I'd like help please. I'm uncomfortable with the many statements that the women who voted for Trump are poor and stupid

[HoneyDragon]

I can't articulate why. And need help to do so. I'm not going to beat around the bush when people say uneducated with faux sympathy, they do obviously mean stupid. Which isn't helping me either.

Even watching the dreaded Wright Stuff, I'm at edge with two priviliged White males effectively saying women voted that way because they are too weakened to do anything else. (Texan housewives being put forth as an example). I'm not liking the way the media is discussing the amount of women that voted for an odious openly sexist turd ....but for the life of me cannot verbalise it.

It's not just the Wright Stuff. It came up on Sky news and CNN too.

honey I think the media did a terrible job of communicating. It was 'he is sexist' without explaining why. You can't just keep saying something and hope it will stick.

As for the program you watched, it's awful and I would be reporting them for sexist broadcasting. Just unacceptable to have such simple discussion over a complex matter that needs proper exploration.

iPost - fascinating! Thank you! I really enjoyed your post. It did remind me of reading Campbell all those years ago. I also recall reading a study (can't remember who by) about anti-choice women, written by a historian that considered similar nuances. I'd love to know what you were up to interviewing those women (journalist? thesis? book?), but that's probably too nosey.

Men will "other" different kinds of men than themselves all the time. Wether it's along the lines of race, religion, politics, culture, social class, economic class etc. This is almost never diagnosed as internalised misandry. However this is almost never the case with women.

Women who subscribe to modern feminism and those who don't have a whole series of words they use to describe the other that is belittling and undermining. This isn't feminisms fault just to clear this is a human weakness when one puts an ideology before a person.

If anything the US election and Brexit for that matter both represent human failures to listen and engage with one another across political, cultural and idealogical lines. My two penneth for which I desperately and earnestly want to be proved wrong on is if we don't correct that both Brexit and Trump will be dwarfed by the things that follow then.

The US is a white settlercolony founded on the genocide of indigenous people's and chattel slavery. This is Americas recent past.

My hot take is that white middle class women are invested in white supremacy
Jill Filipovic wrote about this. There seems to be a prevailing opinion that most people aren't racist or sexist. This is not my experience or that racists and white supremacist are confined the KKK or UKIP not the case.

Also people are being deliberatly obtuse just because someone voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 (because it was best interests) doesn't mean that the US is any less racist then it was before.

Romneys puritanical message didn't resonate, but Trump's racist, self aggrandising, white is right message did.

edition.cnn.com/2016/11/09/opinions/trumps-win-women-filipovic/

Yes ipost very interesting. I'm not au fait with third wave feminism though. In fact I'm clueless about different feminist viewpoints full stop.

I hold a graduate degree. I voted for Trump as I would never vote for a lying, cheating female to hold the most powerful office in the world. This woman may and should end up in jail.

Bathshua, would you mind explaining why you were more comfortable voting for a lying, cheating man?

Also, don't you think that Trump should/could potentially end up in jail for sexual assault/rape?

Do you think you might hold women to a higher standard than men?

I Post I rolled my eyes are little at your we should listen post. The fears, thoughts and musings of white people is the ONLY thing we hear.

Pence wants to destroy women's reproductive rights and give gay people conversion therapy. If you voted for him it's because your shit stain of a human being. Jill Stein was the perfect protest vote why your tripping over yourself to makes excuses for them is beyond me

"Also how sexist is Trump? I heard the tape. I didn't like it but what I see is a man who has his daughter lined up to take over the family business."

And? He also talks about her as a "piece of ass" and says it's "check-out time" for the man when his girlfriend/wife turns 35.

coteExactly but the media did a terrible job of addressing this issue.

I'd love to know what you were up to interviewing those women (journalist? thesis? book?), but that's probably too nosey

Oh nothing so high faulting. But am well chuffed that you thought it might have been for something of substance. I have just four poxy O levels, 2 of which were soft subjects. I'm not a Trump voter (not actually allowed to vote anywhere, for anybody) , but I certainly fit tidily into the uneducated female box being discussed on here. Nice to know I might not always give that lowly status away when I write something down.

One day somebody said something about people who lean right and I nodded, and I realised it was a knee jerk "this we know is true" head nod. Cos I hadn't stepped outside of my left leaning echo chamber since MerryXmasMrLawranceGate at the Young Conservatives club in 1984.

So on a whim I went and set up SM accounts to just follow and listen to actual, real live right wing-ish people. Trump discussion sort of dominated. Via their links and comments I found more and more grassroots versions of the same to follow. It started as a sort of "I shall go and observe these creatures in thier own habitat ! Rather than take my left leaning textbooks facts as gospel" sort of thing. I was only expecting to do it for a couple of weeks or so.

But it was very interesting, and very challenging, so I went into hyperfocus (I have ADHD, this happens sometimes) and spent a year and half, listening, reading, seeing what strands set them off in what directions and why.

I didn't actually talk to them or anything. It was only ever supposed to be a sort of ... hobby. But turned out to be perhaps the most useful thing I have ever done in terms of getting a more rounded, far less echo-chamberish, political education.

