The Mis-education of the American Boy

Growing up gay (even in the closet) one often doesn't fall into the toxic masculinity category although one is well aware of all that term encompasses.  Indeed, if one is gay or rightly or wrongly targeted as gay, suddenly you become a preferred target of the toxic masculinity of your peers and classmates.  The result can become that you strive ever so hard to "pass" and be one of the guys. The emotional cost can be extreme and the effort difficult if you do not excel in team sports. I did not and was saved by the fact that I was lucky enough to have a family that owned a summer home and was vested in snow skiing which gave me the opportunity to excel at water skiing, sailing, snow skiing and other things that compensated for my other team sports deficiency. Despite my "lucky breaks," high school was one of the most horrible periods of my life. Most boys are not as lucky as I was and, as lengthy piece in The Atlantic lays out, America is suffering a crisis in the way boys are socialized and too often emotionally stunted and not allowed to be fully human.  The "jock culture" in particular leads to misogyny all to often.  With two young grandsons, I do not want to see their personalities stifled and warped by America's cult of toxic masculinity.  How this problem can be fixed is difficult to answer, particularly since so many fathers are victims of the same forces.  Here are article highlights: 

I’ve spent two years talking with boys across America—more than 100 of them between the ages of 16 and 21—about masculinity, sex, and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men. Though I spoke with boys of all races and ethnicities, I stuck to those who were in college or college-bound, because like it or not, they’re the ones most likely to set cultural norms. Nearly every guy I interviewed held relatively egalitarian views about girls, at least their role in the public sphere. They considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities. They all had female friends; most had gay male friends as well. That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, maybe even 20 years ago. They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity. They’d seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity. “Everyone knows what that is,” he said, when I seemed surprised.

Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day). It’s not that all of these qualities, properly channeled, are bad. But while a 2018 national survey of more than 1,000 10-to-19-year-olds commissioned by Plan International USA and conducted by the polling firm PerryUndem found that young women believed there were many ways to be a girl—they could shine in math, sports, music, leadership (the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance)—young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity.* One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative. In another survey, which compared young men from the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever-ready for sex and to get with as many women as possible; they also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages that they should control their female partners, as in: Men “deserve to know” the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times.

Feminism may have provided girls with a powerful alternative to conventional femininity, and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but there have been no credible equivalents for boys. Quite the contrary: The definition of masculinity seems to be in some respects contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male respondents in the PerryUndem survey said honesty and morality, and only 8 percent said leadership skills—traits that are, of course, admirable in anyone but have traditionally been considered masculine. When I asked my subjects, as I always did, what they liked about being a boy, most of them drew a blank. “Huh,” mused Josh, a college sophomore at Washington State. (All the teenagers I spoke with are identified by pseudonyms.) “That’s interesting. I never really thought about that. You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.”

While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.

It wasn’t always thus. According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.

Then, during the second half of the 20th century, traditional paths to manhood—early marriage, breadwinning—began to close, along with the positive traits associated with them. Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyperrationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.

For Cole, as for many boys, this stunted masculinity is a yardstick against which all choices, even those seemingly irrelevant to male identity, are measured. When he had a choice, he would team up with girls on school projects, to avoid the possibility of appearing subordinate to another guy. “With a girl, it feels safer to talk and ask questions, to work together or to admit that I did something wrong and want help,”

There is no difference between the sexes’ need for connection in infancy, nor between their capacity for empathy—there’s actually some evidence that male infants are more expressive than females. Yet, from the get-go, boys are relegated to an impoverished emotional landscape. . . . Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.

