The footage of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bus ride with Billy Bush in which he owns sexual assault as his preferred method of engaging with women he finds desirable, led to a tsunami of accounts by women who’ve been similarly treated when men let loose their inner Trump.
Journalist Karen Middleton published her account of sexual harassment and assault by MPs and male colleagues in The Saturday Paper.
Leah McElrath broke down Trump’s non-apology for his actions into a series of astoundingly succinct tweets every woman should print out and stick on the fridge as a guide to common manipulative tactics used by abusers.
In fact, Trump has done all of us a great favour. His global performance of alpha male entitlement has given us a textbook example of predatory male behaviour, without us having to bother reading the textbook. He’s created an atmosphere in which women in our millions can comment on our experiences of such behaviour and, in many instances for the first time, give it a name. He’s outed both himself and the toxic masculinity from which predation springs in a way nothing and nobody else could. For this we can be relieved. There can no longer be any doubt that to adherents of that toxic masculinity, women are prey.
Trump also sorted something that has deeply troubled me for the last couple of years. I’ve written on this blog and elsewhere about my childhood sexual abuse and the PTSD that is its consequence. So when I met online friend David in person for the first time I knew he knew my history. When he asked me about it in the cafe I was discomfited: it seemed neither the place nor the time, however, part of my psychological damage from that time is that in certain circumstances I’m unable to make an assessment of my own best interests, so I briefly answered his questions and also told him of my lifelong struggle with PTSD.
When we left the cafe David grabbed me, pulled me to him, kissed me and put his tongue in my mouth. It was one of those moments in which you can’t get a handle on what is actually happening because what is happening is so unlikely. Then it’s over.
I’ve never been able to make sense of why, only moments after listening to an account of prolonged childhood sexual abuse and subsequent lifelong PTSD, a man would grab a woman he’d just met and put his tongue in her mouth.
Until I read a discussion between Donald Trump and Howard Stern. Troubled women, Trump asserts, deeply, deeply troubled women, give the best sex:
She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed. How come the deeply troubled women, you know, deeply, deeply troubled, they’re always the best in bed?”
Stern said damaged women are “looking for love, they’re looking for positive affirmation, they’re looking for a father figure who will love them and tell them they’re wonderful and they’ll never be enough.”
Well I have a friend, Howard, who’s actually like a great playboy, I mean, I don’t say this about men, this guy does very well, Trump said. He runs silent, runs deep as they say, like a submarine. He will only look for a crazy women. He says, ‘Donald, Donald, please, please, I only want the crazy women.’”
“They’re desperate,” Stern said.
Reading this exchange was like an epiphany. I understood why David had been so overwhelmed by desire he’d felt compelled to grab me and stick his tongue in my mouth, even though you’d hope a man might think twice about violating a woman who’d just spoken about childhood sexual abuse and lifelong PTSD.
But hey, a deeply troubled woman can turn loose a man’s inner Trump, and he can’t help himself he has to grab her and stick his tongue in her mouth.
Vulnerability turns him on. Damage turns him on. It’s deeply, deeply sexy.
It’s a relief, really, to have my experience explained by Trump and Stern. It’s a relief to know it’s a predator’s thing and how else would we know so publicly, so accessibly, unless men like Trump and Stern shared their opinions?
We’ve known for a long time that women who experience childhood abuse are highly vulnerable to re-traumatisation. But I doubt it’s ever been so clear that this is because there are men who seek us out, specifically because we’ve been damaged.
Think on that, if you can bear to.
No Place For Sheep 
An excellent take on the predatory obsessiveness of masculinity. Only when men lead a collective deconstruction of male gender identity will we start to truly appreciate what the possibility of equality between men and women might promise. And that simultaneously would usher in hope for sustainable life on earth….alas I fear it will come too late, if ever.
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Thank you Moles.
I fear you are right.
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I seemed to meet every arsehole on the planet who could smell out the damage and PTSD from years of sexual and physical violence at the hands of the pedophile bastard who finally died 3 years ago.
