What Politicians’ Reactions to the Trump Video Reveal About Sexism
Version 0 of 1. There has been a lot of advice from Washington in the last week about how to treat women: They should “be championed and revered” (Speaker Paul Ryan); they need “protecting” from “abusive, disparaging treatment” (Senator Michael Crapo); they “deserve to be treated with respect” (Senator Orrin Hatch.) The language that politicians used to chastise Donald J. Trump for the way he talked about groping women in a video uncovered last week said a lot about their own attitudes toward women. Many described them in terms of their relationships to men — wives and daughters. Some described women as in need of protection, and others as deserving of respect. In many cases, according to a linguistic analysis of statements by senators, the reactions broke along party lines. Of the 73 senators who publicly reacted to the video, Republicans were much more likely to refer to their wives, mothers or daughters, and to women’s need for protection. Democrats were more likely to expand their remarks to other groups besides women. The two parties were about equally likely to describe the effect on women as demeaning or some similar language. The analysis came from Textio, which makes software that companies use to analyze job postings and other documents for bias. At the request of The New York Times, Textio analyzed the language of every public statement made by a senator on Twitter or elsewhere in response to the video in the 72 hours after it was released. Republicans were much more likely to make a statement: Only five of the 54 Republican senators did not. Nine of them — but no Democrats — phrased their comments in terms of their familial relationships with women. Many people pointed out: What about respecting women as human beings, not just in relation to men? The language also more subtly excluded women, said Robin Lakoff, professor emerita of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who in 1975 published a groundbreaking book, “Language and Woman’s Place.” Many of the candidates spoke about women in possessive terms. “Our daughters, sisters and mothers,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, while Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate, said Mr. Trump’s words “demean our wives and daughters.” The use of “our,” besides conveying ownership, implies that the audience is also men, and that women are not involved in the conversation, Ms. Lakoff said. “For a lot of Republican rhetoric, there is a notion that it’s men talking to men,” she said. “It sends the message to women: ‘You don’t belong here; you’re maybe the subject of the talk but you aren’t a participant in it.’ ” Similarly, Mr. Trump often refers to “the women,” along with “the Muslims” and “the blacks,” as a method of excluding them from his group, said Jennifer J. Jones, a Ph.D. candidate in political psychology at the University of California, Irvine, who published a paper last month on gender and Hillary Clinton’s speech patterns. Seven senators tried to expand the point to offensive statements Mr. Trump has made about other groups, not just women, just as Mrs. Clinton did in the debate Sunday. Three senators, all Republican men, spoke about the need to protect women. Two of the examples below: Fourteen spoke about the need to respect women, including a quarter of the female senators who responded, with four of them Democrats and 10 Republicans. (Mr. Trump has also repeatedly emphasized his respect for women.) “Respect” is a loaded word, Ms. Lakoff said. “You could mean you think of women as human beings equal to you, people who are deserving of respect and have rights,” she said, or use it to refer to a more outdated form of chivalry. Fourteen senators, Republicans and Democrats, used words that described the effect of Mr. Trump’s language on women — like “demeaning” or “degrading.” Seven labeled the behavior as “assault” or spoke about Mr. Trump’s “preying upon” women — though none of the senators who have endorsed Mr. Trump used language that strong. |