Megyn Kelly: “You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals’—”
Donald Trump (interrupting): “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
(Wild laughter and applause from the audience.)
– The GOP Presidential Debate, 9:15 PM, August 6th, 2015
“try explaining that 2 ur kids.”
-Rosie O’Donnell via twitter, 9:28 PM, August 6th, 2015
We knew Thursday night’s GOP debate would be a totally bizarre and awful circus, just like we know to gird our loins before an encounter with that horribly homophobic relative at a family gathering. Anticipating and moving on from the disgusting remarks we know we’ll endure becomes second nature, and we have lots of practice. We’ve spent years deconstructing the wildly illogical sentiments of the anti-gay politicians and the ridiculous things they say about our right to build a family, get jobs, get married, be in the military or live in buildings with roofs. As more and more Americans agree that we’re people who deserve the same things as other people, the tone of the discourse of those who disagree begins shifting, just as it has with the conversations about other minority groups who achieved equality on paper but not in practice. The topic stops being addressed directly and we enter a new era where every racist or sexist belief is said in code. We see all manner of linguistic gymnastics and intentional obfuscation and overall nonsense. Bigots make strategic alliances, claiming they can’t be racist if they have black friends or watch Oprah, can’t be sexist if they are a woman themselves and don’t let child-rearing halt their career aspirations. Or, you know, they can’t be homophobic or transphobic if they love Neil Patrick Harris or think Caitlyn Jenner looked good on the cover of Vanity Fair, even if they openly ridicule feminine men, masculine women, fat lesbians or non-passing trans women. For example: Rosie O’Donnell.
This exists (via sodahead)
In 2010, when the right-wing media lost its collective sh*t over Rachel Maddow’s yearbook photo — in which she had long hair and wore makeup, thus inspiring a Buzzfeed post to note, “Three words I never thought I could say about Rachel Maddow: I’d tap that!” — I wrote an article about the various ways in which the media polices, is threatened by, and expresses its disgust over female masculinity and women who “look gay.” In addition to talking about the reaction to Maddow’s yearbook picture, I also mentioned Perez Hilton’s misogynist jabs at Samantha Ronson (a.k.a. SaMANtha Ronson) and Cynthia Nixon’s partner (a.k.a. “The Hobbit.”) and took a brief trip back in time to discuss what I think is the epitome of this type of policing: Donald Trump vs. Rosie O’Donnell, 2006.
Rosie’s certainly far from perfect as a media figure or a queer activist. She was a lesbian entertainment pioneer in her own right, she’s incredibly philanthropic and she’s said a lot of awesome things… but she’s also said and done a lot of profoundly f*cked up things. However, I don’t think Trump or the clap-happy audience he addressed at the debates went wild when Trump dissed Rosie because she dismissed the opinions of women of color about The Vagina Monologues, which one of many reasons why many queers and feminists justifiably want to keep their distance.
Whether they realize it or not, Trump felt and has felt comfortable trashing Rosie because she doesn’t fit into traditional ideas of how women should behave and appear and definitely doesn’t fit into their traditional ideas of who women should date and be attracted to. But Trump’s (or society’s) opinion on the worthiness of women who exude traditional gender norms is hardly empowering, either: as Megyn Kelly pointed out last night, Trump told a former Playboy Playmate on The Celebrity Apprentice that seeing her “on her knees” would be “a very pretty picture.” After the debate, Trump took to twitter to call Megyn a “bimbo.” Women who dare to eschew a traditionally attractive presentation are monsters, inhuman, slobs, pigs and beasts. Women who embrace a traditionally attractive presentation are sex robots, objects, bimbos and idiots. So let’s be clear about one thing: neither group of women — the masculine or the feminine — are coming out on top with any semblance of privilege. Nobody wins. Speaking generally, all women face specific indignities, discrimination and violence related to their specific gender presentation, class, race, and other intersectional identities that vary depending on context. I’m focusing in this piece on a particular type of gender discrimination leveled at gay women who embody “masculine” traits not because they won the Oppression Olympics, but because that’s the topic of this post.
