Is Trump's golf-swing hitting Hillary GIF sexist?

[Broken_Erika]

Then Trump gets a second term and we end up with Rush Limbaugh 2024.

 

[Ryika]

Valessa, yeah, technically, very technically.
But level of naivete are we inferring as a basis for this rationale?
Like there has to room for some iquisitveness to be assumed as implicit.

Well I'm glad we agree on that then, but there are tons of people out there who are not able or willing to make that basic distinction, that's the problem.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The gif is sexist, but the sexism is not in the depiction of violence. Here, as usual, ideology does its work under the surface level of a particular ideologeme.

 

[metatron]

Well I'm glad we agree on that then, but there are tons of people out there who are not able or willing to make that basic distinction, that's the problem.

Yeah, well, my pointing out the absurdity in the following line serves to indicate that i deem this not a useful perspective in this case, no matter technical correctness.
Effectively our dissensus is about what we're supposed to be judging here, i suppose.
But we have, i guess, sufficiently belabored the point, so we shall not go out of our ways to disagree.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

So is the gif sexist or not? You completely avoided the question to ramble about random nonsense.

It's only "random nonsense" if you don't understand, and it's extremely obvious to me that you have no clue at all, and no wish to even try. So take your "random nonsense" crack, tie it to a kite, and fly it.

I haven't seen the gif. But to me it's basically no different from the situation I mentioned - expressing a wish to commit violence against a female politician. But by all means, show me the gifs Trump likes where violence is committed against his male political rivals.

@topic:
No, obviously it's not sexist, but it's not surprising that some would call it sexist, because some people are just unable to differentiate between "he did this to his opponent because she's a woman" (sexist) an "he did this to this woman because she's his opponent" (not sexist). So that's just what you have to expect from people, most of the "normal people" out there are just stupid, or accept a premise without ever thinking about it and realizing that it doesn't make sense.

Where are his favorite gifs of perpetrating violence toward his male political rivals?

According to CNN, a man who says he likes boobs is sexist. Even though literally everybody aside from crazy cat ladies likes boobs. Including heterosexual women and babies.

Talk about random nonsense...

Yes, and that all might be true, but then you're still arguing that he's a sexist who likes the gif for sexist reasons, it does not make the gif sexist. I mean you can even argue that he likes the gif because it shows a man being violent towards a woman, and while I would disagree with that conclusion and point towards the fact that she was his political opponent as the more likely conclusion, but the argument itself would be sound. It just wouldn't - in my opinion at least - be the argument that best explains the factors involved.

Certain media outlets however have been arguing that the gif itself is sexist, Valka has entirely ignored that part of the conversation and instead went directly to discrediting Trump which does not even address the core question, and you've sort of argued for the same. But none of that makes it sexist, the gif stands on its own, and showing a man punching a woman is not in any way sexist, unless it is made clear that he punches her because she is a woman, and then on top of that, the gif celebrates that he does it.

Trump sharing a gif does not change anything about whether the gif itself is sexist or not, at best you can ask if the act of sharing it was sexist, which is a different discussion - one that would lead me to conclude that it's again better explained by them being political opponents in my opinion.

I haven't seen any articles about this, or even the gif itself. The closest analogy I can come to is some male Conservative <censored, extremely uncomplimentary word> thought it would be hilarious to put a picture of our female premier's face on a golf course and openly encourage people to aim for it. She's the first non-Conservative/Social Credit (same thing, but with added religion and bigotry) premier we've had in 80 YEARS, and some people are sending her death threats, chanting "Lock her up" at a rally (sound familiar? If it would stop the right-wing American filth from infesting Canadian politics, I'd help build a wall along the 49th parallel myself) while the right-wing political party leaders just stood by with grins on their faces, and advocating violence toward her that would never have happened if she had been a male premier.

If you can't see the comparison, then you're just extremely obtuse, not to mention trying to pick another fight that I'm not really in the mood to indulge.

 

[metalhead]

One - I don't think that the aggrieved outsider schtick has outlived its usefulness. There is even some actual truth to it, despite the fact that he's President, he is isolated as no other President has been at this point in a Presidency. Really though, even when he wasn't President the aggrieved outsider schtick was patently ridiculous on factual grounds, so I don't think there's any reason to think it's not going to work in 2020.

Well, it was ridiculous insofar as people really should have been able to see through his bluster, but if people weren't easily conned, there wouldn't be so many successful con men about.

