, revolting, creepy, small handed cad? Can you please explain that one for us?
Donald Trump doesn't act like any traditional model of American masculinity. He would have been a perfect foil for the hero in old melodramas, novels, serial stories, comic books, and films. Lack of humility, self-restraint, respect for others, courtesy toward women (however patriarchal by current judgment), and simple decency are his M.O.. He's a rich jerk.
1
All true but the last. As a repeat bankrupt who will no release his tax returns or audited financial statements, one must conclude that his wealth is as imaginary as his accomplishments and virtues.
1
I remember reading an article in which a Trump supporter justified his love for him by saying "This country needs John Wayne!"
But Trump's personality and nasty brand of masculinity couldn't be much further from that of Wayne's on-screen persona: In the trailer for the 1956 Ford/Wayne western The Searchers, the speaker recounts how Ethan Edwards (Wayne's character) spent years looking for a girl who was abducted by Indians "Never thinking of himself as brave, never thinking of himself as a hero".
Trump's puerile masculinity amounts to just about the opposite approach: Do nothing, achieve nothing but tell the world that you've gotten more done than any president ever before.
If only fewer people fell for this faux Wayne act...
2
No qualities he actually possesses.
No, he's more like some fairytale evil queen.
2
I'm really getting tired of the NYT giving so much space to people who hate "others" than themselves, as if there's one scapegoat for everything going on in America today--white men. Hillary Clinton was a Terrible candidate for president; she and her husband made sure no-one would challenge her. She was not the most qualified person ever--yes, she had lots of "experience" but she accomplished almost nothing that I know of (and I voted for her in both the primaries and the general). She completely messed up the attempt to pass health care reform early in her husband's presidency, and as far as I've heard did nothing significant as a senator from New York (a position she got for why?), nor as Secretary of State. She voted for the Iraq war as Senator. Had it not been for her lock on the donors, who knows what candidates would have come forward in the Democratic Party before Bernie finally threw his unlikely hat in the ring. Only Hillary Clinton could have failed to defeat Trump. The NYT has a lot of bigots writing op-eds.
1
SOME American white men loved it. Many did not. Some American white women loved it too.
While sexism as unquestionably a factor, so was racism. So was economic inequality. So were the endless lies from the Republican smear machine painting all Democrats, and particularly Clinton, as criminals.
The author correctly describes Trump as an immature, despicable character. But over-generalization does not serve this topic.
Very well thought out and presented, although I do feel that you are preaching to the choir.
Most men realize that Donald Trump is a failure as a human being. Let's hope the fit of group insanity that allowed him to push us into national disgrace is the last time we'll see this brand of fake toughness.
3
Trump's "psychic masculinity" requires the prehistoric view that men can and should take what they want from women--anytime, anywhere. No love, no responsibility, no joy. But those sexual bullies miss the best things about sex; the mutual interest, mutual attraction, mutual desire and mutual passion that cannot be forced. A real man knows this.
So please somebody. Explain to me why 53% of white WOMEN voted Trump????
A real man carries his burdens with grace and aplomb. And Donald has a new, additional burden, Commerce Secretary Ross and HIS Russian connections.
A real man has loyalty to his friends and supporters. So Ross knows at least Donald will protect him.
I️ worked long and hard on a comment for this piece on Thursday night. The NYT eliminated every comment and started at zero comments again yesterday.
How can the NYT just disappear reader comments as if they never happened? People took time and devoted thought to their writing. It’s just wrong!
The author must be a real expert on what "a real man" is lol.
I have no idea if there's such a thing, but a woman describing what she thinks is the "right" way to be a man is is just quite 'enlightening' lol.
What's the big rush to try to make men be this feminist sensitive invention of what progressives think being a man 'should' be about?
1
So, I can't stand Trump and think he should be in jail because of the way he had assaulted women, but this is the type of cheap identity analysis that gives feminism and academics a bad name. What did I learn? Nothing about Trump or about why people voted for him. A lot about Ms. Filipovic.
1
Jill Filipovic is so right about the Obama model. The men and women's work environment and lifestyle have so changed today, that for a portion of those who couldn't follow, it is absolutely frightening. Hence, the attraction, for both sexes, to the apparent reassuring stereotype of negative masculinity. So right on.
1
This is all well and good. And nicely written. But someone please write an article about why millions of women voted for Trump! That scares me more is this increasely uncivil country!
1
Back in the eighties, we had T-shirts that said: Women’s Liberation is also Men’s Liberation. Like others, though, I cannot get away from the fact that most white women voted for Trump. What is it that they fear so much? What makes subservience so attractive to them?
There will be no change in men’s roles until more women want a change in women’s roles. Even the most fair-minded and feminist of men cannot liberate women that do not wish to be free.
1
Outstanding article
Id like to say thank you for so articulately stating the reality of the USA (and other Western countries) in 2017
Really sad but true
1
Dabbling on internet forums devoted to video games as an adult male is no different than an adult woman dabbling on internet forums devoted to knitting. I'm certainly glad there's a woman out there to explain the challenges of a modern, contemporary adult male in this country. I agree with her assessment of Trump's level of development but her opinion's on the white American male in general, not so much.
2
Okay, NYT, now give a male writer to explain contemporary women and their challenges.
17
LOL, chauvinistic reply: Covered!
Objectivity: zeroed!
Insult: hurled!
Congrats, you succeeded on all these counts.
2
Having to deal with misogynistic idiots with an over-sized ego and equally over-sized sense of entitlement?
1
Sad
3
The author knows so much but understands so little.
7
Then explain it all, please.
1
Add in senile decay and that's Trump all over.
17
Donald Trump is a fraud...period. He's the loud mouth drunk in the bar who starts the fight and then runs for the restroom. When the individual, alleged by the Trump campaign, to be an ISIS affiliate, jumped on the stage at one of Trump's mini-Nuremberg rallies, I expected to watch Trump spring into action, subdue the brigand and toss him against the side of that $100,000,000, custom designed Boeing 757, that makes Trump appear to be "just like us". Didn't happen... If this "president" is the modern definition of what passes for the ideal American male, I will walk right past Duluth Trading and shop at Ann Taylor. In my experience, the most dangerous individuals, if you base manliness on such a thing, are generally the quietest. A rattler is a rattler, but a rattler sans rattles is something else. Thankfully, I'm everything Trump isn't. I'm not rich. I'm a tree hugging, animal loving, anti-gun, card carrying member of the Sierra Club. Love/marry/divorce who you want, I don't care. I own 6 pairs of Birkenstocks. I fly coach. I got a couple of student deferments but had no bone spurs. I voluntarily served two tours in Vietnam, didn't care for it much but figured I owed the country something, and I have the purple hearts and holes to prove it. In my opinion, Trump is a coward, unfortunately in a position to get lots of American and Korean kids killed. John McCain and John Kerry are still my heroes. I like Jeff Flake, too. Trump is something but not my nominee for a man.
96
May there be more like you!
Well said. My hat off to you.
Donald Trump is an abomination, and he makes it embarrasssing to be a male in 2017. He shouldn't be allowed to be in the presence of decent people, especially women, for whom he has no respect. He has no moral compass. He is a man without any core values.
I believe all of my statements to be true. But if even half of them are, there is still a question that gnaws at me, and which Ms. Filipovic does not address: Why did 57% of white women vote for this crude misogynistic sociopath? Can someone please explain this to me?
78
Why?
Because women are no less susceptible to mistaking ego, self-indulgence, and certainty of one's own entitlement to dominance and freedom from responsibility - the false veneer of power and manliness - as the real thing.
Feminism has always been about more than equality and self-realization for women; it is also about women and men seeing through the facade of false manliness and recognizing and valuing the real thing.
We've come a long way as a society towards making the first two a reality, but are farther behind with regards to the latter.
Now with Trump we went as a country from barbarism to decay without passing through civilization
14
And not a mention of his Vietnam War-era bone spurs, or why Americans would rather vote in tough-talking draft dodgers (Cheney, Bush, Trump) than (more) level-headed military veterans (Kerry)... incomplete analysis.
16
In most states, the election system is vulnerable to corruption. I don't believe the folks you list + Trump were voted in, given how easy it is to commit computerized vote theft and use other means to keep people from voting or their votes to be counted.
How Hackers Broke Into U.S. Voting Machines in Less Than...
http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/defcon-hackers-us-voting-machines/
Donald Trump Warned Of A ‘Rigged’ Election, Was He Right? http://www.mintpressnews.com/donald-trump-warned-of-a-rigged-election-wa...
The 2016 Presidential Election Table http://tdmsresearch.com/2016/11/10/2016-presidential-election-table
The GOP's Operation RedMap
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482150951/understanding-congressional-gerr...
“White American men loved it.” Don’t forget that Trump got elected because 54% of WHITE WOMEN voted for him.
27
Which just goes to show that both white men and white women often mistake ego, self-aggrandizement, a white man's belief in his own entitlement to power and dominance as manliness, qualifying him to be president of the United States.
And how wrong they were.
1
No, Trump got elected because the US is NOT a democracy. The person who got the most votes--Hillary Clinton--did not win the presidency. THAT is a sickening disgrace...just as it was in 2000, when the person who lost the popular vote became president and started a war in Iraq for no reason other than Dick Cheney and friends thought they could make some oil money.
1
" ...54% of WHITE WOMEN voted for him."
THAT is the real mystery the author needs to solve. The Greek chorus has been working overtime on the man-child story.
Trump is simply a bully.
15
Jill’s right. And most right in her use of the old word “character” which I learned from my father and have used in admiration for countless students, male and female, in their recommendations for college over 44 years. Let’s avoid gendering the word as we struggle to preserve its meaning and usefulness.
11
Fear of being forced to submit to a more powerful alpha type person will motivate anyone into defensive displays of defiant behaviors to dissuade possible attackers. Displaying this every time one does not feel supported or approved indicates a lack of self confidence, an identity that is built around feeling weak and impotent.
A person with strong character does not worry about being threatened unless there is a likely threat. A person responsible for others acts to assure a safe and secure environment, forming good relationships and keeping good communications with trust and openness with neighbors and potential adversaries.
Trump's behavior belong's in a western b movie, not in real life.
13
Obviously, the author traffics in overstatement (to make a point) when she states that "care jobs are not jobs men are generally willing to take ... because nursing, elder care and child care are women's work." There is no such thing as men's work or women's work, nor has there been for a long, long time. Men have been ministers and doctors, nurses and loving dads, uncles and teachers since time immemorial. What's different is how we value some of these roles.
But in every other respect, the author is absolutely correct, and I have faith that, as manhood and humankind moves (as usual), two steps forward, one step back, we will emerge from this odd Trump-regressive era with fresh resolve to again progress forward as men and women with courage and resolve, for the sake of white males (like myself) and absolutely everyone else.
6
Thank you, Jill, for articulating what many of us men cannot. I am white and male and have grimaced again and again at the attempt to reassert a masculinity that is a disproportionate version of yesterday. In that sense it is twice fake for today. There are many of us who recognize the gender discrepancies and attempt to correct the ones that are in our power to do so. Your article refreshes the fight by not villainizing masculinity per session but a false masculinity practiced by our President.
18
"The president is a perfect figurehead for this bizarre moment: a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues, occupying the most powerful and exclusively male seat of power in the nation (and perhaps in the world), who ascended in large part because a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office. He is ego unchecked, narcissism in place of dignity."
It would be interesting to list the nations that have never in modern times had a female head of state, and compare them to those that did or do. I'm not sure it would lead to any firm conclusions, given the number of relevant factors at play in governing; but it would be worth doing.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a few in the first category: Russia, Poland, Mexico, and of course the United States.
4
Character, chivalry, courtesy, common sense...... Some qualities that seem to be diminishing in our world. Probably because there is no money in them.
11
@Bob: Ah, but there's something much more VALUABLE than money in those qualities! And thoughtful people know that, which is why Trump will NEVER know any of it.
Real men are the ones with depth of character, with strong moral and ethical values - values which they have taken on consciously & deliberately! - and who are strong enough in every sense of the word "strong" to know that chivalry, courtesy and innate decency toward others is the mark of a REAL MAN. And Trump will go to his dying day not comprehending any of this!
1
I think you are absolutely correct Jill but you did not go far enough. Most women and girls for that matter, instinctively understand the dangers of toxic male anxiety. Simply put, men like this are dangerous when they feel their ridiculous definition of manhood that is so tied to their sense of self-esteem, is threatened. Hillary was the perfect foil in that regard. Here was an educated, seriously smart candidate, with a good heart and plans--America said, can't have that, so let's give the most ridiculously unqualified, repugnant man the nuclear codes instead. We have a problem in this country and it is a cultural ill as bad as racism and that is a male superiority complex (white male) that is in reality a collection of little weak boys needing to believe what they know deep down is not true, that they are genetically and naturally superior. The last few decades have proven this false over and over again and with Hillary we finally had our chance to change this country, and possibly the world forever and guess the boys weren't going to allow it...
31
This disgrace really belongs to the idiotic Electoral College vestige of slavery, and the bloodiest fool FBI director there could have been.
12
Just to add some real facts about the 'boys'. 53% of all white women voted for Trump. Just on 50% of college educated white women voted for Trump. This is not just a 'boys' issue
Don't oversimplify. Many white men gladly for Hillary Clinton. I️ did. And see the many comments describing the proportion of women who voted for D. Trump.
The men described in the article are the problem, yes. But not all men. Not all white men.
History is a long tale about the acquisition of human rights. It is not a straightforward tale, there are setbacks and unexpected twists. I wonder how it will turn out.
Black people in America used to be slaves. They aren't any more, but they're not exactly equal just yet. The rise of the KKK, the erection of Confederate Statues, the "COLORED ENTRANCE" signs I saw as a teen have passed. Mostly. My fervent hope is the current resurgence of racial animus and threats are the dying throes of American racism.
Women used to be chattel as well. They aren't any more, but they're not exactly equal just yet. My fervent hope is the current resurgence of misogyny is one of the dying throes of American gender bias.
I started to say Donald is a throwback to an earlier age. But he isn't even that. He's an abomination.
Hillary got it right when she said many Trump supporters were deplorable. I think she underestimated the proportion.
I still like the picture of Trump up in the cab of the 18-wheeler murmuring "vroom-vroom." Like he has a clue how to run one.
32
Undoubtedly, this analysis has merit but the simpler, more obvious basis for Trump's behavior and his appeal to some is the consistently overt, unchecked, virtually anarchistic and wholly narcissistic expression of his primitive lizard brain. People, not just men, who are "in a rut," who believe they have no opportunities for personal and economic improvement, who invest more in blaming others than taking personal responsibility, who willingly become loyal followers and surrender themselves to a strongman, who want to act out without consequences, have found their messiah. Trump doesn't think about what it takes to be a man, and he doesn't care what anyone else thinks. In uncomplicated fashion, his lizard brain-controlled personality seeks to assert power, to harm others, and to protect himself. To him, those attributes - and only those attributes - define manhood.
17
Trump would probably freak out if given a buzz cut.
3
Trump appears to be a very fearful person.
15
Ironically, my biggest regret about Obama was that he was too soft.
Enter Godzilla. Is there no middle ground?
9
Obama was rational. That counts as "soft" in the Swamp.
1
Donald Trump criticized John McCain for being "captured" with condemnation.
Was that to take McCain's manliness away?
Truth is, Donald Trump will never know what it is to be a real man.
38
McCain didn't need anyone to take away his manliness. He did it all by himself by endorsing Trump after Trump had literally urinated over his war record.
Why, Ms. Filipovic, do you persist in repeating the mantra and fad of calling President Trump a 'man-child'? If in raising your child would you excuse and allow constant foul-mouthed behavior? The slandering of every one around and the consistent lying? The constant bullying and taunting? Decisions made without prior thought or knowledge?
A white-male-with- power is not what this is about. President Trump is a full grown 70 year old adult that exhibits all of the symptoms of a sociopath. Would that be tolerable in your offspring? Please give some thought as to what actions we must now take. And let us know.
45
Rhea - allow me to offer an alternative interpretation of the term "man-child:" someone who acts childishly in the sense of "I want what I want, and I'm going to yell if I don't get it NOW," and so on --- what we used to call a spoiled brat when I was a child. In other words, someone whose parents should have taught him not to behave that way when he actually was still a child. He's an example of a grown man with a child's sense of entitlement and a child's view of the world in an adult body: hence a man-child.
Most parents would be proud to raise a child who grew up to become President of the United States; I don't think there are many parents who would be proud of raising a child who grew up to have a character like Trump's.
13
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
32
Trump. Phony gilt glory. He is undignified, unfit, dementedly tweeting to blow up our country with his unrelenting ego. Period. The end.
21
Period, okay. But I wish you hadn't said "The End."
g
Gee thanks Jill - now, President Trump, if he understands a single word of what you wrote, can fall back on Freudian theory to explain away his venal shortcomings. Will Weinstein Spacey Hoffman Halperin et al embrace the psychological triad of ID, Ego and Super Ego and follow suit? Other than that objection, I think you nailed it...(him).
2
Donald Trump inherited his real estate wealth and power. Trump played a businessman on television but his business failures vastly outnumbered his success. Trump behaves like a typically entitled royal. Ignorant, insecure, immature and intemperate. Think Henry VIII, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero. Trump is no where near the successful New York City busnessman that Sean Combs and Shawn Carter are.
9
When you're from Queens, you gotta do something.
"What Donald Trump Thinks It Takes to Be a Man"
The title of your interesting op-ed is wrong to start with.
Donald Trump doesn't thing anything. He knows. Everything. And his inner-circle, sycophants and family keep reminding him of it all the time. And they avoid talking about his short fingers. You know, sycophants.
So stop all this analyzing. There's no there there. He's as naked as an emperor can be. He doesn't think. Period. He only has gut feelings and that has landed him in three marriages, multiple bankruptcies and 3500 lawsuits.
No thinking man could have ever achieved such a loosing record.
His IQ may be above average, maybe. But I think it is up to the psychiatrists to determine the true nature of his, (and our, as he is the POTUS) problem.
9
If his IQ were anywhere close to average we'd be in even bigger trouble. The guy's a total moron. His "I have the best words" and "big, big water" might not put him in jail but publicly asking Russia for Hillary's emails, and telling NBC that he fired Comey because of the "Russiar thing"...what complete and utter idiocy-Thank God!
2
@ William: Why on earth would you think Trump might have an above-average IQ? He's the poster-boy for privileged incompetent males who would never succeed if their family's money & connections didn't push them forward.
And his pathetically small vocabulary shows that he's NOT really very smart at all. He's only "smart" in the way a snake-oil salesman or con artist is smart; no high IQ is required to be a con artist. You just need the people you're conning to TRUST your proclamations of how smart you are. Trump has no high IQ; he's just got a brass set (that he thinks is gold).
2
It is not just white males that voted for him. It is white women too despite Access Hollywood tapes and all that. If that leads to the conclusion that race was dominant, Hilary was white too. Besides, the country elected Obama twice. Remember Hillary got 3 million more votes. We have to accept that his election was just one of those random events--just 30,000 vote margin in three states that mattered--rather than deep misogyny in the country. If that small, margin had been the other way around, this entire commentary would have to be turned upside down.
7
@Chandra: Don't fool yourself: there is plenty of deep misogyny active in this country, at every level. Just like there's plenty of racism active in this country at every level.
And one big reason Clinton didn't win is this simple: A lot of peoples' thought process went along the lines of "first a black guy, now a woman? No, no, no, that's too weird & unacceptable. What might happen next if we allow a black guy and then a woman to be in charge? This is too much "change" and it's scary! We need a white guy."
I'm really afraid that that's the level of lizard-brain thinking that was at work on election day. Because you *know* that if Hillary had been a man, she'd have been elected.
1
Back in the day, we used to call someone like Trump “assholis rex” – guys who were jerks, knew it, yet reveled in it because it was the only thing that got them attention; they had nothing else to offer. For Trump “a desire to reclaim this psychic masculinity” is just an exaggerated overcompensation for a lack of masculinity. Or, to put it bluntly: it’s a substitute for that part of the male anatomy whose symbolic value outweighs its reality.
7
Trump has poisoned the well of civil discourse, but, like any foul thing, once it is vomited forth the body politic is restored.
6
A person who ridicules a disabled person and in another incident feigns shooting and executing a former POW is now POTUS......
The Horror of this realization is overwhelming me.
13
There are plenty of women Trump supporters. I'd like a psycho-analysis of that, please.
24
Not rocket science. They admire that type of man, and are probably married to one.
Perfect piece to describe The Donald. Then add his Narcissistic Personality Disorder, shake, stir, and boy do we need to win back the House iun 2018 and the Seanate in 2020.
5
This president, who shall not be named, does not think. He knows. A weakness shared by all his mindless followers.
13
Here's something the cognoscenti and elites of both sides of the political divide do not get. Non-voters vastly outnumbered those who voted for the POTUS or the Clintonista. ~130M voters went to the polls in 2016. Clinton received 65,844,954 votes to Trump's 62,979,879. But more than 100 million American's of voting age DID NOT CAST BALLOTS! In fact, if "none of the above," had been a choice on the ballot most likely neither candidate would have won. This is some we all need think about.
But this is not atypical behavior for us is it? American's have a bad habit of not voting. Only 3 times in the fifteen presidential elections since 1960 have more than 60% of the voting age population gone to the polls. So the majority of American's are either lazy and indifferent, or else they're just acting rationally in the same sense espoused by the late, great, George Carlin about voting. They don't feel they have a stake in our government or those selected to represent them, and so don't vote. Period.
I happen to think it's the latter case. So the POTUS doesn't even come close to representing the majority of American's (especially males); and his vaunted "base" is a minority of a minority. The vast majority care less about his tenure, though the longer he keeps careening about the place the more likely it becomes he'll be hearing from them. And he won't be liking it much I suspect. Guess we'll see soon enough. 2018 cannot come soone enough, can it?
John~
American Net'Zen
8
This rings true -- but what about the millions of female Trump voters?
9
Analyzing Donald Trump is not difficult:
Trumps are swine - morally, intellectually, socially and genetically.
The Trump family's privileged position in American society testifies to an utterly perverse capitalist system and thoroughly debauched culture.
16
I would rather be single than like either Trump or Obama. I believe that Napoleon was correct when he said that a man shows his weakness in his choice of a spouse. Most married men are henpecked and almost pathetic to behold. Trump and Obama are extremes. One is a sleaze and the other is almost a woman in a man's body. No thanks Jill Filipovic I'll pass on your ideal man.
1
Inherent in your critique of Obama is that to be "feminine" is to be bad. This is literally the definition of misogyny, buddy. If you think Obama is not a real man because his wife is a smart strong woman....then maybe he's more "man" than you because he can deal with the really hard concept that women and men are equals.
Why should male and female minds and personalities be identical? I hope not. Life would be much duller and less wonderful
But analysing Trump is a worthless endeavor.. Joseph Welsh gave the most accurate critique of Trump while rebuking Senator Joe McCarthy when he said, "Have you no decency Sir?"
When his real manhood was tested, the drafting to the Vietnam war, he escaped by claiming he had a heel spur. The heel spur was not worse than that he could play tennis and golf and fool around with ladies.
9
Oh, and you think years --- years! --- of avoiding STD's in the nightclubs of New York is somehow less worthy of admiration than fighting in Vietnam? Sad!
4
Too many men who were “chicken hawks” (hawks who avoided service) have come to executive rank in our politics with disastrous results. There is still time to impeach Cheney, and perhaps get into practice for impeaching Trump.
6
Why do you think threatening to hit ISIS ten times harder if they strike us is not manly? At least it shows he has mastered the multiplication tables.
3
This column is female-centric bunk that misses the point about Trump. Little privileged Donald's childish world view is merely that of the low brow outer borough building construction thug that made his father rich on VA loan money in the early '50's. Being "the Man" in the world of Queens building construction then meant posturing as a selfish gangster bullying and conning one's way to results and running over anyone in your way. Trump was labeled as a buffoon when he came to Manhattan, is deeply insecure because of that and has never gotten over it. Ms Filipovic is speciously conflating many things she does not understand in order to get out another published rant of flimsy feminist rhetoric, which is fine. A writer has to keep her brand up. But Trump is in no way as profound as all this. And no, Ms Fillovic, men do not admire him. He is president because the Democrats have failed miserably to lead America into a dignified future we can share.
