We know who he alienates by this behavior — and that includes many mainstream Republicans as well as Democrats. But who is the audience he is playing to?
.. Mr. Trump and his die-hard followers delight in the shock value of violating social and political norms. They revel in the thumb in the eye. It’s intrinsic to the president’s appeal to his base, and it’s increasingly clear that either deliberately or impulsively, both his conduct and his policies are aimed at that base and not beyond it.
.. There is something about his swagger, his unabashed embodiment of a time when women were eye candy and arm candy. And there is something about the way he strikes back at women who anger him that seems to resonate for some men.
.. The uncomfortable larger question is whether this president’s behavior is encouraging and unmasking resentments about women’s place in society.
.. “A subset of men whom Trump appeals to is threatened by women in power,” she said. “They feel their dominance in society is threatened. This is not coming — generally — from college-educated men or those in suburban or urban centers with strong economic prospects.”
.. unless other political leaders address class grievances, Mr. Trump’s appeal will continue to resonate.
.. “Trump’s persistent insults to high-profile women play to that part of his base that has long been incensed at a definition of political correctness that includes women, L.G.B.T.Q. people, immigrants and other groups — but leaves out working-class whites nursing the hidden injuries of class,” she said. “So long as class remains unacknowledged as a key source of social disadvantage, Trump’s insults will feel to some of his supporters like a delicious poke-in-the-eye of elites.”
.. Mr. Trump has in fact turned politics into performance art. Some have likened what he does to insult comedy of the type practiced by Don Rickles. But insult comics are quick to point out that there is a crucial difference. “Insult comedy underneath it all is about affection,”
.. “I saw Trump be a roastmaster at the Friars Club, but he doesn’t have the skill to do this kind of thing with the right intention underneath it. Is it entertaining to some? I don’t find these tweets entertaining in the least. It’s off-putting and it gets to a scary bully level.”
.. Others were overjoyed that Mr. Trump was upsetting “snowflakes,”
.. others believed that the president was justifiably striking back against attacks on him from Ms. Brzezinski and her co-host, Joe Scarborough. Some insisted there was no sexism involved, that women aren’t exempt from criticism and have to learn to take it, just as men do.
.. Ms. Matthews thinks Mr. Trump’s reaction is more visceral than strategic. “He can’t stand to be criticized, especially by a woman, and he can’t stop himself from lashing out,” she said. “There is no strategic audience he is winking and nodding to. However there is a segment of his base that enjoys his political incorrectness — even at this extreme — and I would say his misogyny.
.. Yet criticism, even from Republicans, has not deterred Mr. Trump and some of his supporters in the past — witness how many denounced him over the Access Hollywood tapes. The president has paid no discernible political price for his actions. So that leaves the question very much open whether behavior once ruled unthinkable is again permissible in America today.
Trump vs. Clinton on women, national security and everything else. Times Opinion writers weigh in before, during and after
.. Even his mangled syntax can be seen as manly. “Part of Trump’s appeal is that he’s inarticulate,” said Jackson Katz, the author of “Man Enough? Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity.” “He seems more real,” as opposed to the intellectuals that Republicans have long dismissed as weak.
.. With his rejection of free trade, his resolve to build a wall to keep out immigrants and his swagger, he conjures an America where a man still gets good pay for an honest day’s work. That man could provide for his family so his wife could afford to stay home. In this America, men don’t face competition from immigrants or women for jobs. In this America, white men are restored to their dominant place in the economy, politics and the home.
.. Scholars point to an enduring ideal of American manhood, epitomized by the Western — the strong, silent and chivalrous man. Gary Cooper in High Noon. Alan Ladd in Shane. “The cowboy types that show up in our imagination would have nothing to do with Trump,” said Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and gender at Stony Brook University and the author of “Angry White Men.” “He’s not a man who’s done a lick of real work in his life. Let’s see you change a tire. Masculinity in America has always been something that you prove with your hands – not the size of your actual hands.”
.. The aggression that characterizes Mr. Trump’s words and behavior is both a reflection and a cartoonish exaggeration of traditional masculinity. That very ideal of what it is to be a man has been under assault for generations.
America’s economy is not less robust, and its welfare provisions not more generous, than those of the 22 other affluent nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet America ranks 22nd, ahead of only Italy, in 25 to 54 male labor-force participation. Eberstadt calls this “unwelcome ‘American Exceptionalism.’”
. And one that tends to be overlooked— widely known but narrowly considered— is the simple fact that almost all mass murderers are men. As of 2014, Timecited the number at 98 percent. That makes masculinity a more common feature than any of the elements that tend to dominate discourse—religion, race, nationality, political affiliation, or any history of mental illness.
.. the most primal act a human being can take to ameliorate self-loathing is “showing one’s power over other human beings.”
.. Sociologist Lin Huff-Corzine posited that “men are more comfortable than women when using guns, whereas women are more likely to choose knives.” Criminologist Candice Batton suggested that men are more likely than women to “develop negative attributions of blame that are external,” which translate into anger and hostility toward others. Women, though, are more likely to blame some failing of their own, “directing anger inwardly into guilt and depression.”
.. “Being able to stockpile weapons and have ever bigger and scarier-looking guns is straightforward and undeniable overcompensation insecure men trying to prove what manly men they are,” writes Marcotte. “This isn’t a discussion being held on the plane of rationality, but a psychological drama about these men’s fears of emasculation.”
.. The idea of toxic masculinity is—critically— not a sweeping indictment of bros or gender. It’s an admission that masculinity can be toxic at times.