Women’s ‘no’ means ‘yes’, Trump proves?

“Have you ever committed adultery?” A Washington Post reporter asked Gary Hart the senator from Colorado and front running Democratic candidate for presidency back in the 1987’s summer of misfortunes. The reporter’s audacity couldn’t have struck at a worse time. Already bogged down by the growing rumours of womanising Gary Hart, a married man, was reported by Miami Herald of spending the night with Donna Rice a young model. The Post on the other hand had identified yet another woman with whom Hart had a long-standing relationship. With the media pressure growing unbearable Mr Hart went home to Colorado withdrawing from the presidential race on May 8.

Time has changed and old fashioned US presidential candidates like Gary Hart with feeble hearts are no longer in vogue being replaced by brave-hearts like Donald Trump. A “fat pig”, a “slob”, a “degenerate”, Trump wouldn’t hesitate in speaking his heart out to talk show host Rosie O’Donnell about how he feels about her. He had not hesitated earlier also when elaborating how he felt about women in general as came out in a 2005 leaked Access Hollywood tape. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he boasted. At least a dozen women including Salma Hayek appeared disagreeing with him when they surfaced to level sexual harassment charges against him albeit rather late now.

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct” Mr Trump told Megyn Kelly a Fox News host before the election. At that time he seemed politically wrong especially with a big majority of women of the country. A pre election analysis by the Pew Research Centre found that majorities of both men 58 per cent and women 62 per cent believed Trump had little or no respect for women. Only 38 per cent of respondents thought the Republican nominee had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of respect for women, compared with 76 per cent who believed that Clinton did. Ten pre election polls taken in October showed eight to 22 per cent points leads for Ms Clinton with an average advantage of 17 among women. So by the look of the polls Hillary Clinton appeared firmly poised to take to new heights the traditional women’s support for Democratic presidential candidates in recent history.

According to the Roper Centre for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, women supported the Democratic candidate in 2000 by 10 points, 2004 by 3, 2008 by 13 and 2012 by 11 points. Amid much higher hopes for 2016 Hillary Clinton garnered 54 per cent against Donald Trump’s 42 per cent of women’s votes. Although Hillary Clinton won 94 per cent support of black women and 68 per cent of Hispanic women voters she could only get 43 per cent votes of white women compared with 53 per cent that Donald Trump won. The result appeared somewhat surprising in context with pre-election polls like Reuters/Ipsos poll released on October 21 that showed that 63 per cent of Americans, including a third of Republicans, believed Donald Trump had committed sexual assault in the past.

Even the voter turnout of 128.8 million, 55.6 per cent of eligible voters in 2016 was lower than 130 million (57.5 per cent) in 2012 and 131.4 million (62.3 per cent) in 2008 when Obama was elected the first black President. The US election result actually trounced and trashed the numerous predictions that American women most of whom at that time appeared genuinely enraged by Donald Trump’s sexist and degrading approach towards women would ensure a memorable defeat for him. After all, women account for 52 per cent of the American electorate.

But that didn’t happen which left quite a few layman men like us wondering whether women or at least many of them do mean yes when saying no? The long standing notion has been debated by men and detested and denounced by women for a long time. But time’s changed and Mr Trump has risen as the truly dazzling star of white nationalism. “When you’re a star, they let you do it”. Guess he’s not been so wrong after all.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2016.

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