By adolescence, says the Harvard psychologist William Pollack, boys become “shame-phobic,” convinced that peers will lose respect for them if they discuss their personal problems. My conversations bore this out. Boys routinely confided that they felt denied—by male peers, girlfriends, the media, teachers, coaches, and especially their fathers—the full spectrum of human expression. . . . . Cole spoke of his mom with unbridled love and respect. His father was another matter. “He’s a nice guy,” Cole said—caring and involved, even after the divorce—“but I can’t be myself around him. I feel like I need to keep everything that’s in here”—Cole tapped his chest again—“behind a wall, where he can’t see it. It’s a taboo—like, not as bad as incest, but …”

Other boys also pointed to their fathers as the chief of the gender police, though in a less obvious way. . . . “there’s a block there. There’s a hesitation, even though I don’t like to admit that. A hesitation to talk about … anything, really. We learn to confide in nobody. You sort of train yourself not to feel.”

Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it. Or, as with Rob, an inability to acknowledge any human frailty that was so poignant, it made me want to, well, cry.

I was struck by how many had dropped athletics they’d enjoyed because they couldn’t stand the Lord of the Flies mentality of teammates or coaches. Perhaps the most extreme example was Ethan, a kid from the Bay Area who had been recruited by a small liberal-arts college in New England to play lacrosse. He said he’d expected to encounter the East Coast “ ‘lax bro’ culture,” but he’d underestimated its intensity. “It was all about sex” and bragging about hooking up, and even the coaches endorsed victim-blaming, Ethan told me. “They weren’t like that in class or around other people; it was a super-liberal school. But once you got them in the locker room …” He shook his head. “It was one of the most jarring experiences of my life.” . . . So he quit the team; not only that, he transferred. “If I’d stayed, there would’ve been a lot of pressure on me to play, a lot of resentment, and I would’ve run into those guys all the time. This way I didn’t really have to explain anything.” At his new school, Ethan didn’t play lacrosse, or anything else.

What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.

Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.

Guys who identify as straight but aren’t athletic, or are involved in the arts, or have a lot of female friends, all risk having their masculinity impugned. What has changed for this generation, though, is that some young men, particularly if they grew up around LGBTQ people, don’t rise to the bait. “I don’t mind when people mistake me for being gay,” said Luke, a high-school senior from New York City. “It’s more of an annoyance than anything, because I want people to believe me when I say I’m straight.” The way he described himself did, indeed, tick every stereotypical box. “I’m a very thin person,” he said. “I like clothing. I care about my appearance in maybe a more delicate way. I’m very in touch with my sensitive side. So when people think I’m gay?” He shrugged. “It can feel like more of a compliment. Like, ‘Oh, you like the way I dress? Thank you! ’ ”

Sexual conquest—or perhaps more specifically, bragging about your experiences to other boys—is, arguably, the most crucial aspect of toxic masculinity. . . . there’s this “race for experience,” because if you get behind, by the time you do hook up with a girl “she’ll have hit it with, like, five guys already. Then she’s going to know how to do things” you don’t—and that’s a problem, if she tells people “you’ve got floppy lips” or “don’t know how to get her bra off.”

No matter how often I heard it, the brutal language that even a conscientious young man like Nate used to describe sexual contact—you hit that!—always unnerved me. In mixed-sex groups, teenagers may talk about hooking up (already impersonal), but when guys are on their own, they nail, they pound, they bang, they smash, they hammer. They tap that ass, they tear her up. It can be hard to tell whether they have engaged in an intimate act or just returned from a construction site.

It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.

Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men.

[I]t’s time to rethink assumptions about how we raise boys. That will require models of manhood that are neither ashamed nor regressive, and that emphasize emotional flexibility—a hallmark of mental health. Stoicism is valuable sometimes, as is free expression; toughness and tenderness can coexist in one human. In the right context, physical aggression is fun, satisfying, even thrilling. If your response to all of this is Obviously, I’d say: Sure, but it’s a mistake to underestimate the strength and durability of the cultural machinery at work on adolescent boys. Real change will require a sustained, collective effort on the part of fathers, mothers, teachers, coaches.

Personally, I am not optimistic.  Too many fathers and coaches are a major part of the problem. Yet, if things do not change, we can expect more Donald Trumps and misogynists and the dangers they pose to society and the world.