I also agree with TheXxxxxx that there was probably a massive underestimation of the level of racism involved. I was very shocked when visiting California to hear the number of people saying things like "they're only poor because they'd rather steal than work" about non white people. Worst of all, it was just said as a passing comment like it was just something everyone acknowledged and people were genuinely shocked when I challenged it.

I think it's a by-product of the American dream - there's a false belief that America is the "land of opportunities", so anyone who is poor and black/Hispanic/other minority race are seen to not be taking advantage of the opportunities properly (rather than it being due to obvious structural causes of inequality). However, when you look at certain poor white segments (not so much red necks) there's a belief that they're poor because their "rightful opportunities" have been stolen by immigrants.

So a lower middle class white woman who believes all the above is almost certainly going to vote for Trump to realign the American dream, no matter how distasteful we may find those views.

ipost- that sounds really interesting, I don't think I could do it myself (18 months!!) but very impressed!

A lot of people who voted for Trump are part of a generation of people who are terrified that they're losing the power they feel entitled to in society as white privileged people. That took precedence over his misogyny. I have zero time for anyone who voted Trump. They are enabling a dangerous man who will prey on the members of society who need kindness and help the most.

iPost thank you - and seriously - I did think you were a sociologist (or a PhD student in sociology). I don't know what modern analyses of right-wing women there are out there, but yours was really thought-provoking. Do consider writing it up (based on that post) and 'doing something' with it. Maybe a guest blog here? (I don't know how that works). You might also like Campbell's Iron Ladies if you can track it down. She did something similar. It helps if we can see people we disagree with as humans rather than caricatures or demons. This does not mean we have to agree with them, of course!

I keep seeing the assertion that politicians aren't listening to the people. What exactly do commentators mean by this? Does listening essentially mean doing exactly what people want them to? That isn't representative democracy - that's direct democracy. What do we really want here?

What do we do after we've "listened" to the views of white supremacists? Start rounding people up? This is horrible to think and type but really, the logic of this whole "why are people voting for right wing extremism?" is confusing.

iPost - your post of 13:04:48 is definitely one of the most insightful and intelligent contributions I've read to this whole debate.

wasabi I would also like to know what that means????

Most people are homophobic should we listen to them? The recent ched Evans rape trial has revealed just how violently misogynistic alot of men are should we listen to them. The ched Evans trial also exposed just how misogynistic our judicial system is. But since that's in line with public opinion lets just listen to them. God forbid I should be critical and it comes across as sneering. Because that would be the real crime here.

Yes this is exactly what I'm trying to articulate. This idea that unless we "listen to people's concerns" which seems to be a euphemism for pandering to sexism, racism, homophobia etc. we are somehow sneery and condescending.

Whoever posted that they were scared of the consequences if things didn't change - what change do you want to see?

I don't think listening to someone's view means doing what they want - it means hearing what they have to say and actually engaging on the subject rather than saying that it's an uneducated opinion to have. Now obviously I imagine there's a lot of voters who actually want to be obeyed rather than heard but I think starting from a position of listening would engage a lot of people who feel alienated.

E.g. Someone's mad because illegal immigrants are stealing all the blue collar jobs. Now to me there's two solutions to this - first the white supremacist solution of companies giving first refusal of jobs to born (and probably white) Americans, but second is the socialist solution of setting employment regulations that give people a proper wage, acceptable working hours and prosecuting companies that use illegal immigrants to get round those laws.

If you engage with the angry person based on the second solution and point out that it's companies acting illegally to blame then I think you move closer to people feeling heard and you may even move away from the easy rhetoric of immigrants being to blame. Of course, that's assuming that someone's positioning is based on the fact of wage suppression rather than from a racist belief system and that's not at all guaranteed.

From the BBC: "Nationally, Donald Trump has won 47.5% of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 47.7%"

Wasabi, Xxxxx, do you honestly believe every single individual in that 47.5% is a white supremacist? That every single one is homophobic? That every single one is a misogynist? (I say that as someone who would have voted Hillary had I been American).

If they are, then America is stuffed. I think I'd rather allow for the possibility that some people might have held their noses and voted for a candidate whose views they did not share, simply for issues they thought (whether correctly or incorrectly) were overwhelmingly important. Such as the future of their jobs. Or the fear that Clinton, by imposing a no-fly zone over Syria, might lead the US into a war with Russia.

Mostlyhet Up until recently American families would watch lynchings and bring their children and have picnics as black bodies hung from trees. They would then turn the skin into belts.

The US schools to prison pipe line criminalises black children then puts them in prison to work for a corperations for as little as as 0.23 an hour Bill Clinton gave a speech with black prisoners in the background on stone mountain (significant because this is where the KKK was formed) promising to be tough on crime ( we all know what means)

So in short yes, yes I do.

Yes mostly quite possibly. And I think Dodo makes a good point too. I'm just disturbed by a lot of what I hear right now and the strength of the Trump vote among white men and women suggest strongly to me that the issue of race as well as misogyny were prominent in many of these individual decisions.

"Bill Clinton gave a speech with black prisoners in the background on stone mountain (significant because this is where the KKK was formed) promising to be tough on crime ( we all know what means)"

That is truly horrifying.

And Dodo do you think your analogy would work if it was applied to legal migrants?