“Crazy”, “hysterical”, it is not uncommon for politicians to attack women with misogynistic terms. A way to discredit women’s words.
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In his latest speech, Donald Trump attacked Kamala Harris, sometimes with violent words and terms deemed sexist. The likely future presidential candidate was described as “crazy”, “baby killer”. Expressions that are not insignificant, addressed to a woman, and which are recurrent in the political speeches of American conservatives, but not only. Decryption with Ursula Le Menn, spokesperson for the association Osez le féminisme.
franceinfo: Is it common, in politics, to use misogynistic arguments?
Ursula Le Menn: It’s true that it’s quite common to make women out to be crazy in politics, to discredit them. To say that they are too emotional, too sensitive, unfit to exercise power. We need the opponent’s words not to be credible, to advise the public not to listen to this person. In the case of Trump, we are also faced with a huge inversion, since we have a man who spends his life ranting shameless lies and conspiracy theories, and he is the one who calls Kamala Harris crazy.
“What better way to discredit someone than to make them look crazy?”
Ursula Le Menn, from Dare to be a Feministto franceinfo
But it is also something that we observe everywhere, whether in politics or in everyday life, to refer to this supposed madness of women: “she is crazy”, “hysterical”. It is omnipresent, so it is not so much a surprise that we find it in the speeches of politicians. In their strategies, they will appeal to clichés, commonplaces, and then, they do not even need to convince. In fact, they appeal to things that are so present in society that, somewhere, it becomes obvious: she is crazy, like all women in fact.
In the case of Trump’s speech, there is also violence in calling her a “baby killer”. What does that refer to?
It is not insignificant at all that he linked the two terms, “crazy”, which is misogynistic, with “baby killer”, to talk about abortion. We can clearly see that this really targets women’s rights. The fact that she is a woman and that she defends women’s rights such as abortion is, for him, the number one argument to attack her. It is also a usual strategy of Trump to have completely defamatory remarks. But here, the fact that he targeted her specifically as a woman, is very demonstrative of his misogyny.
Is this a strategy reserved for conservative circles?
Already, this is really particularly the case of Trump, who is quite poor in his arguments in general. He will simply be in very Manichean speeches of good, of bad, so it is not very surprising from him.
But of course, misogynistic speeches, without complexes, are very present among American conservatives, much more than among Democrats. That does not mean that there is no misogyny among Democrats obviously, but in conservative speeches, it is uninhibited. We will have archaic visions of traditional women, who must have children, be in the kitchen, etc. It is an assumed speech, which they sell to their voters.