But I also know many decent men who understand friendship and never abuse or impinge on me.
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Yes, by far the majority of men I know and have known are good friends and understand boundaries.
In fact there’s only been the one I refer to in the post who has not. I still haven’t dealt with all the damage from that relationship.
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you are & you will….don’t let him take any more…..let all the power of the love you know & have known heal you beautiful woman…xx
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Thank you, Someone.
I’ve never been so grateful for my family, especially the youngest members. They heal me & don’t even know they’re doing it. 🙂
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This comment sounds like it’s blaming men collectively.
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The balance of power world wide is held by men. These men impact on the lives of both women and men. Our culture is inherently masculine and our governmental style is patriarchal.
Men are the worst enemy of the freedom of other men – this is also reflected in crime statistics. Women get harmed mostly at home, men are in danger all the time. Ironically, it is only women who prepare themselves every day for sexual harassment. If anyone wishes to take up this point GOOGLE offers a plethora of opinion, such as, http://everydaysexism.com/
I do not believe we can progress discussion if you believe a negative comment about SOME men is viewed as a collective insult on all men.
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I have a copy of this quote on my desk from Ted Bundy, the American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist and necrophile, who once said: ‘I can tell a good victim by the way she walks’. These words haunt me. The idea that one’s traumatised experience becomes visible in her gait. Bundy presumably was on the look out in a way I consider most men/people are not but still I reckon there is some truth to the notion that those of us who have been traumatised in the way you describe, Jennifer are susceptible to the manipulations of men like Donald Trump and further down the line to the Ted Bundy’s of this world because such men’s damaged psyche’s crave some sort of affirmation from others like the so-called victimised and desperate women to bolster their fragile egos. You’d have to have a fragile sense of yourself to want to attach to someone who is damaged to the point they cannot discriminate between genuine love and some sort of false flattery. Besides, from my experience so many of these traumatised women who give the appearance of wanting sex do so in a sort of fog. They’re frozen. They have been sexually abused from a young age and therefore know about how to go through the motions to flatter men, to give men what they want but underneath it these women only know how to ‘perform’ sex. They can’t necessarily feel it. It’s not a loving intercourse but some sort of awful enactment that only leaves them feeling more hollow. Thanks for a powerful post. That conversation between Trump and the other about their wish to hook up with ‘crazy women’ is so revealing.
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That Ted Bundy quote is chilling.. and he was definitely not the only man to recognise it. I remember watching a documentary *years* ago, where they played random mall footage to men who’d been convicted of sexual assault and ask them who they would pick as ‘victims’. (Looking back I’m not sure of the ethics of this, but that’s another post.) What
they said confirmed the idea that some people, usually unconsciously, project an image of past trauma. It wasn’t the conventionally attractive or ‘provocatively’ dressed women they chose; it was those of us who try to fly under the radar, who keep our personal space small and inoffensive, who are genuinely concerned about ‘what other people think’. I’m not suggesting for one second that this is some uncontrollable, essentialist physical factor that applies to all humans, but to the Ted Bundys of the world, it’s a thing. Like those memes and pop culture moments that say (exclusively of women), “crazy in the head, great in bed.” Insidious, once you’ve noticed it.
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Thanks Elisabeth.
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Have you seen the Gable Tostee case? I find it particularly disturbing.
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Another example of the what a jury is, a dozen people and not half a brain to scrape together from the lot combined.
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I’m not so sure. Tostee is clearly a predatory male, who attempted to control Warienna Wright by perhaps assaulting her and then by putting her onto his balcony; however it seems Ms Wright made her own decision to try to climb over the balcony and try to jump into the balcony below. Perhaps she’d watched too many silly movie sequences, too much James Bond or the like. But the jury was asked to consider if Tostee was guilty of murder – clearly “no” on the evidence.
On manslaughter the case was less clearcut. Did doing what he did cause her death? On a layman’s view, perhaps it did. But the measure is “beyond reasonable doubt” and that was not proven.
