Does Donald Trump respect women?
Rod Vessels, A Socratic Method practitioner
Let’s get a few things straight, before addressing this question:
Consenting adults can have sex.A man or woman can have intimate relations with whomever he or she chooses.A man or woman can choose to have sex with more than one partner.None of the above necessarily addresses the question of whether such man or woman has respect for another man or woman.The issue of respect has more to do with the humanity type of the person engaging in sexual relations with others. Each of us chose long ago what humanity type would make us happiest, whether we chose to serve ourselves, be served, or serve others. Each humanity type is no better or worse than the other humanity types, in our advanced human world.However, we live in a mortal world today that is dominated by those whose humanity type is to be served. Politicians and womanizers (or manizers, as the case may be) tend to be the humanity type that is happiest being served by others.In mortal life, those seeking to be served by others have no interest in caring about other humanity types, unless such caring can be feigned to give them value.Trump is giving us evidence that he seeks to be served by others; thus, he is wreaking havoc in our mortal world and in the relationships he feigns with others.Now, to a case in point, straight from today’s New York Times:
“Donald Trump’s Inhumanity Before a Victim of Rape,” by Roger Cohen.
Cohen reports the following:
In his boundless self-absorption, this president is capable of anything.
…
The only blow Trump knows is the low one. As the gutter is to the stars, so is this president to dignity. …
I cannot forget Trump’s recent treatment of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to end mass rape in war. The Islamic State, or ISIS, forced Murad into sexual slavery when it overran Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in 2014. Murad lost her mother and six brothers, slaughtered by ISIS.
She now lives in Germany, and has been unable to return home, a point she made in her July 17 White House meeting with Trump. “We cannot go back if we cannot protect our dignity, our family,” she said.
Allow me to render the scene in the present tense. Trump sits there at his desk, an uncomprehending, unsympathetic, uninterested cardboard dummy. He looks straight ahead for much of the time, not at her, his chin jutting in his best effort at a Mussolini pose. He cannot heave his bulk from the chair for this brave young woman. He cannot look at her.
Every now and again, in a disdainful manner, he swivels his head toward her and other survivors of religious persecution. When Murad says, “They killed my mom, my six brothers,” Trump responds: “Where are they now?”
Where are they now???
“They are in the mass graves in Sinjar,” Murad says. She is poised and courageous throughout in her effort to communicate her story in the face of Trump’s complete, blank indifference.
Why this extraordinary attitude from Trump? Well, at a guess, Murad is a woman, and she is brown, and he is incapable of empathy, and the Trump administration recently watered down a United Nations Security Council resolution on protecting victims of sexual violence in conflict.
At the mention of Sinjar, Trump’s unbelievable response is, “I know the area very well, you’re talking about. It’s tough.”
Let’s play how-well-does-President-Trump-know-Sinjar? It’s a wildly implausible game.
Toward the end of the exchange, Trump asks Murad about her Nobel Prize. “That’s incredible,” he says. “They gave it to you for what reason?”
“For what reason?” Murad asks, suppressing with difficulty her incredulity that nobody has briefed the president. Nobody can brief this president. It’s pointless. He knows everything. “I made it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women,” she says.
“Oh really?” says Trump. “Is that right?”
…
I have watched the Murad-Trump exchange several times. It is scary. This president is inhuman. Something is missing. In his boundless self-absorption, he is capable of anything.
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