Trump In 2007: Hot Women Are "My Alcoholism"

Despite Donald Trump's lie claim that he respects women, his past statements and behavior tell a different tale.  With a total of 10 women so far coming forward to describe how Trump engaged in sexual harassment or near sexual assault of precisely the type Trump boasted about in the 2005 Entertainment Tonight tape, it is pretty clear that Trump is a predatory and sexist pig.   The New York Post reports that a new poll found that 63% of Americans surveyed (including a third of Republicans) believe Trump committed sexual assault in the past.  What I find most ironic is that his hometown media is the most vehement in its rejection of Trump and effort to expose him for what he really is.  Perhaps all Trump's years of bullying people, screwing over contractors and investors and riding rough shod over people in the greater New York City area is at last coming home to roost. The New York Daily News is now publicizing Trumps "alcoholism" - Trump's own word - for "hot" teenage girls and "women."  I'd say the best description of the many, in my opinion, falls into the category of "pervert" and "lecher."  Here are highlights from the Daily News:

Donald Trump claims to only hire the “best people,” but also boasted once of hiring a teenager with no experience just because she was beautiful.

In video taken of Trump giving a paid Learning Annex speech in 2007, the Republican presidential candidate — currently accused of groping as many as 11 women against their will — said he insisted on hiring “a beautiful girl, 17 or 18, so beautiful” as a waitress even though she had no work history.

He also told the crowd that hot women are his “alcoholism” and that having one near him was like setting a glass of Scotch in front of a drunk.

The macho-man exchange occurred at a San Francisco Learning Annex talk that Trump was reportedly paid $1.5 million to give.

The cringe-worthy moment began when a woman in the audience asked Trump how many jets he owned and how she could apply to be a flight attendant.

Trump, leaning over the podium, demanded she come up onstage — as wolf whistles and loud cheers erupted from the men in the crowd.

Video of the 2007 event shows the woman, who introduced herself as Juliet, crossing the stage as Trump leers at her low cut blouse and ample cleavage.

After giving her a blatant once over when she arrives at the podium, the married Trump wraps an arm around her squeezes and says, “You’re hired.”

As Juliet pivots and walks away, Trump keeps his eyes trained on her derriere.

“Now if she worked on my plane that’s like a death wish for me,” Trump says, before going into his riff that beautiful women are his biggest addiction and weakness.

Trump, who is trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton in the latest polls by 7 percentage points in the latest polls, saw his 11th accuser emerge Thursday — the day after the third and final presidential debate.

Wellness expert Karena Virginia recounted the humiliating hands-on experience with The Donald during the 1998 edition of the tennis championships.

I was in shock,” she said at a Manhattan news conference about their encounter. “I felt intimidated and powerless.”

The GOP nominee — as he has with the 10 previous women who made similar charges — dismissed Virginia’s tale as bogus.

Virginia, like several other Trump accusers, said she was moved to come forward after a long-buried videotape emerged in which the businessman bragged about his crude treatment of women.

Trump campaign deputy communications director Jessica Ditto ripped the woman’s attorney Gloria Allred, who last week appeared with another of The Donald’s accusers — Summer Zervos, once a contestant on “The Apprentice.” Allred also represents several women accusing Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting them.

Having raised a son and now with two grandsons, Trump epitomizes what I would never want these males to be like or think like.  Meanwhile, my two Mellennial generation daughters have jumped on the "nasty woman" meme that mocks Trump and his boorish, low class sexism. 

Trump Has Exposed the Misogyny of the GOP

Note to new readers: I am a former Republican and served on the GOP City Committee for Virginia Beach for eight years. I resigned from the GOP because of what I saw as its growing extremism.  