In line with what happened in the OJ Simpson case, he may well be found culpable and suffer a big civil damages case. He may well be ruined by that; he won’t escape punishment – nor his conscience nor his reputation.
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Yes, I can see that the jury probably couldn’t say guilty, but the story they were expected to believe from the defence? He was a big guy and she was not. And the audio?? How did that play in his favour? Just weird, totally.
I feel like our institutions, our governments, justice system, the ABC are leaking credibility so fast I doubt that any infusion can save them. And I feel that Trump is another example. It’s a dreadful failure for the institution that is the Republican Party allowing this dismal derelict character to represent them in this election.
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Di, I agree all our institutions are daily losing more and more credibility. It’s almost as if a new type of human has taken over, one entirely lacking ethics & morality and driven entirely by self-interest.
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I haven’t been following this, DQ. It sounds horrible.
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Tostee has been a smart arse who brings gwomen back to his flash Gold Coast apartment and apparently threatens women visitors that he throws them off the balcony in they don’t “come across”.
The girl in this case either freaked out and fell off (screaming no, no ,no ,no just before her end) or got chucked, possible, less likely).
I’d have thought manslaughter would have been a safe verdict.
As you see see above, DQ is not impressed by Tostee (apt name?) also and I think has mentioned he is a lawyer and thinks it is not be over yet.
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Oh, gawd, does it ever end?
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No! If you were her mother would you not want to pursue him?
He may not be a murderer, but he is responsible for the circumstances leading to her death . . . or do you disagree?
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No, DQ, I didn’t mean does that tragedy never end, but does this violence against women never end.
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He was acquitted of that crime, being an arsehole does not make him guilty of it.
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No one said he was proved beyond any doubt to have murdered her, but a genuinely safe conclusion, on ghe evidence, is that he was culpable and it is wrong that he walks away scott-free. Think of the girl’s last five or ten minutes.
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I can’t enter this discussion about Tostee because I haven’t been able to follow the trial. I do know that the law can be an arse.
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Yes, dunno. read a bit a more on it and it is true you’d have had to have been on the jury to sift through the nuances.
The defence’s approach rested on the alleged instability of the young woman and seemed to be saying “you prove otherwise”.
I suppose from this time we see if it fades or the family follows the path DQ described, of instigating civil proceedings, where I understand the onus of proof is some what reversed but penalties are somewhat less..
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They can only be monetary, can’t they?
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Could be severe though, with apportionment of costs and time consumed.
As you probably gathered, I read up a bit more on the case. She was apparently locked out on the balcony after some drinking and sex that degenerated into into a drunken row (according to the defence). Which is why I felt it would be hard to get a sense of what really happened unless you were a juror or lawyer intimately involved in the proceedings.
Outright murder may not have been possible as a verdict, but some sort of culpability seems the reality.
Once again, I have to withdraw to DQ’s comment, 1.39, 21/10 (backed by Marilyns “arsehole” comment, straight after).
DQ, who I think said he was a lawyer out there in the simulacrum, suggests what happens from here depends on an accurate summary of whether a civil action can be bought to bear and
chances of success, if successful, It would be a costly, likely brutal bear-trap for MrTostee.
From this point, we shall see what we shall see…
……………………………….
Rereading the original post, I think I can see we are living in an amphetamine/cocaine and alcohol fuelled, impulse-valorised world whose subjects become increasingly dislocated from reality.
Bonfire of the Vanities, cultural and psychological manipulation of a society and its Skinner-box subjects.
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I can’t.
Follow this trial and many related crimes.
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No, Pearton, I haven’t caught up with that yet. Actually, I think I’ve been avoiding it.
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Thank you for writing. Disturbing but so important to think about the society of equality I think that most people want but we are still so far away from. Personal experiences are a vital part of this. My empathy was triggered but there a members of my own family who most likely wouldn’t have the same reaction. The Trump alpha male diagram I made didn’t even consider the idea of damage. The problem is even worse than I could imagine. A lot of people want to pretend none of this exists, maybe because it’s just too painful, or they believe that’s just the way it is and it will never change. Is there a limit to which cultural reprogramming can fix this because of some male evolutionary link between power and sex? Will it require some technology-assisted biological evolution as well as cultural evolution? If you want to dislike Stern even more, he’s into babysitter role play porn. Depressing.
