How Trump Triggers the Misogyny I Don’t Own

Rodney Clough
3 min readAug 17, 2024
Shirley Chisholm, c. 1968, first African American Democratic candidate for President… also a woman. Candidate Kamala Harris is the second. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Years in the reinforcing… years.

Spoiler alert: I am a misogynist. As in “once a misogynist, always a misogynist.”

I am a creature of a misogynistic culture, by parents who raised me in a misogynist household, who attended schools where I learned the lessons of misogyny, who was awarded perks during employment from a corporation embedded in a misogynist commerce.

That was long ago.

Or … wait … was it?

When it comes to reinforcing, President Biden and the Democrats ceded important ground to Trump. Rather than show a disconnect between who we thought we were and the world, Biden cautioned us about a threat to the world as we know it — lurking misogyny and all. The important work of self-assessment and growth went unchallenged. This meant that in our mind — oblige me to speak for other misogynists — Trump went unchallenged.

Now it is the summer of our discontent, eighty odd days before we revisit our past in a voting booth. Candidate Kamala Harris has tossed us a lifeline to fight for who we want to be. On the other hand, candidate Trump is asking us to follow him.

He is asking us to follow an agenda of and including misogyny. Catnip for me who refuses to own my misogyny, the portion I neglect to own.

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Rodney Clough
Rodney Clough

Written by Rodney Clough

Refuses to nap. Septuagenarian. Cliche’ raker. Writes weekly.

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