For his ultimate victory, it wasn't the case that Trump tapped into a benign, chivalrous kind of sexism that may be characterized as in the realm of "traditional values" with respect to women's roles in society, rather according to research cited below, "[he's] getting
support from people who are hostile toward women’s economic and legal
equality and who think feminism is making America worse."
Though the pertinent research referenced below doesn't break this down, this obviously also captures the sentiments of some women themselves who have patriarchal views. What's interesting is that we in the U.S. are often quick to thumb our noses in arrogance against other, frequently Islamist, countries for their systems of government and society where men hold the social, economic, political, and cultural power from which women are largely excluded, yet fail to see this happening within the context of our own country and society.
Clearly, men's loss of centrality is what is at stake here. While we clearly need a revived women's movement that keeps pushing forward for women's rights and equity-based policies and practices, the election itself is in part a reaction against what I think to be an inexorable progression of women's call for equality in U.S. society.
Sorry, sexists. The genie's out of the bottle and your own families are the better for it.
Angela Valenzuela
c/s
Updated by
Since the start of the Republican primaries, hundreds of
thousands of words and hours of television airtime have been devoted to
one question: What do Donald Trump’s supporters want? The 42 percent of Americans supporting Trump have been studied and caricatured and psychoanalyzed.
Explanations abound: They’re stricken with economic anxiety. They’re anxious about their social status. They feel left behind by the federal government. They’re authoritarians who want a forceful leader. They’re racists who oppose the changing demographics and norms of the US.
But there’s another important factor that these analyses
have largely left out: sexism. Three political scientists who studied
the connection between sexism, emotions, and support for Trump found that the more hostile voters were toward women, the more likely they were to support Trump.
Researchers Carly Wayne, Nicholas Valentino and Marzia Oceno, who wrote about their work for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage,
conducted their research before the revelation of the secret recording
that captured Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without
their permission, and before more than a dozen women came forward to
accuse Trump of sexual assault in the aftermath of its release.
While it might not seem surprising now that Trump has
galvanized sexists, their findings suggest that sexism played a much
bigger role in his rise than most people realized or wanted to imagine.
How “hostile sexism” predicts support for Trump
Sexism has largely been overlooked as a major factor in
voters’ decisions to support Donald Trump. That would be understandable
if it were simply one factor among many — one prejudice among the many
that Hillary Clinton called the “basket of deplorables … racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
But Wayne, Valentino, and Oceno’s research, conducted in
June, found hostility toward women was a major factor, predicting
support for Trump more strongly than authoritarian attitudes and about
as well as racial prejudice. The political scientists used a
four-question survey to determine sexist attitudes, asking if people
agreed with the following statements:
- Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.
- Many women are actually seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor women over men, under the guise of asking for equality.
- Feminists are not actually seeking for women to have more power than men.
- Feminists are making entirely reasonable demands of men.
The survey also asked how strongly respondents supported
Clinton or Trump. The higher they were on the sexism scale, the more
likely they were to support Trump and the less likely they were to
support Clinton. Hostile sexism was nearly as good at predicting support
for Trump as party identification was.
Sexism — and particularly anti-feminism — isn’t
politically neutral. Many conservative women have come forward to say
they’re horrified by Donald Trump, but sexism has been correlated with
support for other Republican candidates as well. In studies of voters in 2008 and 2012, traditional beliefs about gender and hostility toward feminism were also linked to much lower support for Hillary Clinton.
“It’s the kind of sorting that people do to go into one
party or the other,” said Wayne, a PhD candidate in political science at
the University of Michigan. Republicans “tend to have attitudes that
are more traditionalist, more old-fashioned, less likely to want the
kinds of changes that feminism, for example, is pushing.”
Wayne said she couldn’t compare how sexist attitudes
nationally had correlated with support for Republicans in previous
elections, so she couldn’t say if Trump made the situation better or
worse. But Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, used the same survey as part of a poll in New
Hampshire, and found that sexism was a much bigger factor in the 2016
election than it was in 2012:
Clinton’s candidacy is another piece of important context
— it’s possible that strong support for Trump among sexists is in part a
reaction to the first woman who could plausibly be elected president —
but Schaffner’s findings back up the idea that Trump’s core supporters
are unusually hostile toward women and feminism.
Trump isn’t just tapping into “traditional values”
Trump’s support among sexists doesn’t seem to be a
function of the traditional, old-fashioned “family values” usually
associated with the Republican Party.