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Jennifer, I am deeply grateful to you for writing this. I regard myself as reasonably articulate, but some things are very difficult to find the words.
I do not talk about my life in the ‘real’ world. I have learned that ‘sharing’ is often interpreted is ways I did not intend.
I do try to explain aspects of my life online because I feel a bit safer and I am sure there are many others who can identify with sexual predation.
I know from speaking to my gay male friends there is similar predatory behaviour by some men.
I wouldn’t call these predators true alpha males. To me a strong leader-type is not someone who seeks out the vulnerable. A leader does just that s/he leads, by example, encouragement and support.
Sexual predators are deeply scarred, probably more so than their victims (which does give them insight into selecting victims). Maybe there are sexual predators from happy stable environments… but there’s always an exception.
Thank you also for this:
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Made an error on finishing the blockquote….. I am only human.
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Diannaart, thank you for letting me know this post has been useful. That’s really good for me to know.
I think what the world describes as alpha male is very different from a leader.
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I agree, Jennifer.
My description, of a leader, was purely idealistic.
Nor do I believe that alphas are without insecurities – in fact show me one without frailties and I’ll be checking out the nearest guide to detecting narcissists.
My point was that Trump’s failings are so bleeding obvious and yet…. to his fans and a significant proportion of the MSM… no one really cares. They just want someone to call out “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take any more” – which is a great movie line, but rather lacking in substance and nuance. Trump never says HOW he will fix things, just that he is THE MAN to fix things.
Were Trump transposed into a wolf, he would’ve been trounced at the first stage of alpha determination (dog-fight) – bluster is not good enough to lead wolves. We all know wolf-packs mostly have a male dog as leader, but often a female will take over, either because she was mate to the former alpha-male (sound familiar?) or simply other males are too young or old for leadership, hmmmm, another parallel for another day.
The point I am inelegantly trying to make is that humans have forgotten or, perhaps, never really learned, what an alpha leader is really about. Which is not surprising given the confusion of what we imagine is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.
Sometimes our big brains are an impediment rather than an advantage.
🙂
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I think its prejudices that are the impediment, culturally nurtured to the advantage of a comparative few. More and more I see “normality” as determined by alpha somethings, as the most destructive and constricting concept in society.
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“More and more I see “normality” as determined by alpha somethings, as the most destructive and constricting concept in society.
I agree. Returning to my wolf comparison, alpha wolves do not remain pack (team) leader if they cannot manage to lead. Wolves are highly intelligent and it takes more than the biggest bite to keep a pack together; hunting together requires planning and cooperation among the pack.
Indeed, many of the “alpha-somethings” have created their own interpretations to their own advantage. Similar has happened with interpreting Darwin. His theory has been remodeled to a limited understanding of “survival of the fittest”. The “fittest” can be an earth worm, an ant colony or an eagle – whichever has proven fitter to survive and adapt to change – this does not mean the “strongest”.
I once believed that if more women attained positions of power we would see a more nuanced, appropriate and, yes, fairer, society emerge. Instead we find the patriarchy still in force except that it accepts some females…. however, the game remains the same, where greed is mistaken for ambition.
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Dave, It’s very confronting, to think anyone consciously or unconsciously seeks out a survivor for his or her own gratification. I know it’s something I didn’t want to think about for a long time. The idea that my past marks me is terrifying.
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Only a narcissistic psychopath could behave as Trump has and still stand for the greatest elective office on Earth.
Whatever he might do or say should hold no surprises for anyone.
Far greater crimes lurk in the mud of his psyche.
The good news is that he should be soundly thrashed at the election and the world will breathe a sigh of relief come November 9th.
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I hope you are right, DQ.
I fear the civil unrest Trump has been seeding if he loses. That said, I fear even more for our planet if Trump wins!