But he'll have a much harder sell of "Here is all the crap that pisses me off because it hurts you, and I'm the only one who can fix it because I'm not bought and paid for by special interests" after having been in office. When you actually divorce that message from the messenger, it's a very good message. But when you've been president for 3 and a half years and haven't lifted a finger to do anything about any of that stuff, you're going to have eroded much of the trust people were placing in you. You can't run around pretending you'll be able to do a bunch of stuff when you never delivered any of what you promised.

Two - I think the Republican re-election strategy is going to center on preventing Democratic votes from being cast/counted, rather than on what we might think of as a "normal" election strategy. This will be much more successful than it ever was during Obama's Presidency as we will not see even token federal efforts to enforce civil rights provisions or ensure that the election is fair.

Three - This is the most depressing point, at least for me. I suspect that Trump's coalition will not abandon him come election time, regardless of what they're now telling opinion pollsters, because I think that Ta-Nehisi Coates' diagnosis is substantially correct. Trump is the Great White Hope, literally, of all the people who (self-consciously or not) want the US to remain (or become, or whatever) a white ethnostate. I suspect this interest in white supremacy will ultimately prove more important than other considerations, just as it did in 2016. And, related to this, I think that plenty of people who voted for Trump now "disapprove" of him, but stack him up against a real, living, breathing Democrat, and they will flock back to Trump as the lesser evil.

Now, I really hope I'm wrong about this third point but...what I saw in 2016 makes me doubt that I am.

Trump is dealing with such a razor-thin margin of victory that even if you're right, he only has to lose the Obama-Trump voters to give PA, MI, and WI back to the Democrats.

The thing I think that even Coates' piece misses, though, is how complex things like voting decisions truly are. We would probably be appalled at how many people deep down are indifferent towards being governed by white supremacists, but that doesn't mean every single one of those voters has it as an overriding concern. It's one thing to shrug off the appalling racism of Trump to cast your vote for him; it's quite another to shrug off 4 years of utterly broken promises to vote for him again.

I think Trump benefitted greatly from being a blank slate. He won't have that luxury next time around, and he will have to attune his message to that reality if he wants to win again.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You can't run around pretending you'll be able to do a bunch of stuff when you never delivered any of what you promised.

Assuming his followers want him to do anything at all. I've got this theory that they just want him to keep talking in this way (posting hilarious gifs of Hillary getting hit by a golfball)

 

[Ryika]

It's only "random nonsense" if you don't understand, and it's extremely obvious to me that you have no clue at all, and no wish to even try. So take your "random nonsense" crack, tie it to a kite, and fly it.

I haven't seen the gif. But to me it's basically no different from the situation I mentioned - expressing a wish to commit violence against a female politician. But by all means, show me the gifs Trump likes where violence is committed against his male political rivals.

Of course it's random nonsense. You're blatantly admitting that you have no idea what you're talking about by saying that you haven't watched any of the relevant material, how could anything you say even be on topic? It's random rambling about things that are tangentially related to the words used in the headline, and that's it.

Where are his favorite gifs of perpetrating violence toward his male political rivals?

Let's talk about Kathy Griffin instead. The lady with the severed Trump head picture? Have you seen her making such pictures with any female politicians? ...no?

OH MY GOD, WHY IS SHE SUCH A MANHATER?!

Of course the argument is just really stupid. Trump does not have any political opponents on the same level as Hillary Clinton, and he has not retweeted gifs about anybody but her, not his male opponents, not his female opponents. You're concluding that there is a pattern of behavior by looking at the one politician that he has a real feud with (no, you're not even looking at it, as you admitted earlier), ignore all female politicians who are not Hillary Clinton, and draw a conclusion from it, of course the conclusion you draw is just utterly nonsensical, how could it not be with such a lackluster method of observation?

Talk about random nonsense...

Did you know that cats apparently taste pretty good if they're held indoors and fed until they're fat?

I haven't seen any articles about this, or even the gif itself. The closest analogy I can come to is some male Conservative <censored, extremely uncomplimentary word> thought it would be hilarious to put a picture of our female premier's face on a golf course and openly encourage people to aim for it. She's the first non-Conservative/Social Credit (same thing, but with added religion and bigotry) premier we've had in 80 YEARS, and some people are sending her death threats, chanting "Lock her up" at a rally (sound familiar? If it would stop the right-wing American filth from infesting Canadian politics, I'd help build a wall along the 49th parallel myself) while the right-wing political party leaders just stood by with grins on their faces, and advocating violence toward her that would never have happened if she had been a male premier.

More barely related stuff with premises based on 1-time-occurrences!

 

[Perfection]

Make fun not war.

That tweet was a personal insult to Hillary and her supporters. It wasn't fun it wasn't uniting. It's Trump being a plain and simple jerk.

