Social implications of the election of President Donald Trump
A large number of people voted for Donald Trump. While the specific motivations of each of these voters are impossible to guess, but it is clear from multiple independent surveys that a number of male voters were hoping President Trump would liberate them from the oppression of "Political Correctness". Even among women voters there appeared to be a few who wanted to see this changed.
I was surprised by women voters - especially ones from rural America who seemed to be deeply supportive of him despite warning that his open misogyny would not leave them in a better place. Most of the women interviewed believed that these were just words and that no importance should be attributed to them - because that is how "men talk".
This is an interesting theory. One I feel is likely to be tested now.
In general - when a social taboo placed on something is removed, the people who pursue a particular activity push for the most visible demonstration of that activity. This is a natural human impulse to come out and celebrate a particular choice.
More specifically - the election of President Trump will be interpreted by some as a removal of social taboos on certain kinds of speech.
As this taboo was at the core of several legal processes, the removal of the taboo will result in significant legal implications.
For example - there is a taboo on verbalizing sexual comments in a work place especially about female co-workers. Doing that sort of thing was usually seen as leading to a internal HR complaint. A court case could easily emerge out of something like that.
However seeing how much Donald Trump the candidate has gotten away with in this election on that front, a Donald Trump supporter might think that the taboo has basically been lifted. This kind of thinking will lead to a visible decline in workplace hostility towards women.
Unfortunately what happens in a workplace greatly influences society, and when someone breaks a taboo in a highly legally secured environment like an office building - the likelihood that other taboos hold in less legally secured spaced like the street outside is even slimmer.
What starts as a venom in one part of society - quickly and quietly spreads into other parts. What begins in the office usually winds up spoiling the home too.
I don't think the women that voted for Donald Trump are ready what the breakdown of these taboos will bring them. They may enjoy watching Mad Men on their TV, but they are not mentally equipped to live in that world. Should it resurface - they will be quite shocked - as shocked as Hillary supporters were when she lost the electoral college.
This I feel is likely to be the greatest social impact of the successful presidential bid of Donald Trump.
posted by maverick @ 12:04 PM
11 Comments:
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These women already live in a mad men world. Their world is not your world. Their husbands, sons and friends are all misogynistic. So, Trump will change nothing in this respect.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1284399
Munir is again trying to buy time abd extend the great double game
Awful lot of signaling happening here mav. http://www.dawn.com/news/1295770
And this before the inevitable revenge attack to Sep29. Lulling us into a false sense of security?
Dear WiseAss,
> People both men and women talks shit and gossip behind 4 walls.We talk exactly like this(unless stuck up Pentecostal or something)and worse mixed with fantasy at work place(in India) even with our bosses&clients when women are not around.
Yes - that is true - but no one behaves like that in front of a woman.
That is what will change now we have President Elect Donald Trump.
Dear pqs,
> These women already live in a mad men world. Their world is not your world. Their husbands, sons and friends are all misogynistic. So, Trump will change nothing in this respect.
There is a couple of reasons why I feel this may not be right. Firstly in the few profiles of women who support Donald Trump, the picture that emerges is not that of a repressed woman in the usual sense. It is difficult to believe that those women interviewed and profiled by so many different sources were speaking under duress of any kind.
Secondly - In places like India or Pakistan - where the sort of thing you bring up is more true - I think they still manage to elect women prime ministers and presidents - something the US just can't bring itself to do. In general where there is a lot of repression, the repressed community lashes out whenever it gets a chance. So I am inclined to believe they do not live in a "Mad Men" world.
That being said - you may be right - perhaps these women felt that if Hillary was elected president, then the men would feel even more angry and they would take their anger out on these captive women ? so in some strange way the election of Hillary posed an even greater threat to these women's safety than the election of Donald Trump.
The only place where I recall something like this is pre-Taliban Afghanistan. Women were threatened by a general sense of moral decay in post-Soviet Afghan society. When the Taliban came in with its organized and regimented forms of misogyny - the women found their lives actually improved. I don't think the US is in that place right now - but who knows - I may be wrong and you may be right.
Dear Nanana,
It appears the Islamabad finds itself in a quandary as do many other nations. No one knows what Donald Trump's real foreign policy will be and who really calls the shots in this administration.
