Against the Normalization of Trump’s Misogyny

Trump's re-election has emboldened his attacks on women, further normalizing misogyny at the highest levels of power

By Jackson Katz

In just over two weeks, an emboldened and angry Donald Trump, restored to unimaginable power, has plunged the federal government into chaos and threatened the rule of law, separation of powers, and other core tenets of American democracy.

Many people and organizations are understandably operating in crisis mode, as Elon Musk and various Trump appointees seek to dismantle and eliminate programs that serve average people – including the most vulnerable.

It’s important for people to stand up and take action in real time, and do whatever they can --through lawsuits, legislative action, street protest, and more -- to block the implementation of immoral and illegal policies.

But let’s take a moment to step back and ponder a broader question: Trump’s legitimacy as the nation’s leader, and what that means in terms of social norms, or what effect Trump’s behavior has on what we understand to be normal.

From the moment Donald Trump became president of the United States in 2016, pundits and commentators from the center to the left have debated the costs and benefits of “normalizing” him. Should his ideological and political adversaries try to work with him and his administration, and finds points of common ground and agreement?

Or should they oppose him at every turn, seeking to delegitimize him and his efforts to undermine fundamental democratic norms and practices?

This is harder to do now that he’s been re-elected, not because his personal behavior or policy goals are any more palatable to democracy lovers – they’re not – but because this time around he won the popular vote.

With all he has put the country through since his fateful trip down the escalator at Trump Tower a decade ago, 77 million people nonetheless chose to reinstall the bombastic real estate developer and former reality TV star to the most politically and culturally influential position in the world.

Many liberals, progressives and Democrats have been demoralized since November 5 precisely because he has, in a sense, been normalized by the voters.

One of the signature political slogans of our time is that elections have consequences. Some of those were on full display in the past two weeks in the senate hearings for Trump’s grotesquely unqualified cabinet nominees, his grossly incompetent handling of the first public tragedy of his second term, the DC plane crash, and his brazenly authoritarian edict to shut down US AID.

But that’s not the end of the story.

For all the shortcomings of the Democratic Party, more than 75 million people voted for Kamala Harris. They – and the tens of millions who didn’t vote at all – don’t have to stand by passively as Trump takes a sledgehammer to the American system of checks and balances, and clears the path for full-on plutocratic rule under the guise of “populist” concern about the lives and struggles of average (white) Americans.

Nor do they have to remain silent when he says and does things – from the rarified position of cultural influence that comes with his occupancy of the White House -- that sabotage decades of progress against racism, sexism, and anti-queer bigotry.

They also don’t simply have to accept Trump’s abusive, bullying behavior and commentary – via social media posts or in front of media microphones -- out of a misguided belief that because he won the election, Trumpism is the “new normal.”

Contrary to Trump’s assertion of a sweeping mandate, his margin of victory was in fact quite small during a political cycle in which incumbent parties and candidates worldwide faced considerable electoral headwinds.

And as long as we have the First Amendment, there is still plenty of room for expressions of outrage, disapproval, and dissent.

We can’t normalize Trump’s misogyny

It’s impossible to catalog all the ways in which Trump 2.0 has already been ruinous and destructive to this democracy. From the moment he took office, his administration began “flooding the zone,” a football metaphor often used by Trumpism’s chief strategist and ideologue, Steve Bannon.

The idea is to overwhelm the liberal and democratic opposition with a relentless attack on precedent and business as usual, with the ultimate goal of deconstructing the “administrative state,” or what many others might refer to as the routine operations of government in a representative democracy.

I want to focus on a further way in which Trump’s presidency is horribly regressive and corrosive. It’s not about his policies, per se, as callous and destructive as they are. It’s more about who he is and what he represents.

In my 2016 book Man Enough: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, I argued that the president wields enormous material and symbolic power, including the power, in a sense, to personify not only “America,” but American manhood.

As a result, how the president is regarded as a man has a lot to do with his political success or failure -- especially when politics is dominated by a media culture that emphasizes storytelling and personal narratives to make sense of the workings of larger and more abstract economic and political forces, and that is governed by the values of entertainment.

One of Donald Trump’s core political strengths is the fact that he is regarded as a “man’s man” by tens of millions of people. It’s not primarily about his stance on issues. It’s about him as a heroic – or anti-heroic – character.

A Wall Street Journal editorial in 2016 put it this way. In a discussion of Trump’s success in the Republican primaries, the Journal lamented the candidate’s lack of knowledge on critical issues, describing his appeal as a matter of “attitude, not substance.”

