Trump's response to the Rob Porter firing was telling. Not a word of sympathy for Porter's victims. Total support for the man they say abused them. The Trump era is shining a glaring spotlight on a gender ethos that has lingered long past its sell-by date.
Women have always known this ethos exists. It exists in workplaces where men think they can proposition female subordinates, in the movie industry where they think they can strong-arm aspiring actresses into sex, where the mall creeper can become a state Supreme Court justice...
in marriages where men act out their insecurities by punching and kicking their wives and get total support from their male colleagues and bosses even when they know, where a man walks in on teenage girls while they are naked and brags about it because he owns the pageant...
then brags on tape that he can grab women by the p--y and gets elected president anyway despite nearly 20 allegations of sexual harassment, where female restaurant workers and office workers and on and on deal with sexual abuse on the job...
where male legislators routinely make policy for women's bodies without so much as one woman in the room and where women still earn 7 cents on the dollar (or worse if they are women of color) for the same job as their male counterparts.
It's been like this a long time, though women's general social and economic advancement has somewhat masked the sting. Trumpism is making the subtext of misogyny text again. The question is what are we going to do about it?