4
"He is president because the Democrats have failed miserably to lead America into a dignified future we can share."
President Barack Obama was the epitome of dignified. With a less recalcitrant Congress he may well have made strides towards that future you yearn for.
djt is "leading" us backwards in case you haven't noticed.
10
He is president because We the People haven't been paying attention to our duties and responsibilities regarding our Nation.
Democratic voters stay home at midterms, I guess thinking congress doesn't matter, only the White House.
The fault is not with the party, even if it has been a little lacking in oomph, the problem is with democratic voters.
4
He is president because we DO NOT live in a Democracy!! Democracy is when the person with the most votes wins. This also happened in 2000, and that loser went on to start a few wars for no reason and nearly bankrupt the country. Oh, and they both happened to be republicans. Just sayin'
We tend to worry about Donald Trump’s ignorance, narcissism, dishonesty, emotional immaturity, short attention span, thin-skinned instability, bullying cowardice, misogyny, bigotry and recklessness.
Let’s give ourselves a break. We elected a sociopath, and we’ll just have to live with it until he is impeached, chokes on a cheeseburger or loses a bid-for re-election.
In the meantime, we should concentrate on those other malformed masculine misfits mentioned by Jill Filipovic. You know, the ones bullying their wives or living in their parents’ basement – the ones who love and elected Donald Trump.
There is a decision to be made.
Do we completely ostracize these jerks or do we put their faces on milk cartons?
Actually, you women have to decide. We Obama-like modern males are busy and happy caring about people until we’re blue in the face.
5
umm... interesting, but perhaps this piece might have been better placed in a periodical focusing on social psychology for the lay reader? The title alone is not an assertion that one would expect to see printed in the Times.
1
I wrote this about archetypes of manhood, hyper-masculine men, and specifically Donald Trump in 1992.
"The Rooster is the personification of sexual and aggressive instincts which embody the masculine id. The Rooster presents the male animal. He is a proud warrior and a fanatic for hardy tests of full-blooded manhood. His atavism leads him to wage war against civilization or war that is socialized by a competition. This vying may be business or intellectual, but it is often physical, especially when a man is at a young age. The Rooster can be a daredevil, a felon, a tough guy or a Trump cad. He is an exponent of rapacity and profligacy. "Strike, Strut, and Rut" is the Rooster's implicit motto. "
http://robertpirsig.org/Being.html
2
OK but now how do we adjust out systems so as to keep these guys out of the leadership positions? The chickens are stuck with their system, but we can think. So lets.
1
DJT echoes the crude way of dealing with politics as people in my family up here in upstate NY. Simplistic. Racist. Caustic. One paragraph policy statements. Echoes of Fox News. They finally have a leader that thinks like them. Oy vey.
8
Tucker Max? Obscure enough for you?
1
“Mr. Trump’s own life and actions paint an appealing picture of masculine entitlement for those who want power without the shackles of responsibility. He may not be the smartest or most qualified guy in just about any room, but his money allowed him to marry and reproduce with a succession of models, star in a reality television show, live in vulgar gold-plated glory, say whatever offensive thing danced through his brain and still make a successful run for president.” Your logic is warped my dear. For God’s sake, acknowledge, accept, and respect people’s choice for POTUS. Your depiction of Trump’s ascendancy alludes to two things: (1) Those who voted for him are nothing but a bunch of bimbos (the deplorable) and (2) the election results were just a sham. It is unfortunate that America is further becoming a place of “intolerance”.
4
The election results were this: Hillary lost by getting three million more votes. Same thing happened in 2000.
US Democracy=FAKE NEWS!!
Touched a nerve, huh?
Only 12?
He probably fired Comey because of the height thing......threatened his manly authority.
5
"Resentful of the changing order of things, some men have simply leaned in to chaos: If the system no longer serves them, it will at least be fun to blow it all up."
This is it in a nutshell, we have a country with a sociopath in the White house, put there and supported by passive aggressive nihilists.
6
Neither passive nor nihilist.
Aye, there's the rub !
Did you expect us to know who Tucker Max is?
1
Our National Press have been speculating on what an AmericaExit would look like, imagine if the east and west coast progressive Blue States joined Canada it would result in the world's greatest democracy, no slave era electoral college, no more voter suppression, health care for all, and not to forget the worlds largest energy reserves both clean, carbon and uranium. Let the rest of the impoverished lumpen proletarian populated under educated Red States wallow with the neo fascists and the NRA.
7
Nailed it.
3
Sure he is quite a man if you consider that he was a draft dodger, excels in lying, a racist, an egotistical narcissist, a bully and has said such horrible things about women, i't's a mystery why even one women voted for him. He can't stop verbally harassing Hillary Clinton...calls her Crooked Hillary. What about him and all his wheelings and dealings. He is hiding a lot by not showing his tax returns.
Besides the Great Divider he is also The Great Distractor.
6
"Plenty of American men are doing exactly the opposite of Mr. Trump and embracing the more productive characteristics of masculinity while rejecting the malicious ones." The problem is, those men have allowed the most powerful position in the world to be given to Donald Trump, and seem to be in no position to prevent the nihilists from having their way. The author is trying to suggest that somehow, this too shall pass, and I hope that's true. If we survive to the 2018 elections, we will have a chance to find out.
5
What is most troubling is how women could and did support the vision of "manhood" embodied by trump. I was recently astonished to encounter such an individual. "He is a STRONG leader!" she said. "And Hillary?" she said. Until we truly come to terms with and understand the paradox that has been white women's support for trump, we will not confront the real tragedy of his elevation as President.
5
Trump has character, don't kid yourself. He paraphrases the old acting adage, that there are no small parts, just small actors. His twitter tweeking is: There are no petty parts, just petty people.
3
Not the “character” that I talk about, and not, I think, the kind Ms Filipovic is talking about. The word now means “role” to most. But not to us.
1
Trump thinks he is a man because he has conquered, intimidated, and assaulted women for the purpose of proving to himself that he is a man. Even taking into account his positive accomplishments (being elected president, the building of Trump Tower, etc) he thinks only about how many women he has had sex with. A out of control teenager is a good description of Trump. A man? Not even close.
2
Yes Trump's personality quirks sometimes embarrasses those who voted for him but we still support him because unlike the author of this piece we can see beyond the inconsequential to what is really important. (Check the record stock market and job growth stats for starters). Millions of us will forever be grateful that he kept out of office an incompetent, disingenuous, criminal and pathological liar. This misguided piece calls her "one of the best qualified candidates in history". That is an absurd statement considering the latest revelations of her own "Russian Connection" and what she actually accomplished (or rather didn't accomplish) during her tenure as senator and secretary of defense.
@Michael
Your description of Sec. Clinton seems to come straight from the "Hate Hillary Playbook" full of accusations without validated examples.
I suggest you get facts straight before discrediting a woman who has proven her competency in many areas. BTW, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, not defense as you wrote.
7
If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
1
Check back in a year if the scales are off your eyes by then. "Absurd" completely describes this post.
This is the riskiest Opinion Piece I think I've ever read, anywhere. I commend your courage.
1
Men like Trump are fundamentally afraid of women, actually.
6
Thank you for this article. It sums up my views on Trump perfectly.
But it also reveals how a large percentage of people who support Trump are not yet prepared mentally, emotionally, or psychologically for the present, and certainly not for the future. And sadly, if government is "of the people", then we have a long way to go as a society.
3
Trump has many faults but depicting other "white men" as the enemy is offensive to most Americans and highlights the divisiveness of progressive, "identity politics".
Offensive opinions about any group of Americans , identified by gender,race,religion,ethnicity or sexual orientation is bigotry.
4
I think Trump is also EXTREMELY jealous of Obama. Trump feels so incredibly inferior to him in intelligence, talent, class, eloquence, integrity and pretty much all other virtues that he remains focused on taking every opportunity to attempt to put that elite upstart down.
Nothing but a classic schoolyard bully.
8
Well said. An old political maxim is that voters like a candidate who likes them, and who is like them.
Trump's boasting and strutting both fooled and enticed a lot of voters who didn't notice the shallowness and whining, the dishonesty and failures.
It's sad to realize that Trump is an aspirational figure for men who want things to be the way they used to be, talking dirty, ogling women, being the boss. That's hard to do when your boss and coworkers are women and your wife expects you to put away the dishes.
This especially stings when your wife has more education, a better job, and paying off that truck (very manly) depends on her paycheck as much as yours.
4
Yes, well articulated. Thank you not placing in print Trump as "President Trump". We certainly don't have a leader in the highest office. I deplore media to not use "President" and "Trump" next to each other in publications.
4
Donald Trump is not a new kind of old-school American man and he doesn’t give a thought to what it takes to be a man. He doesn’t give a thought to anything. He wouldn’t identify with chauvinistic misogynists any more than he would with progressive male feminists. He isn’t entitled because he is male, he is entitled because he is Donald Trump. He doesn’t ascribe to any code or embrace male power. He acts and reacts in the most primal manner solely to serve his own needs. Unrestrained id indeed.
3
"He is a paradigm of feckless male entitlement, embracing male power while abnegating the traditional masculine requirements of chivalry, courtesy and responsibility."
Apparently, those "traditional masculine requirements" don't seem to cut across the partisan divide very well, as there was hardly a wholesale abandonment of Trump by GOP women. They seemed somehow able to "make their own peace" with this shameless vulgarian.
As far as Trump being a "new kind of old-school American man", that may be too complementary. What he is is a man who's ego and Id are on constant, unfiltered display with a twitter account displaying his "thought bubbles" in real time. That, more than anything else, is how Trump maintains his grip on people. The great irony about Trump is that he lies about facts but is completely truthful about being an unabashed jerk, and people love that about him! They can't wait to get their next fix.
If we're being honest here, "activities" like Trump admitted to on tape are now unraveling the lives of dozens of people in Hollywood, while he gets to be president. How, exactly, does that work?
The GOP always embraces "bad boys", it's in their nature.
Especially if they win.
1
No woman should ever really pretend she knows what it's like to be a man, as no man should ever really pretend to know what it's like to be a woman. You may think you know, but you really don't.
Trump would not be the guy I'd want to have a drink with despite any promise to cut my taxes or pay for the beer. But it has less to do with being a gentleman, or not, and more to do with the fact that his life, despite the Mar-a Lago's et al, seems so less fascinating than it does seem dull.
5
Donald Trump suffers from a mental illness called Narcissistic Personality Disorder where he seeks grandiosity, constant praise and adulation and lacks empathy. He is also the son of a domineering, autocratic and racist father, and he's turned into just such a man complete with what Carl Jung would call a negative Father-Complex that is destructive of all authority other than his own. Yes, he's weak as all such "strong men" are and he's unstable if not seriously mentally ill as to render him, as we see every day, totally unfit to be President with the ability and apparent willingness to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea. However, his appeal to disenfranchised, angry white males is potent and has kept his Republican Congressional majority in check out of a combination of fear and greed in gaining long sought political objectives like tax cuts and demolishing social programs. America is thus faced with a classic demagogue who has a fanatic and even ruthless "base" that intimidates those who dare to stand up to him. The constant attacks on the "dishonest media" and more recently our justice system as a "joke" and "laughing stock" are undermining our very democracy and the honored, but often ignored (as with the emoluments clause), Constitutional "rule of law." Our very democracy is under siege by this seriously impaired man who has used his considerable sociopathic skills to intimidate, harass, and undermine all who might and have opposed him.
3
His day will come. Not soon enough for any of us, but it will arrive. No one this reckless and ignorant can escape the diligence of Bob Mueller. A couple of threads were pulled this week. More to come.
4
He certainly likes be saluted. When he had his chance to be a man and defend, he showed his cowardice, and dodged the service. This was a family trait going back to his grandfather skipping the kaiser's army by hiding in the US. Compare this to John McCain's family. Oh, don't do that , why compare a patriot to a null set ?
3
Pres. Trump has probably never had a callous that he got from doing useful work. He talks the way a not-very-bright rich kid thinks that tough working-class men talk. He sounds like the dumbest, angriest guy in a sawmill lunchroom, floating racist statements like trial-balloons to see what he can get away with before somebody calls him out.
Apparently, there is no one in his party with the courage to call him on anything. Not unless they're retiring soon.
His sexist language is written off by conservatives (including women) as "locker-room talk". I have lived in military barracks, I've attended schools and worked with men from every economic class. You hear people saying the kinds of things that Trump says, but no normal person in those situations admires them or thinks that it's respectable. This is the province of angry, scared men looking for some kind of perceived power over others. No enlightened work place would ever give a person like that power over others, and no enlightened nation would elect a frightened dim-wit who speaks and acts that way to high office.
This is simply not the nation that I thought it was.
8
And the saddest thing is that being elected president legitimized his sense of entitlement and dangerously bloated his shameless guiltless ego. Despite having all the traits of the worst kind of leader, he was still given the presidency, his everyday abuse of power is even rewarded when in any another decent system it would be scrutinized and prosecuted. I can only take comfort that maybe all those who voted for him projected on him their own darkness in full light as it was the only way they would become aware of it. This will allow them to finally process it. So maybe trump being president is a necessary step in our evolution, to bring to light the American and human shadows and dark secrets, acknowledge it, process it and be done with it. And hopefully after this trumpian dark age, the foundations that propel human evolution and civilisation will be stronger and more Noble so that history will not repeat itself!!!
2
It could work. Hope it does before millions die.
1
Blaming white men for Trump and arguing Trump is a symptom of all white males is too simplistic. Trump was and is supported by white women, by those who want to maintain the male dominance model. This model has always been part of American culture, it is now okay to display it wantonly because of Trump and his behaviors. The vast silent majority looks to signals on what they can and cannot do. Obama caused so much resentment because he behaved in a way that supported equality of all kinds. The general population had a leader that harkened back to the Alan Alda male seen in “MASH”, the kind, emotional thoughtful male who through his empathetic behavior was able to be successful. Trump shows a different model that is more in tune with general American [and probably general world] standards for male behavior. Yes he is the forever Peter Pan child man who never needs to grow up, show curiously or intelligence. He is out of shape in every way imaginable, rude and bullying, but struts around with his trophy wife always near by seeming shouting, “so what? What are you going to do about it?” These behaviors prove even though completely incompetent the male gets to rule. This is nothing new, it is just coming back to the surface to beat back any attempt to establish equality, which unfortunately, is not a natural state of affairs.
3
Trump represents the worst impulses of humanity. Period.
2
>>>White American men loved it.
Not this white American man. Don't stereotype us. I've heard that there's a lot of white men living in New York City. Trump received just 18.6% of the popular vote here. Seems to me that a lot of white men didn't vote for Trump.
And a surprising number of women did vote for Trump across the country. They're still defending Trump on Facebook and elsewhere.
So don't blame Trump solely on white men. Blame Trump on ignorance, stupidity, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, anti-immigrant paranoia, distrust of science and the willful ignorance of facts in addition to the factors that you've written about.
In 2011, Newsweek gave the citizenship test to 1000 Americans, who failed miserably. 73% couldn't say why we fought the Cold War, 44% couldn't define the Bill of Rights, 29% couldn't name the vice-president and 6% couldn't even circle Independence Day on a calendar. And I think it's probably gotten worse since then. Fair percentages of Americans still think Obama was born elsewhere and is a Muslim. This is a country where a majority of Republicans recently polled stated that they thought higher education was bad for the country. This is a country where 6% of those polled some months back thought chocolate milk came from brown cows.
Is there any wonder that people believed the Russian placed ads on social media?
4
If it is not about him it does not count. Just a backyard bully. Great concept of a man?
1
I don’t think of Donald Trump as a man. I think of him as an incredibly needy child.
3
It's amazing that these men are impressed by someone who dodged the draft and has never done a day's labor in his life. It's similar to seeing evangelicals look at someone who violates one or more of the 10 commandments daily and thinks that in the Sermon on the Mount Christ said "whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, hit him back ten times as hard" is some sort of Christian. Too bad Trump didn't have Calvin Trillin's dad, who told him "You might as well be a mensch".
2
I would love to have some unbiased entity do an in-depth study of this infamous 37% that continues to support him. Who are they, why they believe in this phony, you know, statistically slice and dice them so the rest of us understand what makes them tick.
3
Wow. What an essay... Please share this with everyone you know. Bravo Jill. Bravo.
1
What a “right on”, insightful, articulate description. Thank you.
1
Oy. I loathe The Trump and Crew as much or more than the next person, but must object that this sort of formulaic, jump-on-the-bandwagon stereotyping diatribe does not add to the discourse of resistance.
And not to disturb your hagiography, Ms. Filipovic, but "Hillary Clinton’s hand-raising Hermione Granger feminism" is hardly the side of Clinton many found objectionable, including very many without a misogynistic lens. Effective opposition to toxic Trumpist "masculinity" is undercut by revisionist, sanctimonious history. Preach to someone other than the chorus if you want to effect change. And do it cleanly.
2
I’d be curious to see the author explain why so many women (white mostly) voted enthusiastically for Trump.
2
Most men despise Trump. He's an embarrassment. An eyesore. A pox on this country. The detritus of society. Most men admire and respect someone like Mueller who represents the highest values of this nation -honesty, integrity, intelligence, class, and the judeo christian sense of morality. Most men are not racists, cowards, misogynists, morons, greedy, self centered, insensitive, ad nauseum. Most men know that Trump is an aberration. A monster created by right wing media, bullies, insecure losers. No, most men occupy a much higher moral and intellectual level than Trump and those that worship him. We hate him for what he represents, and for trying to destroy the democracy we love.
23
Most men?
Not sure data backs that up.
3
And yet, that’s not what the exit polls showed. More than half of male voters cast a vote for Trump. More than 60% of white male voters cast a vote for Trump. A staggering 70% of white male voters without a college education voted for Trump.
That doesn’t look like hate.
1
Maybe but I think you need to recheck your stats. As Mark Twai said, "there's lies and then statistics."
Trump's supporters' ranks may be thinning. His poll numbers may be going down. His independents supporter who went with him for a variety of reasons may be deserting him. Those who supported Trump because of their allergy to Hillary Clinton may be walking out of his camp. But our media will continue to be going gung-ho on his solid support. Why? Because that's what opinion leaders in their Greek houses are opining. That leaves little room for them to wander far from the herd.
5
Maybe I just don't get it. Trump is full of psychological illnesses. I don't see how Jill can apply a normal evaluation of any kind of behavior analysis. This doe not excuse the men (and women) who get pleasure out of supporting Trump.
In my opinion we should have a far greater problem with the Trump supporter than the trump himself.
8
There are many women that resent being pushed into the work force. They'd prefer to stay home and raise children, keep house (admirable occupation, but barely feasible in this economy). They resent feminism.
They'd prefer the burden of finance to be placed soley in the man's lap.... just like in the olden days....you know when America was Great.
1
This is probably all true but how does it explain women's support for Trump? They shouldn't and didn't support Clinton "just because" she was a woman, but for the life of me, I do not and will never understand how women voted for and continue to support Trump.
16
Good article but it should never be conceded that Trump won the election. Hillary had more votes and it will never be known to what extent voting machines were hacked in PA, etc.
12
I agree with Mary Ann Donahue, Jim, and Henry. The feminist explanation, even one as well articulated as this, tell more of the writer than of the subject. Trump has been a very rich boss, accustomed to get his own way; and if he doesn't, then, in life as well as on TV, "You're fired." In this respect, female bosses are just like male bosses. Trump's companies are his own, not by the public in the form of stockholders, which means he can ignore stockholders. The only vote is his. If he doesn't get his way, then he'll get those who work for him or dispute his running of the country out of the way. As for others--"the people," we used to be called--they're customers. He'll provide them--which means us--with phony, misleading ads whose words are meaningless. I'm not a socialist, much less a communist, but in one instance they'd be right: Trump represents The Boss, whose interests, which are paramount, are antithetical to those of most of the rest of us. The Republican politicians? Well, they're bankrolled by people much like The Boss; and in real life, their first goals are to get elected or reelected, and to acquire or keep power. Unfortunately, the term "principled politician" (in this case, Republican) is an oxymoron. Take the so-called moderate Susan Collins. How often does she vote against Boss Trump's agenda? Something like 10% of the time. Trump is less a feminist issue than a democracy issue. Boss Trump is an autocrat and an equal lack-of-opportunities ruler.
10
Jill, what qualifies you to speak on behalf of billions of men? If generalizations about men are the best that feminist analysis has to offer, then we should look elsewhere for insight into the mind of Donald Trump.
3
Against my inner grain, I read this essay by Ms. Filipovic who has taken the time and trouble to write about The Puerile President, only to conclude that there are few originals in our midst.
Trump stopped growing awhile ago and appears to be reliving his jockey days. He reminds me of a brother-in-law, who never failed to make an informal party into a fiasco. When my husband and I separated, on occasion the thought would occur that these young gatherings of ours were a great opportunity for his brother to behave at his worse with his groping, his derision, his insecurity. 'Is this what Americans are' would be a parting question from an acquaintance.
The strong American Macho Male, but don't tell him about 'the tragedy that has taken place in the family because he is not going to be able to handle it and will fall apart'! O please, the poor cuss is emotionally frail and a big toto.
Too clever for his own good and not very bright, awkward signs of compassion, and limited in his outlook. Stuck in his bubble, and enraged about the pins that are being placed in his balloon, Trump shows signs of an unhinged Babbitt unable to escape from himself, and we have become in thrall to his latest tweets from The National Nursery.
Fortunately on Fall days, my husband comes to mind. His innate decency. My brother, a moralist, but compassionate and sharp as a tack. Barack Obama, a 'Man for All Seasons'. He makes me sit up straight and I will not slouch again. He is My Wisdom.
4
"Almost a year ago, he won the presidential election".
He actually didn't. He lost by three million votes, but the electoral college took care of that for him.
The electoral college is the biggest problem of our time - without it, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would have been President, while George W. Bush and Donald Trump would be largely forgotten footnotes. The electoral college will continue to put losers into office over and over again, and blaming Trump voters, Russians, James Comey or anyone else will not solve that injustice.
16
Not this stuff again. The rules are clear. To become President you must win the majority of electoral votes as determined by state. It's not just about the popular vote. If you want to change that you will need to amend the constitution.Good luck with that.
Trump can be justly criticized on many issues but the derogatory use of the following are terms are offensive to most Americans .
"white conservative men"
"white working men"
"white male aspiration and identity"
"specifically white"
"white male power"
"for many men... plundering what was rightfully theirs"
"yawning fear of female power"
This demeaning of men, especially white men, is part of the problem not the solution.
6
No, demeaning of others by men is the problem.
1
ok, thanks for the update.
1
Boy, do you have your head where the sun doesn't shine!
1
As a career Ar Force Officer, there are some draft dodgers worthy of admiration, but Trump is not one of them. I would never salute him.
16
Thankfully, most women voted for Clinton and/or rejected Trump, except for one particular group. That group appears to either appreciate the "qualities" of masculinity that Trump throws in everyone's face...or lower, or else they are stuck in an old-school culture loop that accepts this type of man. I think if that group could change, they might have a lot of influence on changing these types of male attitudes and behaviors, but it might never happen. I think many of these women are just as strongly wrapped up in identity politics and culture as many men.
The fact that a majority of white women, a high percentage of which were non-college educated, voted for Trump is more scary than the fact that so many men did also. Hard to believe that anyone could observe Trump during the campaign and not just accept him but go wild for him. Same thing happened with the ERA. I don't think feminists would have much more pull with that group than they would with certain males. Identity trumps misogyny it appears.
From fivethirtyeight.com:
"Although women overall voted for Clinton by a large margin, much of that support came from well-educated white women, who voted for Clinton by about 16 percentage points, and women of color, who voted for her by 67 points. Trump won among white women by an average of 6.5 percentage points, according to exit polls, and he did particularly well with white women without a college degree, winning among that group by about 24 percentage points."