The Republican Party of my grandparents and even my late parents ceased to exist years ago, although its full descent into something hideous took longer to be fully revealed.  Thanks to Donald Trump, the GOP's full misogyny is on worldwide display.  The image of socially moderate "country club" Republicans has been replaced by swastika tattooed white supremacists and religious fanatics pushing for a form of Christian Sharia law.  One need only look at the 2016 GOP platform to see how radical the religious extremism has become.  Gays, of course, are a target of choice, but so too are others who reject the Christofascists' effort to bring back the 1950's.   A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump's role in exposing just how horrible the Republican Party has now become.  Here are excerpts:

On Friday [a week ago], a video was leaked to David Fahrenthold at the WashingtonPost, revealing Donald Trump crudely bragging of nonconsensual sexual advances on women. On Saturday, in a sudden and dramatic cleaving of the Republican Party, leaders including Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, condemned Trump’s behavior, while others withdrew their endorsements and called on him to leave the race.

The grisly culmination came on Sunday night, with a stomach-turning press conference in which Trump presented Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and other women with complaints about Hillary Clinton related mostly to her husband’s sexual behavior, and then a debate at which Trump sniffed and paced his way around a stage angrily.

As for the video itself, Trump stuck with his talking point that there is nothing unusual in his language about women, emphasizing it as just “locker-room talk” — part of an ordinary, shared male view of women as sexual prey. . . . .If Donald Trump is going down, he seems determined to do so in a blaze of revelation, in which he forever ties his own outsize loutishness to the everyday misogyny of members of the party that nominated him. That may be the one public service he performs in this election.

Saturday’s yowls of disapproval from Republicans reeked of disingenuity and desperation.   Yes, the tape on which Trump is caught joking about grabbing women by the pussy seems to describe acts of sexual assault, but the language is not so far off from the scads of examples of Trump’s disparagement of women that everyone in his party has already heard.

Trump has repeatedly and energetically referred to women as pigs and dogs and pieces of ass, has rated them on a scale of one to ten, described those who breastfeed and pee and gain weight as “disgusting,” bragged about not changing diapers, and suggested that “putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.”

The worldview that Trump has affirmed over and over and over again, during decades in the public eye, is one in which women are show horses, sexual trophies, and baby machines, and, therefore, their agency, consent, and participation don’t matter. . . . . How can anyone be shocked that a man who calls women pieces of ass also talks about grabbing them by the pussy?

Republicans are not shocked; they’re scared. Donald Trump is losing and they are beginning to understand that his loss is going to expose them, not simply to partisan defeat, but as a party that has been covert in its cohesion around the very biases that he makes coarse and plain.

Trump’s attitudes about women are not different from the attitudes that have been supported by the contemporary Republican Party via their legislative agenda. . . . . Trump’s attitudes about women are not different from the attitudes that have been supported by the contemporary Republican Party via their legislative agenda.

Which is worse: Threatening to grab someone by the pussy or forcing someone to carry and give birth to a baby that is the result of rape? Which is worse: Popping a Tic Tac in preparation for forced extramarital kissing with a stranger or actively discouraging women’s full participation in the workforce? The answer is: None of these is worse; they are all of a kind. The view of women as yours to control via political power, star power, or simply patriarchal power, is what Republicans — not just Trump, but lots of Republicans — have been doing for years.

In other words, the party’s policies are built on the same frame that Trump’s words and personal actions are: a fundamental lack of recognition of women as full human beings. If you doubt it, look no further than the words these guys used in their theatrical disavowals of Trump this weekend. “Women are to be championed and revered,” said Ryan, making women sound like quailing damsels or icy goddesses, but not actual humans. . . . Here is their apprehension of women: They are discernible as worthy of respect only as extensions of male identity — as wives, daughters, their recognizable subsidiaries. 

Somehow, the disapproving ire of his Republican allies wasn’t so harsh when Trump was building his political career on the fundamentally racist lie of Obama birtherism, or threatening to ban Muslims, or calling Mexicans rapists, or describing immigrants as especially criminal, or even when he went on a tear about the weight gain of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. At Slate, Jamelle Bouie argues that the pussy tape was the final straw because its object was a Republican constituency, white women. . . . there it was: the giant Republican lie about an interest in gender equality exposed as pure snake oil by their front man.