In a survey in August, Wayne and her co-authors measured
the impact of a different kind of “old-fashioned” view about women’s
roles: the belief that women are different from men because they’re
physically weaker and more morally pure. They asked survey respondents
if they agreed with the following statements:
- In a disaster, women should be rescued before men.
- Women have a quality of purity that few men possess.
- Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well-being in order to provide for the women in their lives.
- Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores.
The questions measure “benevolent sexism” — a
traditional, chivalrous view of men and women’s proper roles. Benevolent
sexism can still undermine women’s equality because it paints women as
weaker and more in need of male protection. Unlike its more hostile
counterpart, though, benevolent sexism didn’t correlate much at all with
support for Trump, at least before the leaked Access Hollywood
tape. (Unlike the study on hostile sexism, the researchers didn’t use a
representative national sample but rather an online survey. But the
results were weighted for partisan identity, and Wayne says it was a
high-quality sample.)
“The hostile sexism is highly correlated, but the
benevolent sexism really is not,” Wayne said. “I found this result
particularly interesting in the aftermath of some of the fallout from
Trump’s tape. … There were a lot of Republicans saying they were against
Trump’s statements because of their daughters and wives.”
Trump, in other words, isn’t just drawing from a base of
people who have traditional views about women’s roles. He’s getting
support from people who are hostile toward women’s economic and legal
equality and who think feminism is making America worse.
Trump’s sexism was hidden in plain sight
It shouldn’t be surprising that Trump is the candidate of
choice for people who believe that allegations of sexism are mostly
made up and that feminism is really a ploy to get men on the losing side
of a zero-sum status competition between the sexes. Trump’s misogyny has been a core part of his public persona for a long time.
Long before many of the sexual assault allegations
emerged, Trump made clear, in public and private, that women matter to
him not as people but as sex objects. Even with women whom he supposedly
likes and admires, he’s made clear that he values their looks above all
else. He turned his attitudes into discriminatory policies in his
offices, at his resorts, and on his TV show, harassing women he found
attractive and urging his employees to fire those he did not.
The fact that Trump was virulently sexist used to be
widely recognized. "His brand of self-aggrandizing, bewigged machismo
was kind of de rigeur in the 80's and charmingly old-timey in the 90's,
but now it's just passé and exhausting and increasingly offensive,"
Richard Lawson wrote in a post headlined "Donald Trump: A Sexist
Dinosaur" for Gawker in 2008. "And he never stops!"
In the vast American soul-searching
over why people might want to vote for Trump, sexism has gotten short
shrift. That might be because Trump’s blatantly sexist remarks were
generally not a part of his political campaign or preferred policies,
unlike his hostility toward immigrants and Muslims and his constant
reiteration that African Americans live in a wasteland of crime and
violence.
But even if his misogyny was more muted in the early days of the campaign, it appears to have found a receptive audience.
Since the start of the Republican primaries, hundreds of
thousands of words and hours of television airtime have been devoted to
one question: What do Donald Trump’s supporters want? The 42 percent of Americans supporting Trump have been studied and caricatured and psychoanalyzed.
Explanations abound: They’re stricken with economic anxiety. They’re anxious about their social status. They feel left behind by the federal government. They’re authoritarians who want a forceful leader. They’re racists who oppose the changing demographics and norms of the US.
But there’s another important factor that these analyses
have largely left out: sexism. Three political scientists who studied
the connection between sexism, emotions, and support for Trump found that the more hostile voters were toward women, the more likely they were to support Trump.
Researchers Carly Wayne, Nicholas Valentino and Marzia Oceno, who wrote about their work for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage,
conducted their research before the revelation of the secret recording
that captured Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without
their permission, and before more than a dozen women came forward to
accuse Trump of sexual assault in the aftermath of its release.
While it might not seem surprising now that Trump has
galvanized sexists, their findings suggest that sexism played a much
bigger role in his rise than most people realized or wanted to imagine.
How “hostile sexism” predicts support for Trump
Sexism has largely been overlooked as a major factor in
voters’ decisions to support Donald Trump. That would be understandable
if it were simply one factor among many — one prejudice among the many
that Hillary Clinton called the “basket of deplorables … racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
But Wayne, Valentino, and Oceno’s research, conducted in
June, found hostility toward women was a major factor, predicting
support for Trump more strongly than authoritarian attitudes and about
as well as racial prejudice. The political scientists used a
four-question survey to determine sexist attitudes, asking if people
agreed with the following statements:
- Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.
- Many women are actually seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor women over men, under the guise of asking for equality.
- Feminists are not actually seeking for women to have more power than men.