8
When I married, my wife was teaching at two universities in Boston. After we married, she gave up her teaching duties and was "at home' for the next seventeen years. When I would come home from teaching, I would often hear the sound of the piano. The children always found their mother there when they came home from school. She wrote stories which won several prizes.
Then seventeen years later, she went back to teaching and is now a professor.
if I compare HER life with that of my daughter and daughter in law, both these lives are worse. Both have full time jobs, are hassled, and worried about childcare.
Feminists and their male fellow travelers have radically changed marriage and family but have never asked the question, "Have we made a MAJORITY of American women happier?"
3
Your wife had a partner who brought home the bacon. Plenty of couples struggle to make ends meet without the wife’s income; your family did not.
She obviously worked in a profession where a 17-year gap in employment didn’t matter. I have a dear friend with a degree from MIT who took 14 years off to raise her kids. When she was ready to go back to work, no one would offer her a job because her training was too out-of-date. Women without college degrees have it even harder.
You report that your wife enjoyed her time; she wrote stories and played the piano. Your wife found housework and childcare tasks an acceptable substitute for being a college professor. Not all women would.
There are women who love being at home with their kids. Yet many women love their jobs, just as many men do. Both men and women enjoy the challenge of the workplace, the pride in earning one’s way, the pleasure in being recognized for a job well done.
Before you gasp in shock that a woman should find any task more enthralling than childcare, ask yourself why men should ever find any task more interesting than childcare. Because...they’re men? If your daughter and daughter-in-law struggle and worry, ask yourself why your son-in-law and son aren’t struggling and worrying, too.
2
There's only one way to find out: Ask them.
AND NOW back to the topic under discussion...........
After reading some comments, it seems that some men get testy about discussions of manhood, and some women want a different definition. Of course we are all different. I think in the case of Trump he is an insecure little boy at heart, he keeps telling us that he alone is in charge, that he is very intelligent, that he has had more women because he is a "star", and he wants attention all the time. That disgusts me, not that he is those things because they will make him miserable, but because they appeal to people who should be more serious about our shared democracy. OK, most aren't but that is a problem and our founding fathers tried to adjust for that, but now we know they failed. Rome had the same problem when Caligula became emperor.
The best anyone can do in life is to live up to our potential and achieve peace within ourselves. We don't have to prove much life is too short. Proving you are a man is easy, being a good one takes some work. But our democracy is sacred for all of us and we all need to be serious.
5
Trump will never read this. So perhaps we should establish a group of volunteers to read interesting commentary to the president. The task would also entail explaining multi-syllable words.
I'd volunteer.
4
Spot on but what do we do about it? Since the 'election,' I have continued on in my life and continue to do what I want and really hope most women are too but there is a chill in the air , a feeling that it's not over, more to come. I certainly hope not but you are right that Trump has tapped into a toxic male anxiety and one wonders what he'll get them to do next.
6
The male toxicity represents maybe 30% of the voting population. I am more worried about the 53% of white women who voted for Trump
And no one shines a light on the absence of character more than does trump. He is the poster child for everything that lack of character produces.
9
Perhaps we know what it is to be a gentleman by living in the tweeted presence of its opposite. I know scores of renaissance men who have ideals, good values and common sense- they are amazing husbands, fathers, uncles, sons and brothers- sadly, none of them would go headlong into the mudslide that is party politics lest they lose the simple pleasure of owning one's own soul.
6
Donald Trump represents the reaction of the outmoded patriarchal culture against emerging next wave ideas of equality and diversity (not just feminism but humanism). This hypermasculinity can be seen in the rapid expansion of sports watching, UFC, and male chest thumping that has occurred all over the world.
But it's not just men: women love UFC and also want their men to be masculine and manly. Men wouldn't be acting this way if women, at some level, didn't respond positively to it with interest and support. Why is this?
Overlapping both sexes' reaction is a real subconscious fear by both that the coming AI revolution holds real and permanent threats to future jobs, family livelihood and general human development. Trump's voters aren't just complaining about loss of white male privilege; their hopelessness in the coming job-destroying AI revolution is something that the entire culture is facing.
In that vein, Trump and the white male backlash could be a miner's canary signalling the future is not looking so rosy. People - men and women - are fearful for the future and are looking for answers. Trump has used his strongman and tough guy stances temporarily present himself as someone who can allay these fears and protect voters. That's why he won the election.
He's going to fail and our leaders need to be ready with better answers. We're all in this challenge together is one clue.
4
We shouldn't forget that the kind of man that Trump embodies in the eyes of his supporters, is coming close to the ideal man not only for part of today's men, but also for part of today's women - after all, a majority of white women voted for Trump rather than for Hillary, for instance.
So the longing for a return to and official celebration of the old cultural Western stereotypes about men and women isn't just something that characterizes a bunch of white men, and it's even not something that opposes those men to women in general. Yes, from a modern-day perspective you can call them misogynists, as the author of this op-ed does, but from the perspective of many women (including Melania, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Michelle Bachman etc.), THESE are the "alpha males", who "truly" know how to celebrate femininity.
Cultural values can be changed, but it's a slow process, and for those who don't have access to role models embodying the new Man or Woman in a way that makes the new ideal accessible to them, it's a process that is threatening to rob them of their own social identity without offering any alternative, in other words a cruel, unfair and senseless process.
The only solution here is for us "moderns" to stop judging those who feel left behind, and to remember how building your own male or female identity is first of all a social process, so IF we want society as a whole to move on, it's up to US to lead through example and offer them real alternatives.
1
this piece is a perfectly stated and thoroughly chronicled critique of trump and his all male chorus line.
1
Much truth, for sure. But I winced as I read it. I thought, isn't this a bit of the pot calling the kettle black? What I mean is it seems the M.O. of the two gender sides is of the same coin. Nothing seems to have been learned by the failures of patriarchy. We still seem to be ruled across all genders by "the only way for me to get my good is at your expense" thinking. This awfulness won't be solved by doing the same things to "you" the same way with the same thinking and problem solving that were and in many cases still are done to "me."
1
Very good analysis of who our current President is, and just who are the people who support him. I will always believe that this past election was much more of a "he vs. she" than a "Republican vs. Democrat" issue. The lame excuse of "I just didn't like Hillary" with no concrete reason for the dislike simply means "I don't like having women in charge and I never will. And, unfortunately, there are women who feel like this, too, because it lets them stay in their comfortable place regardless of what happens to our country as a whole.
2
Lots of times when I've been in discussions with my women friends over more than fifty years it becomes apparent they're speaking as if men are better than women. They're not.
1
The arc of history has been one of increasing enfranchisement. We've gone from nobility and peasants to universal legal rights. Initially only White male landowners voted, now minorities and women share the right. We've repudiated race-based slavery and discrimination. As a society we are trying. Trump and his ilk represent a last gasp at preserving entitlement. I think we are seeing this in the negative responses, not only to him as a person, but also to everything his party has proposed legislatively. Hopefully he will act as an attenuated virus vaccine, making us more ready to combat this particular disease.
2
Ms. West's explanation of why white women voted for Trump rings true: they would never support a feminism that also helps those people.
Or, I suppose, support a feminism movement that is associated with a party that helps those people.
Or support the model of manhood exemplified by the first black president.
Or support a scheme in which white entitlement or white male entitlement suffered.
With Trump and his supporters all roads lead to the same low ground.
As noted here, the white men associated with those white women (the men they have elected to stand by) have dropped their responsibilities, and dropped out of church, school and the other institutions that offer respect. Without responsibility and respect, they are now defined by spite, misogyny, online mayhem, dishonesty, delusion, cultish behavior and a fundamental inability to compete under conditions that are fair and require equitable measures of hard work and competence. In short, all they have left is Trump.
Not all white American men loved what Trump had to offer. I certainly didn't. But I assumed Ms. Filipovic was not talking about all white American men.
3
As an observer from north of the great lakes, one who served in Canadian military for 45 years and hence often with US forces, i find the election of Trump a symptom of many problems in US as it declines in importance. The election of Trump is more an indictment of the way the US practices democracy than anything else. I weary when I hear people on both sides of the border say that it is time for business minded people (read white men) to take over governing. For God's sake, both countries have been run by the business class for decades and that is how we got here. Our parliamentary form of democracy forces compromise on legislators from time to time and our embrace of multi-cultural society (because of Quebec) make us a little more resistant to divisive political memes. Nkitia K.'s biggest fear of US system is that it could easily elect a buffoon. What I hope for now is that enough Senators, et al, remember the thrust of the founding documents and the institutions of government in US will be able to restore control.
4
"who ascended in large part because a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office."
This cut to the bone. There were a lot of factors in Hillary's defeat, but misogyny (conscious, unconscious, or internalized) was the primary one. Think - how many people in your social circle just couldn't warm to her, or thought there was something off putting about her, or had opinions completely unrelated to policy? Whether they want to admit it or not, a lot of Americans were uncomfortable with an openly ambitious and powerful woman. Perhaps that's why we're seeing the floodgates of sexual assault and harassment allegations open - women have had enough. I know my patience with misogynistic behavior has been zero since Election Day and I bet a lot of woman share that anger, frustration, and exasperation.
7
Not the 53% of white women who voted for Trump
She lost because she didn't come to Wisconsin or spend resources in Michigan. She was a horrible candidate who lost to a reality show moron. Blaming all of this on misogyny is missing the point by the proverbial country mile.
There were very good reasons some people had for not voting for Clinton.
She was not "one of the best-qualified candidates in history." If she had been she would have won. It turned out HRC couldn't lead the way out of an empty room. She was so qualified that she forgot to campaign, that she took voters for granted, that she couldn't divorce Bill when he undermined her campaign with his public powwow with the attorney general. The loser lost and reinvigorated misogyny.
Next time, how about a self made woman?
Another quite reasonable attack on Trump, another failure to understand or account for his popularity. Women voted for Trump in much the same way that they supported McCain and Romney against the "new ideal" Obama: 43% for McCain, 44% for Romney, 42% for Trump, with well over 60% of non-college educated white women supporting Trump. The author doesn't live in the world of Trump supporters (the "deplorables) and her description of the new America, while encouraging, doesn't accurately reflect the reality.
1
Wow! This was brilliantly written. Thank you.
3
Bravo!! Here here!! Excellent piece - excellent thinking - very fine writing. Thank you! I liked it!!! And I agree with all the points - ALL!!!
3
I can't stand Trump and I'd like to embrace this good=vs=evil male dichotomy. Except while it may be true for Trump, the people I know who voted for him aren't like this at all -- and would be completely insulted and driven away being painted by this brush. Why does it have to be so black and white across such a broad swathe of us vs. them? Isn't it enough that Trump's destroying our democracy and values?
1
People of any gender with malignant narcissism are unable to recognize how they're perceived by others. Their lack of empathy and their inability to self-reflect, self-correct, and self-modulate makes for the kind of behavior we see with Trump. In his deluded mind, he is not a bully, but rather a powerful man acting on his instincts. He claimed this week that Americans need only him, and he believes it, thereby underscoring the danger of normalizing this person.
He is far from normal. About as far from normal as a human can be.
3
I'm a 58 yr old white male. I feel very confident saying that Donald Trump does not represent American manhood or any other type of manhood. He represents himself- period. He is a liar, a draft dodger, a confessed sexual deviant, an overweight man with weird hair, etc. There's nothing there to provide a role model.
As a high school counselor I see an undercurrent emerging. I think the younger crowd has many role models. I think there is a trend toward finding themselves in relation to many groups and not necessarily seeking traditional roles as male and female. This movement is just beginning to take shape. The internet has guided much of this along with the reaction to the failure of character within most of our political leaders.
I hope I'm right. I hope I live long enough that we no longer have to write article after article on conflicts between men and women and between ethnic groups. Rather the conflicts would be between individuals seeking to find themselves within a village of fellow seekers....and yes, I caught just enough of the sixties to hang onto a little belief in the power of the individual seeking self realization.
1
Can you imagine Obama demanding executions and the GOP simply going about budget business?
This bully is dangerous:
He has established a committee to suppress the vote
He has rolled back free federal government information websites by decommissioning much of the data
He daily discredits reporting of facts as lies
He lies to peoples faces without a trace of understanding
He has surrounded himself with military professionals
He has called for control of the judicial system
He is demanding investigations of his political rivals
And now he demands that two people be executed on his positional word.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
8
"Resentful of the changing order of things, some men have simply leaned in to chaos: If the system no longer serves them, it will at least be fun to blow it all up."
The author should study Germany, they learned the hard lesson that if you throw millions of young men under the bus that they will cause trouble. So let's not pretend Feminism is a good thing, it is not. No ideology has ever done any good to humanity. If you want to pay to see, ride it out and then write a book with the title "What Happened". Well, what happened is that you lost and thanks to you humanity lost as well.
2
Real men are both comfortable in their own skin and comfortable letting others be the same. It's fine by me if you feel differently.
Yes, all true enough.
But there's more as well. Trump represents the embodiment of the antithesis of morality. That he has tapped into the rage of misinformed people predisposed by hereditary and familial racism, xenophobia, and greed, and amplified by the platform of Fox News and Twitter trolls, represents a power disproportionate to the actual social evolution going on.
Plus, there's the novelty factor of a life sized grotesque artificially orange man with white goggle patterns around his eyes, whose speech alternates between tantrum and obsequiousness, acting out the opposite behavior of everything ordinary decent citizens were ever told in school or laid down their lives for.
This is an existential problem of the passion play between gods and demons.
5
Thank you Ms. Filipovic. Well articulated and dead on accurate
2
Most most qualified? Apparently not.
Allow me to start by saying that Trump's taste in wives tends toward women with eyes focused more sharply on the financial benefits of cohabiting with him than on any physical or emotional reward.
With a few sporadic and short-term exceptions, for easily 3/4 of my working life, my immediate supervisors have been women. I spent my working years in hospitals, first as an orderly, then as an army medic, followed by four hospitals and, finally, in hospice care at a non-profit agency. Only when I was in the boonies of Vietnam was my boss male. Back home, stationed in Ft. Stewart, GA, the head nurse in the base hospital ER was a woman. My first wife was an RN, as is my second (now a NP). For more than 40 years my women friends have outnumbered my male friends. Given the opportunity to live life over, would I do anything differently, go to med school (which had been my plan when I got out of the Army) perhaps?
Nope. Not even if 3 model-wives and a succession of affairs with women of similar physical attributes were thrown in.
2
thanks for that Glen,
For the last 17 years, I have worked for a not-for-profit that serves the blind and visually impaired as well as the deaf and hard of hearing of central New York State. During that whole time our director has been a woman and all of supervisors of the various departments have been women -- a true matriarch -- that runs like a perfectly well-oiled machine.
Before that time, I worked for the Texas School for the Blind in Texas for 15 years and at that place, while I did have some female supervisors (lower level ones), any of the more powerful positions -- including the director of the school, were men. While some of these males were marginally fit to supervise, in my opinion most were not. However, in my 35 years of human service, particularly the last 17 in my opinion, the men could not compare with the women in their ability to effectively lead. I conclude -- not a scientific conclusion I know -- that at least from my experience, men are just not fit to lead. Is it hormonal? Is it "manly man" indoctrination? Is it a combination of both? I do not know. I do know that for the last five to eight thousand years, since agriculture came on the scene, men -- adolescents all regardless of age in my opinion -- have dominated the world, creating the worldwide cesspool in which we live. It is time for men to play with their boy toys and stay out of all leadership positions, which they are biologically inferior to hold and let the women take over.
1
One piece in a complex, conflicted social/culture pie. Well articulated and correct as far as it went. But to dig deeper and broader would require a book, not just one column. Still, we all can profit from looking at implicit assumptions regarding who and what males and females should be and the Times is a great forum for this. HRC received more votes than Trump and that gave rise to thoughts of the efficacy of our electoral college but the deeper issue of states rights vs federal power vs moral and ethical responsibilities was only lightly touched in the media. Perhaps Ms. Filipovic will continue writing and explore this issue in more depth and a broader context.
4
This is a well articulated column. Ms. Filipovic nails the essence of a certain male stereotype Trump represents:
"a perfect figurehead for this bizarre moment: a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues, occupying the most powerful and exclusively male seat of power in the nation (and perhaps in the world)....He is ego unchecked, narcissism in place of dignity."
You could also simplify things and simply call him obnoxious, a billionaire Bunker whose whining grievances, at least in the eye of certain women, are really hard to take.
A seven-year old locked up in a 71-year old man's body: what a combo, as any female can relate to in her dating past or modern present when she realizes she has to do everything for someone entitled to do nothing.
As he prances around Asia, donning his leather jacket and talking tough about military might, there's an awful lot that doesn't add up. For someone who so assiduously avoided military service, he cravenly wraps himself in the valor of others. As he walks ahead of his wife, pushing past leaders (as he did last July) to take over a photograph, you think, what a self-centered jerk.
I bet every woman has dated or had bosses like Trump, instantly realizing how lucky they are without them.
Unfortunately for the world, enough aspiring Howard-Stern wannabes (male and female) decided to give Trump a whirl at running the country.
45
Christine, as a wife of a man who served 28 years in the Marine Corps and the mother of 2 children at a service academy, I have found those who are most offended by the NFL players and who scream the loudest for war are those who haven't served or haven't had a family member who served. Serving in the military is an honorable calling and should be treated with respect, it is not a trophy to be carried around and exploited. I find the relentless focus on service hypocritical since it allows those who haven't served to chance to feel good and claim to be supportive. But lets remember these are the same people who quickly vote to cut funding for veteran medical services, job retraining and reintegration into civilian life after many tours in our wars of choice. The hypocrisy is amazing and breathtaking....
5
The author asserts that "by most measures, life improves", in the face of the unassailable fact that the American middle class is dissolving into a lower middle class whose parents had a more affluent and a more upwardly-mobile set of opportunities, and all the while life of any kind on this planet is more threatened with marginalization and extinction.
12
This is a perfectly good- and perfectly accurate- article in nearly all respects, but one: it repeats the claim that Hillary Clinton was "one of the best-qualified candidates in history" for the office of the Presidency.
That Clinton won the popular vote and had a ton of political experience is not at issue. That she was "one of the best qualified candidates in history", however, assumes that Clinton's experiences would have led her to make decisions worthy of the Presidency, once she assumed it.
Based on her past experiences and the decisions she made, it is safe to assume the following:
1. She would have been warmonger. Having voted unrepentently for the invasion of Iraq; played a key role in the bombing of Libya that led to its destruction as a nation-state; having approved the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia that enabled the Yemen War; having opposed the Iran Nuclear Deal- these are the signs of a person who fundamentally believes in war over peace.
2. She would have approved the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, recognizing the existence of a corporate "right to profit" and enabling corporations to effectively turn off environmental regulations by suing for lost profits.
3. She would have been willing to continue negotiating cuts to social security and medicaid benefits with Republicans.
4. Based upon her previous kowtowing to Wall Street, she would have failed to enhance regulations on banks and would likely have been willing to see Net Neutrality stripped.
16
Despite your odd "analysis" of what HRC might have done if elected, the statement you argue with is still unassailable. Hillary Clinton WAS the most qualified candidate for the presidency within memory. Even now, some wish for a"do-over" for what we now know was not a free and fair election, with the actual winner replacing the pretender.
If nothing else, HRC is the still only person in the US who could immediately begin reversing all of Trump's disgraceful and destructive policies (every one of them initiated as a slap in the face to a far more capable president, Barack Obama) on Day One.
7
... really ... thinking as for Iraq most members voted yes on Republican lies ... sales of arms to Saudi Arabia Trump gave them keys to the war chest ... aligning with corporations, well that would be new like the 45th has not ... presently Wall Street is so under represented? ... as for Social Security and Medicaid doubt your assumption but we will never know because the alternative was elected and all is great ... great ... great?
1
The thing is she is NOT the president and that is the point of that statement. How can you or anyone possibly know what she would have done and how successful she would have been when your mind was closed to begin with? Please
2
This narrative of race and gender is more carefully phrased and less simplistically offensive than I’m used to seeing of late. Thanks for that. But it’s still a narrative of race and gender, so it’s interesting you invoke Joan Didion.
One of her signal achievements was the 1991 essay Sentimental Journeys, about NYC and the Central Park Five, showing how the press, politicians, and judicial system buttressed suspicious confessions that didn’t add up and a lack of forensic evidence with a narrative that fit the deep needs of the city to convict the defendants. They were later exonerated.
She wrote of the “insistent sentimentalization of experience, ... preference for broad strokes, for the distortion and flattening of character, and for the reduction of events to narrative, ... devised to obscure not only the city’s actual tensions of race and class but also, more significantly, the civic and commercial arrangements that rendered those tensions irreconcilable.”
We can’t determine matters of fact or the laws of nature by means of dueling narratives.
You say many men seek power without responsibility. I think American life would be more harmonious if we thought it axiomatic that, at work and home, responsibility and authority must be in balance.
I suspect the commenter complaining bitterly about her younger husband wants him to dance to her tune. But I can’t establish that by narrative.
4
"...who ascended in large part because a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office."
This may explain why some men would not vote for Sec. Clinton but doesn't address why so many women did not.
Yesterday, in a doctor's waiting room, a woman noticed my small & discreet "don't blame me, I voted for Hillary button" and told me she had voted for trump. "You're still willing to admit this"? I asked. We engaged in a very civil conversation in which she revealed that she was a retired teacher, 35 years teaching special ed. Also that she gets most of her news from Fox.
There is a Proposition on the ballot in NYS about a Constitutional Convention which most who are collecting pensions are against. She voiced her opposition to this ballot item. I informed her that people like trump and his ilk are against such pensions. She also stated that people should have to show driver licenses in order to vote. "What about the elderly, who no longer are allowed a license?" I asked. "I hadn't thought of that" she replied. It was obvious that she had believed the lie that millions of illegal immigrants had voted, that she had swallowed whole, Fox News propaganda.
My point is that even citizens with advanced degrees can be manipulated by fake news and fall for a snake oil salesman. This woman was a member of the Teachers Union in NYS and benefited from this and yet could be manipulated to vote for the likes of djt.
184
Women voted for Trump for the same reasons women sabotage each other at work, because we are culturally programmed to be at war with each other, allowing men to continue to hold the power in this country. The day ALL women stop allowing themselves to be manipulated this way is truly the day men should be anxious about---and it IS coming.
4
My mother was legally blind from birth. She got a government ID issued for those who didn't have a driver's license. She never failed to vote. But I'm glad you won the argument.
1
States issue official ID cards for those who do not drive.
1
Donald Trump represents the mentally ill, highly sociopathic men of the world, regardless of their upbringing, social status, race, or political views. Given that they "suffer" from both deranged thoughts and emotions, one can hardly compare their choices of masculine expression from that of their mentally healthy counterparts. To do so is a fool's errand.
97
And the hedge fund managers, who continue to pay lower taxes on their 7-10-figure incomes than a high school principal. Trump knows about this (if he remembers). He raged against the carried interest provision.
Then, when it came to propose a tax law, he forgot.
27
Goodness. I am proud to be a man. I will not apologize to you for that. I am not mentally ill however I am sure you believe I am. I do not exhibit the traits you attach to all men, sorry.
1
Let's stop making this a "male" issue. I have a female boss who exhibits many of Trump's traits. Ignorance, closed-mindedness, arrogance, and being delusional are by no means limited to men only.
131
Jim, Having such a boss must be terrible. But, your boss is not President of the USA and a woman like her would never get elected to be POTUS.
I don't think Ms. Filipovic is making this a "male" issue as much as a djt issue.
54
Well, actually she is making it a male issue, and good for her. The piece identifies two modes of reaction to a cultural shift in expectations for men-some men embrace, or at least acknowledge the desirability of, a turn from the traditional models and some men do not; the latter have found their Bro in Chief, and they and their allies of convenience are running rampant at the moment. As a man who would like to see a more decent and just world than the one we live in, which is dominated by institutions and assumptions designed almost exclusively by men, I say bring on the change.
44
A year ago we thought a MAN like her could never be elected.
The point of the essay is to remind us that "a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues [is] occupying the most powerful and exclusively male seat of power in the nation." There is a cultural shift happening, and Trump is part of a desperate attempt by some to swing the pendulum back. But it will not work in the long run. Dear white Christian males, take note: Women are here to stay, people of other races are here to stay, people of other religions are here to stay, and no amount of name-calling tweets is going to change that.
