Last month, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of "playing the woman card." This suggests that she's only polling well because she's a woman, or because she's duping "politically correct" liberals with a gender equality guilt trip.
Trump is wrong on the polling and wrong on the gender politics. But over the weekend, he doubled down on his wrong idea in the most Trump way possible — suggesting that men, not women, are really the oppressed ones.
RealClearPolitics reported on a Trump campaign rally in Spokane, Washington, that offered a preview of how Trump might handle the gender dynamics of running against Clinton in the general election.
"If [Clinton] didn't play the women's card, she would have no chance, I mean zero, of winning," Trump said. "She's playing the women's card. She's going — " [here Trump's voice drips with sarcasm] "'Did you hear that Donald Trump raised his voice while speaking to a woman?' Oh, I'm sorry!"
And then: "I mean. All of the men, we're petrified to speak to women anymore. We may raise our voice. You know what? The women get it better than we do, folks. They get it better than we do. If she didn't play that card, she has nothing."
Women in the audience started cheering at this.
Trump's "women get it better than we do" line could mean two things. It could mean that he thinks women have an easier lot in life than men — partly because men now have to be constantly "petrified" of being labeled sexists.
It could also be a reference to Trump's claim that Clinton is unpopular among women (which is technically true, but misleading, since women dislike Trump a lot more). So he may mean women "get it" (as in, understand Clinton's trickery) better than "we" (men) do.
It could also be both at once, or one meaning pivoting into the other.
Either way, Trump's comments are not just wrong but also disturbing. That's because Trump is parroting the ideas of a movement of aggrieved men, typically dubbed "men's rights activists" (MRAs), who think that feminism has overreached and that men are now the oppressed class as a result.
MRAs tend to value traditional gender roles, as do the conservative movement and the Republican Party for the most part. It's not unusual for traditionalists to blame and shame women who flout gender norms, of course. But MRAs specialize in a very particular, and very dangerous, brand of blaming women.
The "men's rights" movement is full of splinter factions and warring tribes. MRAs distinguish themselves from PUAs (pick-up artists), and so on. But broadly speaking, this movement says women are the problem, and that women's complaints about sexism are really about nothing more than oppressing men. It invites you to take the "red pill" and see how deep the misandrist rabbit hole goes. It's a toxic world view that helped inspire Elliot Rodger's murderous rampage in 2014.
Trump is tapping into some of the nation's most aggrieved and angry sexist resentments, just as he is tapping into some of its most aggrieved and angry racist resentments.
It's unsurprising, but still alarming.
Update: After publishing this piece, I got inundated with angry Twitter mentions from self-identified MRAs and MRA sympathizers. Amid the cesspool, though, several people objected to the idea that Rodger was actually an "MRA." That's a bit complicated, but fair enough; the piece has been updated to better reflect those nuances. Rodger was, however, inspired by the kind of virulent anti-woman resentment that is too often fostered and given safe haven in MRA spaces.