The Protection Racket

 

 

"To close up that fissure, the figure of the sex-predator president must be obliterated by the figure of the monstrous woman. There has to be a female violence (BLOOD ON HER HANDS!) even more terrifying than mere male sexual aggression. It is not enough for Trump the rapist to be opposed by a woman who is devious and weak and stupid. He must be up against what Barbara Creed called, in the title of her groundbreaking 1993 book on horror movies, “the monstrous-feminine”: “what it is about woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject.” Hillary Clinton was bad (and Trump did call her “the devil”)—but Harris is evil. She must be not merely disdained but dreaded and reviled beyond the limits of the imagination. “No person,” as Trump put it on Truth Social on October 11, “who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can EVER be allowed to become POTUS!”

This is the most extreme example of Trump’s uncanny ability to turn the world upside down. Trump the rapist becomes the defender of women against the sexual violence unleashed by the monstrous-feminine: “You will be protected,” he told women in Pennsylvania on September 23, “and I will be your protector.”"

 READ ESSAY BY FINTAN O' TOOLE