The Sadness of Women Who Still Vote Republican [View all]

[Celerity]

Why are so many women complicit in their own marginalization?

https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/the-sad-misogyny-of-women-who-still



None of this makes sense.

I think I’ve been misled somewhere. Growing up, I learned from the men and women around me what it meant to be a gentleman; how decent, good-hearted, honorable young men lived in the world, the way they treated other human beings, how they carried and conducted themselves. And from as early as I can remember, I was taught that women deserved to be treated by such men of character, with respect and compassion, as equals. I grew-up believing that in matters of intelligence, creativity, vision, leadership, and value, women were fully my peers and that I should learn from them and listen to them.

I learned what consent was and why I never had the right to decide for another woman what she wanted or approved of. I learned that real men showed restraint and self-control. I was taught that a woman’s body belonged to her alone. Implied in all of this, was the idea that not only was this the right way to treat the women I loved or met or knew from a distance—but it would be the way women would want to be treated; that they would appreciate being seen in this highest regard.

This made sense to me: that every woman would treasure and demand being treated with dignity and would not abide anything less. I must have been grossly misinformed somewhere along the way because I've met many women lately who I just can't seem to make sense of: women who adore and applaud and worship a court-established rapist in Donald Trump, women who somehow, with all they’ve lost because of them—still vote Republican. 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.

With his relentless vile and vicious attacks on the physical appearance, sexual lives, and even the menstrual cycles of female political opponents and critics, 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.

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