275
Amen to that! I would love to see what they do if the majority of us just decided one day to not show up to work or pull our money out of banks or stopped having sex with them...They would know pretty quickly about how fleeting power is, as it takes others to believe in your power for you to have it over on them!
1
But 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. How are we going to change that?
The distinction between the “power of position” and “personal power” (character, etc.) has been recognized for millennia. Tom Friedman alluded to it last week in his discussion of “moral authority.” What we are currently witnessing is another manifestation of this human phenomenon.
16
I have four great nephews who range in age from 12 to 18. They are all intelligent, kind, witty, thoughtful, adventurous, responsible, respectful and look out for each other. Every one of them, even at their young ages, exhibit that character, and a core morality that constitutes my idea of what a man is and should be. Something trump has never had and will never have, it's not in his DNA. He's a poseur, an ignorant selfish jerk and a pathetic excuse of a human being whose only likeness to his gender is strictly anatomical - little hands aside.
217
John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck.
Donald Trump.
If Donald Trump displayed any characteristic of the heroes of the silver screen, I've missed it. He DOES represent Mel Gibson and Harvey Weinstein.
1
I always appreciate guidance from angry feminists on what's required to be a man. I presume Ms. Filpovic is open to the same kind of instruction on how to be a woman.
14
Mr. Pettimore, this happy feminist would like you to continue to carry my suitcase and tend to the garden, while I continue life on paper. Keep up the good work!
1
I daresay women have become all too accustomed to having men instruct them on proper womanhood throughout the ages; a review of literature, politics, and art throughout history would confirm this. How dare a woman stand up for equitable treatment and respect! Such a woman must be none other than an "angry feminist."
7
i always appreciate a comment that illustrates the point of the article perfectly...
3
This the best explanation I have heard of the trump phenomenon but it does not explain all his women supporters
71
I've got about fifty ideas on that and they're still not good enough. Years and years of conditioning. There is something in a lot of women that makes them love taking second place. I don't understand it. I am a woman, a much, much older woman and I feel myself think I should do it when it's the furtherest from who I am. There is intimidation that happens early on. My precious father told me after my brother committed suicide when he realized he couldn't beat alcoholism, a few years later, that he always did more for my brother than for me because "he was the boy." Males have been over-valued. The fine women I know are as good as the fine men I know. Some of the less fine women I know are far better than any of the rest of the men yet they will still take back seat. It's conditioning. It must stop and in many places with many enlightened people, it is changing. But way too slowly. By the way, the fact my father would be so frank with me was a testament to how much he thought of me and how wrong he knew he'd been. Alive today, he would be 110. I'd say he was way ahead of his time and he got there.
116
My son told me that men want to be Trump and women want to be close to him. It turns out, he was right. There is a certain type of woman who wants to associate with a bully, braggart, and boor.
4
It's conditioning, you say. Yes, but it's also just plain old bullying: The 500-pound gorilla sits anywhere he wants. We are but animals with large brains, with a reptilian brain stem calling a lot of the shots. As a beta male, I sat in the back my whole life and shut up.
Thanks Jill,
Excellent column and observations. This should be a must read for all Americans, male and female.
And hopefully your prognosis is correct - regardless or in spite of Trump, American men are becoming more involved in household, day-to-day happenings, and they and their families are better off for it.
25
I'm in my mid-30s & my husband is 8 years younger, just ending his 20s. He comes from a much more wealthy family than mine, which has made him the quintessential image of white privilege.
He wants home-cooked food like his mother made, he won't do dishes until we have none clean, he won't do laundry until he's out of socks, he waits for the trash to overflow before taking it out, the can rarely makes it to the curb for pickup, his unfinished projects litter the house along with his shoes, he wakes late, etc.
I'd be willing to take care of the house if I could get him to work. But he complains that 40 hrs/wk will kill him (he's not disabled), refuses to be at work before 10am, is disgusted he must prove worth to get paid well, & usually quits within two weeks. Then gets angry & defensive w/ me when I tell him he needs to grow up.
We want children, a possibility for me that fades with every day, but I refuse to be mother to both child & husband. I blame Baby Boomers for changing nothing in the way they raised sons. We now have a generation of "men" - maybe even two - that were told the world was their oyster to slurp with impunity.
I see in my husband, & so many males my age, the worst of both gender archetypes. He's kind, wants the best for everyone. But he fumes at the tiniest obstacle, cries at any criticism, begs me to be nicer for he's so delicate, thinks he deserves a mansion for existing, doesn't see the future value of current sacrifice.
And he didn't vote for Strump
15
Your comment should be required reading for all high school seniors.
This is exactly what happens when parents don't parent -- the children never grow up, and their unchecked tantrums and whims become society's problem.
We have become an entire nation of mental toddlers with the unreasonable pie-in-the-sky demands of unchecked adolescents.
As much as I feel your regrets, I grieve more for the nation that must weather the effects of hundreds of thousands of these undeveloped beings.
(Keep trying! -- so will we.)
2
Dear Amanda: I am a baby boomer father, part of the cohort you blame for parenting a generation not able to function in healthy adult relationships. I wish you could meet someone like my 27-year-old son. He cooks, does housework, is unfailingly good to his girlfriend and is buying a house for the two of them to live in. If they choose to have kids at some point, he will be a loving and involved dad. There are many others like him; like the dead in the Sixth Sense they are everywhere if you are equipped to see them. Your judgment seems to have been clouded when you chose your husband. His multiple issues may have their roots at least partly in how he was parented, but as an adult it is on him to grow up and be a good husband-or just not an entitled man-baby. An advice columnist would almost certainly refer you to a counselor. Good luck to you.
8
Don't blame baby boomers because your hubby happens to be a man-child. I know plenty of baby boomers (and I'm one myself) who raised great sons and great daughters who have great respect for everyone and my grandchildren and many others of that generation are even better.
2
Sign seen on Center Street:
Real men don't need to lie.
67
Trump does not give a thought to what it takes to be a man. He only thinks about what it means to be Donald Trump. He lives moment to moment acting and reacting to the world around him solely in service of his own needs, desires and interests.
On the outside, his behavior may exemplify what a small, dying breed of chauvinists (who admittedly are experiencing a moment, rejuvenated and emboldened by their president) view as an ideal of American manhood, but he does not identify with those men. He does not identify with anyone. He does not have an unrestrained id - he is pure id.
72
beak93,
Well, it is late in life here but it seems to be my lot to try to learn something of value about men. My late stepfather, whom I admired and held in high-esteem, would have thought I was a proper fool for posting comments. 'In any event, you have nothing to add'...are a few of his words that come to mind.
My mother died on the same date and an hour apart sixteen years after he deceased. Fair Stands The French Flag, I used to call her at the home in Paris and the nurse would tell me 'She has a new admirer, but she remains oblivious to his presence'. A case of unrequited love, we would laugh.
What do I hear this early morning, only 'there is nothing that you can do with a man like that'. She would have dismissed Trump at the peril of our Nation.
Moving forward, the noun inspirational has to be qualified if I use it to mean something positive or if I am being paid a compliment. Why? Because the truth of the matter is that he has redefined the positive spin of the word. His actions and powers of moving the intellect or emotions are captivating an interesting audience.
2
The most accurate description I've seen of the virtue-less character now residing in the White House.
90
Amen, on many levels. First, this describes President Trump to a tee. Second, you are correct that many men (and women) do not behave in this manner. And third, all is never lost. Civilization muddles on.
May we all learn from this experience (and not repeat it in the future).
50
"[Trump] won the presidential election by presenting this version of aggrieved manhood in opposition to Hillary Clinton. White American men loved it."
Very certainly, the Cult of Trump poses a consequential threat to post-enlightenment progress, largely and more often achieved through artists in opposition to their contemporary political establishments. We cannot accept ideas and notions - wacked-out myths or full-on superstitions - that belong in the Dark Ages. This much is clear.
Yet, from the quote above, an interesting question came to mind: What did women see in Trump that was so appealing? The election statistics state that millions of women felt some form of social advantage in electing Trump. If ever there was a cohort that voted against its own interests !
Another way, perhaps, of looking at the same point would be to pose a similar question: What did women see or not see in Hillary Clinton? I don't for an instant consign rigourous analysis of the Enlightenment to Trump voters, be they man or woman. But is there something of mistrust that Orwell identified in his railing against the tyranny of pure rationality? Was there something missing in Clinton's vocabulary and mannerisms that was better expressed - even non-verbally - by Bernie Sanders? Something of the great but flawed novelist?
No doubt Clinton was qualified to be a functional president. But did she in any way give reassurance that she could be an agent of next steps in social progress for all?
15
"But did she in any way give reassurance that she could be an agent of next steps in social progress for all?"
AND THAT'S WHY VOTERS OPTED FOR DONALD INSTEAD ?
31
"No doubt Clinton was qualified to be a functional president. But did she in any way give reassurance that she could be an agent of next steps in social progress for all?"
So instead we have a dysfunctional president whose main concerns are using the Presidency to increase his own wealth and getting big tax cuts for the richest, which also includes himself.
Maybe Clinton would have been more transformational than you think. Sadly, we'll never know.
70
No. Voters "opted" for Trump because he appealed to their sexism, racism, anti-semitism and hatred for "the other". He appealed to the fantasy that the U.S. could return to the days when blond-haired blue-eyed men dominated and minorities and others "knew their place" and still lived across the railroad tracks.
And your question is really a straw man argument in any case because Trump certainly did not leave the impression that he could be an agent of positive social change. Quite the opposite. And that's been proven with his support of racists and anti-Semites.
4
So eloquent and insightful. Thank you, I needed this.
59
Trump has neither self-respect nor respect for others. Both are vital in forming character.
88
Well, gosh, he doesn't need respect. He has money.
1
Money--a sad test of respect for self or others.
1
You cannot respect yourself if you have no respect for others.
1
“Muscle-flexing” is the term I used many a time, including in this space, while discussing how Donald Trump made it in real estate. The illustration in this thought-provoking article reassures me that I am fully justified in using that term.
When this “thoroughly modern man-child, the kind of overgrown adolescent,” as the author aptly describes him, sold his success story to the aggrieved white males of middle America, they swallowed it hook, line and sinker. And the ruffian language he used to sell the story made it all the more palatable to them.
Trump’s ruffian language and mannerisms were very much in tune with their ideal model of manhood. During the eight years of the Obama presidency, “in homes across America, the Obama model of manhood had increasingly taken root.” They found the Obama model a threat to theirs.
Though ruffian language and mannerisms are common among non-white men, too, it is the white men of middle America that overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Trump. Again, as the author says, they are getting less and less attached to traditional institutions that gave them a sense of community, which makes them “seek community online.” No wonder Trump took to tweeting from the very beginning of his presidency. The language he uses in his tweets may be unbecoming of a head of state. But his targets find it soothing to their ears. Trump knows how to pamper and energize his constituency.
25
Maybe it's because too many white Christians are attracted to overgrown adolescence (because they missed the days when they were adolescents) and Trump reminded them of someone who had it all and got away with all his shenanigans at the end.
1
Joan Didion had it right. As long as Trump thinks admitting to mistakes and apologizing for them is weak, he will never have the strength, or the character, to be a real man.
140
He doesn't think that apologizing for his mistakes is weakness. He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He doesn't think he makes mistakes at all.
3
Unfortunately, Ms. Filopovic appears to conflate . . . or maybe confuse character with masculinity. Trump has neither.
I am white man. I have two sons in their 20s and think I've done a pretty good job of teaching them to be strong, confident, independent, sensitive, respectful, and considerate of others. In short, I have done my best to instill in them a sense of honor and good character.
Trump is the antithesis of my notion of manhood and an embarrassment to men everywhere.
If it was only men voted for this pathetic man-child, he would not be the president.
Will the columnist do a follow-up after interviewing some of the millions of women who drank the same Kool-Aid as the men and voted for him?
While we're at it, let's call out the millions of young voters who, even though they are progressive at heart, sat out the election merely because Hilary didn't fit their Utopian model.
Donald Trump is Biff Tanner.
excellent article - what I like most about America - good clear reasoned analysis - and from a woman ? - hmmm - guess the angry white male Triumphalists won't be reading this !
What is left out of many columns focused on Dear Leader is that he has severe mental problems. I'm not a professional but based on his behavior and comments and considering that he is an adult, he has major problems. Psychopath, sociopath, severe narcissism, borderline personality disorder come to mind. Anyone who continually flat out lies about the most easily verifiable things, treats others like dirt and then turns around and complements them has major mental problems. How he obtained the GOP nom says a lot about the party.
trump is a beta looking for his apha
One look at Melania’s non-presence, even when present, and consider the Don in terms of the kind of woman he wants as a partner. Partner? She’s more of a prop he uses. When he wants one.
So what does that say about Trump as a man? To me it makes him look weak, that he needs to lean on a woman’s looks, while not giving her voice. There’s something really weird about that ‘marrriage’ or partnership, as a type of business relationship.
And what kind of man makes use of a handshake that is more like a man holding out his hand to take a woman onto the dance floor? Like an invitation to dance. Which is really strange when he does it with men. Powerful men!
Trump’s nonverbal behavior is strange. Masculinity? I see weakness, going way back. Even as a young man, he looks weak to me.
The issue of how men treat women and whether or not women are treated equally is very important. However, why is everything put in the context of Trump. I am tired of hearing of the guy. Enough!
Right on. But what do you say about the women drawn to, supportive of, or excusing of such men as Trump?
With some strong reservations I would agree with Ms Filipovic's description of President Trump's view of masculinity. However, as a white American male of the President's age I can say that contrary to her suggestion, not all of us embrace this view vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton's "Hermione Granger" feminism, whatever that might mean (although it does have a holier than thou ring to it).
More importantly, I don't believe much of Ms Filipovic's unnuanced essay describes President Trump very well, and it largely misses the reason he won. It doesn't take a terribly observant person to see that the President is an insecure narcissist of epic proportions and and almost certainly a psychopath. He is obviously a man who has never had an actual friend or a genuine romantic relationship. In that regard, his views on masculinity are a rather trivial part of much larger and more frightening whole.
All of which has little or nothing to do with why he won. He won because middle and lower middle class American whites see the country as a place that once reflected their values and aspirations but that now is spinning away from them uncontrollably, and he promised to bring it back. Ms Filipovic vaguely touches on this point, but seems far more concerned with denouncing his invidious view of masculinity, and let's face it, that horse beaten to death long ago.
His view on masculinity might have been the icing on the cake for some voters, but was largely beside the point.
When your (neo-progressive) crime is being a white male with masculine proclivities, smear and derision are the only response.
I think you left something out of your wonderful article. Trump and many other old white men are using prescription testosterone and viagra. It twists their minds and makes them believe they are more manly than any other man and will probably shorten their lives. In a few cases a shorter life may be good thing for the country.
This pieces captures the zeitgeist perfectly!
Trump didn't just brag about never changing a diaper (I've changed plenty, but also outsourced the job when I could). He also expressed contempt for the notion that he would take his kids to the park. I can't imagine a deeper poverty than that.
Dear Ms Jill Filipovic, You seem so wise, and you are certainly correct in your view of Donald Trump. Best of all, your review ends on an optimistic note. It was something we should all read.
Spot on analysis and sad commentary on the person occupying the Oval Office.
There was a time where the President of this wonderful country stood for something more than self interest and spoke with a sense of maturity and decency. I long for those days.
I shudder to think of the monsters that are being exhorted by the POTUS and likely setting our civilization back 150 years.
Thank you for articulating the fundamental problems Mr.Trump presents to those of us who respect all people.and dream of America returning to its ideals which i always thought was a land of opportunity for all who embrace freedom and the right to live one's own life and allow others to do the same.
Thanks again, i am sharing this with ever man i know.
I know several men who are a credit to their gender: strong, loving, responsible, kind, and admiring of strong women.
Trump is none of these things. How very, very tragic that many men (and too many women) actually admire him. How urgent to remove him from office and remind Trump voters--whether deceived, foolish, ignorant, or nasty--that he is not any kind of role model.
Ms. Filipovik offers us the eternal plaint of women, that men can be icky, and excessively protective of their ickiness, that many regard as a right. As to a sense of privilege accruing to being male, I haven’t seen much difference in how it’s expressed by whites as opposed to blacks or by any other intensity of melanin.
But her thesis that this tendency was strong enough to elect a president who gives the multitudes of the icky hope for better days, when the fundamental rightness of ickiness is better respected and loungers again can depend on their women to go out and pick sufficiency in the fields … lacks sophistication.
She may have a case. However, while this may have been ONE reason men voted for Trump, it’s only one, and probably not by far even the most compelling. Far more important was a nation whose middle classes were being eviscerated, where its political establishments were not only doing nothing about that but not doing much of anything – for YEARS. Trump spoke to that and Mrs. Clinton did not, noticeably (yes, she spoke to it, but not to 77,000 traditionally Democratic rustbelt Midwestern Americans who turned on her).
We need to heal and to prosper again, we needed a compelling if highly imperfect goad to begin that process, and we elected him … just barely. We don’t really need wedges that separate us more than we’re already separated. Instead, we need forbearance, cooperation and healing, with a great president … or without her.
7
It was not only men who voted for Trump.
Of the white women who voted
53% of all white women voted for Trump
51% of white college women voted for Clinton
62% of all white non college women voted for Trump
I am male.
I voted for HRC.
Neither candidate had any program to help displaced workers.
TRump made promises about restoring jobs that he can not keep.
HRC's proposals would not provide jobs at the previous wage for displaced workers.
Telling laid off miners to become call center operators at a fraction of their previous wage is not a solution.
57
I don't know if this is relevant but the last Democratic presidential candidate to receive a majority of the white [male plus female ]vote was LBJ in 1964.
There are many factors besides male sexism that affect voting choices.
25
Richie Rich, reliable snake oil salesman.
What in the new tax plan lauded by Trump, is aimed to help the middle class.
And, for the third time, I ask, how much did YOU deduct for state and local taxes paid?
The elimination of the alternative minimum tax and the estate tax are aimed at helping the richest, not at all the “eviscerated middle classes.”
The only thing we learned from Rachel Maddow getting her mitts on a page of the 2005 Trump tax return is that without the alternative minimum tax, the $31 million tax liability of Trump would have been zeroed out.
Ayn Ryan and Kevin Brady and their uncute minions kept praising the $1182 tax savings for the “average family.” Trump would have saved on that one return what trickled down to 26,227 “average families.”
That great savings heralded by Ryan and Brady amounts to $22.73/week. Don’t spend it all in one place. Meanwhile, carried interest, slammed by Trump on the hustings while he profited from it as a developer, remains untouched.
87
"You tiny, tiny, tiny little man"
- author J.K. Rowling's brilliant assessment of America's Nightmare-In-Chief
334
Reminds me of the tiny man that started the jokes about Trump's hands. A lot of tiny people keep joining that tiny man across the country. And they talk as if Trump is to blame for it.
1
How on earth did we get here after all the progress we've made to become one of the most enlightened nations on earth? How?
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It's the last gasp of a vanishing breed, they have yet to realize the 50s are over, and they're not coming back. Trump and a few others have the money to keep it alive a bit longer, but it's over. Power over women and others, privilege, a well paved way through life, Ivies, plumb jobs, private clubs away from the riff-raff, rescue from mistakes-like bankruptcies and such. Many of his followers are not in that strata, but they wish they were, along with the women who wanted to be on their arm, and that's enough to keep it going a bit longer, and Trump in the White House.
8
Jeanne,
The most enlightened Nation but perhaps the most 'Laid-Back', a Paradox, where Latin America sent earlier an amusing, but real account of where We were a century ago. The average white male life expectancy was 47.
We are taking an expensive pause in our history, but our Nation will prevail. It will take 'Work' and a sense of 'Woke', but The Will of The People and a Love of Country where We pull each other through this quagmire into 'Ours' might turn into an Era of Wonders.
The sensationalism of 'Trumpism' is fading and We are walking forth.
Enlightened? I don't think so. That was a mirage. I think the Trump presidency has proven just how unenlightened we actually are. And let's not forget that even though Trump has a very low 37% approval rating, that means that he's still supported by about 70% of Republicans.
4
'You tiny, tiny, tiny little man' - author J.K. Rowling (on Donald Trump)
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Wow! That is a lot of hate for white men. What is the point of this screed?
10
Re-read the article a few times, think about what was said, and re-read the article again.
1
It's not against white men. It's against man-children who refuse to grow up. Unfortunately, we have enough of them in the USA to elect one as president.
1
the point of it : the white male who gave
us the plays of Shakespeare, the Sistine
Chapel,The Divine Comedy and whatever
else is great in the arts and sciences has now become the pariah of the far PC
left feminist movement and their male
sympathizers. if they get their way,and
they probably will, America and Europe
will be handed over to the new no-nothings whose idea of politics and art
will be little better than tearing every
thing that offends them down and replacing them with mediocrity and gender and race based political correctness. the ny times recently and
regrettably has given way too much space to these strident,self appointed
male and female scolds.
1
Great article. Yes, some of us are always working in the trenches of being men, and being responsible for our words and actions. I still have hope for humanity, in spite of DT.
35
Trump has a talent for projecting power and independence, but inside he's a damaged and frightened little man. Those are the kinds- as with Hitler- who do serious damage before the people wake up.
More troubling to many men is the fact that Trump still has enough support to keep his job. Yeah, lame men are to blame, but so is the absence of unified opposition from women. Plenty of females show up at his rallies and cheer. Were they to agree that he is the creep he so obviously is, he would never have won in the first place. That gap in women's brains is both puzzling and dangerous, but is rarely noted by either men or women. Maybe that could be your next column.
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many women like being dependent on a man for the food and shelter. hate to say it, but collectively, women have never accepted responsibility for their sustenance and their children. i see this in court all of the time. society takes care of their children via public programs, when father's don't, or can't, and nobody ever asks why the mother should not pay back the public funds dispensed once the kids are in school and she can work. can't have it both ways.
4
53% of white women voted for Trump. I would bet real money that some of these women donned pink hats and marched in the Women's March. I agree that this is an issue that no one wants to touch.
4
On another note, Ms. Goldberg has taken the trouble to write of The Witch Hunt, and with this in mind, this American is joining those of us who are encouraging the witches among us to vote. We have a coven in this region and the members may enjoy reading 'Lolly Willowes' (1926), a single woman who escapes the grip of her family and moves to the countryside, transforming into a witch with exchanges and visits from The Devil.
But regardless of one's beliefs, please cast your spell on voting this week.
If you have to keep telling me how great you are; your not. And the louder and longer you need to keep telling me, the farther it is from the truth.
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Not to forget... his continue drum beat of how smart he says he is... while he's invariably saying something incredibly stupid... like he's really, really smart.
And every time he says "believe me" you know it's a lie.
Interesting that he said believe me 40 times during the debates. For every one million words he used, 580.6 are “believe me.”
1
what you describe is a characteristic of many new yorkers. always telling themselves (and you) how great new york is and therefore how great they are for being there. this has been tamped down somewhat with the homogenization of our culture by mass media but it's still there. DJT is nothing if not an old school newyorker.
Adolescents committing murder and mayhem, committing crimes, dominating over girls and women, sowing fear into the hearts of people in their homes, and affiliating with other street gang members all have the same image of manhood as does Donald Trump. All of them are fundamentally insecure and unable to conceptualize the context and consequences long term of their behaviors. None of them actually understand that they are misusing the time and opportunities which they have.
White men love the Trump for being a creep. Voter evidence would support that far too many do. But not all of us. The November 2016 vote tells us that white women do too. Please explain that as well.
" - the new ideal of the progressive man — a hands-on dad and a self-identified feminist married to a high-achieving woman who was once his boss, who is also well mannered and protective of his family..."
I will take the progressive man any day over the toxic masculinity of the entitled, white, brain dead, he man woman-haters, racists, gun carrying, knuckle draggers that currently make up a large portion of today's Republican party.
