It was Eve's fault. She has power.

Donald Trump said the women accusers are bald faced liars.   

Trump critics call this misogyny.   Yet a majority of white women voted for Trump.  Maybe some people think the Democrats are the misogynists.

Trump sees women as vicious competitors.  Democrats are positioning women as victims.

Frequent Fox story theme

Readers of this blog communicated to me directly that yesterday's post missed the mark.  They said I misunderstood the "lustful teacher meme."  My post described the Fox News meme of the predatory women teacher seducing her innocent and vulnerable male students.  The emphasis of the post was that the repeated stories were an attack on political correctness.  Fox, I suggested, was forcing male readers to question whether the zero-tolerance condemnation of sex play between older women and 16 year old boys felt right to them.  Weren't the boys eager participants in this?

The input I received was unanimous.  They were victims.  Even if those boys eagerly welcomed the sex play, they were victims. They did not "get lucky. " 

So said the avalanche of comments.

Several readers said the main point of Fox News' repetition of the "lustful female teacher" meme is the slut-shaming of women.  In the campaign Trump said that his women accusers were liars, all of them.  Trump presented himself as a proud and lustful man who was very successful with women.  Trump paraded his succession of younger wives, taunting Cruz, showing off Melania, comparing her to Heidi Cruz.  Trump was the owner of female beauty contests.

There is a theme here: women are attractive objects, but powerful in their own way.  Men compete over them with their worldly successes; women compete with each other with their sexual attractiveness.  Men find women attractive.  Women use their sex appeal to advance their own interests.  Men are not trustworthy around women (Access Hollywood:  "I did try and fuck her.  She was married.")  Women are not trustworthy around men (Access Hollywood: "You can do anything.  Grab 'em by the pussy.  You can do anything.")

I agree with my readers.  Trump and Fox are slut-shaming.  But in doing so he is showing women as powerful.   Trump understands women as competitors in the hardscrabble effort to get ahead.  The Fox News meme of the lustful teacher is evidence and confirmation of that view.  Women have power and sexual energy, for good or ill. The strategies are asymmetric, men using status and power and wealth, women using beauty.  It assumes that women will play dirty, just as men do.

Poor, weak, victim Gillibrand 

Meanwhile Democrats position women as weak. Vulnerable.  Their power is to complain.  

It is the power of a tattle-tale, not the power of a strong leader.

Democrats think they are helping women but they are, in fact, positing their own form of misogyny: weak women.

The liberal progressive view posits an ideal world of asexual workplaces, in which everyone is very careful not to offend.  It is a zone of legal strict liability: a gesture or word is to be interpreted in a manner least favorable to the perpetrator, most favorable to the person who found offense.  

Example: Democrats just jumped on Trump's tweet regarding Senator Gillibrand, saying that his describing her as a lightweight flunky who came "begging", in quotes, for campaign contributions and would do anything for them, is sexually suggestive.  Democrats came to her defense.  Mistake.

The Gillibrand response is a stupid, self-destructive move by Democrats.   

One, it serves as a vivid example of Democratic offense-overreach, another example of liberal feminists so eager to find offense that Trump cannot even insult her for being a flunky hypocrite without being accused of sexual harassment.  This demeans actual sexual harassment by using the same language of outrage for that tweet as one would use for something clearly sexually inappropriate.   

Two, it posits a frightening and oppressive workplace and political environment of hazard, in which everything needs to be run through mental filters of possible objection.  This hurts women because it makes the hiring of women dangerous by positioning them as hazards. Collegial cooperative teamwork cannot take place in an environment where everything and anything can be "taken wrong."  Democrats see the defenestration of Franken as a sign of virtue and purification.  It is a frightening example of feminist tyranny, a pyrrhic victory for feminists and Democrats.

Three, and worst for Gllibrand, it positions her as a weakling.  This is a huge branding error.  In their first, big matchup Gllibrand comes off as a whiny complainer about low blows and Trump not being nice.  She was in a fight and instead of hitting back hard she called in girlfriends to complain.   Very, very weak positioning.  She comes across as exactly what Trump called her, a lightweight flunky for Senator Schumer.  Flunkies call fouls and get help.  Leaders fight on their own.

Trump is a misogynist of a certain kind.  He objectifies women, but values them while doing so.  And his Kellyanne Conway surrogate fights exactly like Trump does: viciously and without giving an inch.   Meanwhile, Democrats, in their effort to be the party of women end up treating women not as powerful people with agency of their own, but as victims needing protection.

Is the Democratic strategy working?  It is not.  White women are voting Republican.