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I think Trump’s problem is that he is a scam artist, and for that there is no cure, other than jail. Beyond that he is a stupid scam artist who gives away his manipulative techniques. If he were smart, he would know when to shut up. We can be grateful that Trump is not that smart.
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Yes, I agree Silkworm, we can be grateful Trump isn’t smart enough to shut up.
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My apologies for being off topic: Does anyone know what happened to Hypo?
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I’d venture he’s hypotrophied?
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No, but he comes and goes, Helvi. According to his own lights 🙂
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samjandwich is very bright these times.
We will send out search parties.
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From Paul Walter; “Bonfire of the Vanities, cultural and psychological manipulation of a society and its Skinner-box subjects.”
Nice!
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He’s good, isn’t he? 🙂
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Why, thanks allthumbs.
You see, I am wondering if the problem JW has raised relates to a natural order of things and how we might define what is a “natural” order of things. Are the problems of “normality” exacerbated but what appears to be massive changes in mode of production,or does human culture have a natural push back that keeps things as they always have been,regardless of what particular jungle we live in?
We could ponder at free will and determinism and think either our society is now out of control and devoid of a narrative guidance as to purpose, meaning and value (JW’s incident of being tongue kissed in the street as mild example) or contemplate chaos as the natural order.
We could think in terms of decadence, a decaying system now in free, fall devoid of hope of reversal or movement to some thing more rational and come up with a conservative or Liberal Marxian answer, It is processive, just the dark before the dawn, or something underpinning all else or evidence of definitive damage done through an ill directed c change in mode of production, say something a bit Rousseauian.
I don’t know, I have a headache and lack the brains anyway, I wish there were a few more inputs, no one wants to go deeper with it, even the host.
It’s a shame a few more of Bob Ellis’ people like yourself haven’t migrated here, Had we critical grey-matter mass, we could eventuate something a bit deeper as to an examination of JW’s problem and more substantial answers as to its nature and how it should or could or not be dealt with.
Personally I wonder that a society with an info vacuum exhibiting all the signs of death of discourse is beyond help. Glad am getting older, It seems things fall apart..or do they?
We shall see what we shall see, but what we shall see beyond the pine box destination, I know not.
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PW, think the problem I’ve raised is to do with a sense of entitlement, in my example entitlement to women’s bodies & emotional life, but there are many other examples and they aren’t necessarily gendered, class entitlement, for example.
I the big picture, I imagine entitlement as an evolutionary failure, a psychology individual and collective that does not progress beyond its own narrow sphere of self interest & preservation. An inability, or unwillingness to cultivate the ability, to think beyond self or tribal gratification that impedes human development & will likely result in our extermination.
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Entitlement and Exceptionalism writ large.
This man has never been elected to anything – not even dogcatcher – and wants to be acclaimed President of the USA.
It is laughable.
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You know, I’ve been thinking about this problem out for a walk along the Torrens and have come to a conclusion thát requires a little explanation. It will seem off topic, what is included next, but I think I can draw a link between this story and the thread topic, which is to with attitudes and the reinforcement of them.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/oct/22/approval-of-port-melville-supply-base-near-darwin-quashed-by-federal-court#comments
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/oct/23/josh-frydenberg-to-work-with-port-melville-operators-over-struck-down-approval#comments.
The penny hadn’t dropped as to the real possible significance of those two stories about the Tiwi Islands and approval of a big port being rushed through with very, very little due process observed, until the final piece in an puzzle came together via the comment of one Dave Bradley in the comments section of the Josh Frydenberg article. To understand my direction here a reader must read Bradley’s comments.
I’m relying for his comment to show up in the link provided, but basically he gives a real and compelllng reason for the port’s approval, rushed through, and the likely anger Australians would feel were his comment to be up at say, the Telegraph that again suggests that underlyingly things are not as good as they seem despite all reassurances from the mainstream.
