Bonus: Jamie Raskin On How Biden Confronted The Supreme Court Over Roe
Yesterday we looked again at what kind of people turn into MAGAts. While we were looking at that, John Pavlovitz was mulling over how women— any women— can still be supporting Trump and his anti-women agenda. He marveled how “With every horrible thing Trump has said about women, with his boasts of uninvited physicality, his history of unrepentant infidelity, his multiple marriages with ever-younger wives [and] with his relentless vile and vicious attacks on the physical appearance, sexual lives, and even the menstrual cycles of female political opponents and critics,” there are women who still vote for Trump and for Republicans. “Donald Trump is the very definition of the kind of man I was taught that women would want no part of— let alone brag about and defend on social media. More unthinkable still, that they would joyfully give power over themselves and their daughters and granddaughters to such a man. As the GOP crusades openly and unrelentingly against the rights of women to determine their fates and decide what happens within their bodies, they inexplicably have these women as willing allies. This is a confounding and tragic reality.”
I look at these women and I wonder what it is that they think as they champion a predatory misogynist like this man and align with his antiquated movement of subjugation.
I try to imagine the story that they tell themselves about it all, about their own worth, and I wonder how they connect all the dots.
Maybe it's some toxic cocktail of lingering blind hatred for Hillary Clinton, lifetime FoxNews indoctrination, subconscious white supremacy, internalized misogyny created by sexist theology, deeply embedded self-loathing, and real-time Stockholm Syndrome— but still, I just can't seem to make any sense of it.
That a party with such seeming disregard for women would be co-signed by other such men isn't at all surprising. I expect knuckle-dragging, towel-snapping, cavemen to want men like them making the laws and protecting their interests. That kind of self-preservation of a species, as pathetic as it is, still makes some kind of sense.
What I simply can't fathom are women who affirm and celebrate something so seemingly antithetical to their well-being, something that with every word and every bit of evidence— declares that they are of little value.
That affirmation feels like an act of self-harm, a conspiring in their own silencing and minimization.
As a man, I'm not at all qualified to answer these questions and so I'll rely on the wisdom of the women these words will reach and lean into their responses— especially those who have complete peace about defending Trump and the GOP, who believe they are for them, those who are okay with their daughters living in the world they are making here: a world where their uteruses, their healthcare, and perhaps one day again their votes are not their own.
All I can is that as a man looking on at it all; a man with a mother and a sister and wife and a daughter, all of whom I adore; a man who thought he understood what decency looked like and was cherished— I simply don't get it.
I’ll be fighting like hell for women to be seen and treated as fully equal, which is why I will be voting Democrat.I hope more women will be as well.
They deserve nothing less.
They deserve more than Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Let me offer a possible antidote: the stunning, undeniable brilliance of Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin. Watch him speaking to Democratic Party activists in Phoenix over the weekend— truly inspiring, whatever your gender is (but especially for women):