It seems that the Donald gives off a musky odor that is extremely attractive to some women. How else to explain his astonishing poll numbers among white women, where once again he garnered 55 percent of their vote? It makes me think of the attempt to create odorama movies back in the 60s. Yes, it was a real thing. John Waters even used it in his film Polyester in 1981, briefly reviving this odorous technique. Scents were put into the seats of the theater and triggered by scenes in the movie so that you get a good whiff of what is going on. Trump may have the scents piped into his rallies, making peroxide blonde women swoon at his every word. Of course, this doesn't explain how he manages to attract women outside his rallies, but maybe he finds some way to trigger olfactory sensations through the cadence of his speech that is irresistible to white women but repellent to women of color.
Whatever the case, pollsters are scratching their heads as to why white women are so attracted to him, after many expressed their misgivings over his handling of the pandemic, his divisive rhetoric and any number of sexual abuse allegations. You would think this would be enough to turn every woman off Trump. Yet, many women bubbled in his name just the same.
It seems the ghost of Phyllis Schlafly is still among us. She was able to persuade many women back in the 70s that there was no reason to have the Equal Rights Amendment, even though most women couldn't open up an individual bank account in their own name or have credit cards until the mid 70s. Dear Phyllis successfully managed to convince many women that the National Organization of Women, better known as NOW, is nothing but a bunch of lesbians and bull dykes promoting abortion on demand. Sadly, that image has stuck nearly 50 years later. Many white women are adverse to any suggestion that they should have gender equality. Just listen to Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn tell us she is perfectly fine with gaps in pay and thinks women should be content being women.
The ERA was finally ratified in Virginia in January of this year, after the Democrats finally took control of the state legislature with a record number of women representatives, including the state's first transgender. Given we were in the heat of impeachment hearings no one paid much attention. This was a long deferred dream although many changes had been made in national and state laws regarding gender equality in the years since the Equal Rights Amendment was first put forward in 1974. It has yet to be approved by Congress as Moscow Mitch has blocked anything from moving through the Senate except federal judge nominations, including the hasty confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the vacant Supreme Court seat left behind by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Many political pundits thought that this lack of respect for Judge Ruth's legacy would spur more women to vote out Trump and Republican senators alike. On the contrary, it seemed to encourage many more conservative voters to go to the polls and give Trump the second largest popular vote total in history, 10 million more votes than he had in 2016. It's just fortunate that Joe Biden received the single greatest popular vote in history, which may ultimately top 80 million.
How can this be? Weren't women upset with Trump for flaunting the advice of his own medical advisers by refusing to wear a mask at the Rose Garden ceremony for Mrs. Barrett's nomination? Afterward, he and many others in his inner circle came down with COVID. He had to be rushed to Walter Reed at one point when he apparently had difficulty breathing. Surely, any mother would be appalled by this truculent behavior. Nope, it seems more white women identified themselves with Amy Coney Barrett than they did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and bubbled in Teflon Don on their ballots, along with Republican senators across the country, so that Mitch was rewarded for his brazen act of filling a Supreme Court seat in the heat of a national election.
White women continue to reward men behaving badly across the country, despite voicing their own concerns with these misogynistic men. It's not just Trump. Lindsey Graham openly stated that young women can accomplish anything they want if they are pro-life, embrace religion and follow a traditional family structure. Putting aside the incongruity in Lindsey's own life, why would women vote such a male chauvinist pig back into the Senate?
Part of the problem is that the patriarchal authority Graham described has been inculcated into them from from the cradle. It is hard to shake, no matter how hard you try, and even if a woman has a rebellious youth where she experiments with drugs and sex and god forbid socialist ideas, ultimately she comes back to the loving arms of her misogynistic daddy or finds a surrogate in a husband. I've seen this with many of the women I knew in high school. They have literally been nurtured from cradle to grave in a paternalistic society where daddy's authority is absolute.
Of course, it is not to say all white women are like this. We see strong white women in politics who are role models to a younger generation. We can also take some succor that young white women voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket, so maybe we will break this vicious circle yet. But, it must be extremely frustrating for women of color to see their white counterparts so easily duped by these con men.
There is literally nothing the Republican Party offers that is in their best interest. The GOP has fought against universal health care, equal pay for equal work, equal access to institutions, and firmly against a women's right to choose in regard to abortion. The handful of women in prominent roles in the GOP look like Commander wives from The Handmaid's Tale, spouting the same rhetoric their male overlords do. It's not just Marsha Blackburn, but Joni Ernst and many others as well. One wonders how they must feel having to act in these subordinated roles. Marsha probably nothing at all, but you can see the pain on poor Joni's face when she is asked to defend her decisions.
A few GOP women speak out like Lisa Murkowski, only to quietly demure when it actually comes time to vote on the Senate floor. She voted against the procedure to put Amy Coney Barrett's name forward for confirmation, but voted for her when the vote actually counted. The only GOP senator to vote against Barrett was Susan Collins. One hopes that when the next session of the Senate meets, Ms. Collins might consider caucusing with the Democrats as she is now persona non grata among Republican senators.
Of course the irony of all this is that I'm a man criticizing women for their choices. I generally try to refrain from such criticism, but it just shocked me that so many white women would vote for Trump given his track record. It wasn't just liberal white women who spoke out against him. So too did Cindy McCain and Laura Bush and even Jurushah Duford, the granddaughter of Billy Graham. Mrs. McCain even went so far as to endorse Joe Biden, which may have helped swing Arizona by the narrowest of margins in his favor. Yet, across the nation white women stuck with Trump, as they would an abusive relationship that has little hope of ever improving.
We will see where the next four years take us. It is doubtful the Republican Party will change significantly unless they suffer a stinging rebuke in the 2022 midterms, but they are doing everything possible to avoid a replay of 2018. The GOP finally placed conservative women on the Senate judiciary committee and are running more women in state and national elections. But, these are just proxies for their own patriarchal views. Few of these conservative women speak with a voice of their own, and that to me is incredibly sad.
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