Donald Trump never met a preposterous statement he wasn't willing to stand by, and so it is with his apparent belief that women are unfairly advantaged over men in our society. On Fox News on Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Trump why he would say that Hillary Clinton is a talentless hack who is coasting on the "woman card," i.e. the unearned privilege he believes women enjoy over men, and Trump defended himself by pulling his P.C.-police-suppress-the-truth card.
"Well, I'm my own strategist and I like that — what I said and it's true," Trump said. "I only tell the truth and that's why people voted for me."
The audacity of it is stunning, of course. If he hadn't been born a white man in a wealthy family, Trump would be a used car salesman in Des Moines who spends his weekends on desultory Match. com dates with divorcees who never call him again. Meanwhile, a huge amount of Clinton's appeal is that she's a smart and talented woman who has overcome a huge amount of sexist abuse in order to get as far as she has.
But Trump's bleating about the "woman card" epitomizes the appeal he has to his supporters, even as he manages to alienate everyone else in the country. There's a certain logic to his argument if you believe, as most conservatives do, that sexism is a thing of the past and that feminists are just making up stories to "play the victim" and earn the sweet, sweet cash they supposedly get from saying sexism still exists.
The problem with the "sexism is over" argument is that women in this country are still not equal. There's a persistent pay gap. Women are underrepresented in congress and no woman has ever been the president. While women graduate from college at greater rates than men, they are less likely to get plum jobs and promotions.
Looking over the statistics, there's really only two ways to explain the inequities: Either women are being treated unfairly or women are simply inferior to men. Feminists stand by the first argument, pointing out multiple studies that show that sexist beliefs about women and systematic discrimination holds women back.
Conservatives, however, reject the notion that sexism is still a thing, forcing them to argue that women fall behind because they're simply not as good as men. There are a lot of euphemisms for this argument — they usually say it's because of women's "choices" instead of bluntly claiming that women are inferior — but the gist is there: It's not sexism, it's that women aren't good/smart/ambitious enough.
Once you buy into the argument that women's inequality is due to women's inferiority, it's not much of a leap to start assuming that any woman who does go far must be getting some unfair advantage. For Trump and the sexist men who support him, it's easier to believe that Clinton's success is due to a feminist conspiracy to promote women over more deserving men than to admit that there are women out there that are smarter and more capable than they are. It's the same mentality that led Trump and the folks who support him to embrace "birther" theories about Barack Obama. It was easier to believe he was installed by a shadowy cabal than accept the possibility that an African-American man could be a legitimately elected official.
Trump's simplistic sexism has become déclassé in mainstream conservative circles. Instead, the trend has been to accept some women into leadership positions, as long as they remain firmly in the minority and don't ever rise to the tippy-top positions reserved for men. This simultaneously props up the argument that conservatives aren't sexist while maintaining a belief in female inferiority. The gist of things is that while a small handful of exceptional women are good enough to compete with men, most are not. And even those who are smart enough will never be quite as good as the men at the top.
Ted Cruz's selection of Carly Fiorina as his running mate is a perfect illustration of the delicate dance that conservatives are performing with gender politics. On one hand, he's trying to show off how non-sexist he supposedly is by picking a woman. On the other hand, he went out of his way to pick someone who isn't as smart as he is, as evidenced by her long history of professional and political failures. The pick allows him to appear to respect women while reinforcing conservative beliefs that women aren't quite as capable as men. If anything, by picking someone who isn't very good, Cruz is subtly reaffirming the belief that women in leadership are incompetents who get a leg up not because of talent but because of "political correctness."
John McCain did the same thing in 2008 with his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Now there is a hack who only got as far as she did because powerful men wanted to be seen as the kind of people who promote women. She was a bad pick for his campaign, but a good pick for pushing the belief that women aren't as smart as men and can only really get far because of their supposed female privilege.
Under the circumstances, it's easy to see why so many voters prefer Trump. He doesn't play these complicated games of pretending to respect women while rejecting the possibility that women really can be equal to men. His belief systems are far more straightforward: He doesn't think women are smart and any woman's success that challenges him will be waved away as a gimme handed to her because of "political correctness." For those who are sick of pretending to believe things they don't want to believe, such as in the possibility that women can be smart, the Trump method is far more appealing than the elaborate systems of B.S. that other conservatives have built.
That, plus it's always thrilling to misogynists to hear that, simply by virtue of being male, they are better than a woman who was her class valedictorian, an accomplished lawyer, a senator and the secretary of state. But odds are low Trump will get far with the general electorate by suggesting that even the smartest woman somehow pales in comparison to a mediocre man.
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