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| I reckon this portrait comes close... |
Given that Donald Trump has tiny hands, it is possible that
most women would be unaware if he had tried his pussy-grabbing romantic technique on
them. One suspects that Trump has persistently been bothered by under-endowment.
How else to explain Trump Tower, or his steady stream of misogynistic ranting? Does
a man secure in himself and his attributes stay up through the night to launch a sexist Twitter assault on a woman who dared to criticize him? We may still
look forward to the day when, in a furious insomnia, he publishes a litany of
tweets full of sexual aggression in response to a minor criticism from Angela
Merkel or Theresa May.
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| Give the poor man some laxatives... |
On the other hand, maybe he should be cut some slack. Bullies
are usually pitiful once one sees beneath the surface aggression. As well as
the lack of man-size hands, he’s evidently cursed with a limited intellect, he
would seem to be afflicted by narcissistic paranoia, he’s chubby, he invariably
looks constipated (or maybe that’s just him smiling), his hair is one of God’s
better jokes, and he has a personality more suited to the violent sex offenders’
wing of a prison than to normal society. Not that I like to dwell on this too
much, but one imagines he makes for a revoltingly grunty, gassy, sweaty,
thoughtless and fumbling sexual partner. So it is perhaps no wonder that Trump
has an enthusiasm for hatred, violence and sexual assault, given his countless
intellectual, emotional, physical and pyschological shortcomings.
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| ...maybe it's just him smiling... |
But really I’m just bantering here. And banter, or ‘locker-room
talk’ as our American friends call it, has been the standard defence of Trump’s
comments. Nigel Farage, an experienced apologist for most things reprehensible
(notably racism and sexism), has excused Trump’s pussy-grabbing boasts on those
grounds. Because, it is thought by some, these things are obviously funny, and
it would be political correctness gone mad if we weren’t able to excuse men a
few laughs about rape and sexual assault. After all, how else can women be kept
in their rightfully subordinate place other than by creating a rapey culture of
sexual objectification and threatened sexual aggression? As the United States
is about to do the unthinkable and elect a woman to the highest political
office in the land, for many simple-minded men, and even some simpler-minded women,
it makes sense to wheel out a caveman wielding a giant club (notwithstanding
the tiny hands) to put all women back in their place.
There is no doubt that many men, unfortunately, seem to
think misogyny is acceptable. A wave of laddish culture, complete with rape
jokes and the sexually objectifying banter, has, for example, infected many
university campuses. Universities are actively trying to confront the problem,
for example by providing classes that explain the notion of consent to men,
thereby undermining the sophisticated semantic and pyschological research of
the aptly-named Robin Thicke, the thesis of which is that a woman’s ‘no’ is
invariably a subtle form of code for ‘yes’.
I am all for this re-education of men inclined towards
locker-room banter. But I suggest, as a more persuasive means of enlightening
the Trumps of this world, Malcolm Tucker’s carrot-and-stick approach be used: ‘you
take the carrot and you stick it up his fucking arse, followed by the stick,
followed by an even bigger, rougher carrot’. But, hey, I’m just bantering, I’m
not really suggesting that Trump should be buggered with a couple of carrots
and a stick.
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| ...no, the laxatives are working at last. |
Still, we ought to do something about the imbecilic
teenagers and young men who think joking about (and possibly even committing) sexual
assault is okay, who respond to criticism with poorly-spelled Twitter tirades
of abuse against women, who threaten violence to all and sundry, who are
hyper-sensitive to jokes made at their expense, who have little understanding
of the world but are prepared to announce all sorts of solutions to global
problems (usually involving violence), who are inclined to tantrums, rudeness
and aggression, who like to bully and lie and exaggerate and boast. Their
attitudes contribute to the normalization of rape, violence and aggression. But
they are still just kids, and so the more traditional carrot-and-stick approach
would be more appropriate than the Malcolm Tucker variant.
Trump, on the other hand, is in his seventies (and was in his
sixties when he made the locker-room remarks). There is still a chance that the
next president of the United States will be an out-of-control, emotionally
immature, psychologically insecure, intellectually moronic teenager frustratingly
trapped inside the flabby, wrinkly body of an old man. He’s well beyond the
point where suggesting that he grow up is going to make any difference. Maybe a
couple of carrots and a stick are required after all.