They are lazy. Please note how little they have done in congress the past seven years. They don't attend town hall meetings unless armed because they are cowards. And because they are 'entitled white', hetero males they believe they have the right to what a woman can do with their bodies. That too is why these poor excuses of men are afraid of gay men, because they are much stronger than any of them, they had the courage to come-out. That takes a strong man to do that.
I will take the new ideal man any day!
"Most American men are unable to actually achieve this level of authority minus accountability."
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most American men wouldn't want to - or would find it abhorrent once attained. I believe that Donald Trump's existence, as he experiences it, is empty and sad. Or if not so, it's only because he lacks the ability to distinguish and appreciate the warmth of real connections. Either way, it's really not enviable.
I feel like I'm watching a gross, fictional satire on US political power. But it's all true.
The quality of our candidates will get lower if we don’t get the big money out of politics. The megadonors scout, finance and promote the candidates that will serve them the most. Or candidates have to start as self financing billionaires.
The candidate serves their funders while appealing to the lowest common denominator of voter, using fear, resentment, and superiority/inferiority. This is made so much easier by our economic inequality, insecurity, and downward mobility.
If we financed elections like other capitalist democracies do, with some public control over the money and influence, we might get a better class of candidate in the 1st place. But now, our democracy, like our living standards are on a downward trajectory.
Where is what we had in past generations----unions, apprenticeship training and low cost state university tuition? That’s what made the middle class. Now the foundations are torn out from under them, and they are manipulated by phony political ads swamping our media, paid for by billionaires.
Do Americans know that other capitalist democracies ban or regulate private ads and private donations to elections? Btw, they've had health care for all at lower cost---for generations. We still don’t have it, and what we do have under ACA is under attack by Gop. Big insurance/drug companies make our politics dependent, and create political norms.
Ha! Yes, but unlike the throwback archetype you reference as your point of departure, he's all silver spoon Baby Huey who never had to back up any of his bluster. Always had protectors, goons, flacks and lawyers to do the heavy lifting and ease his way.
Rarely have I had such a strong negative- almost physical- reaction to a stranger. He's a human pathogen.
1
Most polls say that a majority of white women voted for him too, let's not forget that. However, I do agree with the basic premise here about a dysfunctional, almost perversely misogynistic male culture being part of the problem. If I were to offer one, reasonably neat way of summing it up, Trump's base is primarily mean and stupid. While I want to be careful about stereotypes, look at some of the Daily Show's videos of Trump Rallies. They illustrate the point well. Lots of mostly mean, really stupid, grumpy old white guys, their fat, ugly wives, and not so bright kids. Deplorable is probably too kind a word for them.
"When he tweets insults about the stature of those who challenge him — “Liddle Bob Corker” and “Little Marco” Rubio — he’s not just emasculating his tormentors by suggesting that manly authority is tied to height (although he’s doing that, too)".
Donald Trump himself wouldn't appear nearly as tall as he does without those extra-long red ties that dangle below his belt line, or the whipped-up orange mousse that perches atop his head.
Every NY Times article about Trump should be balanced with another article about someone like Bernie Sanders, someone who is pro-democratic, pro-environment, pro-working-class. It is easy to obsess about Mr. Trump. His policies and his actions are like a bad car crash by the side of the road. It attracts onlookers and slows traffic. It might be more productive to look away from the abyss and instead at those individuals who are helping to restore democracy to our political system and who speak for a majority of Americans.
"carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues"
I would liked to read what virtues you think he has. I wouldn't accuse him of sloth except for learning, but he embodies pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, and wrath.
I can't think of a virtue he may have. I don't know if he's ever kind. There are stories of abuse to his children, and that DJ2 didn't speak to him for at least a year. I'm grateful he never owned an animal; I'd be concerned for his son. He lies, cheats, steals, lies about cheating, stealing, and lying. He has no intellectual curiosity. He seems to have no humor, no compassion, no empathy. And worse than absence of those traits, he amplifies them. He's cruel, bigoted, intent on doing harm wherever possible.
His body language gives away a great deal. Despite his arrogance and hubris, his postures are of a powerless being. He's always slouched over when seated, hands folded between his legs. Slouches when he walks. Or he sits with arms crossed, protecting himself. The very antithesis of "power poses."
I'm not sure what's left.
Trump embraces all of the perceived superficial, phony qualities of “what it is to be a man” and none of the real ones: selflessness, courage, honesty, compassion, and honor. It’s easy to talk tough, it’s hard to sacrifice for others.
Trump is like climate change. Properly dealt with, we will survive. Left unchecked, we end up losing everything that really matters.
Personally, I think it's already too late to save our country or our planet. With Trump and the endless denials from the right, we have all reached the point of no return. What a world. What a shame.
And to think it all could have been avoided if the human race had been just little smarter. Imagine what the world would look like if we had all been a little smarter? A little more empathetic? A little more compassionate? A little less self-serving? A world dedicated to equality of education, opportunity and good stewardship.
Instead we ended up here, with Trump, and everything that he represents.
You want a vision of our future now? Read Orwell.
Conspicuously missing from this analysis is any mention of the millions of women who thumbed their nose at the first female candidate for president, went along with her opponent's boasts about male entitlement to commit violence against women, and voted for him with an enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism. These women, for whatever reason, are the great enablers of the misogynistic behavior described in this article. They apparently like their men to be this way. This, more than anything else, explains why the Trumps of this world won't be disappearing any time soon.
“Muscle-flexing” is the term I used many a time, including in this space, while discussing how Donald Trump became a real estate tycoon. The illustration in this thought-provoking piece pales into insignificance everything I wrote to describe that Trumpian quality.
When this “thoroughly modern man-child, the kind of overgrown adolescent,” as the author aptly describes him, sold his success story to the aggrieved white males of America, they swallowed it hook, line and sinker. And the ruffian language he used to sell it made it more palatable to them. They found it very much in tune with the model of manhood they have been used to fantasizing about. That model had been threatened during the eight years of the Obama presidency, when “in homes across America, the Obama model of manhood had increasingly taken root.”
Though the Trumpial language and mannerisms are common among non-white men, too, it is the white men of middle America that overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Trump. The author is right: As they got less and less attached to the traditional institutions that had given them a sense of community, they started to "seek community online.” What better and swifter way to reach them than through social media? No wonder Trump took to tweeting from the very beginning of his presidency.
The language he uses in his tweets may be unbecoming of a head of state. But his targets find it soothing to their ears. Trump knows how to pamper and energize his constituency.
"The white working men of Trump speeches have the kind of dirty-fingernail jobs so revered in the American imagination: coal miners, firefighters, autoworkers. In real life, more Trump voters work in cubicles than in coal mines. But the point was never Mr. Trump’s understanding of reality. It was his grasp of white male aspiration and identity."
This is so interesting and illuminating. I was wondering how, if coal jobs have been in decline for some time, there could be so many unemployed miners as to put Trump in the White House. The answer is that the miners are props. It's like old-style Marlboro cigarette advertising. The people really inhaling the poison by the millions are wannabes, buying the scam because they believe it defines who they are. (Of course, their wannabe status is the flip side of the sad conviction that they're not already. Men, that is.)
Still looking for the right guy?
Translation: Trump is a raving, crude misogynist. But we all know that.
Donald Trump has always been rich. He has always gotten his way. During his campaign he said what a good many Americans are feeling partly because they keep on voting in candidates who are not interested in representing anyone other than their rich donors. Those donors are more important for winning campaigns than the voters because of the money. As long as money is the biggest determining factor to being elected Americans will continue to see their elected officials cater to those who donate the most.
Trump is a bully. Male or female, bullies tend to do the same sorts of things. They trample all over any person they can. They lie to justify their bullying. They love anyone who agrees with them until they don't. They pretend that they don't know why another person or group is upset with them. They are masters of manipulation. Remember how Trump drowned out questions about him or his policies during the debates and pointed fingers at Clinton?
Trump probably doesn't think about being a man. He probably thinks about how to get his way. It's a mistake to think that this president is considering how his behavior affects anything. He doesn't. He wants what he wants and if it takes lies to get it he'll use them. He's a spoiled 70 year old toddler in need of discipline and a time out. But he's not a mature man or adult.
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Trump is the only man I know of who spends as much time fussing with his hair as a woman.
3
What about Reagan with his pompadour?
Ha! You have your facts wrong: Trump is now 71.
Aside from that, though, you nailed it.
Donald Trump has been a bully-coward all his life. President Bone Spurs, nothing to see here, move along ... Exploit the weak and toady the exploiters.
199
Hope Trump enjoys his stopover in Vietnam on this trip, but he's just a few years too late.
4
Frankly, the author is giving the enigma that is Trump much too much complexity.
Trump is a reality TV star, who's managed to land a really good gig. The job of a really good TV star is to promote the brand.
You promote your brand by constantly being the lead story
on the news, the most talked about person on social media.
MAGA? Nope. The real slogan is "Good press, bad press, it's all better than no press."
The outrageous statements, the constant backpedaling on positions and issues, is all controlled attempts to remain the top story. That's where consistency lies with Trump, pun intended.
And when does Trump start to back off? When the people criticizing him on an issue start getting as much or more coverage then he does. Because getting more coverage than he does threatens the value of his brand.
Is what he says true? Not true? Crazy? Have a secret genius to it? Who knows. But it is all tremendously self serving. Self-serving as in Trump personally, not politically.
He's open to any position on any issue, as long as it doesn't hurt his ability to promote the Trump brand here and abroad.
That's the motivation. That's the goal. That's all there is too it. Really. Sadly. Truly.
Or - create chaos; then offer a way forward.
Touche!
The psychic of masculinity is a hold-over from cave-man days, when physical strength was the essential power metric. Brain power has been a growing power metric for centuries. But today, there are very few arenas where the need for physical strength hasn’t been usurped by machinery, technology and brain power… which has no gender.
It doesn’t take much to know brute strength is losing out to IQ power. Just saying you’re "like, a really smart person” doesn’t make it so. You have to wonder why Trump supporters can’t figure out that the tide turned… past tense… a long time ago.
I really enjoyed this essay and found it far more thoughtful than other feminist-oriented essays who paint in gloom-and-doom terms the current state of male-female relations in the United States. Indeed, it is far better than in the past and the re-balancing continues and will continue to create stress as status and opportunity change for men and women.
I would say, however, that the most pertinent insight is that Trump represents to far too many people the intoxicating mix of power without responsibility. To be able to do and say what one likes with no social constraint; no cost, no sacrifice or self-effacement. Such a fantasy appeals to *both men and women*.
Sadly, religion, which has always played a role in tempering the acts of the powerful by pointing out that the powerful have a responsibility because they have that power, has abdicated that role in the interest of some short term "deal with the devil".
My friends and I, while wasting a few minutes over pumpkin spice lattes, found it noteworthy that none of Mr. Trump's wives appeared to list college degrees or for that matter much beyond very basic educations in their vitae
Although I appreciate and agree with many of your points I wonder how anyone can critique Trump without stating upfront that he's criminally insane. He doesn't just suffer from dumb guy syndrome or male pattern blindness. Trump is an old fashion thug who does not have the capacity to care about anything or anyone that doesn't immediately pleasure him. The man is a sociopath who threw Junior to the wolves when he rewrote the tweets about his son's now famous meeting with known Russian operatives. What kind of man would do that? As Mel Brooks wrote, "Abbie Normal." He does not represent what a man is or could be. He is a poster boy for fully funding our mental health system. No more . . . no less.
1
Hermione Granger is not an HRC feminist-- she's an Intersectional Feminist, engaging in an analysis of how power is constructed and allocated that takes into account not just the construction of gender but of race, economic class, and sexual orientation. Her critique of power in the wizarding world includes reflection on how giants, house elves, and Muggles are assigned status and "potential." Us really old school feminists might catch a whiff of Woolf's thinking in her arguments, which are steadfastly arrayed against the sort of desire for and exercise of power Woolf that recognizes as common to the patriarch, the dictator, and the totalitarian menace (see Woolf's Three Guineas for the fully developed, historically nuanced argument against this kind of power and its exercise). Trump hungers for this kind of power as he tries to fulfill the self-maiming, world-destroying mockery of manhood he seeks.
It's no coincidence that the white nationalist followed the first black president or that a chauvinist ran against the first woman candidate.
Sadly, Donald's view of the world is shared by a lot of people who know even less about race and gender and civics than he does.
How we got here is the subject of a million sociology theses. But let's not just study it. Let's fix it.
So many thought Trump’s “tough he-man” routine during the primaries and election was just that — an act designed to enhance his entertainer persona (and wallet) and entertain crowds — a crude parody of a presidential candidate — until things took an often ugly and cruel bent that proved that what we were seeing was indeed what we wouid be getting. Still, he had his followers. Enough to propel him to where he is today.
Why is it that some apparently long for the old Ralph Kramden, cave dweller type of “man” as a leader, as opposed to an educated, thoughtful, diplomatic, and measured mature adult? Do we now care so little about the grave responsibilities that the office of the President holds that we will elect its holders on the basis of an outrageous stereotype of strength and impetuous, ignorant rhetoric?
Is this just one more visceral reaction to eight years of Barack Obama? The anti-Barack?
Trump is a good reason to take away white woman’s vote.
Spot on, until the last paragraph -- I think we can objectively show that things are NOT getting better. That's something that is feeding the Trumpians' angst.
So what do we DO about this? Other than hope they come to their senses when they find out they have blown themselves up along with the system -- ?
I am still struck by the fact that so many of the men closing in around Sect Clinton in the final days of the campaign had been charged with (or bragged about) sexual assault: Mike Cernovich, Anthony Weiner, Julian Assange, Roger Ailes--and of course, Trump.
Trump is not a man. He proved that when he avoided the draft. He proved it again time and time again when he failed to show compassion to a fallen soldiers widow or millions impacted by a hurricane
He is a bully. A rich kid crying at the world on injustice to him while grabbing for all the candy and money he can reach.
He is a coward, who rails at injustice to him and him alone as the victim.
Do not discuss being a man because of his gender.
He is a male, a bully, a coward.
Trump and his ilk is playing into the hands of the real puppet masters. The Banking institutions! Once they get what they want from him, and they have, he will be disguarded like a bad penny.
Poor Donnie thinks that his money is power, that is the fallisy the world has bought into.
A brief summary of this article is to say that Donald Trump is the worst and most dangerous President in the history of the United States.
But Trump is a victim. Except for his hand picked advisers (family), all the congressional leadership is impotent and the press is out to get him. Just because he has problems telling the truth (Liar-in-Chief) Donald Trump, can't get competent non-related advisors and has the 5th string subbing in-- isn't his fault. It's the elite and their press that is mucking things up for him. He's a legend in his own mind. So let's all hail the Victim-In-Chief. Poor, poor Donnie.
This piece and many other in the NYT would be more accurate if it qualified its meaning of “white.” Most white people are not privileged. That designation comes from a prejudice that because a small percentage are rich and/or have great opportunities, it follows that all white people are rich and/or have great opportunities.
So please explicitly state that privileged white person only refers to white persons who are rich and/or have great opportunities.
The distinction between "the power of position" and "personal power" (character, etc.) has been recognized and written about for millennia. Tom Friedman alluded to this when he wrote wrote about "moral authority" last week. What we are currently witnessing is another manifestation of this human phenomenon.
Donald tRump is a bully. No ifs or ands about it. Anything else in commentary about this rude and selfish man is simply hog wash.
1
What Donald Trump Thinks It Fakes to Be a Man.
the writer says of women "we can be reduced to simple objects of predatory male sexuality." in fact, reflecting on my experiences now as an old man, i always felt bombarded and abused by the ever-present photos of nearly naked women with the "come hither" look. one only has to glance at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition to verify my point. which is, should the female portion of our society share some of the blame for male predatory behaviour? if one wants to contribute to changing such male behaviour, then stop stoking the male testtosterone furnace! there is a very sick dichotomy at work in our capitalist, individualistic society that should placed at the feet of both males and females. this requires both sides to change for the better.
1
I was going to take you to task, Ms. Filipovic, for your rather one-dimensional view of the male of the species, but your redeemed your argument in the last sentence. Rest assured that there are many men who find Trump's behavior and lack of character abhorrent. We are as anxious as you are to see this nitwit deposed, either literally or figuratively. Perhaps we should draw the line of demarcation based on ideology instead of gender? Most white women voted for Trump, after all.
1
"White American men loved it."
Apparently, so did many white women.
I didn't and I am a white man in my 60's. Fortunately my social circle of men of different races are gentlemen who have no need for masculine displays or demeaning talk. A few are very conservative Christians, and even they are moderate in disagreeing with me, without smears or locker room talk. I voted for a white woman for POTUS, just not the one that the establishment wanted me to vote for; Dr. Jill Stein. For the second time. I hope she runs in 2020, because I will vote for her again.
But Ms. Filipovic just smeared all of us. It is hard to know how women can rally men to action over sexual harassment if they treat white (or any) men this way.
Don't intimate that it was "white men" who brought us Trump. It was as much the millions of Republican women who refused to turn away from this serial sexual harasser; it was the millions of evangelical Christians willing to make a pact with the devil to get themselves another anti-abortion partisan on the Supreme Court...
You're not observing "white maleness," you're observing modern Republicanism and their own particular identity politics.
5
Trump is garbage, certainly. But so, too, are the people who voted for him and the people who - despite their endless crying - live under his rule. Indeed, those supposed classic liberals who bemoan being trumpscum's subjects are the worst of the lot, as they should know better than staying on the sinking ship of America.
#calexit
Misogyny, misandry is a level playing field.
1
Trump knows nothing about being a man. Being an overgrown schoolyard bully? He's got that nailed.
1
Not only is the Donald every unflattering adjective one can think of, but Hillary was the most qualified, organized, sensitive, capable candidate of all time. What drove white woman to the most horrible person on the planet to vote for this monstrosity for president?
5
Smart! The fragility of self-esteem among men can be a dangerous thing.
Donald Trump is still upset that Daddy didn't love him enough and Mommy let him be sent away to military school. Donald Trump is a rich kid who had a father to stake his success, too busy for his kids until they were old enough to work for him and unable to relate to anything or anyone unrelated to him. Other than growing up in Queens, which he still regrets (oh, that Queen's accent), he is the classic rich kid, frat boy bro that we see all over Manhattan. He doesn't know the cost of anything, because he can buy whatever and whoever he wants. He only cares about what he can control and is angered by anything or anyone he can't.
Perhaps it is you who is dictating your fantasy of masculinity. In point of fact you are demanding it. Good luck with that.
2
For the first time I almost feel sorry for the Donald. Not!
1
Donald Trump is a moron, but he is our president. So we sort of take heed to what he says, unfortunately.
When it comes to his idea of men, as we look to Veterans Day next week, the worst insult he ever spew, in my opinion, was condemning a man who has served this country his whole lifetime - because, in Trump's words, that man was "captured"!
Donald Trump's condemnation of John McCain can never, ever be forgiven. In my mind, this was the worst and most embicile statement Donald Trump has ever said in his critique of manlihood or whatever else he was trying to do with this statement. And furthermore, wimpy Republicans allowed Trump to get away with this. For shame!
John McCain has been tortured as a soldier, he has served his country in legislatures over the decades of his lifespan. He still serves at 81 years old with newly diagnosed cancer.
Now there is a real man, our John McCain, and I, even as a Democrat, am proud to say, "our" John McCain. God love him, and God honor him.
Of course Donald Trump would try to turn that around. Because frankly, Donald Trump has no idea what it is to be a man.
2
Brava! Thank you, Jill.
Good God, this man-child is a stain on this nation.
2
if I can’t have it, no one can”
No truer words have ever been spoken.
Miss Filipociv is too kind in her description of Trump. Bottom line is that he's ignorant, insecure, a bully, impulsive, immature, manipulative, and a bold face liar.
1
There is nothing old - school about him. He is a primitive thug like non thinker who is nothing like men of a different era. Yes manhood has evolved but it never started from where Trump is.
Why do so many women continue gravitating to Trump types?
2
"White American men loved it." With that one simple sentence, you insulted a large number of white American men. It is that type of identity thinking, paint everyone with one brush, that is losing so many of your battles. I am a white American male liberal who after that sentence stopped reading.
3
Men are definitely the weaker sex. There are those who say that women are subject to monthly hormonal changes but men are subject to testosterone every day.
Trump's juvenile understanding of masculinity is not masculine. He's a an affront to the male gender. He did not win the popular vote. As far as I'm concerned he just taking up space. Useless, scary, ignorant, and unhinged.
3
Fascinating article. Thank you. But be advised: Even admirers of Barack Obama can stoop to ad hominen attacks. I made one in the comment section of today's Bruni piece against Huckabee Sanders. I doubt the Times will print. If it does I guess I'll be embarrassed. But such is my hatred of and disgust with this man and everybody associated with him.
1
Why don't Republicans, who might contribute to control of this loose cannonball, read the paper and act on these comments from their constituents, their opponents, and the greater world?
Trump's ability to bloviate nonsense reminds me more everyday of Eddie Haskell from the 50s sitcom, "Leave it to Beaver"--the boy who was forever calling attention to himself because of some deep seated insecurity complex . . . and in so doing brought havoc to all.
1
As a white male let me just say that Trump is repulsive; a beta desperately trying to be an alpha. That’s why he’s such a boot licker in person and then runs off to Twitter later to undercut those people with whom he just met. A total coward.
And a total cheese ball: golf, country clubs, beauty pageants, mail order trophy wife, gold plated living room, vacation spots in Florida and Jersey- who cares about any of that stuff? Maybe some Frank Sinatra wannabe. No taste. No class. Trump is a joke.
1
Trump Manhood, meet Robert Mueller Manhood.
You won't persuade anyone of anything till you have mastered your own hate.
2
Any man that is afraid of eating whole fish with the head still on, or even spicy food [as his advance people told CNN about his demands for the Asia trip] is pretty wimpy in my book. And he is a germaphobe. How can you respect that kind of guy?
Thanks for womansplaining what a man should be. Hilarious.
2
It takes all types to make a whole complete. A world of perfect people would get boring real fast.
1
You forget he's also a blowhard on an epic scale. That would make him a pariah in even the most mindless possum hunt. 14=year old hill country boys trying cigarettes for the first time would throw butts at his hair.
Terrific analysis of Trump. Great piece.
It goes without saying that Trump is the antithesis of Obama. Why do you think he hates him so much? He recognizes his predecessor is all the things he could never be--articulate, elegant, welcome in the highest levels of society even though he doesn't have a zillion dollars. How do you think Trump feels, having made all that money and finding he still can't obtain the respect of intelligentsia? That's why he's turned to all these lowlifes--to boost his ego. He is on the biggest ego trip in history
2
Thank you Jill.
You help to renew my faith in ability of the NYT to provide balanced and informed analysis of gender issues. Unlike the editorial board of Oct 28th who are still at the stage of writing titles that include phrases such as "...reforming men'.
The essay is a ruse a la Trump. It is mostly about what Filipovic thinks about the state of gender relations than it is about what Trump thinks.
1
"White American men loved it".
Huh?! No I didn't.
Most people I knew were, (and are), deeply horrified and disturbed by a trump presidency.
Sexism tastes so much finer when it's served up in The Times cafeteria by a feminist.
2
it's not sexist to call out a fraud.
Trump is the poster boy for old age "punk". He is a misogynistic, ignorant, self-centered, privileged, low-class boor. I am sure that I missed some pejorative descriptors here but this will have to suffice. He is not representative of what a real man should be. You are correct in labeling him a "throwback". But that's exactly what his base wants: a return to a time of white male dominance. The positive side is that this particular segment of the population will soon be gone. The downside is that it won't be soon enough.
1
A crass, arrogant scofflaw behaving badly is an oft repeated theme in human literature, theater and reality...There's not a thing new about Donald Trump.
Some scofflaws get away with it longer than others...His time cometh.
2
Too much to hope this toxic environment will someday be lanced, and drain like a ripe carbuncle? A moment reminiscent of when the frisbee decapitated the terrifying "Master Control Program" in the wonderful Tron? A moment reminiscent of when Dorothy threw water on the witch? Will the sky ever look blue and beautiful again?