Or, as the right-wing leader and media personality Charlie Kirk said last summer, after Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania: “If you are a man in this country and you don't vote for Donald Trump, you're not a man.”

Donald Trump, it must always be noted, has been found liable for sexually abusing a woman by a jury of his peers, and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages. More than two dozen women have made credible allegations against him of sexual assault and harassment. He frequently makes misogynous statements to and about women – especially those who defy or criticize him.

And he has twice been elected president of the United States.

In this way, Trump’s elections have "normalized" misogynous abuse in a society where men's violence against women is appallingly common. Wasn’t that one of the messages sent by Trump’s election in 2016, even after video leaked of him saying about women that you can “grab ‘em by the pussy?”

At the time, he dismissed the comment as “locker room talk.” In other words, it was normative male behavior – and people should get over it. Whether he was elected in spite of his misogyny, or because of it, is the subject of ongoing debate.

What is not open to debate is that Trump has long used demeaning and misogynous language toward women who refuse to be subservient to him.

A now-famous example of this came the day after his second inaugural. During a service attended by Trump and his family, along with Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Washington, DC Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde asked the president, in a short sermon, “to have mercy … on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away” and “those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

Later that evening, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the “so-called Bishop” was “ungracious … nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

As Bonnie Stabile wrote in an article published in Ms., Trump has frequently deployed the word “nasty” against female politicians and other public figures in response to their criticisms, and that “his frequent reliance on this adjective to squash women and their opinions has an entire history of its own.”

Stabile further pointed out that “the official definition of ‘nasty’ includes the descriptors ‘physically filthy’ and ‘disgustingly unclean.’ Alluding to women as disgusting, according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum, calls to mind a historical tactic of creating a deliberate construction of individuals or groups in ways that serve a political goal—usually to disempower or provoke aggression against them.”

Not surprisingly, in the week after the church service, the right-wing media infotainment/outrage complex -- taking their cue from Trump’s comments – lit up with condemnations of the bishop as a “witch,” along with many crude and misogynous epithets about her sexuality, and even denunciations of women’s very fitness for religious leadership.

All of this sends a chilling message to women – and young women – about the cost of speaking truth to patriarchal power.

But there’s another cost. When the most powerful and influential man in the country – the president of the United States -- uses derisive and misogynous language to describe women, and pays no recognizable political price for it, one effect is the normalization of that behavior.

This undermines the efforts of adults -- especially parents and mentors, not to mention gender violence prevention educators -- who are tasked with the already daunting task of teaching boys and young men about how to speak respectfully about women, and handle conflict with them, in both private relationships and in public life.

The Road Ahead for Men Committed to Justice

As long as Donald Trump continues to dominate the national attention economy, there is no quick fix or single strategy for how to counteract his pernicious personal influence on young men and boys.

There is, of course, an urgent need to fight back against his social policy agenda, which attempts to undo feminist gains by rolling back women’s and LGBTQ rights.

In both cases, the impulse to use the federal government to undermine gender and sexual equality is driven by the powerful white evangelical Christian base of the Republican Party, and their intention to use the coercive power of the state to bolster and reassert men’s diminished control over women and children in the family and the larger society.

Much of this was outlined in the pages of Project 2025, which is, among other things, a blueprint for a right-wing reversal of the past fifty years of social progress.

And recently, the burgeoning alliance in Trump 2.0 between tech bros and MAGA has demonstrated that despite some of the tensions inherent in that pairing, a critical point of convergence seems to be a shared sense of male grievance, and a renewed celebration of “masculine energy” after years of feminist criticism.

In the face of this right-wing onslaught against gender and sexual justice, one thing is clear. Men who are not okay with all of this need to speak out – as men -- against the rising tide of cultural and political reaction.

Reverend Budde became an instant national and international icon of strength and resistance when she delivered her passionate homily as she stood in front of Trump and his family. Untold numbers of people were inspired by her words and example. The fact that Reverend Budde happens to be a woman was lost on absolutely no one.

Similarly, it is clear that a revitalized multiracial, multiethnic coalition led by moderate, liberal, progressive, and feminist women remains one of the best hopes to counteract Trumpism in the years ahead – on the streets and at the ballot box.

Nonetheless, it is simply unfair to expect women to carry a disproportionate share of the burden. Donald Trump was re-elected with overwhelming support from men, especially -- but not exclusively -- white men.

It is therefore more important than ever that men who are committed to justice, fairness, and equity stand up, speak out, and say as loudly as possible: Not in my name.

(This article appeared originally in Ms. Magazine on February 7, 2025.)