Most disturbing, the voters in his base don’t seem to care. Trump’s voters, some of whom wear “Trump that Bitch!” and “Hillary Sucks But Not Like Monica!” T-shirts, some of whom shout racist epithets about Barack Obama and Muslims and Mexicans, and some of whom march in parades with Hillary-in-a-coffin floats, still like Donald Trump. Paul Ryan, who after months of tacitly endorsing Trump’s racism and sexism by failing to truly distance himself from it, at last made an aggressive move by disinviting Trump from a Wisconsin rally where they were to appear together.  . . . was heckled by the crowd, some of whom shouted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” Republicans’ efforts to disentangle themselves from the monster they created have revealed a base that is deeply invested in that monster.

The press conference Trump held before the debate was soul-scorching, a cartoonish vision of what it means, in the mind of a misogynist and his vindictive fans, to punish the woman who’s beating you: by sexualizing her, humiliating her. . . . saying the worst thing he can imagine saying about a woman — that she failed to hold her husband’s sexual attention.

This is what was on display these last 72 hours: hate. The hate for the other that emanates from his scowling face and undergirds his words, and that has thrummed lightly beneath Republican policy goals for some time, now exposed for the world to see. Trump is channeling the hate of his supporters, inspiring hate in his detractors. This weekend, Donald Trump made America hate again.

Republicans' Feigned Shock and Disgust Over Trump

As the prior post noted, Donald trump is prompting a civil war within the Republican Party as many Republicans now talk of not supporting or distancing themselves from Trump.  The catalyst has been the release of a 2005 tape that shows Trump in all of his misogynistic glory.  However, the tape did not really show anything new about Trump or that wasn't already on open display.  The only thing that has changed is that belatedly many more Americans have come to realize just how disgusting an individual Donald Trump is in fact, and now the Republicans feigning shock are merely trying to save their own asses.  It's not principal driving Paul Ryan's distancing himself from Trump - note that he has not withdrawn his endorsement - but rather a raw lust to retain power. Sadly, Ryan sums up the moral bankruptcy that now extends to nearly all Republicans who are putting the GOP ahead of decency and morality, not to mention what is best for the nation.  These highlights from a New York Times op-ed sum things up well:

The Republicans who say they changed their minds about Trump because of the 2005 video in which he brags about sexually assaulting women are particularly galling. The video was disgusting, but it showed us nothing new about Trump. He’s been insulting women all year, along with Mexican immigrants, Muslims, gay Americans and people with disabilities.

On Sunday, Trump showed once again that this race is and has always been about his ego, and about sexism, racism, isolationism, fear and anger. It is about hating President Obama, mostly because he is African-American. It is about the hard right trying to seize control of Washington so it can roll back half a century of economic, racial and social progress.

I’ve never believed that the Republican leadership really disagreed with Trump’s fringe views. They just didn’t like the way he expressed them, because it exposed some powerful and disturbing currents in their party. Even Ryan’s rather tepid denunciation of Trump provoked howls of outrage from some of the more extreme Republicans in Congress.

So it was not in the least surprising that Pence was back to praising Trump after the debate, or that right-wing commentators were trying to help the nominee repair whatever damage that 2005 video may have caused.

Pence said Trump “was able to move beyond that controversy” over the 2005 tape. “He expressed genuine contrition for the words he used on the video that became public,” Pence said on Fox News on Monday.

Maybe Pence should be excused for living in an alternate reality. After all, he agreed to run with Trump. But Trump did not show contrition, genuine or not. He tossed off his comments about groping women as locker-room banter (a sadly familiar excuse for men’s bad behavior).

Trump showed last night that he knows next to nothing about foreign policy, claiming that Russia was beating the United States because Obama had done nothing to modernize the American nuclear forces. In the real world, Obama has supported a plan to spend about $1 trillion over the next three decades on modernizing nuclear weapons.

Trump was mean and angry, hovering behind Clinton when she talked to make her look small, interrupting her constantly and berating the debate moderator Martha Raddatz when she tried to get him to stop filibustering and answer a question.

