It is hardly a secret that President Trump is a jerk toward women — and worse.
Just ask E. Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels or, god rest her soul on the golf course, Ivana Trump.
Which is why, when Trump calmly, casually said, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” to a female reporter who dared ask him about the Epstein files last week, the outrage was somewhere between “meh” and a mildly less tepid “that’s sexist.”
And that was from other journalists — not a single politician, left or right, condemned it. Not one. The only nonaccepting response I could find was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mocking memes.
But there was something different about this particular animal insult (cow, dog, piggy — all words meant to humiliate women by dehumanizing them), a difference that frankly should raise not just outrage, but also alarms.
Trump’s aggressive sexism, now seemingly uncontrollable by the man himself, isn’t just a personal foible. It’s a political weapon, and one tied to violence — a war on women that is ultimately part of the war on democracy.
The open disdain for women in general (despite or including his tolerance for sycophants such as Pam Bondi who survive by serving without question) is what researchers would classify as “hostile sexism” — a belief that women present a danger to men because they want to control them and therefore are deserving of scorn and anger.
It’s a trait that presents a risk to democracy because it’s strongly tied to a willingness to condone or even participate in political violence, and also part of a broader strategy of picking off groups one by one to consolidate power.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University and the author of “Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism,” called hostile sexism like Trump’s a “Trojan horse” that sneaks a larger authoritarianism into society on the backs of women, who have borne it since the Garden of Eden.
It’s a horse that should be a “warning sign, red flag, bell ringing” for coming trouble.
“When women are disempowered, democracies crumble,” Miller-Idriss said. “Authoritarians know that.”
She said the playbook to erode democracy by eroding women’s rights has been used successfully around the world, and it’s pretty simple. “Disempower, belittle, disparage, remove rights, remove from public life, threaten with ‘one household, one vote,’ take away abortion rights, keep people in the kitchen.”
And if it can’t be done by political and cultural means?
Entirely unsurprisingly, a recent study by violence prevention researchers at UC Davis found that people who hold hostile sexist beliefs are far more likely to condone or say they would commit political violence than those who were simply “benevolently sexist,” or just believed women are somewhat less capable than men. In fact no hate other than Islamophobia — racism and antisemitism included — was more closely tied to that willingness to condone violence.
And who was at the top of the list when it comes to holding those hostile sexist beliefs?
MAGA Republicans.
“MAGA Republicans were substantially more likely than non-MAGA non-Republicans to view political violence as justified and to endorse a wide array of beliefs that are associated with violence,” UC Davis researchers found in a separate study.
Can you blame them when their leader makes it so clear it’s not just acceptable but necessary to keep women in their place?
We’ve seen the power of this attitude with the purging of women leaders in the military by Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth, who has been accused of sexual assault himself.
We’ve seen it in the right’s attack on birth control as unnatural or even dangerous, coupled with antiabortion laws that can make childbirth deadly — all part of a larger, pro-natalist push that demands white women have more babies with less medical care to “save” Western culture.
We’ve seen it in the rise of the far-right “manosphere” where misogynists including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate are glorified, and so-called alpha males are encouraged to see rape and violence as not only OK, but desired by women.
But we have become inured to the regular degradation of women by Trump and really, most of the men in his orbit, after years of its steady drip, drip, drip. The misogyny is ugly, but also, conversations about sexism have long bored the American public, often even American women, and Trump knows it.
Miller-Idriss was struck, as I was, by the casualness of Trump’s hateful remark, the way he rolled it out straight from thought to word. He didn’t plan this slur, but clearly he meant it and did not care who heard it. In fact the White House defended it, insinuating the journalist deserved it for being “unprofessional.”
“It’s just so normalized, you know?” Miller-Idriss said.
So normalized that when he attacked another female journalist in the Oval Office a few days later, few made the link between the two incidents as the same kind of hostile sexism.
This time Trump singled out an ABC reporter who dared ask him about his family’s profiteering in Saudi Arabia, and his willingness to sit next to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who allegedly ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump’s attack was dripping with gender scorn.
“It’s the way you ask these questions,” he said to White House reporter Mary Bruce, adding that she was “insubordinate.”
“And you could even ask that same question nicely,” Trump continued, because nice women know how to behave, know they need to show some respect.
If we don’t open our eyes to this purposeful political attack on 50% of our population, then women — like transgender people and immigrants — will become the next group openly assailed for existing in public life.
And that attack will be the next hole blown in our democracy, by men who always have believed that “quiet, piggy” is a reasonable command, to be obeyed or enforced. Our choice.
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