Far too often, butch women are used as punchlines for their “failure” to achieve normative gender presentations, as are non-passing trans women. If a woman’s display of “femininity” involves too much “masculinitiy,” she will often find herself dehumanized and ridiculed. When these identities intersect with race, the result can be deadly — or can land you in jail, as demonstrated by the four black lesbians who were prosecuted for defending themselves against a homophobic harasser and were referred to as a “WOLF PACK” in the mainstream press.
This exists on the internet
Trump’s jab at Rosie Thursday night made my stomach turn and was the first thing I thought about when I woke up yesterday morning, which’s saying a lot after a debate that was chock-full of blatant sexism, homophobia, misogyny, racism and anti-intellectualism. But I shouldn’t have been surprised — although Megyn pointed out that it “wasn’t just Rosie” that he said sexist things about, Trump knew that Rosie, perhaps with the exception of Hillary Clinton, was the one woman who, when Trump chose to insult her, was most likely to engender a supportive audience response. No other statement made by Donald Trump last night seemed as well-received as that one.
Fat masculine women aren’t just punchlines, though, they’re also portrayed as dangerous or damaging when it comes to respectability politics, even amongst alleged liberals. We hear it all the time from family members and peers: “just don’t become one of those lesbians.” And we know what they mean, right? Those lesbians? They’re talking about lesbians who are fat, who don’t wear makeup, who have short hair, who wear men’s clothing. Lesbians you might call “bulldykes” or “bulldaggers.” Lesbians like Lea DeLaria and Rosie O’Donnell. O’Donnell, the more famous of the two, is often summoned as the epitome of those lesbians. She doesn’t give a shit about how men feel about her. She’s loud and outspoken and often very politically radical. Having spent time with her personally (she was friends with a lot of my friends when I lived in New York), I can safely say that she also hates dressing up, wearing makeup, putting on a bra, wearing any shoes besides Crocs or being forced to diet — but she does do those things because she has to for her job. Perhaps the weirdest part about O’Donnell coming to stand in for so many butch stereotypes is that her public presentation is rarely what we traditionally think of as “butch.”
Still, she has come to represent a kind of dangerous female masculinity that many young butches learn to fear embodying very early on. In an essay called “On My Butchness” for The Toast, Caroline Narby described growing up as a tomboy and feeling pressure to eventually “grow out of it”:
…I was and am assertive, vocal, and even—dare I say—aggressive in ways that would be totally normal and therefore invisible in a man, but that are hypervisible and distinctly “mannish” in a woman. A fat, abrasive man is just a fat, abrasive man. A fat, abrasive woman can be a lot of things, none of them flattering. At best, a shrew. At worst, a dyke.
As Kate wrote in her Autostraddle column “Butch Is a Hairy Man-Hating Lesbian,” after detailing a frightening encounter with a cis straight guy who told her he was glad she wasn’t one of those “man-hating lesbians” with “the buzzcuts and the hairy legs”:
The feeling in the pit of my stomach would carry into the first years of presenting as butch. I felt shame in being something that was considered a stereotype. I heard the critiques of butch and femme as antiquated identities, and regardless of my intentions to do otherwise, I internalized them. My second girlfriend cheated on me with a man, and that man said of me that I was so ugly, he wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole. I remember that because it was right when I’d begun to explore masculine expressions. I internalized that, too, even though I’d told myself over and over again that I was still desirable. There are still times when I doubt my own validity, my own desirability, and any wide range of things simply because some small-minded person told me way back when that lesbians were ugly bulldaggers.
It might seem weird to call this discrimination based on gender presentation “homophobic” because obviously gender presentation and sexual orientation aren’t the same thing. But that’s exactly it, really: the two are quickly conflated when a man feels his masculinity is threatened.