Clinton said too often that viewers could find all the facts on her website, but she showed admirable restraint in dealing with someone who will tell you the sun is shining when it’s midnight.

I don’t think last night’s debate changed many minds. Melania Trump said the man in the 2005 video is not the man she knows. But he is the man the rest of us know. To vote for him, you have to pretend you don’t know who he really is — or choose not to care.

GOP Falling into Anarchy Over Trump

I have long thought that the only way to reform today's Republican Party is to kill it.  The cancer of the Christofascists, white supremacists and other ugly elements of the party base has simply to long metastasized for there to be any other cure.  One of the things that continues to drive me to distraction is the media's continued labeling of Trump's base of support as "the conservative base."  These people are not true conservatives.  They are anarchists, fascists and hate-filled bigots. To these vile people, if one is not a white, heterosexual, right wing Christian, not only are you deemed as unworthy of equal rights, but you are viewed as less than human.  The GOP needs to either split, leaving these ugly elements to form their own minority party, or simply die, because they are noting short of toxic and will continue to drive decent people away from the GOP.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the raging anarchy and intra-party civil war.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.

Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.

It was an extraordinary display of personal animus just four weeks before the election, destroying any semblance of party unity behind a nominee who many GOP leaders said they could no longer stomach because of his character traits and tawdry campaign tactics.

New national and battleground-state polls showed Trump sliding since Friday’s publication of a 2005 video of him bragging about sexual assault, putting Clinton in position for a possible electoral landslide. Clinton surged to an 11 percentage point lead nationally in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted over the weekend.

“It’s every person for himself or herself right now,” former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said. “The nominee for president is so destructive to everyday Republicans.”

With Republicans at war amongst themselves, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton moved swiftly Monday to pry away moderate Republican-leaning voters who are turned off by Trump. Her campaign launched an advertising blitz featuring testimonials from ordinary Republicans explaining why they were voting for Clinton.

“She is reaching out to voters that may well have supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and in a normal year might also be inclined to support the Republican nominee but are so troubled by Donald Trump they are open to supporting Hillary Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. He added that nasty personal attacks by Trump at Sunday’s second presidential debate in St. Louis“only helped us close the sale.”

Ryan’s move, announced on a contentious conference call with House GOP members, was seen as a concession that Trump could no longer win the presidency and that the party must devote itself to retaining its majorities in the House and Senate.

Democrats insisted that Trump’s lewd comments and description of predatory behavior in the video would haunt him for the remainder of the campaign.

“It’s not behind him,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “No. I guarantee you. Women do not forget being talked about that way, because all women have had a man in their life who has been in a position of power that has treated them without respect.”

Many Republican elected officials felt paralyzed Monday, disgusted with Trump’s candidacy but afraid to withdraw their endorsements and feel the wrath of his supporters. The situation was most precarious for politicians in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, who can save their seats only if they get votes from the most fervent Trump supporters as well as moderates uneasy about him.

Trump is exacerbating the tensions by rebuking any Republican who betrays him and using the party leadership as a foil. Trump tweeted on Sunday: “So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!”

Trump’s high command is keeping track of Republicans who break from the nominee. As he climbed into a waiting SUV late Sunday in St. Louis with other Trump advisers, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani coolly said that Trump “will remember” who was with him and who was not . . . .

Trump’s blistering method is being orchestrated by Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive and former head of the acerbic conservative website Breitbart, who has become a near-omnipresent counselor at Trump’s side. He has urged Trump not to worry about any cleavage in party ranks and instead to target Clinton. 

The choice before Republicans is Trump on the one hand and morality and decency on the other. Tellingly, the Christofascist leadership has chosen Trump.  Need I say more about them?  As for Paul Ryan, the man remains morally bankrupt and only looks better whrn compared to Trump himself.