Basically it comes down to the reality of the national information vacuum, offers a trail as to who is running things and the sort of authoritarian (masculinist?) and capitalist pathologies involved. It asks questions of our politics and ability to change the system as currently configured more to social infrastructures and education, when conflict seems to benefit those responsible for big decisions- it seems to point to a collusion between Big Man stuff, ritualised and reinforced down treading of women and other “others”and the need the decision makers have for authoritarianism as part of a process that allows them to get what they (think they) want and perhaps inadvertently also from an ethnological standpoint, create a world they feel comfortable within also.
We may think it points to a sterile spoils of defeat stuff that misses the real point as to living life. But if I am right, it means that any chance of establishing the mechanisms and changing widespread improvements in individual attitudes is subservient to globalisation of the current rather primitive and harsh type, so it seems I must remain a pessimist as to things changing because clearly there IS a hierarchy and that this prospective ordering is conducted for a misguided few rather than in the interests of the advancement of civilisation and humanity.
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Yes, your last sentence is exactly what I mean.
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One woman complains
Trump ignores her.
Five women complain
Trump says they’re all lying to try to damage his campaign.
Eleven women complain (the latest count)
Trump says he’ll sue all those liars after the election (good luck with that Donnie)
If the number complaining reach a hundred, he might consider a reverse class action . . .
Maybe he should build a wall . . .
Or rather four walls, and then get inside it.
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DQ
…are you surprised at all? Rolf Harris still claims he is innocent…
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I have no TV but friend alerts me that Julie Walters and Robbie Coltrane are playing characters on ABC1 drama who are not unlike Mr&Mrs Harris. and there is Bill Cosby and slimy Saville. the women who reveal the abuse are so brave.
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Women who support their men in these situations puzzle me. They must have minimal self-esteem if they settle for so little as a man who violates other women and children. They don’t know they deserve better.
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Some variation on Stockholm Syndrome?
Took me a few years to leave my husband. However, I had enough sense to know I was not mature enough to bring children into the relationship, which evolved into not wanting ANY children with that man. After that realisation, all I had left was to scrape together enough courage to leave.
I kept things simple, not so many women are able to do that. Also, my ex was so arrogant in his belief of total control, he did not realise I would really leave until I was gone. Compared to many other people whose relationships are so tangled with children, money, social standing, lack of support (friends and family are the worst offenders for keeping people together), simply the time to take on a clearer perspective, then imagine being in the public gaze as well.
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oh Jennifer I am so sorry you were violated by that asshat David.. crossing the internet-to-‘Actual Life’-barrier is such a delicate thing for us to choose to do and he failed at it. I treasure the friendships of those I have managed it with.
the entire Trump campaign is grisly Entertainment Noir for anyone intelligent.
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Yes, Ann, it’s a risk & one I took in that instance because he’d written about having 4th stage cancer & just finishing up three years of chemotherapy. It never occurred to me that a man in such a state would have the interest in or energy for sexual activity, so I assumed it would be quite safe. I felt sorry for him, like women are supposed to.
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Jennifer, thank you so much for your article. Michael.
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Thanks for reading, Michael.
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This election is one giant trigger for so many of us. I’m fearful of how my insides will feel for the next four years if he wins….
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Happened to stumble across this while wasting time on Youtube – actually YT suggested it to me and I do believe its logarithm is getting a little too personal.
Anyway, I call this The More Things Change The More They Fucking Don’t (but we can still larf about it):
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Final prediction: Hillary to win 340 to 198 (give or take a few). Not a record loss for Trump, which it should have been. I would have predicted 450 to 88, echoing Goldwater.
It is a function of having an unacceptable candidate being given, or buying, airtime.
How many of Trump’s companies will go bankrupt over this appalling campaign? Will Trump be bankrupt or has he sequestered enough to avoid that fate?
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Woe, woe and thrice woe.
I always thought the Yanks were fucking idiots, taken collectively; it’s been proved true once again.
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Trying to figure it myself. So many factors on so many levels.
In the end, Clinton was identified cleverly as the establishment candidate, too much a neoliberal with no relief in sight for those who felt excluded. Way overconfident, as evidenced in the non inclusion of Warren or Sanders as veep which would have been a reassuring, unifying move but one not appreciated by Wall St..
