David French explains at National Review Online why Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump hurts efforts to marginalize the extremes of feminism.
Some Americans believe that Donald Trump is the answer to feminism. He’s the fearless man. He’s the strong man. He’s the man who laughs in the face of the social-justice warrior and demonstrates the appeal of pure, unadulterated aggression and virility. In reality, however, he’s a great gift to feminism: the man who will revive a failing ideology.
To understand why, one has to understand the true object of modern feminism. The modern feminist doesn’t so much hate biological males as hate the very concept of manhood as a distinct and valuable aspect of the human experience. Masculinity, to the extent that it exists, is toxic and must be suppressed. Classically male virtues such as bravery, strength, loyalty, and an intellectual and physical sense of adventure must be de-gendered (after all, who’s to say that any given woman can’t share those traits?), while traditional male vices, including tendencies toward unjustified violence and superficial, obsessive sexuality, are to be regarded as essentially masculine. …
… The masculinity of Trump is exactly the caricatured, counterfeit masculinity of the feminist fever dream. It takes the full energy of manhood and devotes it to sex, money, and power. It’s posturing masquerading as toughness and anger drained of bravery. (Is the man who recoils from Michelle Fields and obsesses over Megyn Kelly really going to take down ISIS?) Trump represents aggression channeled into greed. Apologies are for the weak, and self-sacrifice is for suckers. Trump is a kind of man that many people can recognize but none should emulate. He is the indefensible man.
And he breathes new life into a feminism that is so extreme, so hysterical, that even a majority of women reject it. Yet the more that frustrated men and their conservative female cheerleaders flock to Trump, proclaiming him the answer to the feminizing of America, the more they grant the intellectual, cultural, and moral high ground to a movement that has been degenerating into self-parody.
In Trump, feminists have a true cultural bogeyman, and he is actually dangerous.