Buried at the end of the 6th paragraph you write that they (those Neanderthals that voted for DT) are misogynistic. And your sociological/scientific data supporting that conclusion is found in the next.....oh, I'm sorry.....your baseless accusation lacks evidentiary support. But who cares. In our newly minted woke universe, it is ok to demonize millions of people as long as they are male and white. I got it.
2
hey. i thought you guys scorned political correctness. tell it like it is. john wayne is dead.
The Trump-man is on the way down and soon will be a relic of the past. Especially after the revelations about Weinstein and so many other men who have abused their power and position. The groping, insensitive, crass, entitled men like Trump are starting to be seen as the pathetic throwbacks they are. No matter what power they may have, they will not be tolerated any longer. The Trump-men will be relegated to their cellars where they can play video games and feel sorry for themselves, while in their place will be men who are not afraid to be kind and generous, not afraid to love their children, not afraid to apologize when they're wrong, who recognize that women are more than objects of desire. The bullies and loud-mouthed boors, the gropers and braggarts are on the way out. No one will miss the Trump-man.
3
"This happened while, in homes across America, the Obama model of manhood had increasingly taken root. Yes, powerful men do abuse their positions to extract sexual services from women or to remind us that no matter how mighty and successful we are, we can be reduced to simple objects of predatory male sexuality."
What? So, I'm to read this as some sort of connection between Obama and powerful men extracting sexual services from women?
1
Bravo. Well stated.
It will be interesting to see what the Russian trolls and pro-Russian Republicans have to say in response.
1
"Mr. Trump on “The Howard Stern Show” talking about his wife’s breasts." I may sound like a fossil (which I am) but in my day anyone who talked about my wife's breasts would expect to be admonished , either verbally or physically. Of course, I am older than the sexual revolution and the feminist movements of the mid 20th century. I learned about bigotry as a young Marine stationed briefly in North Carolina when I tried to have a beer with a fellow Marine who happened to be black. He was denied entry, so he and I left. He explained how things are in the South. I was unaware of how awful it was. I grew up in a house without bigotry of any sort. I was unaware of it. The women in my life were all respected by the men in my life. I never witnessed one of them being treated as an inferior. I didn't have a sister, but my mother was smarter than most of the males I met at school and university. I realize now in my dotage that we are all not so lucky to have brilliant moms, but we can have women of character and courage, and most do! How many single moms balance a career and motherhood compared to men? And who does it better? Trump is nothing more than a thug who appeals to the thugs among us. You know those who thank you for your service while avoiding any service at all cost themselves. How those generals can serve in the draft dodger's cabinet is beyond me. Anyway your essay was point on - thank you!
2
Donald Trump has qualities of a very spoiled adolescent boy. That is how he was raised. It is an insult to men to speak of "psychic masculinity" and suggest Trump has "rough-hewed American maleness". He is nothing more than a comic version of Richie Rich that has not yet grown into manly confidence and judgment.
It is even more of an insult to men to suggest that men and women should be more alike in their interests and roles. No real man can support any of the anti-family philosophy touted by feminists.
Feminists have aborted 60 million, spread 200 million STDs, lowered the marriage rate among the poor to 26%, promoted affirmative at the expense of white males, and fail to give fathers the respect they deserve in all areas of culture.
I've been waiting a long time for the remake of "Father Knows Best". Instead the premiere episode of CBS's 9JKL was devoted to the humor and joy of "One-Night Stands" - feminism at its best.
1
Please tell me this is parody.
With his "liddle/little" epithets hurled at far more masculine figures than he, President Trump emasculates nobody but himself. What amazes me is that such juvenile male comportment manages in this country to generate an electoral majority.
This suggests to me that authentic American manhood, at least among whites, is on a glide path to oblivion. I used to believe that boys grow up to become men. It is disturbing to realize that a working majority of white guys regress into the worst attributes of infancy.
Before the ascension of President Trump, masculine white America was already crumbling into greatness, but now us white boys are exhausting ourselves from all this winning.
Rarely do I agree with everything I've read in an article, but this time is one of those rare times. One behavior or characteristic left out would be the "chip on the shoulder" readiness to fight when criticized. It's as if Trump is saying, "Yeah, you wanna make something out of if?"
Die chauvinism, die!
Die racism, die!
What the Donald thinks being a man is, can be measured in inches. No not that. Pinocchio nose.
1
Angry white men (AWM) were responding to two blows. First a black man winning two terms, followed by the most competent presidential candidate in our lifetime, who just happened to be a woman. W...h...a...t???? This was simply too much for the AWM.
Sadly, they chose a petulant child who happens to be 70 years old. Whether you liked Reagan on a horse at his ranch in California, or Bush chopping wood at his Texas ranch, they both exhibited distinctly male characteristics. Ride 'em cowboy-ism laced with a western "c'mon and have a beer partner" vibe. Why even Poppy Bush jumps out of airplanes all the time. Very daring and manly.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that Trump is the least masculine man to inhabit the White House in a long, long time. It's doubtful that Trump could walk nine holes of golf, much less competently ride a horse, chop wood, or skydive.
This phase of our republic is fascinating to analyze, but terrifying to watch in real time. What will be the antithesis to this? Now there's a subject to explore.
Many white conservative men are feminists, help their spouses at home and are not at all racists. They are conservatives because they see good people, of the Barack Obama type, who sick and tired of political corruption and capitalist greed, wonder if socialism may be a valid alternative for North America and other countries of the world. They censure the crimes of Stalin as much as Hitler's. They swear they would never suppress human rights and private property. But their knowledge of socialism and Communism is bookish.
The white conservatives I know, some of whom lived under Communism, know that the worst solution for democracy’s social illnesses and capitalist excess is socialism and Communism. They know that socialism can only survive if it suppresses human rights and abolishes private property. That is why we are and will be conservatives (and feminists and non-racists) to the end of our lives.
1
Previous American forefather tied
telling the truth
with manhood.
He had a bad childhood.
According to the New York Times, 53 percent of the white female voters in this country voted for Donald Trump. Ninety-four percent of black women and 68 percent of Latina women voted for Hillary Clinton, but these votes were cast along racial and ethnic lines, not gender lines. One reason women voted for Trump is because their husbands, brothers, sons, and boyfriends are among the men affect by the decline in blue-collar jobs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/opinion/white-women-voted-trump-now-w...
1
OKAY! OKAY! I GET IT ALREADY. All white men are the problem. I hear it all the time. But how do you explain all the WOMEN who voted for Trump?
2
Trump's masculinity would have been at all times and in all places a phony blowhard masculinity. In olden days in America a masculine man would have been someone who could back up a guy in a bar fight. I would be happy to have had Washington, Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt behind me. (Not that any of them would be likely to be in a rowdy bar, or me either for that matter.) But Donald Trump? Worse than useless.
Could Donald Trump have endured cold and hunger at Valley Forge, Lincoln's childhood cabin, or Teddy's ranch in the Dakotas? You got to be kidding.
The ability to get laid a lot without being a famous superstar may create envy in male companions, but it does not create real admiration. Most guys understand that it requires some combination of over indulgence in alcohol, glib lying, false pretenses, and some degree of force, physical or social.
Trump is a masculine joke.
Thanks you for introducing me to Joan's Didion's illuminating essay:
"To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness."
I suspect that Didion has described the president's evenings, haunted by special counsel Mueller!
1
Hermione is awesome, both as written and as portrayed by Emma Watson. Hillary is a long-time enabler of her husband's sexual harassment, plus she has the kind of tin ear that lets her come up with phrases like "basket of deplorables".
1
It isn't just white angry males who voted for Trump.
42% of women voted for him also. What does this tell us? That obviously women do not value themselves and will let a man like Trump take away what freedoms they have about choices. Unfortunately it has become a "them or us" zero sum game. And women had a huge hand in this.
1
Tough talk, sure.
But when the going gets tough, the “tough” get bone spurs.
1
I agree with all of this but its a re-run of trump analysis and - dare I say - not revelatory and rather boring.
3
Jill, please get off your high horse and stop trying to lecture us wayward and childish men. Men, in general, are not responsible for Donald Trump any more than is every woman responsible the acts of Kim Kardashian. Over 50% of white women voted for Trump. I didn't vote for Trump and am not responsible for his acts any more than you, as a white woman, is responsible for the actions of Bianna Brochu. Brochu, if you don't know it, was the white woman who tried to poison her black college roommate, who she nicknamed "Jamaican Barbie".
We have a man in Donald Trump, who is totally unfit to be president and is damaging our country. Focus on that and don't try to divide your readers and set us one against the other by lumping us white men in with Trump.
3
Your analysis is spot on. Additionally, however, a case can be made that this white-power degenrate is in fact suffering from what would be a clinically diagnosed sociopathy by virtue of severe Personality Disorders. On of the hallmark traits of a male narcissistic sociopath is his complete and utter loathing of women. Hence, we hear nothing about Mary Anne Trump, it's always all about Fred. And notably, Ivana and Marla are virtually silent. As a former police detective, it sickens me that the law suit that names defendants Phil Epstein and Donald Trump as having raped and sexually tormented a thirteen-year-old girl numerous times in 1994 just poof! went away.
1
Please, the Republican President is no man, he's a rich, draft-dodging coward who thrives on name calling and hiding behind his attorneys and Generals. Please Mr President, step into the cage...
1
Thank you for this well-penned piece. You put into eloquent words the heart of the battle raging in the U.S. - a battle to reshape not only white men’s identity as family, community, god-like benevolent king and caretaker to nurturing mother-women, but also men’s and perhaps more importantly, women’s, support of an evolving women’s identity that increasingly incorporates traditionally male qualities of leadership, independence, and professional expertise. In the 2018 midterm elections, will white women and women of color stand together in their vote against misogyny and for equal opportunity for both men and women to take on leadership and care taking roles? I certainly hope so.
6
Let's be honest, columns like this just feed the Trump hater. The Trump supporter, who may or may not have the juvenile characteristics of Trump, will just shrug their shoulders. And remember many women voted for him. Funny how some women just love "bad boys".
In the end there will be no warm memories of Trump. The enduring legacy of Trump will be more akin to the nightmare of Domestic Abuse and bad divorces.
There will be a fortune to be made in T-shirts that say:
"I survived the Age of Trump."
5
Donald Trump is the anti-Christ of statesmanship, an inverted caricature of all the positive qualities of leadership. Thank you, Ms. Filipovic for so skillfully skewering his equally paradoxical nature as a male role model.
3
Donald Trump and his followers have put a stake in the heart of American Exceptionalism, such as it was.
4
The choice for men in America is not between two male archetypes. Trump is far too flawed to represent anything but unbridled machination. A man without a moral core, he flits from ill formed positions on issues he does not understand and replaces thoughtfulness with reactivity. There is a threshold of tolerance for this manipulative kind of manhood, when it is reached he will begin a tail spin into insignificance, surrounded by the apologist stooges who prop him up.
1
I am wondering if Hillary regrets abandoning her Goldwater roots. She would probably be president now if she had not. Which way the wind is blowing is always difficult to ascertain. She and her husband are the epitome of the power hungry politicians who lack all conviction. I voted for her but not with any enthusiasm, that had gone out the window after Obama's capitulation on bailouts, government option, drone wars and other triangulations. If all of that was on account of white men, then guilty as charged, I confess.
The brush with which you paint is over large. My suggestion is to organize around the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. You can count on me and many other males who despise Trump and everything he stands for but it would help to understand the fight is not gender or culturally based. It is based on the oppression of the many by the few.
It is hopeless, I'll grant you, to swing the ignorant, prejudiced whites. I have worked among them, most of them are as vile as the president and the party he represents. Women have it tough and I would love to see them in the vanguard of a movement that brings social justice, inclusiveness and shared prosperity. It's a fight I've been waiting for my entire life, since I was first able to read. Soon I will be dead, no longer a witness to history, lumped into a demographic whose passing will be applauded. What happens then is up to new generations, in whom I see hope. But right now, I am ashamed to be white.
6
With the possible exception of some in his family, Donald Trump lacks the ability to befriend or cooperate with anyone. He's only comfortable in antagonistic relationships - relationships where he is right and the other person is wrong. Unfortunately, this unhealthy trait carries over into his professional (word used loosely) dealing, and make him uniquely unqualified to be president. There is little wonder that nothing gets done.
See:
RevolutionOfReason.com
TheRogueRevolutionist.com
5
Geez Jill, you sure do paint a lot of men as losers. But you are right on target with your comments. Too many men are not living up to their duties as human beings. Whether Trump, Weinstein, Spacey (and the list goes on and could include Bill Clinton and a host of other politicians), too many men have a warped sense of right and wrong. And the list could also include people such as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Gingrich, Hannity etc. who put they one self interest ahead of the common good.
5
There are a lot of wonderful men out there, unfortunately they don't tend to make headlines.
I get sick and tired of people trying to impute higher motives to Trump voters. There is a slice of those folks who felt desperation over the economy and things like the opioid crisis. Probably 75% of those who voted for Trump were hardcore partisans who would have voted for any R on the ticket. Many of those voted out of pure spite, based on the memes that twenty-plus years of nasty right wing media have produced. The hell with the lofty explanations; this election more than anything was about nasty human, tribal pettiness and competition. Much of that centers around the feared slippage in the mental pecking order of whites and white males. No one who fell for the most obvious con in history has any right to complain about how this is going. Trump voters are the fools who cut off their own noses to spite the other person's face.
8
I did not suspect that so many NYT readers/commenters were psychiatrists who were able to diagnose mental illness from afar. Of course that's only my opinion!
1
If Jill were to write an article attacking black women the way she attacks white men (not just Trump, she included all white men), she would rightly be called both racist and sexist.
The constant theme of anger directed at white men is only going to serve the interest of Trump, and may well get him reelected. The double standard is clear to see. But besides that reality, it's just wrong to do. Don't attack people for their race or gender.
2
Except for the fact that such an article couldn't be written.
TRUMP'S Family legacy of masculinity was, no doubt, strongly influenced by his father. The father who, in 1926, was arrested after participating in a KKK rally, for fighting with police. No doubt Trump learned his violence and racist ideas at his father's knee. Not to mention the forms of physical and emotional violence he was most likely subjected to. Donald used to start food fights when invited to birthday parties. Children do not spontaneously start food fights, unless they see examples of such behavior at home. Such as during episodes of domestic violence. There is a strong probability that Donald witnessed, and/or is a survivor of domestic violence. KKK members are not known for their gentle childrearing practices.
Hillary hate, stupidty, envy, terrorized by thug husbands, misplaced ‘faith’, ...
Enjoyed this piece. It always baffles me how these so-called men who line up for Trump beat their chests and cry about personal accountability as it concerns others (usually weaker targets), but demonstrate so little of it themselves. It used to be that leadership by example was supposed to inspire people to be better, but what we've got now just gives men an excuse to be as lazy and awful as they want to be. Today's GOP truly is the small penis club.
5
While I agree with the basic premise of the article, much is unsupported rhetoric and ignores what has long been a stealth trend of the GOP, namely, the idea that "real men" vote Republican. In 2004, an athletic genuine war hero, a medal-winning Vietnam veteran of numerous battles, was branded as an effete elitist, a "metrosexual" (whatever that is, but it sound less than manly), and was beaten by a draft-dodging recovering alcoholic and drug addict who had bumbled us into 2 wars and an economic collapse, whose sole qualification was being the 3rd generation of a power-elite family.
They've poured out this image of the "libtard"--skinny, or fat, weak, whiny, effeminate, unproductive, or worse, NOT White (!) while "real men" sound like the voice-over guy in the Ford Trucks. Clint Eastwood cursing out Obama at the 2012 GOP convention. John Wayne and the Marlboro man--even Arnold Schwarzenegger, all "manly" Republicans. Is it any wonder that they not only eviscerated Obama for being Black, they claimed he is Gay, and Hillary Clinton is a Lesbian? Long before Trump was anything more than another regular of Howard Stern's "Whack Pack".
But what the article ignores is that more White women voted for Trump, a man they'd never let near their daughters, than for Hillary, a woman who always fought for women's issues.
Has America gone mad, stupid, or what?
6
LEBOWSKI
Funny–I can look back on a life of achievement, on challenges met, competitors bested, obstacles overcome. I’ve accomplished more than most men, and without the use of my legs. What?What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?
DUDE
Dude.
LEBOWSKI
Huh?
DUDE
Uh, I, I don’t know, sir.
LEBOWSKI
Is it being prepared to do the right thing? Whatever the cost? Isn’t that that makes a man?
DUDE
Ummm..sure. That and a pair of testicles.
5
I was raised the son of an autoworker and a stay-at-home mother of six in a post-WWII suburb that offered white people the American Dream. I was 270 lbs in high school, began college on a football scholarship, and almost killed myself for three decades attempting to approximate a damaging fiction of masculinity. Much of the last 30 years I've worked to overcome the first 30. Now when I hear this pathetic foot-stamper whining about the hurts he thinks he has suffered, it is so similar to the countless white people I know who relentlessly insist that "No one gave me anything," or "We all have the same opportunities," or, well, you know. Trump is like King Lear demanding his daughters fawn over him; his Cabinet and apologists are the 100 knights following the declining king around the kingdom seeking diversions (did Lear golf? was he Scottish?). But unlike Lear there is no evidence that Trump was once noble; that his is not a diminishment but a never was. I once bench-pressed 450 lbs; I once put my fist through doors because it felt good. Now teach Humanities in an urban school, spending what is left of my life with the kids that neither Trump, nor any one who would associate with him, knows or cares about. My wife has my full support as she works as a freelance writer. Every day my 16 year old son tells me he loves me, and I tell him the same. We have a new grandson. Graced is learning at 60 what it means to be a man.
15
I can't even begin to tell you what your post means to me. My very best wishes to you and your family.
What is striking about Trump is something that goes unmentioned in this piece: his admiration of violence. He encouraged people to fight at his rallies (offering to pay legal fees if aggressors got sued), frankly admires torture (he wants something even worse than waterboarding), likes the idea of the police being rough with suspects, hates the idea of negotiation, loves to make outrageously bellicose threats ("fire and fury like the world has never seen"), wants to build more nuclear weapons, and asked what the point of nukes is if you don't use them.
This is from a man who never served in the military, never played a competitive sport growing up that required running and jumping (not golf), eschews serious exercise, and I imagine has never done yard work or even carried heavy boxes into his house.
This is a bully's fantasy, and one that could only come from someone who has no experience with actual combat or physicality: a weakling's dream of the physical power to hurt someone.
7
He's a bully. Bullies lack self-confidence so they must resort to behavior like this. Real men don't act this way. Real men are confident and do not need to belittle other people. Real men don't have to talk tough.
6
It would be nice to focus on Trump and his enablers without bringing gender into it along with the usual feminist generalisation about all men etc etc. Hence "White male power remains a dominant force in America, but it is no longer the only force that matters. For many men, this is not a leveling of the playing field, but a plundering of what was rightly theirs"
IF true, for many women , who apparently voted for Trump, this was not an obstacle. Writing feel-good articles is not a constructive means of getting rid of the moron in the White House. Try harder to channel your indignation creatively.
3
As a progressive man, this is a depressing portrait of my gender peers. Clearly, Donald Trump is all the worst bits of American masculinity rolled into one package. The fact that he’s the president does not justify him as a role model for anyone more advanced than a Neanderthal—which is an insult to Neanderthals.
There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to grow up to be a man. To move beyond the entitled and shiftless version occupying his parent’s basement but living life online, where he gets to celebrate his masculinity through porn and violent video games. He needs to grow to be responsible for his own care and those who need that care around him. He needs to have the courage to say the most powerful of words, “I’m sorry, I was wrong,” as he emerges into the sunlight.
Too bad that time has passed for the Groper in Chief. Too bad for the rest of us.
3
I decided to pay money to subscribe to the NYT because I thought that by actually paying for news I would get a higher quality of journalism and reasoned opinion. What I seem to be getting is targeted slanders that pander to whomever the NYT wants to elevate as their core readership. I'm no fan of Trump, but these articles do nothing to advance the country or society in general.
2
Let's stop making this a "male" issue. Yes, Trump is an idiot and a jerk, but so is my female boss, who shares most of the traits that makes Trump so noxious. Being close-minded, unintelligent, power-hungry and delusional are by no means exclusively male traits.
5
You're right. I'm a woman and I've worked with and for some truly rotten women.
At the moment men hold most of the power in the world so their bad behavior makes headlines and has a greater impact.
Although the writer makes gross feminist generalizations about men (well, actually, in keeping with PC convention, white men), she certainly has Trump nailed,
2
"White American men loved it." (Trump's victory.) This offensive generalization shadows a provocative piece. Some white American men did. Many were appalled, a complicating factor for your sweeping thesis. As you certainly know but do not state, a majority of white American women "loved" Trump's election as well - at least they voted for him. How does that inconvenient truth fit into your sweeping gender-divided binary analysis? How do you propose to deal with the many women -- an apparent majority of 2016 voters - who wanted the postmodern adolescent man-child in charge, instead of a - gulp - woman?
3
Inspired, informative, excellent. Thank you.
2
This article is right on point. I think many, many people out there saw the prospect of the first black president followed by the first female president and thought, "Well, this has gone just too far! Why, everybody's gonna get 'uppity' if we don't nip this in the bud." It makes me sad and it makes me mad.
1
He would improve like the lion that had the thorn removed from his paw, That is, if the thorn was in his paw and he wasn't born with it.
Trump is a fraud, a racist, a bully and a proto fascist, an exemplar of deformed and absurd versions of masculine ideals. That persona was instrumental in appealing to those who felt marginalized by Obama's egalitarian mode defending the vulnerable regardless of race, religion, sexual identity or national origin. Trump's grandiose and deceptive agenda to rid our Nation of the 'other' was the primary reason he won. He played us with a grotesque version of American male dominance. The reality is that there are many men of honor devoted to their wives and daughters and professional colleagues who are women in positions of power with responsibilities they meet with estimable competence and character serving the needs of all in an egalitarian mode that relies on equity and opportunity for each. Trump does NOT represent all men. And...yes...men are not all heterosexual...there is a range of sexual identities. Ms Filipovic's last line is the best, "The virtues of self respect, toughness, moral nerve, character, have never been, unlike the presidency, male-only business." Amen...
1
Steve Schmidt, Republican strategist, in a discussion of Putin's taunting Trump for his weakness, said it best: "There is no flower quite as delicate as the
male ego. And in America, there is ONE flower more delicate than All."
And what does it say that 53% of white women voters supported him? As a white woman feminist that’s an utterly depressing figure to think about.
3
They should hang a sign on the White House door, "He-Man Woman Haters Club, No Gurlz Allowed."
1
... And in conclusion- White American Men are looting and burning their "own neighborhood." And another thing- the behavior here can be summed up as "just plain lazy;" Lazy in the head.
Thoughtful, and simultaneously entertaining, essay. Now, if only The Donald was smart enough and brave enough to read and understand this piece!
1
YES! This is just about the smartest analysis of our current social and political nightmare I have read. Now that we understand the male Trump voter, I would love this author’s take on the 53% of white women who voted against their own self interest in choosing Trump. And then I would love to hear real solutions for how to reach these people, show them how they were duped without shaming them, and persuade them to choose a better path in 2018 and 2020.
3
Thoughtful essay. It seems true that many men are stuck in adolescence.
But Trump is a peculiar sort of person because of his personality disorder which has been evident since he was very young.
Even still, with his behavior, why did so many white women vote for him. It wasn't all women, it was white women.
You can't untangle racism -- the fear of the decline of white power --- from his election, and from the continued support he receives from this group. Sad.
1
There is much to agree with here from the perspective of this 69 y/o white male medical professional feminist Clinton voter who has done most of the grocery shopping and cooking over a 47+ year marriage to his white female medical professional feminist Clinton voter high school sweetheart. However, I am at pains to remind you that it was white women who were a major source of Trump's electoral college victory and the only segment of female voters who otherwise went overwhelmingly for Clinton. Arguably, they were resigned to the outdated "boys will be boys" view of men and regarded Clinton as "a threat to their fantasy of femininity."
3
Very well written; why this Republican loves the NY Times. Well done indeed.