I work hard, I pay taxes, I love my country. My president should goddamn take me seriously.

 

[Gori the Grey]

or even just take his job seriously enough not to be wasting his time with this kind of drivel. I'd settle for that, frankly.

 

[Ryika]

Consider this: While he watches and retweets memes, he cannot deport dreamers, maintain border fences, or mishandle north korea.

Shouldn't you be happy with every second of his 8 years in office that he wastes doing things like that?

 

[Lexicus]

But he'll have a much harder sell of "Here is all the crap that pisses me off because it hurts you, and I'm the only one who can fix it because I'm not bought and paid for by special interests" after having been in office.

Maybe. Maybe my calculation here is just the result of the fact that I don't understand how people consider politicians, but not businessmen, part of the "establishment."

The thing I think that even Coates' piece misses, though, is how complex things like voting decisions truly are. We would probably be appalled at how many people deep down are indifferent towards being governed by white supremacists, but that doesn't mean every single one of those voters has it as an overriding concern.

Well, it depends what we mean by "overriding concern." Because I don't think that the vast majority of Trump voters were self-consciously embracing white supremacy. But that was what I read in the subtext of many of the arguments they were making. And that's the "revealed preference" expressed by their actual voting behavior.

I think Trump benefitted greatly from being a blank slate.

This may be true, but I don't think the fact that he is no longer such a blank slate will prevent his voters from projecting what they want onto him (again, not that he was really much of a blank slate in 2016 - he had a long history of racism, criminality, and so on). In any case, that's one of his skills, after a fashion - presenting himself in such a way that people can read totally contradictory things in him and still both be kind of right, if that makes sense.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Of course it's random nonsense. You're blatantly admitting that you have no idea what you're talking about by saying that you haven't watched any of the relevant material, how could anything you say even be on topic? It's random rambling about things that are tangentially related to the words used in the headline, and that's it.

So include a link to this gif, so I can see it for myself. I'm not about to waste my time searching for it.

The gif has been described, Trump's actions have been described... seems clear enough to me.

Since you can't see how the issue is that this is advocating violence toward female politicians (since no equivalent gif seems to exist of any of Trump's male political rivals), then you are either genuinely obtuse or willfully obtuse. I'm betting on both.

It's interesting how you claim that the attacks against Rachel Notley are "one-time occurrences" when you've shown that you understand precisely nothing about why they're so outrageous. Assassination isn't something Canadians normally do, and for this to be happening is really unsettling.


You and I are done here.

 

[Perfection]

Consider this: While he watches and retweets memes, he cannot deport dreamers, maintain border fences, or mishandle north korea.

Shouldn't you be happy with every second of his 8 years in office that he wastes doing things like that?

Making an ass of himself on behalf of America while the whole world watches is pretty damaging too.

 

[metatron]

So include a link to this gif, so I can see it for myself. I'm not about to waste my time searching for it.

https://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/videos/trump-clinton-golf-gif/

 

[Perfection]

Of course it's random nonsense.

of course it's an insult directed at Trump's political opponents. But Trump's political opponents includes 65 million Americans who he swore an oath to protect the rights of. He doesn't get to play this game.

Let's talk about Kathy Griffin instead. The lady with the severed Trump head picture? Have you seen her making such pictures with any female politicians? ...no?

OH MY GOD, WHY IS SHE SUCH A MANHATER?!

Of course the argument is just really stupid.

Of course it is, Kathy Griffin is a C list comedienne and Trump is the damn president. Nobody cares what Kathy Griffin says, it doesn't matter.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Consider this: While he watches and retweets memes, he cannot deport dreamers, maintain border fences, or mishandle north korea.

Shouldn't you be happy with every second of his 8 years in office that he wastes doing things like that?

He's mishandling North Korea in part by tweeting about the situation there, so, no, I can't take this view.

Not the least of the problems with his tweeting, moreover, is how it reduces complex problems to what can be fit into a tweet, so, for me, tweeting is problematic as such, independently of the content of the tweets.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I think this is roughly on the right path, in that the problem is not so much the gif - we can easily see that by cutting out the two of them and replacing them with other politicians. It's crass but in itself not sexist.
The problem here is Trump and his well-established sexism. The thing becomes sexist by virtue of having him in it as the assaulting party.

So if a racist goes to the toilet, does their urination become a racist act?

 

[Perfection]

So if a racist goes to the toilet, does their urination become a racist act?

Depends on who Trump pees on.

 

[Gori the Grey]

So if a racist goes to the toilet, does their urination become a racist act?

Now, why don't we get thread questions like this on CFCOT? This is a question worth pondering.