Hate and misogyny should never be overlooked or normalized in our national civic life. Particularly for candidates seeking the presidency of the United States, the nation’s most powerful and highest office.
I am old enough to remember political campaigns dating back to the late 1970s. I have never seen such disrespect for women coming from one of the major parties as I have from the 2024 Trump-Vance ticket. Yes, of course, in the 2016 presidential campaign Donald Trump was disrespectful to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, infamously calling her a nasty woman in their October 2016 debate. Yes, Trump’s discourse is rarely civil or respectful or politically correct. He made fun of disabled journalists. He mocks fallen and injured soldiers. He brags of sexually assaulting women (“when you’re a star, they let you do it,” he boasted). And word is that in private he speaks even worse of women, seeing them as sex objects and possessions, not as thinking, smart, capable participants in American democracy.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
And for all of Trump’s clear sexism, calling women ugly or fat or horse face, few seem to care. Trump says and does things that no man running for the presidency ever has. If that weren’t bad enough, his vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, is getting in on the game. Their rhetoric is alarming to me as a woman and as a woman of color. It should be alarming to everyone.
Vance on Wednesday addressed the criticism being leveled at the Trump campaign about Trump using Arlington National Cemetery, and specifically Section 60, for a backdrop for campaign videos and photos. Vance falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris of starting it and then said out loud in front of an audience that Harris can go to hell. She had not said a word about Trump’s controversial visit. Campaigning is prohibited at Arlington National Cemetery, and Section 60 is the revered ground where the members of our military services most recently killed are buried. A complaint was filed against the Trump campaign by a staffer, who later declined to press charges, citing danger to her family and herself.
On Thursday, he used a 2007 video of Miss South Carolina Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton bungling an interview question to impugn the intelligence of Harris ahead of her televised interview with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. (Vance’s own running mate didn’t seem to mind Upton’s answer; Trump signed her to a modeling contract a month later.)
Vance just can’t hide his hostility to women — from attacking those of us who are “childless cat ladies” to those who are suggesting there’s no role for postmenopausal women beyond grandmothering to affecting a discernible disdain for unmarried women. That anger is becoming more common and more acceptable in some parts of the GOP. Hulk Hogan, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, said last week that he wanted to “body slam” the vice president, mispronounced her name and questioned her racial identity. The Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, who wants a total abortion with no exceptions (not for rape, not for incest, not for the life of the mother), thinks the 19th Amendment, which acknowledges that women constitutionally have the right to vote, should be repealed.
Here’s the thing: Harris is only the second woman in history to be nominated by a major political party for the office of the presidency. She is the sitting vice president, an office that is deserving of respect and decorum. The office, at the very minimum, should be treated with decency by those who address it
Millions of young American women and girls are enthusiastic about Harris and watching her every word and move. And they are watching the drivel coming from the Republican campaign.
That’s why we can’t “normalize” misogyny in politics. That’s why we can’t platform posts that make vile sexist innuendos about Harris and other women.
Trump and Vance are the leaders of a major political party. Trump is a former president, and Vance is a sitting U.S. senator. Are we to believe they have no impulse control? Do they not realize that women make up more than 50% of this nation? Twenty-five women serve in the U.S. Senate, one is vice president, four sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, more than a dozen are governors of states and countless thousands are elected officials and judges at the federal, state and local levels.
Why are journalists, academics and corporate leaders not calling this out? No corporate executive could disparage women this way publicly — or privately — and get away with it. No college president. No industry or Fortune 500 leader. No judge. No physician. No one could do it and still have a job. No one should do it and credibly seek a job of public trust.
The clear message coming out from the Trump campaign and other MAGA adherents has been and continues to be that women are only good for, as one far-right pastor aligned with MAGA movement posted on X recently, “having children, not talking too loudly, not having a career, and most importantly submitting to their husband’s leadership.”
I hope the women of America are paying attention.
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