{"id":9482,"date":"2016-10-10T13:15:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T20:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9482"},"modified":"2016-10-10T13:15:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T20:15:42","slug":"trump-politics-and-our-sexual-schizophrenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-politics-and-our-sexual-schizophrenia\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump, Politics, and Our Sexual Schizophrenia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Conservatives should know better than to so quickly validate a dishonest narrative that benefits the other side.<\/h1>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n
By Bruce Thornton \/\/ Front Page Magazine Online<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A few minutes into Sunday\u2019s debate Donald Trump\u2019s decade-old crude sexual banter with a reporter from an entertainment show was mentioned by the CNN moderator. Donald again apologized for the comments, and Hillary immediately pounced on Trump\u2019s misogyny, throwing in his alleged racism and Islamophobia. To his credit, Trump ignored her slurs and attacked her record. When Democrat loyalist Martha Raddatz pressed on, Trump let loose with a powerful contrast with Bill\u2019s record of abuse\u2013\u2013which Hillary side-stepped.<\/p>\n

Welcome to another debate on everything except the issues. Consider the reporting on Trump\u2019s comments, which is the mother of all dog-bites-man-stories. I don\u2019t know what cocoon you have to come from not to know that every single day millions of men\u2013\u2013and women\u2013\u2013 of all ages, races, and sexual persuasions exchange vulgar, crude banter about sex. And you\u2019d have to be particularly dumb, or duplicitous, to be shocked that a New Yorker with a flamboyant and braggadocios personality who is involved in casinos, reality television, construction, and beauty pageants probably would do so on a regular basis. Or, if not dumb, then a partisan hack indulging in rank hypocrisy in order to gain political advantage. Welcome to another episode of America\u2019s political hypocrisy and sexual schizophrenia.<\/p>\n

The Dems, of course, and their minions in the media are hyping this story for obvious reasons. Their candidate has a long history of lies and money-grubbing, possesses no political charisma, and touts no policy proposals other than the same dull progressive clich\u00e9s and failed ideas. Donald\u2019s juvenile sex-talk is a perfect distraction from the steady drip of revelations about Hillary\u2019s email and server scandal, pay-for-play foundation, video evidence of her questionable health, and news reports from abroad documenting daily her disastrous management of foreign affairs while Secretary of State.\u00a0 And don\u2019t forget the WikiLeaks release of her Wall Street speeches transcripts, which show her political duplicity and cozy ties to the 1%.<\/p>\n

What makes this latest bout of misdirection particularly hypocritical is the glaringly obvious record of Bill Clinton\u2019s sexual depredations, from his time in Arkansas to his sex-tourism on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s Lolita Express<\/a>. Most men engage in smutty talk of exaggerated sexual conquests and fantasies about future trophies. But we know of only one who as governor and then president abused his power to fulfill his sordid wishes in the Arkansas State House and the White House, besmirching the dignity and honor of an office supposedly devoted to serving the people and upholding the Constitution. And few women, when their guilty husband is exposed, unleash a nuclear bombardment of harassment and vilification of the sort famous \u201cfeminist\u201d Hillary Clinton launched. The same woman who is now calling Trump\u2019s banter \u201chorrific\u201d was described by her own courtier George Stephanopoulos as someone who will \u201csavage her enemies,\u201d as she did the victims of Bill\u2019s sexual assaults.<\/p>\n

But once again, the Democrats and their Republican fifth column think words are more important than reality. Indeed, Planned Parenthood, recipient of much Democrat largesse and political cover, said, \u201cWhat Trump described in these tapes amounts to sexual assault.\u201d But real<\/em> sexual assault like Bill Clinton\u2019s gets a yawn when the perpetrator is politically simpatico. I understand why the Democrats do it, but the Republicans\u2019 motives elude me. They seem to be driven by some standard of \u201cconservative\u201d purity of the sort for which they regularly criticize the Tea Party, or by class prejudices that find Trump and his supporters vulgar, stupid upstarts who refuse to listen to their betters. They may be jumping ship to preserve their careers and influence, or making an electoral calculation about getting the woman\u2019s vote. They seem to forget that squeaky-clean Mitt Romney was savaged as a sexist for his \u201cbinders\u201d full of the resumes of qualified women. Memo to NeverTrumpers: no matter what a Republican does, no matter how much he panders, he will always be a racist and sexist capitalist pig.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something else, though, going on\u2013\u2013some Republicans\u2019 bad habit of accepting identity-politics narratives about race or women, and then preemptively cringing to prove that they are not benighted racists or sexists deserving of political and social shaming. That is, the same gutlessness in the face of political correctness that in part fueled Trump\u2019s improbable rise to become the Republican candidate for president.<\/ins><\/ins><\/ins><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

So Paul Ryan, who earlier called Trump a \u201cracist,\u201d said that Trump\u2019s comments were \u201csickening.\u201d No, Congressman, using the power of the presidency to get sexual favors, and then perjuring yourself when questioned about it, is sickening. Calling yourself a feminist and telling us that victims of sexual assault \u201chave a right to be believed,\u201d when you have \u201csavaged\u201d victims of your own husband\u2019s depredations, is sickening. So too with all the other Republicans, including party chairman Reince Priebus, who have eagerly jumped on the holier-than-thou bandwagon. So too with the NeverTrumpers, who have started a campaign to get the candidate to step down. All their ostentatious dudgeon is based not on proven actions, but on sexual big-talk as common in our Republic as flies. When there\u2019s clear evidence that Trump has in fact sexually coerced or assaulted women, then will be the time for condemnation.<\/p>\n