It has been a totally irrational, contrarian decision by voters made ina sort of vacuum for objective news and comment,tipped by rightist zealot FBI Comey’s intervention at a critical stage when Hillary Clinton had started to break clear of Trump, who was somehow forgiven as a tax dodger, oaf and ignoramus, that is to see an extreme version of Tony Abbott overthrowing Gillard.
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I think Sanders appealed to the demographic that fled the Democrats for Trump. Clinton was always a mistake: too much baggage, too much arrogance, too little connection with struggle street.
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I agree with your summation of Clinton, although Trump can easily be painted with same brush – except his baggage has not been on display for decades as was Clinton’s.
I do not believe that Clinton’s loss can be solely blamed on her sex – although how much this plays a part in any bid for power by women is open for debate. Ultimately Clinton represented too much Wall Street establishment, too much a player for the elite.
Therefore, the USA public voted in an elitist of bombastic proportions, how much Trump’s sex played a part is debatable, given the numerous mentions of Trump as “someone who will get things done” I posit a great deal. Disenfranchised white males (and their spouses) found their alpha male leader. That it is unlikely he leads for them is also debatable.
May Trump’s reign be brief.
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One term trump?
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Hoping for a single term.
Action on climate change delayed, yet again. And back to the future on any progress Obama managed.
Heard a pro-Trumper on radio this morning, NOW they’re coming out, who believed the economy was more important than anything else – even climate change which he claimed to believe in, but nothing can be done until the economy is healthy and, quelle surprise, Trump was the man to repair it.
Of course, change to global weather patterns will stall until the a balanced economy.
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Well, we all got blindsided, DQ
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I think that’s a serious challenge for the Bob Ellis Crown of Wrongology, Doug.
I’m sure Frank would vote for you.
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In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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Yes, this election showed me just how flawed our society is. I’ve become deeply disillusioned with people I thought were “good” folk–morally, ethically, religiously. It’s tiring to continue to explain exactly what you say here. The pain isn’t just that Trump will represent us as our leader, but that our friends and family knew how he degraded women, how he molested them, how he assaulted them. They knew and they just didn’t care. Wrote a post a few weeks ago about the same thing (“Sexual Assault, Apple Pie, & Making America ‘Great'”): https://thelesserlights.com/2016/11/30/blog-post-sexualassault-applepie-makingamericagreat/
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There’s nothing wrong with hating Donald Trump. Enough voters “overlooked” aspects of his appalling, obnoxious personality because, in their eyes, the character of Hillary Clinton was determined to be much worse. Here is an individual that would not divorce her serial sexual predator husband who humiliated her globally (the lowest point arguably being the coercion of a young intern to XXXX his XXXX in the workplace), just to retain his surname “brand” to further her own career. To many voters, Trump is merely the least shithouse.
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To many voters no “shithouse” is better than the “least” one. The problem is “overlooking” sexual assault as if it is on equal ground as “obnoxious personality.” It’s not.
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Pay no attention to her, Lesser Lights. Their voters could dislike Hillary all they wanted, but voting for President is not a popularity contest. Trump will be seriously incompetent. He knows better than any expert you care to name; he is dangerously thin-skinned; deficient in knowledge and ill placed to judge anything more than a reality TV show.
Being a serial groper may be the least of his deficiencies, but like Al Capone it may be the minor one to bring him undone once the Messiah effect wears off.
Watch this space.
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“Hillary to win 340 to 198 (give or take a few)”
doug quixote* November 8, 2016 at 7:17 pm #
*PhD in Wrongology
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Wrongology? That’s a new on to me Helvi and I rather like it 🙂
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You need better glasses, Guinevere.
This fool is a horse of a different colour.
I may be unable to guess how stupid American voters are at 10,000 km, but I can tell a sheep where there is no place for sheep. 🙂
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Yep. Agree with that ,Shannon.
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That’s an insightful post, Havana.
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