Donald Trump’s attacks on Rosie O’Donnell have always been tinged with this particular brand of homophobic misogyny, as was apparent in this 2006 mud-slinging:
“She talks like a truck driver…I never understood, how does she even get on television?… I’d look at her right in that fat ugly face of her’s and say Rosie, you’re fired!… It’s not the chubbiness, Rosie is a very unattractive person inside and out, and she’s very lucky to have her girlfriend and she better be careful or I’ll send one of my friends over to get her girlfriend. Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?”
His disbelief that Kelli could fall for Rosie was a constant sticking point for The Donald, who later asked Fox News, “Can you imagine the parents of Kelli… when she said ‘Mom, Dad, I just fell in love with a big, fat pig named Rosie?’ Can you imagine the expression on their face?” Again we see misogyny working on both sides — Donald sees Kelli, the more feminine partner, as apparently helpless, naive and stupid (and, apparently, vulnerable to the advances of his cool friends) and Rosie, the more masculine partner, as disgusting and dominering. He even suggests sending his friends to take Kelli away — because clearly, Kelli’s homosexuality is a result of just not finding the right man. He has also called Rosie a “slob” and an “animal.”
But this specific type of vitriol against Rosie began over a decade ago, before Trump even got into the mix, when Rosie came out and got that haircut. You know the one.
This one.
Back in 2002, Sarah Warn at AfterEllen wrote about the appalling media-wide reaction to Rosie O’Donnell’s alternative lifestyle haircut, stating:
The news coverage of O’Donnell’s haircut has been one of the most troubling issues, since it demonstrates the homophobia and sexism still lurking beneath the surface of many supposedly objective publications… Words like “radical,” “masculine,” and “drastic” [employed by a National Enquirer article titled “Rosie Loses Her Family”] are all designed to invoke disgust, fear, and dismay over O’Donnell’s defiance of traditional feminine norms. Never mind that her current look actually resembles most forty-something suburban American housewives.
Still, O’Donnell told People Magazine in 2014 that the feud with Trump was “the most bullying I ever experienced in my life, including as a child. It was national, and it was sanctioned societally. Whether I deserved it is up to your own interpretation.”
via sodahead
What makes this even more relevant in this election cycle is that the mindset behind Rosie-hating is the same mindset misogynists employ to degrade Hillary Clinton, whose political aspirations and power have led many to resort to wielding “dyke” as an insult since day one. She’s inspired headlines such as, “How Is The Vile Marxist Dyke Bitch Hillary Clinton Not In A Jail Cell” and ledes like “Hillary Clinton, widely rumored to be a highly sadistic bull-dyke…”
Regardless of how you feel about Hillary or Rosie — and there are plenty of reasons to dislike both women — you can’t deny that despite the many advances we’ve made in areas like same-sex marriage, a violent homophobia still drives much of the discourse around women in powerful positions who don’t appear traditionally feminine. Powerful women are still called “dykes” as an insult and dykes are still insulted, insidiously, on the regular.
A lot was said on Thursday that was downright terrifying when it comes to the rights of people of color, women and queer people, and part of what was so terrifying about it was how unapologetic the candidates were about expressing these problematic points of view. But the subtext of offhand remarks like Trump’s deserve our scrutiny, too. How can any of us, really, explain this to our children.
Trump is nothing but a Punk, a Bully, and a Coward!
How much time do you think I would get if I punched Trump right in the face and shouted, “you got punched by an angry trans queer, you woman hating asshole”? Cause reading this article really makes me want to do that, but instead I just squeezed a water bottle fairly hard.
Hey,Al. I laughed out loud re your comment about ‘squeezing a water bottle fairly hard’. As a recovering human – formerly found punching cinder brick walls as a young and angry bull dyke in a China shop – I find less violence toward myself and others a purer justice for the big and small rapes in the world. Some days though, I just want to be a Dorothy & run away to Oz.
