The Politics of Women’s “Hysteria”
Women have been portrayed—in reality, stereotyped—as susceptible to emotional appeals, suckers for playing at their heart-strings, as susceptible to that vague, and frankly insulting, diagnosis of “hysteria.” The Clinton campaign has counted on that being true.
Why don’t millions of American women, including many dearest to me, realize—even now—that Hillary Clinton and her ruthless operatives are (at least figuratively) toasting themselves on how they manipulated women in this election? Personally, I bet they are laughing out loud and doing high fives. Hillary has a ghastly, triumphant smile when she has put one over on her audience.
Now, I am risking losing your attention, and I value it, so let us turn to cases, facts, and principles. Since at least the beginnings of the Victorian era, women have been portrayed—in reality, stereotyped—as susceptible to emotional appeals, suckers for playing at their heart-strings, as susceptible to that vague, and frankly insulting, diagnosis of “hysteria.”
The Clinton campaign has counted on that being true, with astonishing success, to turn around this campaign. A private conversation between two men in the studio of a soap opera is taped without their permission or knowledge, essentially by accident (‘a hot mic”), and 11 years later it is illicitly released to time exactly with the crucial debates held, supposedly, to permit the American people to choose their next president, the most powerful leader in the world.
Donald Trump apologizes for loose lips, a decade earlier, and declares it does not represent who he is. The commenters, interrupting him virtually as he speaks, hasten to declare this an insincere apology. The heads nod in unison across all channels: No, no. On behalf of all American women, we do not accept this apology.
From that time, the mass media has no objective—not discussion of political principles, not America’s economy, not America’s place in the world—but to run and repeat the “groping” story. In the glare of worldwide publicity, several women emerge for a moment onto the world stage and are declared courageous heroines by claiming that a decade or more ago Donald Trump “touched them inappropriately” with no witnesses. All this time, they never came forward or complained. There is no other record. There is no way for Mr. Trump to defend himself but to deny what they assert. But he is not innocent until proven guilty; in the press, there is another standard of justice: once accused, you are dead. The new American spirit of justice; tell your kids about that, ladies.
And so, for weeks, the story is the only topic in America’s once principled leader of the press, “The New York Times,” where now there is no more “news” on the front page, only feature stories and links to opinion pieces about “groping.” The “Times” has succeeded; all of America is groping toward ‘freedom, truth, and the American way’ in this election.
It has been said that no smear can stick if its object does not lend it credence. By that standard, there seldom has been a more promising target of a smear than Mr. Trump.
Well, what about Trump in all this? It has been said that no smear can stick if its object does not lend it credence. By that standard, there seldom has been a more promising target of a smear than Mr. Trump. He is a viscerally aggressive fighter, lashing out when personally attacked, mocking his attackers, jouncing and jigging and gesturing on stage against his detractors. He is not polished, not “cool,” in the Marshall McLuhan sense, he is not politic. His body language is the fighter who raises his clenched fists in response to any insulting personal attack. During a campaign when private actions, emails, discussions are the coinage of effective attack, one tape shows Mr. Trump saying that in high school he loved to fight, including with fists. It shows in his campaign.
And so, the long-planned smear attack by Hillary Clinton and her operatives does the trick. In a few weeks, the women of America in their millions are displaying peak “fight or flight” behavior. The valid video of offensive Trump talk in 2005, for which he apologized, is seamlessly attached to “the groped women” incidents, which he denies utterly, and the campaign for the U.S. Presidency flips from Clinton and Trump running neck-and-neck in the polls to Clinton with an impressive lead that Trump closes but never has overcome.
Tens of millions of women of America have focused their attention exclusively on the “pussy tape” and the “groping” saga. They have done so under pressure of a concerted, almost unprecedented media brain-washing campaign to stir up their emotions, their resentments, their fears—their hysteria.
The phenomenon is so strong that it seems possible that the election has been decided by the reaction of America women to “the pussy tapes.” In recent weeks, Clinton has pulled well ahead of Trump, from approximately equal; Trump is now the underdog. If so, those women have lived up to the stereotype of the woman who does not venture into the realm of ideas, the economy, and foreign policy; she is captive of her emotional nature, her sensitivity to being slighted, her cry to be heard, taken seriously, respected, viewed as equal.
Those are serious demands, assertions of self-respect, but now have been 100 percent co-opted by the Politics of Manipulation. Hillary in public, taking the “high road,” talks of her children and grandchildren and how we are voting for their future; she simply cannot mention them often enough. Women. Their feelings. All about family.
Meanwhile, her operatives, undercover and underground, have spent more than a year and millions of dollars preparing for the dirtiest campaign ever run in America. Recently Wikileaks, for example, showed that the “Miss Piggy” attack on Mr. Trump during the debates, asserting that Mr. Trump verbally prodded a Miss Universe winner to fight to keep her title, when it was about to be withdrawn, was researched, twisted, and held for release for more than a year. That’s right, a highly paid Clinton agent developed the campaign’s book of dirty tricks, including this one, and the Clinton campaign held it more than a year to be ready for use in a debate. That is some impressive plotting to gain power by any means.
What is dismaying to me, on the most personal level, is that the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign successfully manipulates American women to a degree I have never witnessed. I wonder if many of them, seized with righteous anger at the “pussy tapes,” can cite Mr. Trump’s positions on the economy and employment, the environmentalist assault on American energy production, the $2.0 trillion annual drag of Obama-era regulation on the economy, the Trump tax cuts to flip all incentives on U.S. companies toward remaining in America, the Trump “Contract with American Citizens” to fight for freedom, including repealing Obama Care, or the Trump pledge to support schools of choice and charter schools to break stranglehold of the failing public school monopoly?
I am only one man, of course, and what I witness at first hand is limited. The intelligent, educated, sensitive, highly-confident women I know all are for Clinton and all seem motivated by “pussy tape” politics. In addition, there is a decided focus on Trump the “bully,” on Trump as insensitive to the handicapped, on Trump as unpolished, impolitic, and grating.
Get those millions of women voting their anger at men, and their fear, and the entire Trump attack on the socialist-drifting, interventionist-welfare statist, anti-free-market Clinton program can be defeated—defeated without ever discussing it.
He seems to be that, at times, but I see no indication that women in my admittedly limited circle could cite many Trump positions (with the exception of “the wall”) on the issues—in essence, for limited government, more choice for individuals—versus Clinton—in every area for more government power, less freedom of individual action, pledge of managing our lives to make them better.
It is a sad spectacle because the Liberal-Left intellectuals, academics, commentators, reporters, and media columnists support Clinton because of her unflagging, dogmatic advocacy of government control over every area of life at the expense of American freedom—of what remains of free-market capitalism. BUT: when it comes to their columns, comments, and grand-standing TV displays of high moral dudgeon, they speak only of the “pussy tape” themes.
They have discovered that that is where the decisive electoral majority for Clinton is to be found. Get those millions of women voting their anger at men, and their fear, and the entire Trump attack on the socialist-drifting, interventionist-welfare statist, anti-free-market Clinton program can be defeated—defeated without ever discussing it.
About the Author: Walter Donway
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