Friday, October 28, 2016

Donald Trump gender bending

Erudite Partner and I were talking about this interesting article this morning and realized it raised all sorts of speculative possibilities.

Donald Trump Talks Like a Woman
... The chest-pounding real estate mogul from New York has emerged as the quintessentially masculine candidate. Love him or loathe him, Trump’s campaign has been defined by the ways he has asserted his maleness—mocking his opponents for their low energy, bullying his critics, sneering at perceived weakness, boasting of his sexual prowess, vowing to hit back twice as hard as he’s been hit.

But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman. He might be preoccupied with grading women’s looks, penis size and “locker room talk,” but the way he speaks and the actual words he uses make for a distinctly feminine style. In fact, his speaking style is more feminine by far than any other candidate in the 2016 cycle ...

Politico

Julie Sedivy's thesis is provocative and she's seems onto something here. But, good old fashioned feminist dykes that we are, we found ourselves wondering whether Trump's speaking style might reveal further insights into his relationship to gender, that malleable and someimes uncomfortable construct within which we all navigate our lives.
  • Does Trump come across as such an inauthentic sleaze because we feel the contradiction between his masculine presentation and his feminine speaking pattern?
  • Is his comic book masculinity actually a cover for gender insecurity?
  • Does his childish attraction to women who display Barbie doll femininity derive from inability to deal with more adult experience of gender?
  • Oh gosh, is Trump -- hidden even from himself in the deep recesses of his psyche -- actually gay?
Inquiring minds don't actually want to know. But his guy is so out there, one ends up asking.

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