Fascism was first defined in the 1895 book by Mosca, "The Ruling Class." I believe Fred Trump's advice to Donald once is confirmed to have been, "Be a killer. Be a king." Mosca's theory of fascist power was that competing elites would get together and eliminate opposition to their ongoing advantage. In my thinking, Trump is Boris Yeltzin-like figure who "everyman" can relate to. But by 2020, America will have what follows in the wake of the destabilized and fractured and bankrupted global military empire... a war state from hell.
I am starting the Uniparty1
This thank you to the NY Times is my announcement of it.
The 1 is important. That's you
We are united
We are the people of the United States
We are responsible
We cannot change the world.
But we can change the world around us...each 1 of us.
I got the domain tonight, along with Heartvote.com and others.
I gotta try to make something good. Trump is a warm up act to death camps under NDAA 2012 (by 2024: article 1022, no right to trial "for duration of hostilities."
3
OKI, here's the manifesto:
"I cannot change the world,
But I can set an example and change the world around me...
and identify policies and people who support my vision- independent of party"
We the People must be one, united! Uniparty1... each and every 1
Brilliant column; thank you, Jill Filipovic!
1
A person, you wouldn't want your daughter to be alone with or your wife, either. What does that say about him!
2
At last, a plausible explanation of the inexplicable.
1
A well written, easy to follow,unhelpful, unnuanced,analysis of Trump as…Now what?I presume,without knowing or understanding,that the author is against selected types of “profiling.”And their violating uses.And yet she has “profiled” Trump.His male-minions,etc.With great certitude.To what end(s)?Trump,as a complex PERSON?In his various roles.THEN. Now.In the near,and distant,future.Is he a complicated, unidimensional, stick-figure?A fellow being? A complex unpredictable entity?Whose repetitious words and deeds, and those unsaid and not carried out ones- which need to be-are documentable.Daily. So far. So what? Let’s focus only on the diverse USA.On each of US. As a diverse people.With a range of internal and external, available and accessible,resources.Strengths and flaws.Functioning in good enough ways.Daily.In a range of roles.Environments.Networks.Situations.How does/can this article’s “thesis” help US to adequately understand the daily, violating WE-THEY culture which we have enabled.Actively.Complacently. From way back THEN.Until NOW.And if its toxicity is not effectively stopped, changed, TOMORROW as well. Diverse Americans hated long before Trump and his minions.Whatever their psyches.Their socio-economic state today and tomorrow.Their faithful religiosity.As well as BEING theologically-free,religious-in-name-only.All of US freely contribute(d) to daily discrimination. Dehumanization.Exclusion.Marginalization.Willful blindness. Deafness. Ignorance about what is.Isn't
Does this honestly make senses, “both archetypes are ones we’ve never seen before,” ?!?
2
Watch him and his followers then harken back to your elementary school playground and that bully who had a cluster of followers. That child that needed to put down anyone and everyone to make them feel better about themselves. Then roll that 10 year old forward to his 70's and in the position of President. Then this all makes sense, this "man" never emotionally left the playground and never matured enough to stop being that bully. His followers are all the same kind of people who followed him like sheep in 5th grade too.
4
"Almost a year ago, he won the presidential election by presenting this version of aggrieved manhood in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s hand-raising Hermione Granger feminism. White American men loved it."
Not this white American man!
Jerry N E Kingdom VT
5
Give me good, ole “diversary” any day of the week. What a ding dong! “Telling it like it is” doesn’t extend to non-whites and women.
I could only read about half the article - too depressing for words. Why did God do this to us?
This piece explains why angry white men voted for Trump. Now I need someone to explain to me why a majority of white women voted for Trump.
3
I care little about definitions about what it is to be a man. Trump has no spiritual life. He has never enlarged himself beyond serving his ego needs and appears to have no inner life. He is completely and utterly soulless.
His childhood was one of emotional trauma and neglect. He was never taught any values. A teaching for me and all parents.
2
"A yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office"? Hardly.
In reality both major parties put up terrible candidates in 2016. Voters had a choice between a tool and a corporate tool, and they chose one.
3
Overlooked I think is that Donald Trump never did become the man he wanted to be. Too much fear and timidity created the old failing person we see now
3
Another name for Trump's behavior is toxic masculinity - which at its core is fear driven self destruction, masquerading as manliness. It is always,by its nature, a function of a lack of character and moral values. It's another sign of the basic degeneracy of the American character - most specifically of the character of White America - that he enjoys so much support, including among those who vicariously identify with his boorishness and bullying.
2
Barack Obama - the new ideal progressive man whose policies hamstrung the economy and reduced our stature around the world during an 8 year interlude of self-flagellation.
Donald Trump - the old world macho chauvinist who restored the economy and the "can do" attitude that made America great again.
Tough choice.
1
He restores nothing. The improvement in the economy is all because of policies left over from President Obama. Trump has given our allies the jitters, waffles on NAFTA and other trade issues, thus unsettling our trade partners and US business and all but upended health care. He is an unmitigated disaster.
This kind of idiocy is stunning. Do you really not read any economic news? You might want to start.
We should be mindful now of what Donald says, and remember to take his words (or lack of), with a pinch of salt. In this particular case, women AND men elected Donald in my opinion because an absence of knowledge. To put it nicely, both genders displayed an inability to make crucial decisions. Especially when knowing their very actions can have consequences. It was a careless fiasco! It’s liking jumping straight into a relationships purely based on appearance with getting to know the other’s character and mannerism. A complete disregard to other human qualities. Trump lacks self-respect and he will never in my view anyway be a global representative for men across the country, mainly because of the coming out party he has provoked regarding women. Trump has brought out this section of male’s during the campaign that express the true feeling of women. It’s a sad period of our history but we need to share responsibility, and reminder ourselves daily that Trump is NOT a true representation of males.
2
Perhaps 150 million people who saw anti Hillary ads (compliments of the Russians), on Facebook, and zero anti Trump ads, may have had something to do with Hillary losing,despite the fact she had 3 million more votes. Trump and the Russians truly stole this election.
3
Now if we can only "contain" this little experiment, AKA Donald Trump, just long enough to get to the next rendition of leadership without the blowing-up business, progress will march along, if a little bumpy.
P.S., I don't think you give women nearly enough credit for giving us the DT presidency.
Trump is early-middle boomer. John Wayne is a demi-god to him. This man represents the boomers who didn't want to share a coke. Who, except for Donny, volunteered for Vietnam and are still trying to win that war and the war on civil rights.
Ok. You have some viable arguments for the angry white male theory of Trumpism. But what about the many women who voted for him? You make no argument regarding their choice of Trump.
You have too narrowly focus on the white male tribalism aspect of Trumpism and missed that it is part of a tribalism. What was is no longer -- blue collar work is no longer a career that will support a family on one income and will take a man from cradle to grave. The focal points of community are becoming less relevant, in particular churches, as the population becomes more secular and other religions migrate into areas of the country where they were previously absent.
Look at where the core of Trumpsim thrives. It's not in the cities where single income blue collar families have been struggling for years. The population has been heavily mixed racially and in religion for years. There is no need to resist those changes because they came about years ago.
Angry white men may be the core of Trumpism but they are not enough to deliver the presidency to him. It took a much broader base of fear. Remember how the economy was failing, Obamacare was failing, treaties were the worst ever, etc. Driving fear further and further is what pulled people to a man who promised to return their country to them and "Make America Great Again" -- what ever that meant to the listener.
Step back from the tree and look at the forest.
1
Wonderful column, Ms. Filipovic. I, too, note the tendency in the younger generation of men to do more hands-on parenting, to be involved with family life, to pitch in with housework, and to appreciate the contributions of their hard-working wives. None wants his children to model themselves after Mr. Trump or any of his wives, even some with considerable wealth.
Men and their wives who voted for and abet Mr. Trump even after this disastrous year, who model their family lives like the Trump's husband to wife--"I'm boss; you're nothing."--tend to be undereducated, underachieving, and unambitious. Having a savior in Mr. Trump sets them free from taking more responsibility for their own situations. He will fix everything.
Mr. Trump's hold over the psyches of these poor befuddled souls will loosen as they catch onto the fact that their messiah has come to deliver the message, "There is no messiah." It may take some time.
3
Anyone who knows any real tough guys knows Trump ain't one. He reminds me of a small time businessman who maybe knows a made guy or two and thinks their whatever rubs off on him. Such people are to be laughed at, but think they are tough. The fact that so many are fooled by him is disheartening
3
There is nothing "modern" about Obama and Trump as far as men go. It can all be put in the context of being 13. Obama was the cool smart guy with a sense of humor with no need for much attention. Trump was the whiner who needed attention and got into fights because he insulted and irritated other guys and girls. In gym class or after school, someone like Obama will eventually beat him up because Trump will cross the line ad nauseum. Throughout life, a guy like Trump is always overcompensating for feeling inferior.
As far as the comment, "Most men also continue to fall short when it comes to household responsibilities..." Really? Is that what women think about "most men"? I would be roundly reprimanded if I mentioned how "most women" fall short in the (feminine) "caregiving, devotion, compassion" categories, much less in regards to (masculine) "power, respect, dependability, providing." Why don't we just "creep closer" to giving each a break.
I definitely do not want to co-opt the powerful expression that #metoo has given rise to amongst women, but there should be something similar for men who live and practice all of the aspects delineated here of Obama-like masculine character. We're largely silent, but we are, I believe, the large majority of men in this nation who aspire to, and sometimes even reach!, that level of male character -- and it's because we know that we miss so much of life if we don't. I liked changing my son's diapers when he was little. It was a wonderful opportunity for face to face chatter and communication. Trump has no clue on how much he's missed and how much better a man all that could have made him.
3
Great column ; thoughtful and well-stated . Although the insights offered are scary , there's nothing as refreshing as the truth . As another contributor mentioned , the danger of this kind of male chauvinism is mostly present amongst heterosexual males .
1
I'm a "mature" white man, and I've hated every single second of trump's ascension and destruction of the presidency, civility, reason, etc, etc.
I am also a former republican (Gingrich and Rove and the Moral Majority's abuse of truth set me free), former Marine, gun owner, a patriot, and a full out liberal. We all have to get comfortable with people being more than 1 dimensional.
6
In all respect, I feel as if the author of this article very strongly puts out a "If you're not with us, you're against us" message. Throughout history, women and men have always assumed certain gender roles in society. Whilst these gender roles are becoming less apparent now, men and women are fundamentally different. Women per average tend to excel better than men in scholarly pursuits (I would go farther and even argue that women per average exhibit further intelligence and reasoning); Men tend to enroll in military more than women, etc. I'm not saying that a man is greater than a female or vice-versa, but rather stating that (especially in family life) both genders are socially wired to take on certain roles in familial life, for example. In a family, for instance, you NEED a father and a mother. Often more times than not, the father is looked up to as the disciplinary figure whilst the mother assumes more intimate relationships with the children. If you take a look at single mother families, children struggle with the exclusion of just ONE parent (as seen through the 60% likelihood for single-parent children ending up in prison by the age of 30). Tying in all of this information, it is clear to see why people of older generations, such as Donald Trump, take on more masculine male roles. I don't think all roles associated with masculinity have to show white supremacy or inherent superior feelings; Traditional masculine roles shouldn't be associated with Trump's antics.
Great piece (although I worry that you overestimate male evolution in respect of family-care and what men still-too-usually regard as "women's work").
Otherwise, your writing ability depressingly shakes my confidence in my own -- but .... small ego-consolation .... but having Googled it, I'm glad I had to Google "Hermione Granger."
1
djt may have an XY genotype, but nary a clue about anything truly masculine. Nor truly feminine, for that matter.
;-(
2
As a middle school teacher that is deeply invested in the development of ethical citizens, the most important qualities of the President of the United States for my students are those of character first, politics second. Words matter. Behavior matters. How the most powerful man in the world exercises that power -– in day to day interactions — has a profound impact on the young people of our nation.
If our current president were a student in any of the schools in which I have taught, he would be expelled on multiple accounts. He is a quintessential bully, petty, arrogant and abusive of those with less power. He is the absolute worst of what it means to be human, a monster of masculinity run amok.
It is a sad day indeed when we need to use the behavior of the President of the United States as a model for what NOT to do for our students.
4
You´re spot on about Trump exemplifying power without accountability and in your analysis of how he profited from this particular trend of white male whining.
But I wish you, and every other Clinton cheerleader, would finally put to rest that tone-deaf claim about her ´qualitications´ for the presidency, about how she was 'the most qualified' or 'one of the most qualified' in history. That's the kind of claim Trump gets laughed at for.
This office is not one for which your 'formal' qualifications or experience are the only criterion - you also have to achieve a connection to your audience of citizens, to convince them that you re on their side, that you care, that you're not in it (only) for yourself, that you understand the average American. This Clinton failed to do; this failure led to low enthusiasm and low turnout among Democrats in key states; the unqualified guy promising changes in Washington won over the policy wonk who had already lived in the White House.
Acknowledging the flaws in your candidate's campaign is also a matter of character.
2
Since Trump was elected we often have conversations about white male masculinity but I don't often hear about the belief system of white female femininity. Among some Trump voting women that I know, there is much anger about the fact that they must work. They wish their husbands could be more like Mr. Trump. These women don't have careers, they have jobs. They work hard, but wish they could stay at home with their children. They envy Melania and the appearance that she has much time to be massaged, dressed and styled. These women hated Hillary Clinton and Michele Obama because they were career women. They loved Barbara, and Laura Bush and even Jackie Kennedy because they represented a kind of womanhood where there was no pressure to have a career. Frankly, we are talking too much about manhood and not enough about womanhood. An awful lot of women voted for Mr. Trump and support him still no matter what he says or does. They want to be Melania and would settle for even being Marla or Ivana.
4
I've been re-watching some of the old (10-20-30 year old) TV series being rerun on Netflix, and it's surprising how many of them feature at least one prominent white male character who spends a good deal of his time and energy running after women for one-night stands. The women they run after are portrayed as sex objects, and the white male characters are permitted to make comment after comment about their insatiable sexual desires and disregard for how women might feel about men's predatory behavior. Some of these characters were funny, and we all laughed along with the laugh-track. Along the way, we may have numbed a whole generation of TV watchers to the hideousness of having this kind of "character" as our so-called president now residing in the White House.
3
"White American men loved it ..." I've never found Donald to be anything other than disgusting, an opinion shared by almost every White and Brown American man in my circle of friends. It's true that he has his supporters, but we consistently exaggerate his support and attribute it to skin color. I don't live in a bubble. I have friends who are Republicans who find Trump ludicrous and I couldn't imagine any of them holding Donald up as a model for their sons. Quite the opposite. Our society is alienated and disaffected. We systematically depreciate the contributions of common people and focus admiration on icons of "success." I don't think Democrats offered a candidate who offered a real answer to our malady. We rejected Sanders for a technocrat.
1
whoa, I'm a gamer and participate in gaming forums. I'm a 57 year old female physician. Careful with the gamer vilification, there's tons of serious female gamers.
having pointed that out, i agree, T-boy is not only monumentally unqualified but also is guilty of treason.
13
While I completely agree with the analysis in this opinion piece, I must ask:how 53% of white American women could vote for him.in light of Trump's crude character flaws, ugly entitled behaviour and vivicious opinions? The fact that this presidency happened means that this model of behaviour is deeply accepted at some level across gender lines. A good Marxist with a sense of humour might say that money and class entitlement trumps gender and race.
2
The only thing Trump has to hold on to his bravado, and " it's all gone pear-shaped." All his on-going bravado is really just a kind of crucial "faking it to make it."
This man is not capable of a complete thought.
1
Insightful article. I have had similar thoughts, but you said them very well. I am a white male who was married to modern women who had careers of their own and have done very well. When I was with the children, I cared for them and nurtured them. I'm not a weak person, but more traditional white males have called me a "coward" or a "pervert" because I express no derision toward homosexuals and don't endorse the macho cavalier attitude toward women.
5
Another Trump critique. These articles hardly seem a public service; Trump is fully on display for all to judge. Far as I can tell, Hillary has had jobs she was qualified for on her way to not smashing the glass ceiling. Getting elected would have qualified her for the presidency. These candidates wore masks of naughty and nice; some voters surely must have chosen based on a feeling of who could better be trusted to govern a society they could be comfortable living in. The new elite had a good run with Obama, but it's concerns seemed to be making inroads on old ways that some cling to just as stubbornly. Too bad they had to lose to a rich, spoiled brat and a rough beast. Let's see what happens next time.
1
I think that the blinding glare of Trump's definition of a "manly man" is made more so because the last two presidents showed respect for women, have a moral compass, which is so sadly lacking in the man we now have in the WH.
The glaring difference between these three men just brings out Trump's failures as white on a black background is more easily seen.
3
Hillary was not the most qualified to be President. While, she was obviously the only qualified candidate during the 2016 election, she was so badly flawed and disliked that she lost. The DNC made a horrible mistake with her. One hopes the DNC gets its act together and finds the right people now. Michelle Obama?
2
According to Donna Brazille and Elizabeth Warren, the DNC did not choose Hillary, Hillary bought them off with a contract that traded her fundraising ability for her control of spending and hiring decisions. Just like Donald Trump, she used money to rig the system and install corrupt influencers in the party apparutus. Unlike Trump, she did not extend her corruption beyond the party level. And she lost.
This concept is analogous to sexual harassment and abuse. This is 100% about control of others. It doesn't matter who it is: women, African-Americans, homosexuals, Hispanics, transgender individuals, or people of different religions. This is about exerting control over and dominance of other human beings for one's own benefit. There is little doubt that the longer this goes on, the more offensive this will become. And support for Trump will peel away. It does not have to be a lot of individuals. Look at any bully: there are always those standing around cheering him on who, deep down inside, regret standing there. They sense the loathing of the people on the other side. And know they are right. There is always a tipping point. Trump's undoing will lie in thinking there isn't one.
2
But why did all the women vote for Trump?
1
If what Donna Brazile says is right Trump did not win the election.....Hillary lost it not because she is a woman but because she was an entitled spoiled brat who put her own ego and interest above the nation's. Americans had a unifying candidate they could get behind. Trump is a bad joke and one can only hope that voters elect enough Dems to block the demographically doomed Repubs before they do too much damage .
2
>
100% Correct.
Thanks Bernie supporters that did NOT vote for HRC. You really showed us with your Yosemite Sam logic.
N.b., it's an incorrigible leap of reason, childish, and a commitment to ignorance for the order of things to assume that because HRC was an imperfect candidate that Bernie would have beat Trump. The GOP would have wiped the floor with Bernie.
2
Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know.
The thing is, who could have imagined someone with all the glaring flaws that Trump has would actually win? Bernie might possibly HAVE won, despite the things his detractors could find to attack him with, simply because he was as outside-the-mainstream as Trump was.
I voted for Hillary after supporting Bernie in the primary, but I can see her flaws. I can see Bernie's, too. No one is perfect.
Who cares about what it takes to be a good man or a good woman. In our current discourse, gendered values seem incredibly dated. Just be a good person which basically boils down to the Golden Rule. Matthew 7:12.
13
A better rule is to 'do unto others as they would have you do unto them', the platinum rule. The Golden Rule is a good start, but is essentially self referenced.
He is everything you say he is, and more. However, as you state, his money allowed him to procreate with three different women.....what does that say about them and the men and women that raised them? If we don't start teaching respect and self respect to all children, the Trump man/child model will continue to represent the height of achievement for very poorly parented people who just happen to have lots of money that they really haven't earned.
1
Yes,
There are "plenty" of men, like me, who are married to high achieving women. I worked full time, did all the shopping and the cooking all these years (my wife did the dish clean up), changed thousands of diapers during my kids babyhood.
But, man, that is some real work. I mean...some....real....work....
and, there are more than "plenty" white men who are just not into real, hard, dirty work (anymore).
3
this is embarrassing, a perfect mirror of Trumpian discourse with longer words. We are definitely a suicidal party, rushing like lemmings to the nearest cliff from which we hurl insults. No introspection, no acknowledgements of mistakes made and arrogance unrestrained.
You didn't need to publish this to increase the scorn of what you probably call the "depolorables" -- you've already earned it
1
Hillary Clinton was no Hermionie Granger! Hermionie never sought leadership saying she was entitled to it by virtue of her gender! How dare you besmirch a feminist character thus?
If Barak Obama once, just once, said that people should vote for him because he was black he never, but never ever ever ever, would have been elected.
3
Jill, a wonderful statement of truth about Trump.
1
trump is the quintessential 1950s bully on the beach looking to kick sand into the eyes of some poor slob. He's so clumsy and clueless, however, it's his own eyes that end up full of sand.
2
There are more serious matters happening in the United States that psychobabble about President Donald Trump. The Country is being deliberately and systematically dismantled and yet Op ED pieces still consist of simple name-calling. Surely it is time to end the fun and concentrate on more serious matters?
1
Jill
Sorry, you succumb to some overgeneralizations to make your ‘case.’
I’m white, male, 60, identify with the grace and noble qualities of President Obama. But you’ve got me “loving it” when Trump won? I detest the guy, but slash-and-burn wastes our collective energy when we should be taking political action to defeat him and his puppets. I’m disappointed in your rather shallow analysis.
2
Trump is a man without self-confidence. All the confidence he has comes from sycophants. He is somebody because of his money. Take this away and he is an empty barrel.
4
The Alt-Right, and its GOP adherence have crossed the threshold between politics and religion, and now reside firmly on the other side. Steve Bannon has been installed as the prophet of this religious sect, with Donald Trump as its high priest. I cite the following:
1) Steve Bannon bragged that he was Darth Vader, and was proud of crossing to the dark side
2) Boehner confirmed that the rest of the GOP leadership had also crossed over to the dark side
3) Trump indicated that both Confederate Generals and Nazis had "good people" among them
4) Kelly reiterated that Robert E. Lee was a "noble person", and that slavery was negotiable
5) Trump praises tyrants like Putin and Ergodan, who oppress their citizens as "smart people"
6) Trump stated that the Chinese leadership's oppression of their people was "a smart thing to do"
7) Trump, like fascists of the past, rules by demonizing his enemies (Federal Judges, Cruz's father)
8) Trump has taken Paula White as his female prophetess, who believes that success "trumps" ethics
Many of Trump's supporters take a religious view of Trump as their "savior", and are impossible to reason with. Trump bragged that only he could save the nation. No one else. He also famously bragged that he could shoot people on the streets of New York, and get away with it.
Trump is a religious figure, and must be seen as one to defeat his policies and politics.
3
If Donald Trump were just another polite, considerate, conscientious, and a well mannered politically correct sort of nice guy, he wouldn't be our president today now would he. Instead, he is intimidating, ruthless, articulate, evasive, a scoundrel, fast on the draw, an impossible to pin down on anything sort of guy. We never know what he will say or do next. Perfect for these politically up in the air times which chewed up all the other so called politicians he came up against in this last election. Even his clumsiness in delicate situations reveals he is already preparing for what is up ahead. In times of war men become soldiers and in those critical moments the best of them will behave like dogs. Is it not a war, he and our country are up against.
1
Mr. Trump’s journey through life has consisted of one swindle after another.
Whether it was his phony baloney bone spurs to beat the draft; his bankrupting of Atlantic City; his eviction of senior citizens from his properties; his cheap neckties made in China; his defrauding of students at Trump University; his birtherization project; his tax avoidance schemes; his dalliances with Mr. Putin; his alliance with Sheriff Joe; or his hanging around beauty contests to ogle teenagers, his motive has always been the same: to get more of everything for himself in the cheapest, basest way he can.
We need to stop psychoanalyzing this man in hopes of changing him or changing the outcome of future events for the better. We already know that he is a man supremely unconcerned about everyone but himself. We already know that he is a man of profoundly low character. We already know that he is an ignoramus who never should have been elected President. We already know that as long as he remains in office, our very future as a people will remain in danger.
I don’t care about health care, the environment, tax relief or North Korea. These are all minor matters compared to him.
I just want him turned out of office. For colluding with the Russians, for tax fraud, for violations of the Mann Act, for unpaid parking tickets or -- if necessary -- for unpaid library fines.
Come on Mr. Mueller. The ball is in your court.