Hang in Al – to thine own self be true
Much as I’d like to see Trump punched in the face, that would actually require you to touch him, and I wouldn’t wish that fate on any decent human being. EWWWWWW. But I bet a hundred bucks he’d cry like Cartman from South Park if someone did punch him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNl-Hydyxh0
Sadly, given they way he keeps using every challenge he recieves (fair or unfair) to bolster his own bloated, macho “fighting-for-America” image, I imagine he’d love the chance for a lawsuit!
maybe you need to chill, no need to pop a vain.
Thank you so much for writing about this! At this point I feel so sad for all the women who have any kind of interaction with Trump.
Is anyone even vaguely surprised though? I mean,he’s playing the same game as any troll does … except his poison has, for some reason, been allowed to flood out into the media and given air time: presumably because this is ‘politics’ (therefore okay to air?) and not any other garden variety instance of hate speech.
Unlike most other trolls though, he can afford to buy an illusion of happiness, no matter how patently sociopathic his comments. So the usual social constraints won’t work for him. Money won’t buy him actual happiness, but it will continue to distract him from what he feels most disgusted by: himself.
I suspect that the only difference between Trump and the other one men on that stage is the he either can’t or won’t hide his racism, misogyny and homophobia behind prettified code-words. And that’s why Fox et al. Are trying to squeeze him out of the competition: they know that, as much as the sentiments appeal to America’s lizard brain, their expression in such bald, gross terms Just Won’t Do. It’s the difference between “well bless your heart” and “fuck you, asshole!” — said in the right tones, they mean the same thing, but only the first is allowed at the dining-room table.
… the other *nine* men …
“It’s the difference between “well bless your heart” and “fuck you, asshole!” — said in the right tones, they mean the same thing, but only the first is allowed at the dining-room table.”
Oh wow, I LOVE the way you worded this!
Your comment sums it up, brilliantly.
Totally.
He insulted her on stage and then went on Twitter to call Meghan Kelly unprofessional. Yeah, he’s one to talk.
What’s really weird about Trump’s constant criticism of female presentation is that he apparently sees himself as some alpha male Adonis type. Like, I personally don’t care what his body looks like or what his hair looks like, but he’s hardly the pinnacle of heteronormative masculine beauty standards. But I guess as long as they’re not perceived as feminine, men will never have to deal with the kind of scrutiny that women have to put up with on a daily basis (and for all of eternity apparently).
And Rosie definitely was in some of my adolescent A League of Their Own themed lesbian fantasies so take that, horrible misogynist meme!
Idk, there is a lot of pressure put on males to be a “provider”.
And to many (both men and women) that’s a lot more important than looks.
Interesting point, Radred. Our society says that women first must be beautiful, above all else. Then they may also be successful, but beauty is key. Meanwhile, men must be successful above all else. According to the paradigm (seen everywhere, but I’m thinking of Sex and the City), money, not looks, is what truly makes a man attractive.
When the currency of women is ‘beauty,’ and the currency of men is — well, currency — the power structure of those relationships will almost always be inherently problematic.
Thank you for replying to that comment, Queer Girl. I kept trying, but I kept getting frustrated by the initial comment and coming off snarkier or as more of an asshole than I wanted to. So, thank you for being classier than me! And also for saying something more interesting and true than what I could have come up with.
LOL, class is overrated when dealing with trolls and/or (straight white cis) dudes who think they’re more oppressed than the rest of us, but for some reason I still try!
Thank you so much for this! Your articles always get me thinking and I love you for it.
That’s so wonderful to hear, thank you
Thank you for this. My uncle said something today about how he found Trump’s remark about Rosie funny, and he thought there was “too much political correctness” in our society. I didn’t say anything, but my Grandma did, and she said “That’s not funny at all ” and she said that what he’s referring to as “political correctness” is just treating people with respect. So I showed her this article. She asked about many of the phrases and people mentioned, and I explained it to her. When she was done, she said that all the disgusting things that Trump said make her feel sick to her stomach. Thank you for helping me educate my grandma about the larger systems of oppression that are behind his comments.
