Monday, July 18, 2016

What You Can Buy at The Republican National Convention in Cleveland, 2016: Sexism


These buttons, you can proudly wear on your lapel at this year's Republican National Convention:




The article I linked to also tells us that other alternatives include "Life’s a Bitch, Don’t Vote for One,” and “Hot Chicks for Trump.”



The sellers of such buttons probably have no official status, but it's still fun to point out that all three buttons mentioned above  refer to the wider animal kingdom when describing Hillary Clinton or women in general:  Chickens and dogs.

I naturally know the difference between self-identifying as a "hot chick" and being described as a dead chicken available at the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain.  The former is fuckable, the other not so much.

It's that KFC Hillary Special button (2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts -- left wing) which is both the most humorous (if one ignores its meaning) and the nastiest in terms of its meaning.

That's because it is not ultimately about one Hillary Clinton, but about the rating system sexists use for women, even for women in the public sector, even for women in power, even for women with many qualifications, lots of knowledge and skills,  and that rating system is the looks-index or the fuckability index.

All the button really says is that Hillary Clinton is not fuckable.  Why that would even be information in the race for the president of the United States I don't know.  She's not going to let any Tom, Dick or Harry from the streets to fuck her.

Well, I do know the reason for the popularity of such buttons.  The person wearing them can feel superior to Hillary Clinton on those old sexist grounds:  I wouldn't touch her with a barpole (?? is there such a word?)*, I'm more fuckable than she is, and so on.

That this brings us right back to the way Donald Trump speaks about women may not be an accident.  His utterances have lowered the bar for what can be said in public, and his utterances have also increased the freedom for the kind of sexism where women are equated with sex objects or the supply side of the sexual marketplace.

I'm not that bothered about those buttons, because they do the most damage to those who sell them or wear them:  It's a great thing to get sexists identified before we might have to interact with that person.  Still, it's 2016 and all that, and the best attack these buttons convey about  the first female Democratic nominee to be the president of the United States is that she has too fat thighs and too small breasts and, besides, she is a bitch.

Hmm.  Should I write a post about the looks and bitchiness of one Donald Trump?
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* Thanks, LR in the comments:  It's bargepole.
Added later:
And then there's this.