4
Jill - Thanks for the most intelligent and perceptive analysis yet of the tidal wave of stupidity+insanity+boorishness. Your words and perspective make me feel reassured and a bit more optimistic.
1
"White American men loved it."
A lot of white American women loved it too.. Not endorsing the orange in chief by saying this, I just wish we'd read some analysis on why that may be
2
Ms. Filipovic....this is excellent. Thank you!! You really nailed it.
2
This attempt to cloak a person's deep, troubling mental illness under a pastiche patchwork quilt of cliches does not work. Trump would be living under a blue plastic tarp with society's other outcasts if he were a person of no means, as the mentally ill who do not seek and take advantage of treatment do. There's no rational explanation for any of his behaviors or pronouncements and he continues to represent the gravest threat to America's freedom and existence since the Russians planted ICBMs in Cuba 55 year ago...
2
Not sure how I feel about a woman defining manhood for me.
21st Century men who desire to turn traditional gender roles on their heads are making this up as we go along. Whenever we take advice from the women in our lives about how we should behave as men, it is always run through the filter of their perspective on their own mothers' subservience and repression.
I did not repress your mother. I do not ask you to be subservient.
What I do ask is that it be recognized that we who are striving to be different than our fathers, had our fathers as role models. It isn't enough to just defy or rebel against what was wrong about previous male roles and behavior. We are forging a new path and we get it from all sides.
Previous generations of men disqualify us from their company (often at great relief to those of us who saw that behavior as something we did not want to emulate). It is not enough just to do the opposite. And so we are often making this up as we go along. For that reason, we get slammed from the women in our lives.
We are expected to be woke, but at times a caveman. What we'll be blamed for varies. The father who is home with his kids, who cleans the house and who is not the primary bread winner is at once labeled "less of a man" by both the Archie Bunker crowd and a parasite by women.
Add to it all this stupid gland which fills up every day and incites stupidity, and aggression.
Our fathers didn't prepare us for this world.
This is new territory.
1
After the election, when people asked why Hispanic men voted for trump, I thought it was obvious: they want to be rich and powerful, and have beautiful, passive wives too. Machismo won out. Mexican conservative male culture just isn’t that different than American conservative male culture. Obviously, black male culture is different. Perhaps there is a stronger history of respecting women? I’d love to ask a sociologist.
1
I probably agree with most of the author's assessments, but admit to being distracted by having to look up the identifies of Tucker Max and Hermione Granger. Maybe she was merely channeling her inner Dennis Miller -- or probably attempting to show off a level of sophistication unknown by common NYT readers -- but such obscure references don't aid the effectiveness of her writing, only make readers wonder why she reached for those figures as touchstones when more universal ones may be available.
2
Lots of good points here. What gets to me, though, is ther presumption in telling her readers how men think. and feel. If the Times condescended to publish a piece by a man about how women think and feel, he and the Times would be pilloried for blatant sexism.
There's only one word for this: womansplaining.
16
Thank you.
I also roll my eyes at the term “mansplaining”, because I wish someone had given me one share of IBM, Dell, or Apple stock every time during the last 45 years that a woman has emphatically told me what I really mean when I say something, when that is clearly and without doubt not what I mean; or what I really think about something, when that is definitely not what I think.
I often think in some situation, "What would Donald Trump do?" Then I do the opposite.
3
DJT is a fake. He is an actor. He isn't real. He's always been a fake and a front. And all blather around him is fake and stupid and not worth a second of anyone's time.
He is also, a would-be fascist dictator. It's important not to forget that.
A fascist is one who would use dictatorial methods, up to & including full scale dictatorship to achieve right-wing goals.
Just as a communist is one who would use dictatorial methods, up to & including full scale dictatorship to achieve left-wing goals.
Once you start using dictatorial methods you will progress to full blown dictatorship unless an outside force prevents you.
By the way, the use of executive orders that might be unconstitutional is not a dictatorial method as long as you don't try to circumvent the judicial process by, say, attacking judges.
2
Meanwhile, in real life, GWB started an illegal (international law) that killed 500 000, and counting. You have your least favourite president and I have mine.
To be worse than GWB, Trump will have to unnecessarily start WW 3 and then some. If he legally, but unnecessarily, starts WW 3, it will about be a wash.
There is no way on G-d’s green Earth that history will place GWB above Trump, so far.
Statesmanship is more important than the appearance of statesmanship. Who do you think is better to call China’s bluff, Ms Reasonable-And-Considered, or Mr Nutjob? Exactly.
1
Well written Jill.
Thoroughly entertaining and enlightened writing.
You have hit the mark on many issues that unfortunately some men do not want to admit.
Any sane and well read person can see what Trump has done in his short but eventful tenure so far.
Nothing of value for Americans, nothing in regards to responsible leadership has emerged from this president or his party.
Plenty of derisive comment and contempt is a daily feature of his rhetoric.
It really is a shame to see a once respected nation, torn apart from within by its own leader, a man who uses power and dominance and influence in all the wrong ways. This man just happens to have all the attributes that Jill Filipovic mentioned in her article.
There is nothing manly about your president, nothing macho or virile or powerful, certainly nothing rugged or red blooded, in my country a person like that is referred to as a wimp.
3
Trump is the most dangerous person in the world, kind of cancer in the American democracy - and that's despite the fact that he only got 48% of votes. He doesn't care about truth and I wonder that republicans still accept him, while he is producing the next huge debt crisis, risk of nuclear war, misanthropy and earth climate change.
Just hope the American people will remember next year at the midterm elections, whatever Trumps propaganda machine will tell them then.
2
Trump's masculinity is based on cusp of 60s Playboy entitlement. However, he even fails that, more Heffatrump than Heff.
3
I must take exception to one point re 'power couple'. In the 1980's it was clear that Ivana was the brains of the operation.
3
I have a hard time seeing a "real" man going through as much hair spray as Trump does.
3
Actually, that's not hair spray.
He ordered the piece that way.
Of course Jill is taking advantage of the current zeitgeist where men, especially white men of privilege, are a step above bladderworts on the evolutionary scale.
Being a white man I am looking forward to the hideous Trump fiasco to be the final act of my tribe. White men of wealth are devouring the planet and never have enough. What a breath of fresh air it would be to elect someone like Elizabeth Warren and begin to push her sensibilities front and center.
1
"… Aspiration and identity" . That seem to of have hit it on the head for why Trump got elected… His Firemens and coal Miners (blues) and other types – rugged types. Hey I still collect wooden (And antique) truck toys and stuff, but I didn't vote for Trump!
1
I can only comment: much a do about "nothing".
I enjoyed this article. It does a good job of highlighting much of Trump’s "manly" shtick that appeals to men who never learned to be attractive and fulfilled partners on their own terms and appreciate equal and complimentary partners who can grow and adapt to a life with them. Instead, they yearn to dominate and control a cartoonish "relationship" with a woman and, in the process of pursuing such a fantasy, convince themselves that all women should fit into the stereotypical roles and behaviors they have worked out for them. Not surprisingly, that leads to a lot of frustration and disappointment (and much worse) in the real world of human beings.
When they see a manipulative bully like Donald Trump getting away with the boorish and crude behavior he exudes, they want to believe he is authentically powerful and fulfilled in his relationships with women (never mind Melania wincing or swatting his little hands away). It gives them hope that they can somehow dominate and control their way to satisfaction, if not lasting happiness.
My only gripe was with this bit: "a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office." Uh, no. Hillary had her own odious sack of negative baggage, no real vision or convictions that mattered to people, and she made a deal with the DNC to buy her nomination instead of earn it. Simply put, she was not likeable and intriguing to enough women and men to win, and not devious enough to steal the election.
13
“Care jobs are not jobs men are generally willing to take, in part because of the depressed pay, but also because of social constraints: Nursing, elder care and child care are women’s work.”
1) Nursing has had the highest approval rating of all professionals in the USA for 15 years in a row for honesty, trust, and ethics.
2) Registered Nurses can start at $75 K and Nurse Practitioners bring home $110,000 and above.
Nursing takes intelligence, split decisions based on both inductive and deductive reasoning. One works in a team each member providing the best outcome for patients.
3) Nursing will never be outsourced and every state is facing a shortage.
4)I have worked with AMAZING male nurses who SURPRISE! are usually hetero! These males love being friends and colleagues to so many women! The ones I know have fulfilling lives and there’s a good chance to meet women in administration, who are doctors, technicians, physical and occupational therapists.
You can join a temp agency where you can go on 13 week assignments to Hawai’i, NYC, around the world. Air flight paid along with good housing, then onto Colorado/Utah to ski for 13 weeks while working evening, night or weekend shifts. You can ski on weekdays when the lift lines are shorter.
Never met a male RN who regretted their decision and are rock solid in their masculinity--meaning that they are caring, empathetic, compassionate, curious, and innovative.
If you see nursing as “women’s work” you are dead wrong !
1
The author’s point was not that nursing was women’s work, but that many men refuse to enter nursing because they see it that way. That’s statistically true and there is plenty of evidence outside of the medical community to back that up.
Within the medical community, I hope we all recognize that nurses are some of the real superheroes of medicine, come in all genders, races, religions, ages, shapes, and sizes! There is nothing more admirable for any human than to care for others.
OK
I agree with your editorial with one exception. You write, "White American men loved it." Too sweeping. I'm one white American male who didn't love it. Trump is a moron and his presidency has diminished the United States. Instead, I suggest "Too many white men loved it."
1
Jill, you're depressing me. No, I was already depressed. You're making me ill. I think it's because it all sounds true. Ugh.
The internet troll as president. Perfect description.
2
.
He's male, but not a man.
Delinquent, obnoxious, immature boy is more like it.
.
A completely meaningless and angry article. Full of finger pointing and elitism. There should never be a license to pick or slur any racial or economic group ever. This article does it in bushels. No elitist and certainly no NYT writer could possibly feel or understand the disconnect the middle class , the true actual middle class feel towards people that live in our little bubbles of NY and L.A. When the Democratic Party can actually reconnect with the flag waving, church going , "dirty fingernails" as you call them or how Hillary called them "deplorables". Then maybe a radical answer to the equation such as Trump won't win.
3
The great scientist Stephen Hawking got it abosolutely correct about Trump.
"Trump is a demagogue who appeals to the worst denominations of humanity ".
(And they say many tRump supporters were busily googling" demagogue " and" denomination", and so Prof Hawking made it easier for them : "Trump bad. Very very bad.")
2
Um ... an article about Trump's masculinity that mentions the sins of Harvey Weinstein but not Trump's own bragging about sexual assault? How -- even in a piece like this -- does this vulgar, abusive, odious man get a pass? It's not just accusations: he trumpeted and bragged on tape, on Howard Stern, to whomever would listen, that he's a serial harasser, adulterer, and sexual predator. He didn't only talk about his wife's breasts on the radio and in public, but speculated about the future size of his baby daughter's breast on a TV talk show with one of his wives, and on multiple occasions spoke about lusting after his own daughter Ivanka. When asked on a talk show what interests he and Ivanka had in common, Ivanka said "real estate" and "golf" and Trump said "sex." Any other politician would have been sunk by this man's treatment of women -- including his mistresses, wives, daughters, and victims -- but Trump's aggressive disregard of women of ever age and category merits not a mention, even here.
2
Trump is the last gasp of the old, white, straight, entitled American male who realizes his evolutionary moment in the sun is coming to a close and is left with nothing to do but sit in the corner and whimper and tweet and mourn the loss of his position in the world. He cannot the life of him understand why he is no longer allowed to be greedy, sexist, racist and indecent. He gives great hope to the legion of other similar old, white, straight, entitled men who have refused to evolve and who also mourn their diminished position. He is now a great example of survival of the nastiest. He is toothless and clawless, but still very dangerous. He has never been a man in any classic or heroic sense.
4
I'm not a Trump supporter at all and voted for Hillary only because Trump was so unacceptable but to suggest that she lost because of a "yawning fear of female power" is so simplistic. I'd suggest she lost because she was essentially conveying the exact same message Obama was and 50% of the American population simply didn't see their life improve. When you have 400 dollars in the bank you're not thinking about your fear of female power. You just want to live in dignity. Why would you vote for someone who is saying the same thing the guy before her was? How condescending to think people were so close minded but I suspect you don't really know any of them first hand.
That may be because you live in LA. You should have canvassed southern and middle America (or read the stats published by those who did) for quite a different story.
Something like 20 or 30 million American men evidently do look at Trump as a role model. And at least that many American women harbor similarly aspirational feelings about the woman who sold herself to him, Melania.
Where is the article on what Melania thinks it takes to be a Woman (with a capital W)? Stiletto pumps must be high up on the list, along with cheekbone-enhancing makeup. Plagiarism and a Greta Garbo complex round out the top four. What makes Melania's style any less offensive than her husband's?
I'm in my mid-30s & my husband is 8 years younger, just ending his 20s. He comes from a much more wealthy family than mine, which has made him the quintessential image of white privilege.
He wants home-cooked food like his mother made, he won't do dishes until we have none, he won't do laundry until he's out of socks, he waits for the trash to overflow before taking it out, the can rarely makes it to the curb for pickup, his unfinished projects litter the house along with his shoes, he wakes late, etc.
I'd be willing to take care of the house if I could get him to work. But he complains that 40 hrs/wk will kill him (he's not disabled), refuses to be at work before 10am, is disgusted he must prove worth to get paid well, & usually quits within two weeks. Then gets angry & defensive w/ me when I tell him he needs to grow up.
We want children, a possibility for me that fades with every day, but I refuse to be mother to both child and husband. I blame Baby Boomers for changing nothing in the way they raised sons. We now have a generation of "men" - maybe even two - that were told the world was their oyster to slurp with impunity.
I see in my husband, and so many males my age, the worst of both gender archetypes. He's kind, wants the best for everyone. But he fumes at the tiniest obstacle, cries at any criticism, begs me to be nicer for he's so delicate, thinks he deserves a mansion for existing, can't see the future value of current sacrifice.
And he didn't vote for Strump.
14
@Amanda:
Trying to understand just why you married this childish fellow? If this letter represents the truth of your marriage, be thankful you haven't yet had any children, divorce him and move on with the rest of your life. It's no failure to assess with clear eyes, cut your losses and start anew.
I am hoping there are people with voter's remorse who will do the same in the midterm elections next year. Certainly those voters who thought that Trump and the Republicans would actually help the middle class working people of America. Between their continued attempts to decimate healthcare, Trump's lip service with no funding for the opioid crisis, and now this repulsively skewed tax plan, how much more evidence do you need?
All this generalization about 1 or 2 generations of men is half the problem. What about women today? Nothing to be changed about how women approach there world also? Not everything bad that happens in the world is the fault of men. There are plenty of awful women out there and plenty of awful men out there. Maybe take responsibility for your own life choice. Just a thought. All the coverage really makes it feel like there's no need for men in your world view unless they behave in the exact way you deem acceptable. Feels like everyone is just too far up their own you know what to see clearly
Not sure what this guy's hold on you is, but I can't for the life of me figure out why you stay.
Jill, you are saying that if more lower-income men, could be more like the upper middle class (come from intact families, college, good-paying job), they would have proper masculinity: Hillary-voting and house-work-doing. Yes Jill, poor men are deplorable - Hillary told us. The thing is that Democrats used to be about doing something to help poor people. Instead, we have gender/race resentment. Today the DNC circulated an email looking for tech staff and stated, "white, CIS-gendered men need not apply". Jill represents elitism. That, and not Donald Trump's manhood, is why the Democrats will continue to falter.
3
Two points
First, in our society the new “strong” was becoming equal to being smart. Trump is obviously just plain stupid, in addition to being unprincipled. He tries to make up for it by screaming loud.
Second, I worry that this monster is setting a very bad example for young men. I worry this will persist long after the monster is gone. Young people were taught “no matter where you start you can be president.” Instead , now they are taught “no matter how evil and unprincipled you are, you can be president”.
20
Donald Trump is not a man, he's the basis for the McDonald's ad character, Hamburglar.
7
You insult teens by saying Trump is an adolescent. He is vile little three year old in constant tantrum and his ignorant idiocy combined with narcissistic sociopathy is a peril to us all.
13
It insults all children to call him a child, or child-like. He's not a child. He's an unbalanced, lying, vile old man. He was an unbalanced, lying, vile young man.
I hope they autopsy his brain when he kicks because I doubt he'll ever go into therapy and I doubt there will be any psychological evaluation, or at least mental competency exam. He's proof there should be one as well as a physical.
Well put.
Boy Trump never had to grow up--it wasn't expected of him. He seems to have had free rein to learn the craft of manipulation while protecting his deep fear of others especially women.
13
Donald Trump’s behavior illustrates his smallness and insecurity. If that’s what American manhood has devolved to, in a certain segment of white makes, then he represents it perfectly.
12
I'm a nearly 60 year old, blue-eyed white man, born in America. I've worked my entire career in construction.
I'd greatly appreciate it if people would stop assuming that because of the demographic I belong to, that I voted for the ignorant posing vulgarian currently defiling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
What do I have to do, walk around all day, every day in public, wearing a blaze orange shirt proclaiming that I'm not a racist, misogynistic tRumpkin troll bot?
Thank you for not assuming that I voted for the worst President in America's history because I'm a grouchy old white carpenter! (My wife doesn't, either.)
45
Smiling! All generalizations are flawed, except this one! Generalizations are very useful, but should not blind us to the particular individual case or person. I like this carpenter!
1
He looks in the mirror and sees a man.
The mirror looks back and laughs.
23
President Trump acts and speaks the way a weak man thinks strong men act and speak. Combine this basic flaw with the fact that he is also astonishingly inarticulate, and much of what he does and says will make a little more sense.
This really has very little to do with changing perceptions of masculinity or the behavior of white men in our culture. Mr. Trump would be easily identified as the same sort of weak man in the era of Teddy Roosevelt, or of Franklin Roosevelt, as he is at the present time.
58
Weak and, oh so ironically, not very good at cutting deals or building organizations. How can you lead if every deal is a zero-sum game and loyalty only ever cuts one way? He might as well be actively and deliberately recruiting stool pigeons for the FBI.
In one of her books (I think it's The King Must Die) Mary Renault has her protagonist describe with contempt and pity how another character lashes out in fury at the corpse of a defeated opponent "in the way in which a weak man will, in the moments after some fright" (I paraphrase).
I always think of that quote when I see Donald Trump lashing out incoherently, yet again. I don't think he would even recognise strength, courage, or character if he saw them, let alone any worthwhile or positive model of masculinity.
1
This is an excellent overview of the kind of sulky aggrieved masculinity that believes that having a brain is unmanly. But what about the women who support and enable these brats? I am not talking about the numerous Mrs. Trump’s: he has a lot of money and getting married is as legitimate a way of padding your bank account as working in a strip club. But what about his rabid female supporters most of whom would not rate even one on Mr.Trump’s scale of beauty? Don’t they realize that he and his male supporters roundly despise them? Is it a maternal instinct kicking in: boys will be boys? Well, as a mother of boys I have to say that sometimes old-fashioned methods of child-rearing are the best. Grounding your son may not increase his brain- power but at least it may keep him from Twitter.
54
“But what about his rabid female supporters most of whom would not rate even one on Mr.Trump’s scale of beauty? ”
Yeah, he would look at them and say you’re not even a one, get out of my sight, you make me puke.
That’s what I call presidential material. ROL.
1
Come on, Jill, the interesting thing is not that lazy, misogynistic, less educated, (uncivilized), gun-toting white men think Trump is an acceptable person to put into the White House. The far larger question is why so many women of all races and economic classes voted for this disgusting, ignorant, misogynistic, racist, spiteful, uncharitable, narcissistic moron. What do these women tell their children about the man they elected to lead the US in place of, as you accurately state, the most qualified candidate ever - and whose biggest handicap in the 2016 presidential race is that Bill Clinton did not keep his fly closed when he was president.
4
What's your problem with video games?
1
The piece was referring to GamerGate, the anti-feminist movement by certain young men who targeted female game designers with doxxing and death threats.
1
Trump is a caricature of the man-child in the same way John Wayne was a caricature of the Hollywood notion of manhood. Having said that, this binary view of all males, divided into two camps with attributes stated in stark absolutist terms, is a farce. It is a dangerous one, but a farce nevertheless. Someday, one can only pray soon, voices not so shrill and authoritarian will be heard. Probably not in my lifetime, though.
1
First----Not all white men love Trump. Obviously, many of them are disgustedd and repelled by him. Part of what causes our political troubles is over generalization and stereotyping of various economic, racial and ethnic groups.
Also---See gender equality ranking for countries by the World Economic Forum. They say the last decade has made progress, but now some slipping backward, and many countries rank lower than one would think.
CNN reports with this amazing comparison:
“The U.S. slipped four spots to 49th out of 144 countries. It now ranks behind countries including the United Kingdom (15th), Australia (35th) and Bangladesh (47th). Back in 2006, the U.S. was in the 23rd spot.”
The organization says there are simple ways for the U.S. to improve its standing. Example-- it's one of the few advanced economies that doesn't provide women with paid maternity leave. (as a national policy)
Of course, the Republicans would say paid maternity leave would compromise American citizens' proud independence, self reliance, and freedom from big govt. Laws mandating paid leave would start a trend to socialism. Translation: Less excessive profits and less political power for the few.
5
Brilliant. Thank you.
Ms. West's explanation of why white women voted for Trump rings true: they would never support a feminism that also helps those people. For Trump and his supporters, all roads end up at that same miserable place.
May we hope that Trump is just the last several minutes of a tramp freighter going down? The bow is already under the waves. The stern is high in the air, the spinning propellers altogether out of the water.
5
White American men loved it.
Some did. Most didn't. The election was skewed by social media perverted by Russian male privilege to emasculate the hated decandent west, with Hil as by-catch.
A mob mentality is permeating male society here that can only be stopped by knowledge and the realization that we've been had, reeled in hook line and sinker. Only then will the wool come off and instantly provide the needed awareness of what really is going on.
7
This piece wastes not a word in capturing exactly what is happening now. Superb.
14
5x Serial bankruptcy, publicized his own infidelity to embarrass his wife, chronic lying, cheated hundreds of business associates, gross self-aggrandizement, World Wrestling promoter, settled lawsuit for fraud brought by hundreds of consumers, publicly accused of sexual assault by 12 women during 2016 campaign. Pouting, ranting, name-calling, defamation of President Obama, defamation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, defamation of President Bill Clinton, false accusation of lying against Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson, insulted Gold Star parents Khirz and Ghazala Khan, multiple insults against war hero John McCain. Constant defamation against actors, politicians and other public figures, almost always false accusations. Threats, including threats against campaign donors, Senator Ted Cruz and his wife, Hillary Clinton (an implied death threat and multiple meritless accusations Clinton is a criminal), false accusation Ted Cruz's father Raoul was involved in assassination of President Kennedy.
It's amazing Trump can appear in public without being spat on.
20
We all know that a true man is not a racist, does not mock the disabled, is not a sexual predator, and respects the truth.
At another level this is all irrelevant with regard to Trump; we might simply say that a real man is not a textbook sociopath, which Trump has demonstrated himself to be his entire adult life. This is a fixed and untreatable mental derangement, and in a sense all our distress about the fact that Trump is a pathetic shell of a man is misplaced and unhelpful; the critical imperative is his urgent legal removal from office.
19
"Mr. Trump has ushered in a fresh era of noxious manhood?" I certainly hope not. How could it be true? He's personally noxious, but this is not "manhood," and not worthy of an era other than Louis XIII. It won't hold up to the light of day. Will it?
3
How this blubbery, crude, ignorant, cowardly bully could ever be mistaken as an example of traditional "rough-hewn American maleness" by certain white American males will forever be a source of mystification to me.
12
I am offended by the writer’s attempt to include Trump in any typical group of men, at any age and from any era. He is one of a kind and even though I am close to him in age, I don’t recognize in him the “old-school American man” he’s supposed to represent.
He represents nothing but himself, a mad man-child who could not fit into any of the categories suggested by your editorial.
6
" In some ways, he’s a throwback to days when authority and power were exclusively white and male by definition, when displays of masculine entitlement were overt and unapologetic..."
When did that end?
6