- Feminists are making entirely reasonable demands of men.
The survey also asked how strongly respondents supported
Clinton or Trump. The higher they were on the sexism scale, the more
likely they were to support Trump and the less likely they were to
support Clinton. Hostile sexism was nearly as good at predicting support
for Trump as party identification was.
Sexism — and particularly anti-feminism — isn’t
politically neutral. Many conservative women have come forward to say
they’re horrified by Donald Trump, but sexism has been correlated with
support for other Republican candidates as well. In studies of voters in 2008 and 2012, traditional beliefs about gender and hostility toward feminism were also linked to much lower support for Hillary Clinton.
“It’s the kind of sorting that people do to go into one
party or the other,” said Wayne, a PhD candidate in political science at
the University of Michigan. Republicans “tend to have attitudes that
are more traditionalist, more old-fashioned, less likely to want the
kinds of changes that feminism, for example, is pushing.”
Wayne said she couldn’t compare how sexist attitudes
nationally had correlated with support for Republicans in previous
elections, so she couldn’t say if Trump made the situation better or
worse. But Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, used the same survey as part of a poll in New
Hampshire, and found that sexism was a much bigger factor in the 2016
election than it was in 2012:
Clinton’s candidacy is another piece of important context
— it’s possible that strong support for Trump among sexists is in part a
reaction to the first woman who could plausibly be elected president —
but Schaffner’s findings back up the idea that Trump’s core supporters
are unusually hostile toward women and feminism.
Trump isn’t just tapping into “traditional values”
Trump’s support among sexists doesn’t seem to be a
function of the traditional, old-fashioned “family values” usually
associated with the Republican Party.
In a survey in August, Wayne and her co-authors measured
the impact of a different kind of “old-fashioned” view about women’s
roles: the belief that women are different from men because they’re
physically weaker and more morally pure. They asked survey respondents
if they agreed with the following statements:
- In a disaster, women should be rescued before men.
- Women have a quality of purity that few men possess.
- Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well-being in order to provide for the women in their lives.
- Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores.
The questions measure “benevolent sexism” — a
traditional, chivalrous view of men and women’s proper roles. Benevolent
sexism can still undermine women’s equality because it paints women as
weaker and more in need of male protection. Unlike its more hostile
counterpart, though, benevolent sexism didn’t correlate much at all with
support for Trump, at least before the leaked Access Hollywood
tape. (Unlike the study on hostile sexism, the researchers didn’t use a
representative national sample but rather an online survey. But the
results were weighted for partisan identity, and Wayne says it was a
high-quality sample.)
“The hostile sexism is highly correlated, but the
benevolent sexism really is not,” Wayne said. “I found this result
particularly interesting in the aftermath of some of the fallout from
Trump’s tape. … There were a lot of Republicans saying they were against
Trump’s statements because of their daughters and wives.”
Trump, in other words, isn’t just drawing from a base of
people who have traditional views about women’s roles. He’s getting
support from people who are hostile toward women’s economic and legal
equality and who think feminism is making America worse.
Trump’s sexism was hidden in plain sight
It shouldn’t be surprising that Trump is the candidate of
choice for people who believe that allegations of sexism are mostly
made up and that feminism is really a ploy to get men on the losing side
of a zero-sum status competition between the sexes. Trump’s misogyny has been a core part of his public persona for a long time.
Long before many of the sexual assault allegations
emerged, Trump made clear, in public and private, that women matter to
him not as people but as sex objects. Even with women whom he supposedly
likes and admires, he’s made clear that he values their looks above all
else. He turned his attitudes into discriminatory policies in his
offices, at his resorts, and on his TV show, harassing women he found
attractive and urging his employees to fire those he did not.
The fact that Trump was virulently sexist used to be
widely recognized. "His brand of self-aggrandizing, bewigged machismo
was kind of de rigeur in the 80's and charmingly old-timey in the 90's,
but now it's just passé and exhausting and increasingly offensive,"
Richard Lawson wrote in a post headlined "Donald Trump: A Sexist
Dinosaur" for Gawker in 2008. "And he never stops!"
In the vast American soul-searching
over why people might want to vote for Trump, sexism has gotten short
shrift. That might be because Trump’s blatantly sexist remarks were
generally not a part of his political campaign or preferred policies,
unlike his hostility toward immigrants and Muslims and his constant
reiteration that African Americans live in a wasteland of crime and
violence.
But even if his misogyny was more muted in the early days of the campaign, it appears to have found a receptive audience.