More Misogynistic Trump Tapes May Surface; Nancy O'Dell Slams Trump

Last night during the presidential debate Donald Trump tried to write off his horrible comments about women and his right to do whatever he wanted to women - including grabbing them by the pus*y - as "locker room talk.  As if the crudeness of school age youths and, in my view, often dimwitted and crude athletes somehow excuses disgusting comments by a man who wants to be the leader of the world's sole remaining super power.  Now, as Huffington Post reports, there my be transcripts with other foul Trump commentary that may hit the surface.  The Hill reports that the producer of "The Apprentice" says that there are far worse tapes of Trumps that could surface:

A producer from the reality series “The Apprentice” used Twitter on Saturday night to warn that the now-infamous leaked audio of Donald Trump making crude and sexually explicit comments about women is just the beginning.

“As a producer on seasons 1&2 of #theapprentice I assure you: when it comes to #trump tapes there are far worse,” tweeted Bill Pruitt.

Tapes of past Howard Stern shows likewise underscore that what Trump said on the now notorious 2005 tape is the norm, not the exception for Mr. Trump. 

Nancy O'Dell, the female reporter who was the target of Trump's vile 2005 comments has now spoken out and slammed Trump and his disgusting mindset and behavior.  The Hollywood Reporter looks at O'Dell's statements on this issue.  Here are highlights:

Nancy O'Dell spoke publicly about the lewd comments Donald Trump made in leaked audio tapes released by the Washington Post on Monday night's Entertainment Tonight.

"I feel it's very important that I address you all directly. As a journalist for 26 years now, it is my job to bring you news about others, rather than turning the focus on myself," O'Dell said on-air. "But by now, I'm sure that most of you have heard the audio tape which became national news and part of the presidential race. My name was mentioned and unfortunately, the release of it has thrown me into the middle of the political arena of which I didn't ask to be a part."

She continued, "I released a statement on Saturday and I truly mean what I said. There is no room for objectification of women, or anyone for that matter, not even in the 'locker room.' The conversation has got to change because everybody deserves respect, no matter the gender or setting. As a mom, I have to add that our kids — especially our young girls — need to know that their hard work, their achievements, their intelligence, their heart are most important. And those things will not go unnoticed."

 

On Friday, hot mic audio of Trump telling former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about sexual advances he made on O'Dell, who was then a co-host of Bush's, became the center of a media firestorm. In the leaked audio, the Republican presidential candidate is caught telling Bush, "I moved on her, and I failed. I'll admit it." He adds, "I did try and f— her. She was married."

"The conversation needs to change because no female, no person, should be the subject of such crass comments, whether or not cameras are rolling. Everyone deserves respect no matter the setting or gender. As a woman who has worked very hard to establish her career, and as a mom, I feel I must speak out with the hope that as a society we will always strive to be better."

During Sunday night's second presidential debate, Trump repeatedly clarified that his crass comments about women were "locker-room talk."

Donald Trump is a disgusting, narcissistic pig.  The mere thought of him trying to take sexual advantage of anyone of any gender is repulsive.  Just the thought of him naked is enough to move me to vomit. 

The Duggars' Toxic Christian Fundamentalism

As the Duggar sex molestation scandal continues to go increasingly viral - except on Fox News, of course - more attention is being focused on the cult like religious affiliations of the family.  Some are saying, as in a piece in Salon, that the molestation scandal should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Duggars' fundamentalist religious practices and home school organization that is the center of their practices.  Time and time again we see religious fundamentalists - who in my view suffer from a psychological/mental health illness given their obsession with avoiding independent thought and all things sexual - as the ones who are engaging in illicit sex, child pornography and inappropriate behaviors (an ultra-conservative Tea Party leader was recently arrested on child porn charges).  But back to the Salon piece on the Duggars.  Here are highlights:

Unlike most of the writers covering the Duggar sex scandal, I was raised in Advanced Training Institute (ATI), the fundamentalist Christian organization with which the family is affiliated. Joshua Duggar’s confession of sexually molesting young girls in his family’s home when he was a teenager didn’t surprise me, nor should it surprise anyone with any intimate knowledge about this organization, because ATI’s theological beliefs and practices cultivate an environment where women and children are more vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse.

