In an interview with the left-leaning Vox, scholar Christina Hoff Sommers rejected her interviewer’s premise that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump “conforms to a conventional understanding of masculinity.” Instead, Sommers argued, Trump exhibits “amoral masculinity.”
The premise, asked by Vox’s Sean Illing, shows what people predisposed to believe women are oppressed and men are oppressors think about men in America (although I doubt Illing sees himself that way). They don’t like Trump, so they make him an allegory for the big, bad “white man” straw man.
“You’ve complained about the repression of healthy masculinity in this country, but I wonder if you’re troubled by Trumpian masculinity (or whatever the hell you want to call it), which is buffoonish and shallow but nevertheless conforms to a conventional understanding of masculinity,” Illing said to Sommers.
Sommers was having none of it.
“I am troubled by Mr. Trump. But I am worried about him precisely because I disagree with your premise — I don’t think he conforms to conventional masculinity,” she said. “Trump is a reminder of what masculinity can be like outside of conventions. He exhibits what might be called amoral masculinity.”
She added: “He lacks a moral compass. He ridicules, bullies and threatens anyone who crosses him. He insults war heroes and disparages entire ethnic groups. He preys on women. All of this without any apparent remorse.”
Sommers noted that other presidents, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, have displayed healthy masculinity.
Illing’s bias was evident in his first paragraph, when he described Trump as “a raging misogynist who has celebrated his apparent sexual predation on tape.” He also talked about gender issues “f[rom] concern on campuses about rape culture to calls to close the wage gap,” two issues Sommers has worked hard to debunk.
To start, Sommers was asked to define her branding of feminism, which she calls “fainting couch feminism.”
“I borrowed the name from those delicate Victorian ladies who retreated to an elegant chaise when overcome with emotion,” Sommers said. “It views women as fragile flowers who require safe spaces, trigger warnings and special protection from micro-invalidations.”
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