Go beyond the current campaign to the wider culture, and this uproar over Trump\u2019s comments reflects the sexual schizophrenia that for decades has corrupted our understanding of women\u2019s sexuality. When feminism took off in the Sixties, it was all about empowering women to have the same sexual agency as men. All the taboos against female sexual behavior were dismantled, the dreaded \u201cdouble standard\u201d was discarded, and women started acting just like men. They are free to choose their partners, and the frequency and variety of sexual acts, without judgment from prudish patriarchs and Christian \u201cfundamentalists.\u201d They can go to Chippendales shows and leer and grope the strippers with the same gusto as the wise-guys in the Bada Bing. They can watch pornography on television, and read best-selling soft-porn sadomasochistic novels and then enjoy a girls\u2019 night out to enjoy the movie version. They can drop F-bombs with abandon, objectivize men into sexual commodities, dress like prostitutes, and banter about their conquests. And any criticism of female promiscuity is demonized as \u201cslut-shaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around the Nineties the bill started coming due for this uncritical abandonment of traditional morality. Sexual disease, frequent abortion, children without fathers, and the psychological costs of being objectivized and degraded by men\u2013\u2013who were delighted to find that women were now their sexual equals\u2013\u2013were all the bitter fruit of liberation. The response to these unforeseen consequences was the new Victorianism, as Rene Denfeld\u2019s perceptive study called it. The sexual freedom would remain, but now men were expected to observe a whole host of minute rules and limitations in order to protect women from the consequences of their own free choices. College students had the right to get drunk at frat parties and make a bad sexual choice of an equally drunk sexual partner, but were absolved by being transformed into victims of sexual predators who were now held to a higher standard\u2013\u2013just like in patriarchal Victorian times. Apparently the Victorian feminists didn\u2019t understand that if men should know better, then at some level they are better. Women were now the equal of men, but simultaneously not as resilient or strong enough to own the consequences of their behavior.<\/p>\n

Our larger public culture is equally schizophrenic. We have easy access to porn, a fashion industry that dresses even pre-teens like prostitutes, television shows and movies filled with casual sex, and an obsession with sexual beauty that drives a whole industry of surgical enhancement. Yet at the same time, we rigorously police our language and jokes for infractions of \u201csexual harassment,\u201d which is what any woman at any time for any reason believes creates a \u201chostile and intimidating workplace,\u201d in the words of the law. And we have redefined \u201csexual assault\u201d to include bad decisions one would think a confident, strong, adult woman would see as a learning experience and try to avoid. Instead we infantilize women in terms Queen Victoria would find reassuring.<\/p>\n

Democrats promote this identity of victimhood because it delivers political dividends. Remember Obama\u2019s 2012 \u201cLife of Julia\u201d campaign cartoon? The message was the federal government can be a woman\u2019s husband, boyfriend, and father, with the result, of course, that women would be just as dependent as they were in the dark days of patriarchy. Or think of Hillary\u2019s main argument for becoming president: it\u2019s time to elect a woman and correct the continuing injustices of sexism\u2013\u2013despite the fact that today on average women are better educated and live longer than the average male.<\/p>\n

But conservatives should know better and not jump so quickly to validate a dishonest narrative that\u00a0benefits the other side. True conservatism knows the traditional wisdom that talk is cheap, and that actions speak louder than words. And true conservatism recognizes that freedom is the highest secular good, but that there is no true freedom without acceptance of the consequences of one\u2019s actions. This latest Trump episode illustrates how clearly our sexual schizophrenia marks the decline of conservatism and the dominance of progressivism in our culture and politics.<\/p>\n

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Conservatives should know better than to so quickly validate a dishonest narrative that benefits the other side. By Bruce Thornton \/\/ Front Page Magazine Online \u00a0 A few minutes into Sunday\u2019s debate Donald Trump\u2019s decade-old crude sexual banter with a reporter from an entertainment show was mentioned by the CNN moderator. Donald again apologized for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,1091,842,22,92,23,31,187,185],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2sW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9493,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tenth-life-of-donald-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":0},"title":"The Tenth Life of Donald Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Online By seizing control of Sunday night\u2019s debate, he steadied his faltering candidacy \u2014 a bit. The Sunday debate recalibrated the moribund Trump candidacy. It will not end this week. The stampede and groupthink calls for his resignation will ease. Trump might have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8621,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/donald-trump-and-the-other-class-warfare\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":1},"title":"Donald Trump and the Other Class Warfare","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"When democratic masses tire of being condescended to. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The rise and continuing popularity of Donald Trump reminds us that \u201cclass warfare\u201d is an eternal constant of democracies, for as Plato said, every city is in fact two cities, \u201cone the city of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/rdf-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nine-lives-of-donald-j-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":2},"title":"The Nine Lives of Donald J. Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Whatever his faults, a Trump victory is preferable for the Republic. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Seasoned Republican political handlers serially attack Donald Trump and his campaign as amateurish, incompetent, and incoherent. The media somehow outdid their propaganda work for Barack Obama and have signed on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9522,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-case-for-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":3},"title":"The Case for Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Conservatives should vote for the Republican nominee. Donald Trump needs a unified Republican party in the homestretch if he is to have any chance left of catching Hillary Clinton \u2014 along with winning higher percentages of the college-educated and women than currently support\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9366,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-long-trump-summer\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":4},"title":"A Long Trump Summer","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When have voters faced a choice between two such unpalatable, unprincipled candidates? By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Before summer is over, we may see things now scarcely imagined that will make Brexit seem anticlimactic. Trump\u2019s Attack Mode I think the following is an accurate statement: No major\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UK"","block_context":{"text":"UK","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8965,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-failings-among-the-reasons-for-trumps-rise\/","url_meta":{"origin":9482,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s Failings among the Reasons for Trump’s Rise","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services Three truths fuel Donald Trump. One, Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster. If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2016"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9483,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9482\/revisions\/9483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}