Before we get into the rest of this discussion, watch these two videos. Ignore the obvious checkbox demographics, because these two ads make a very clever point – the same words, delivered in different contexts, can mean something completely different.
These, among other things, makes clear the importance of “frame”, by the way. Even if you wrote out these scenes, completely stripped out the body language, the intonation, and simply described the setting and who was speaking, the differences in meaning would be clear.
The frame for the latest Trump scandals is that Trump is a rapist. I know personally that a lot of Hillbots are lapping up the “he’s a sexual predator” line. This is because a) the press told them to, and b) despite many of them buying and enjoying “50 Shades”, despite the fact I know from direct personal experience of some of them walking in on conversations that they fantasize and say incredibly crude things about sex and sexual desires and men, and that women are “like that” in general, they cannot accept that a guy wants women, will approach them, or admit that they can that easily submit to a rich, powerful, or charismatic man.
Cue up of course the followup, too-good-to-be-true, #coincidentally timed confessions of how Trump abused or groped them, despite details like time, place, or degree of intimacy with the Trump clan being under credible dispute or even completely impossible.
It’s still in play, for a number of reasons, but a number of the undereducated women voters the Democrats love (unless they become noncompliant – see wikileaks) – even the churchian “conservatives” – are ready to swallow the feminist spiel about how men discussing how they want women, or brag about approaching women, or discussing the truth that anyone who understands groupies are a real thing knows, is tantamount to rape and being a predator. How this degrades women.
And it’s all in the context. Sadly, we’ve been trained out of even seeing that context, as a recent SNL skit mocking it as “locker room” talk acted like it doesn’t happen at all. The modern progressive frame is that men are not allowed to say anything that upsets women, even in private, if the women ever find out about it.
This despite another skit in that same episode only “working” as a joke on the point that women will debase themselves before the socially powerful of the moment.
Oh, and sadly, if anything, SNL is only even more predictable than they used to be. Both the “news” skit and the Stranger Things-based skit rely heavily on the tropes of white privilege.
So it comes around to “how do we deal with it.?”
Honestly, not sure. To the extent possible with not losing your livelihood, especially if you have family, etc., push back against the frame. Call them out on hypocrisy of their own actions. As much as it’s tempting to point to the Veritas videos of Hillary staffers, it’s not as visceral as pointing out their own conversations about men. And even then, being liberals, they will likely “feel” there’s an excuse for their own behavior, but Trump is evil.
The iconic example of such has got to be the FLOTUS talking about “human decency” in regards to the Trump comments, who takes her daughters to Jay-Z concerts and raps “Get Your Freak On” alongside Missy Elliot. But hey, it’s their “culture”, or some BS.