The Duggars didn’t emerge from a subterranean bunker, though. They’ve been on TV promoting the fundamentalist Christian theology of ATI since their first special in 2004 (“14 Children and Pregnant Again!”). ATI is a Christian homeschool organization that hosts seminars worldwide, provides homeschooling curriculum, and even runs its own paramilitary training center.

[T]hey maintain insular groups and often form churches in which all members are affiliated with ATI and/or follow its basic principles. Referred to as “Gothardism” within fundamentalist Christian circles, the teachings of ATI form an ideological system of practices based on the extremely strict, fundamentalist, and idiosyncratic Biblical interpretations of the organization’s founder, Bill Gothard – a man who, in 2014, stepped down as head of ATI following allegations of sexual misconduct with young girls.

The allegations against “Mr. Gothard” (as he is respectfully and worshipfully referred to by his acolytes) were an open secret among group members for many years. As a friend who worked at ATI headquarters once said to me with a wink: “The prettiest girls are always chosen to work the closest with Mr Gothard.”

ATI’s teachings trickle down into every single part of its members’ lives. This is not just a homeschool curriculum, it is a fully institutionalized religious sect with incredibly strict demands to conformity — rules that, in my experience, more often reflect Gothard’s personal preferences than actual Biblical teachings. Have you ever wondered why every Duggar woman perms her hair? It’s because Gothard taught us that curly hair brings out a woman’s natural beauty. Other ATI beliefs that I learned range from utterly bizarre to downright barbaric . . .

And then there are the beliefs  . . . shared throughout the church’s teachings: the antiquated dress codes (especially for girls and women), the required homeschooling, the prohibition on birth control, the strictly gendered division of labor and the absolute and unquestioned authority of the father within the home.

Women and mothers working outside of the home is absolutely forbidden in ATI no matter what the financial situation of the family. Some women are even required to get permission from their husbands if they want to obtain a driver’s license.

Each child is another notch on Jim Bob’s headboard, walking and talking proofs of his masculine virility. Despite this fascination with Michelle’s fertility, there is a critical question that no one ever seems to be ask on camera: just how fragile is the boundary between the loss of a woman’s reproductive control over her body and the loss of her sexual control over her body? From my experience in the ATI culture, it is very, very slim.

A cornerstone belief of ATI is that God appoints husbands in an “umbrella of authority” over their wives, who are mandated by God to obey their husbands completely. That includes absolute sexual and reproductive submission.  

Like any system of abuse, ATI relies on control to maintain its power, and a critical component of that power is the total indoctrination of its members through its homeschool curriculum. The so-called “Wisdom Booklets” that form the backbone of ATI children’s educations contain more Bible verses than they do information. Particularly lacking, in a religious sect so obsessed with reproduction, is any kind of sex education. This is especially true for young women, who receive very little sex education because the church teaches us that women do not have sex drives. 

Women were taught from a very young age that they are to be submissive in all things: allowing men to open doors for us (even to get out of a car), never initiating conversation with a man and never correcting a man when he was wrong. Essentially, a good ATI woman is sweet, silent, and obedient.

This combination of zero sexual knowledge and deeply-ingrained submissiveness left many young girls in our church especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. As a teenager, I became aware that several of my friends were being molested by their older brothers or fathers.

The only hope of escape for young women was through courtship and marriage to a man, who would attempt to immediately impregnate her and to whom she would then relinquish all sexual control.

I hope this latest religion and sex scandal teaches that religious extremism isn’t entertainment. It is abuse. It is abuse when it is used to manipulate, control and victimize those who are rendered helpless within its confines. We should examine how we allow the most vulnerable members of our society to become prey for power-hungry religious leaders and sexual predators. Yes, the family is to blame. Yes, ATI is to blame. But so are we, for spending the past decade pointing and laughing along.

I remain convinced that raising children in far right fundamentalist homes is a form of child abuse.  The larger public needs to understand that fundamentalism - Christian or Muslim - is a sickness and that the "godly folk" all too often are not the nice, decent people they pretend to be.