I agree this was a very good was to weed through all the rhetoric. Sadly (and I think this point was made somewhere in this great read) far too many people these days can easily dismiss serious matters of “disrespect” that go beyond political policy differences to attacks on ones background as “too much political correctness.” If other political candidates are distancing themselves from someone like Trump right now, it’s only because he’s been blunter and more reckless than most.
Your grandma sounds awesome!
I love this story! Your grandma sounds like a fantastic human being. You did well to show her the article, what a great way to share and communicate what is important to you with someone who doesn’t exactly inhabit the same social space.
<3 RAD GRANDMAS <3
WELL THIS IS THE BEST
ur comment made me so sad and then SO HAPPY
Great article. I am appalled that he was even allowed to stay up there, after saying those things. Like he was just allowed to get away with that? That sh*t would never fly in Canada.
Also, about society featuring the masculine woman…. when I came out my mother said to me, you aren’t into those type of women, are you? I couldn’t say this to her, but yeah actually, I am, and it took me a long time to accept that because of the negative stereotypes.
*fearing
Absolutely, that was the thing that took the longest time to accept about myself too
I think these horrible comments are not only sexist and misogynous, but more specifically transphobic, since they are motivated by a person’s transgression against traditional gender roles (regardless of how Rosie self-identifies).
As a masculine woman, I found this hard to read. It’s like a nightmare, imagining this happening to you, and on a national level… I can’t even imagine. How does someone feel justified, entitled even, to making such incredibly offensive and dehumanizing statements? Wow.
I agree, that while homophobia and transphobia are rarely mutually exclusive, this was definitely a case of transphobia.
This is a really good point! — honestly I wasn’t aware that I could use the term transphobia when referring to discrimination against a Cisgender person, even though that did seem to be the better fit?
The discomfort a lot of people feel when faced with gender non-conformity is also transphobia. The trucker comments, for instance, are an excellent example of transphobia, since they attempt to shame a woman by relating her to a traditionally masculine – and working class – stereotype/profession. The shaming here relies on the denial of a cis woman’s femininity as the ultimate insult (likewise for men), just as it would if this denial was aimed at a trans-woman. All those hurtful comments aimed at (straight) female bodybuilders – also an example of transphobia. People tweeting Serena Williams is a man? Transphobic. You don’t have to be queer or a trans-woman to experience transphobia, since transphobia is in the eye and heart of the beholder. It’s the speaker’s discomfort/fear/disgust evident in their statement that is the criterion for classifying a statement as transphobic, along with the *intent* of such statements, which is always gender policing. In fact it’s often the case that homophobic slurs are used with the explicit purpose of shaming masculine or androgynous women for not conforming to traditional gender roles, regardless of whether they can’t or don’t want to (everyone should, is the message). So even homophobia can be ultimately transphobic, which is why femme lesbians are sometimes exempt from it (and faced with a whole other set of problems).
What kills me is that it’s hardly just generally rude men like Donald Trump who spouts this sort of mysogynist crap. It’s constant, everywhere. When a woman who doesn’t present traditionally feminine is also into women, it’s like all stakes are off for just how much horrible shit people feel okay saying about her. It’s socially acceptable to be openly disgusted by butches. While the gay male stereotype has gained a huge amount of status in the past few years, the female equivalent hasn’t at all. You know shit’s bad when you don’t even get to be a poorly written but likeable charicature in a romcom.
Yup, absolutely.
Yeah well said
I love when Riese writes things. This is why I come here.
<3
Watching all this from afar & the way this all works is fascinating. I watched parts of the debate & woof what a pahlava. These guys really want control over women’s bodies don’t they?