The Pakistanis are looking at the same baffling reality we all are. Half the US-VAP (Voting Age Population) didn't actually vote. The Republican Party is claiming a mandate it clearly does not have. A majority of the US voters voted against Donald Trump. Half of those that supported Donald Trump did so because they were told to dislike Hillary by Russian-FSB-led agitprop. So the real "mandate" that Donald Trump enjoys comes only from some 12% of the US-VAP.
Right now it looks like we are going to have to change the name of the country. From The United States of America - we are going to have to make it into - "The United States of America - Brought to you by Russia".
For the Pakistanis, the Ukrainians, the Baltic States, the Saudis, the Iranians etc... etc... this is a real head-scratcher.
With the bizarre demonetization initiative - the Modi government has basically invited - disaffected criminal groups to make common cause with terrorists. One can basically start the countdown to a major terror strike in "mainland" India now. The Pakistanis would love to get a piece of that action. That way they can leverage a good exchange rate for the counterfeit bills they printed. Otherwise they will have to go to war with India because right now Prime Minister Modi just turned their current batch of heroin trafficking revenues into worthless paper.
Dear WiseAss,
My poser to you from the previous thread remains.
Where does the NSCS deploy the domestic counter-subversion resources at its disposal?
Do they put all my resources into anti-Trump protests and push them into "Tahrir square" level? or
Do they push all my resources into pro-Trump anti-minority groups that will push things to the "Oklahoma" level?
Both these groups are not adequately covered by existing resources. It will take years to build up enough resources to tackle them effectively. Right now the only strategy is to push a provocation as far as it goes and hope that the outcome is acceptable.
By the way - there are really three choices - first flip a coin, second ask DT and third go into conservation mode.
I think the first two are essentially the same thing. The third option effectively withdraws the NSCS from domestic countersubversion and that will be a massive degradation in national security.
Dear Maverick,
I don't have an answer to this question, but maybe misogyny has very different forms and can be subtle.
I'm from Spain, where people do elect women, where gays can marry where nowadays everything seems open until you start to make some jokes with your coworkers. There, misogyny is rampant. One joke, one day is a sign of nothing, but when you hear the same jokes all the time ... A post-doc of mine is a women and she is teaching me to see this no so subtle discrimination in a world where misogyny seems like something of the past.
So, I think that this is a multiform problem which manifests itself differently in different places and contexts. Under an apparent openness it is possible to find the old ways.
By the way, here in the Mediterranean, women have always had some role and authority within the family. So, maybe it is easier to elect a woman as mayor, or president of a region (there are many), while still being misogynistic.
Dear pqs,
Yes - the beast has many heads.
I have been very fortunate to see relatively few such occurrences. It may have something to do with the fact that I consciously avoid people when they talk like that because such people and their views make me very uncomfortable.
Trump's electoral performance is closely tied to male chauvinism and male identity politics.
While I would like to pretend this may be the last time we see this kind of thing - I don't think we can hope for quick change. The battle will be long and hard fought.
I think during the great push West - America repressed its female narrative. From the Lewis and Clark expedition (where the real credit was robbed from Sacagawea and given to the men instead) - the narrative turned to a distinctly male centric view. Women (and female children) were basically treated as chattel.
We are very far from shifting the American national mood on women's rights.
People like Ivanka Trump are going to find out that they have less of a standing in the family than the dog on the street.
Dear Maverick,
I don't know, as a West-Mediterranean person I often find it very difficult to understand American culture. So, I really don't know what's happening, but it seems ugly. I guess that gun worship is also related to this testosterone culture.
However, if I were an US citizen, I would have found it difficult to vote for Hillary. I don't like her foreign policy and I don't think it is a good sign that a single family has so much power in such a big country. The Democrats should have found a more credible women to be the first female president of the US.
Pere
Dear pqs,
She was the most recognized figure in the democratic party both domestically and internationally.
Any female candidate would have suffered the electoral consequences of a male backlash.
This election may be the last time a female runs for president in the US in my lifetime.
I doubt any other female leader in the US has as much going for her.
It is tragic that such a thing has come to pass.
President Obama is saying we should think long term. When I look long term - I feel this electoral event has set Women's Rights issues back by several decades.
The inability of women to politically unify in the face of such a visible threat of misogyny will always degrade a woman's ability to be politically viable.
This is why - I predict that Kellyanne Conway - despite all her efforts will always be valued less than Steve Bannon.
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