Opinion: Your President Won't Stop Promoting Misogyny
By: Kayla Pasacreta
Every day, you can pretty much count on Donald Trump to tweet or say something outrageous, childish, and offensive. Still, I never can quite get over the fact that someone we're supposed to call Commander-in-Chief is allowed to behave in such egregious behavior. The same man who spent years insisting the first Black president wasn't really a U.S. citizen and wouldn't have gotten into Harvard without affirmative action gets on Twitter and demands an apology for being called what he is - a white supremacist. Not only is he a white supremacist, he's uneducated and doesn't know how to handle his emotions. Side note: can you believe some people argued a woman is too emotional to be President, when the one y'all elected throws daily tantrums on Twitter?
If my tone sounds aggressive, it's because I'm angry. This morning, I woke up and saw y'all's President retweet a gif of himself striking Hillary Clinton's back with a golf ball, causing her to be knocked down. MAGA supporters retweeted the gif and gave their guy a pat on the back for having a sense of humor. As a woman, I saw nothing funny about the gif. I saw a man, who is supposed to be PRESIDENT of the United States, prove he has way too much free time, and demonstrate once again that he has no respect for women.
If you think its "just a gif" and say people who share my anger for the Tweet are overreacting, I don't know what to say to you. I don't know how to explain to you that as President of the United States, you are the most important representative of the country. As a President, any retweet should be regarded as an endorsement and agreement. And alarmingly, this isn't the first time he has joked about violence. Last month, he retweeted a video of a train running over a person with a CNN logo on their head.
When the tape surfaced of Trump boasting that he grabs women "by the pussy", I thought for sure that would be the end for him. Even though he had already made his racism and sexism abundantly clear throughout every step of the campaign, I thought this would be the time his reign finally came crumbling down. But, it didn't. He still got praised for his "fearless" mission to abandon political correctness and "speak his mind". Men with daughters still went to the polls to vote him in. Hell, white women showed up for him bigly. More than 53 percent of white women casted their ballot for this dude.
Why can a man so glaringly sexist still have any support amongst women? Any time a woman insults or critiques Trump, his defense mechanism is to attack a feature of their womanhood. He can never offer a rational reason for disagreement or disapproval; he goes straight for the jugular, resorting to name-calling and bullying. Just look at the tweets below.
There should never be a time in which violence and disrespect towards women, racism, anti-semitism, and xenophobia is normalized. I refuse to get used to having a man in the White House whose disrespect and disregard for diplomacy knows no bounds. We can't even count on the President of the United States to demonstrate common decency.
Trump is a shining example of every thing that is wrong with the country - so excuse me when I lose hope for progress and equality when I see little boys proudly walking around with MAGA hats. As a country, we have got to do better by our women, people of color, immigrants, and marginalized. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you voted for Donald Trump, shame on you.
