The Bill Cosby of Presidents: The time USA underestimated systemic patriarchy

A system that allows presidency to a person with sexual assault allegations by 25 different women is just unfathomable

A woman dedicates more than 25 years studying for, and working towards a position or office, and an alpha mansplainer, notorious and unreliable, swoops down and smacks away the job from under her nose, shaming her for “doing her homework”, instead of admitting his inexperience. Remind me why we are acting like this is something new and surprising.

Have we not, as women, heard from our friends, read of writers online, researched to feel validated and experienced workplace sexism on our own, on one level or another? The kind we have at times failed to recognise and most times dismissed for how subtle and seemingly innocent it is. The kind that could have appeared in the form of an expectation from you alone to serve tea in a meeting of equals, lightly remarked about PMS at any show of emotion out of the spectrum of said male’s access, gotten too close under pretext of colleagueship despite your hinted discomfort, or taken your idea, rephrased it and gotten credited for it as his own.

And yet, the urgency of these elections did not come from Hillary Clinton deserving presidency as a candidate; in her actions and history, there can be found as much, if not more than usual, that is objectionable as is present in the actions and history of any given politician. It came from Donald Trump’s utter unworthiness as one – yes, there is a difference between the two – and in revulsion and grief of the woman-hating system we seem unable to get out of. A system that allows presidency to a person on whom rest sexual assault allegations by more than 25 different women, dating back to the early 1980’s, because the thought of a female leader is just that unfathomable.

But, sad as it is, Trump was unwittingly, ironically right about one thing: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” They let your lawsuits slip under the carpet, let you convince them of your innocence, turn their attention to the victim in questioning of allegations rather than seeking or addressing testimonies, and you most certainly can do anything – even become President. Now, before The Times bylines announce Trump an “outsider”, an anomaly, and apologists label Trump’s a case in which his criminal activity shouldn’t matter, let’s quickly recap to another ‘star’ (of many) we have responded to in much the same way: Bill Cosby. His more than 58 sexual assault and rape allegations date back to mid-1960s along with his rather similar locker-room-style confession on Larry King in 1991 about spiking drinks of the women he took out on dates, despite which the subsequent inaction, denial, and insistence that it not come in the way of his career.

If that pattern was not enough, where on one hand, Clinton’s observation in her Humans of New York interview, “I love to wave my arms, but apparently that’s a little bit scary to people,” had offhandedly gotten dubbed as her “playing the gender-card,” but little objection was raised at Trump’s public ungrounded misogynist slurs, including saying that his opponent didn’t have a “presidential look” and implying her incompetence as a candidate for “she can’t satisfy her husband”. Perhaps a little surprise then that resultantly only one demographic of women – white, without a college degree – voted majority for Trump.

To maintain, after all this, that gender did not come into play in either the unfolding of the campaign or the results of this election would be downright simplistic. To have seen occupational sexism on a macro-level and recognising how potentially indistinct yet alarmingly damaging it can be has been a shameful, painful experience for the past 18 months. But the global outpouring of attentive, educated, critical rhetoric and conscious resistance is something to take pride in. They are tools to be borrowed and brought into practice on the micro level. After all, “the personal”, as the rallying slogan of second-wave feminists stood, “is political”.

Arfa Ezazi is an English Literature major and co-editor of the bilingual literary magazine, Zau.