Credit: Huffington Post images
As we all know, the plastic bouffant presidential candidate has made it beyond clear that he is really running on a single plank: Make America Male Again. To do that, he has assured us on regular occasion, requires only that you "have a young and beautiful piece of ass" beside you.
Sometimes the candidate gets it right even when he doesn't know it. Having a smart woman at your side may very well save your ass.
If there is much of a sane future for humans on this earth, it's clearer every day that it will be guided by the female half of the species. More than ever the world's population is coming to acknowledge that gender truth. The most striking study documenting our global shift toward women's leadership took place already four years ago. John Gerzema and Michael d'Antonio surveyed some 64 thousand men and women in nearly every possible orbit of the globe. Their core question addressed attitudes toward leadership and power.
As Gerzema and D'Antonio reported in The Athena Doctrine, two-thirds of the people surveyed--41,000 people--agreed with the statement "the world would be a better place if men thought more like women."
So what does it mean to think like a woman? Clever researchers, Gerzema and D'Antonio did not pose that question directly. Instead, they asked half their subject to label 125 different behavioral traits--like selfless, trustworthy, rugged, generous, dynamic agile, understanding, curious and down-to-earth--as masculine or feminine or neither. They gave the the same list of traits to the other 32,000 study participants, but instead of asking them to categorize the traits as masculine or feminine, they asked the participants to rate the importance of each to certain values: leadership, success, morality, and happiness.
"By comparing the two samples," they wrote, "we could now statistically model how masculine and feminine traits relate to solving today's challenges." Regardless of age, gender, or culture, they found, "people around the world feel that feminine traits correlate more strongly with making the world a better place." In conclusion: "many of the qualities of an ideal modern leader are considered feminine."
Feminine, but not wealthy. While candidate Trump's appeal seems to have everything to do with his net worth (which might or might not be inflated), wealth did not rank high in leadership qualities. That may be why candidate Clinton has tried repeatedly to soft-pedal her own considerable net worth. Far more important in a leader, according to the study, were achieving happiness for their children and building vibrant local communities. Proving you know that "it takes a village to raise a child," apparently, suggests greater leadership potential than proving you know about dicking other people out of their money.
Still: if two-thirds of the 64,000 people in Gerzema and D'Antonio's study identified "feminine values and characteristics" as better leadership qualities, what about the other third? Candidate Trump has focused almost exclusively on those who want leaders with penises in his unashamedly misogynistic insults to women in power--and in his unsubtle (and effective) efforts to emasculate his primary opponents. Trump's resounding success in channeling the anger and resentment of the one-third of mostly white males who feel themselves left behind by a changing world--an appeal to masculinist resentment that might also explain the improbable flourishing of the Bernie bro--voters' responses in this dark election year confirm just how much of the the American electorate would rather see the nation descend into chaos than submit to the inevitable victory of feminine wisdom over masculine assertion.
The increasing frenzy of gender chatter--be it about toilets, pay gaps or relative brain size and function--shows that the waning of masculine hegemony is a disturbing reality for those who harbor fixed ideas about what gender means. Not all such discontents are Trump supporters, Republicans, or even men. Many feminists, including apparently the icon Gloria Steinem, refuse to acknowledge the hard science on brain and gender fluidity, arguing that people born with XY chromosomes and testicles can never understand the social reality of growing up with double XXs, while the angry Trumpeters scream ever more loudly that relinquishing power to XXs betrays God's Laws and threatens their own ultimate emasculation.
Rage and rail as they might against the gender revolution, the odds are not in their favor, no matter how many and how wide are the Trump rally banners demanding to Make America Male Again. Put it back in your pants, everybody. We've seen the future, and it's not your dick.