Trump ascended to the WH in 2016 because sexism still has electoral potency in the 21st Century

[CousinIT]

ORIGINAL Twitter thread:

Link to tweet

UNROLLED THREAD (graphics/charts at link):

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/994442633102659584.html


1. Donald Trump ascended to the White House in 2016 because sexism still has electoral potency in the 21st century. This thread will comprehensively delve into all the evidence supporting that conclusion.

2. Hillary Clinton ran for the most powerful position in the country. Prejudice against a woman's authority is tied to whether she respects the notion that men should hold the most powerful positions. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

3. Indeed, if a woman is actively seeking power (e.g. running for President) or perceived as seeking power, she is less likely to receive votes. This trend was NOT observed with men actively seeking power or perceived as seeking power. wappp.hks.harvard.edu/files/wappp/fi…

4. A meta-analysis that examined various paradigms of masculinity & leadership showed that the stereotype of leadership is very intertwined with masculinity. Even if a woman is qualified to lead, she may be disliked for seeking to lead. Sound familiar? pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b265/0126e807e…

5. Note that as Secretary of State and before she ran for President in 2016, Hillary’s favorability was higher. But once she sought the highest leadership position—thus defying a cultural expectation that men should wield the highest leadership positions—look what happened.

6. This is why it was deeply unsettling to see even progressives trash Hillary Clinton for her low favorability rating during the 2016 election cycle. She was trashed for her low favorability & the real and gendered antecedents for it were generally ignored.

7. Furthermore, what Hillary Clinton is most prominently a symbol for—helping advance women in our society to the point where long-standing and gendered barriers are broken—has everything to do with the unique vitriol she receives.

8. When a woman is perceived as violating the gender hierarchy status quo, she is met with backlash. Hillary's platform was a clear threat to the status quo, she is perceived as a prominent agentic woman, and that’s why she is the target of so much hatred. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

9. Indeed, there’s now an abundance of evidence showing hostile sexism predicts support for Donald Trump.

10. While viewing the forthcoming data, you should bear in mind this conceptualization of sexism (which is cited a lot in gender attitude research); that people can be benevolently sexist or hostilely sexist towards women. pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c580/4799fdcd1…

11. If you want to see various examples of both benevolent sexism and hostile sexism (the latter needing far less of an explanation), the list of scale items on the left of this table is very useful. Okay, here we go.

12. A survey conducted in June 2016 asked questions designed to gauge gender attitudes & showed: a) hostile sexism predicted support for Trump, b) hostile sexism predicted less support for Hillary, & c) anger amplifies the impact of hostile sexism. washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

13. Another national survey conducted the final week of October in 2016 showed that respondents who agreed with sexist notions in the left image were more likely to vote for Donald Trump. people.umass.edu/schaffne/schaf…

14. Parsing the relationship between hostile sexism and voting for Trump also revealed this finding: the relationship between voting intention and hostile sexism did not differ across gender. So spare me “But women voted for Trump too!” journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

15. Now here’s why the distinction between benevolent sexism and hostile sexism is important: you cannot “Both sides!” perceptions of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton because the former was running to preserve the gender hierarchy status quo whereas the latter was not.

16. The theme of all these studies’ conclusions is the same; hostile sexism predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election over Hillary Clinton.

17. Of course, this predictive relationship isn’t JUST because of Hillary Clinton representing a threat to the gender hierarchy status quo. It’s also because of the sexism & misogyny surrounding who Donald Trump is, what he has said, and what he has done.

18. The Telegraph has an article that is continuously updated with the latest sexist things Donald Trump has said. These sexist comments are features for his voters, not flaws.

Donald Trump sexism tracker: Every offensive comment in one place
Fat.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/

19. Furthermore, the various ways that Donald Trump was unfit for the presidency were features for his voters, not flaws. Giving the GOP nomination to someone of demonstrable unfitness when the context is the prospect of a qualified first woman President was willful.

20. Donald Trump’s messaging was about asserting the primacy of masculinity over qualifications, temperament, and experience. A vote for Trump protects a system where the mediocrity of a man is given deferential weight over the qualifications of a woman.

21. The most telling example of this messaging (IMO): when Donald Trump personally stalked Hillary Clinton across the debate stage. Hillary recently summed up Trump’s message there succinctly: “*This* is what a President looks like.”

22. And my god, if you read nothing else in this thread, look at how Trumpers/conservatives/Republicans responded to a recent polling Q asking if they were hoping to see a woman elected President in their lifetime. d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_upload…

23. Why do you think Republican strategists are so keen to turn Hillary Clinton (and Nancy Pelosi) into boogeyman in their advertisements? They know their base! Women occupying the highest positions of power for the cause of women's rights scares them!

Exclusive: Nancy Pelosi targeted in more than a third of GOP House commercials
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House minority leader, is being targeted in GOP House ads far more than in prior elections, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/01/nancy-pelosi-targeted-republican-2018-midterm-congressional-commercials/469453002/

24. So, like my other thread on how racism propelled Trump to the White House, I return again to what I think is an ill-advised framing of the 2016 election: “zomg Hillary Clinton lost to the worst candidate in history zomg!”

Ethan Grey
@_EthanGrey
1. Donald Trump won the GOP primary and the presidency because campaigning on whiteness-first messaging still has potency in the 21st century. Plenty of people don’t want to directly engage with this fact, but this thread will be getting into it in full.

25. But the reality is that event—a qualified woman losing a position to a less qualified man/unqualified man/abject boor—is something plenty of women have experienced. Which brings us to the unsettling conclusion that Trump’s ascent isn’t such an aberration after all. /THREAD

[dlk]

1. The GOP Consistently and Cynically Uses Misogyny and Racism to Win Elections

They do it because it works and the MSM doesn't call them out on it nearly enough.