Anyone who responds to criticism with ‘There’s just too much political correctness’ is really saying ‘I really want to say this (bigoted, racist, homophobic, transphobic et al) thing like I used to be able to say before people actually cared about human decency & now I can’t so I’ll just yell loudly about political correctness’.
As an outside observer I wondered if that Red State guy would have banned him if he’d said the same thing about Hillary Clinton rather than the Fox News woman. Something tells me nope.
I’m living at my parents’ for the Summer and for that reason I’m being subjected to the news of the GOP debate. despite having avoided seeing the (shit) ‘show’ for myself I’m still hearing about it like the candidates aren’t singularly and collectively a complete embarrassment. My dad, who accepts me most since I’m openly a queer tomcat, found trump’s rosie jab to be the most entertaining part of the (shit) show. Maybe its best that he doesnt explain?
So I completely forgot I have this plugin for chrome that adds in a nonsensical Trump quote betwixt his first name and surname and initially thought this was just an Autostraddle thing to do that.
I highly recommend this plugin because it makes reading things about Trump almost bearable.
Donald Trump is a troll. Literally. Nothing he says is surprising anymore. The best thing we can do is to stop feeding the troll. Just like how you get rid of internet trolls.
They get off on attention. Take their fix away.
Masculine Lesbians are the best. So beautiful, sexy, different. YUM! It aggravates me that the world diminishes their amazingness!
This was an interesting read. I’m not American so I don’t follow the politics there much but you’ve raised lots of important points!
There’s certainly a specific type of hatred that’s directed at masculine women, a type of hatred that’s still so acceptable.
I’m a femme who looks traditionally feminine and the amount of times people have praised me for being feminine, have praised me for not being butch/masculine is fucking astounding. And these are people who are not as generally awful as Donald Trump. But it’s a thing, an awful thing and still a very acceptable thing. Sigh.
Somehow, I just don’t believe that Trump’s fear and hatemongering is going to make America “great again”. . .
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/21/bd/1d/21bd1dd96e84b2fef8da695f53d557f6.jpg
I get angry over Trump’s comments because Rosie is a Mother and her children shouldn’t ever have to hear their mother being verbally assaulted. Rosie can take it, although I am sure it hurts enough. But Rosie is in a tough business and she is an adult, her children are her children and that’s not cool. People shouldn’t be that disrespectful of other people anyway unless that person has unmatched power and a cult of insane followers who would even send death threats to their own favorite on-air personality at Fox if that Fox talking-head dares to report the truth about Trump in a story. They are now threatening to kill the Governor of Georgia, a Republican, because he certified the 2020 election and won’t simply toss out the votes and call for a new election just because Trump LOST there. His cult doesn’t believe negative stories about Trump (not even the ones he has admitted to), they only believe positive stories about Trump (or fantastic conspiracy theory stories that are obviously false) which leaves them hideously uninformed and grossly misinformed to the point that they live in an alternative universe. Trump getting his cult of morons to cheer when he says something hateful about a woman is more than just insults because, if you’ll remember, a Trump cult douchebag made pipe bombs and sent them to all the people that Trump regularly bashed at rallies, including the Obamas and the Clintons… he did it to rid Trump of his enemies… So, would you be surprised if someone paid the guards to look the other way while someone entered Epstein’s cell and killed him (or helped him kill himself) and there is missing videotape of the cell? I wouldn’t be surprised if Epstein was killed to protect Trump from something Epstein could have revealed about Trump. That Maxwell woman is keeping quiet about Trump, although they knew each other well (as many pictures online prove). I think Trump’s “I wish her well” message via press conference may have been a message to her because I’m sure she was scared she could end up like Epstein in prison… but if she is quiet and reveals nothing, Trump’s well-wishes could save her or even get a pardon from him…. Let’s see what happens. She and Epstein have and had dirt on Trump that even the Evangelicults couldn’t get over… well, they are a cult so who knows, they loved Roy Moore and that reality tv boy who molested two of his sisters… wtf?