Mike Pence doesn’t want women to be allowed to serve in the military. Back when Disney’s Mulan was released in theaters, the current Vice President of the USA called the movies a liberal propaganda tool and even referenced the love story between Mulan and Shang as one of the reasons women shouldn’t be allowed in the military. And we’re just getting started!
Mike’s wet dream features completely defunding Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider of sexual healthcare in the United States. Why would you need sexual healthcare in a world where only married women are having sex and where both contraception and abortions are prohibited by law? There was even a time when he wanted to force women to organize religious funerals for legally aborted fetuses and even tried for a while replacing the word “rape” by “legal rape” in legal texts.
You wouldn’t be surprised to know that Mike Pence’s advocacy of life isn’t more than effort for the subjugation of women. Indeed, Pence doesn’t support Universal healthcare, public schools funding, and gun control. Life as he fights for it ends with the first breath. Uncle Mike made sure mommy pops you out. Now, you’re on your own.
Going by Pence’s position on women’s issues, one can easily imagine where he stands on gay rights.
Dissatisfied with the general republican unsupportive position, he goes the extra Santorum mile leading battle after battle to alienate gays for being gays. Christian Mike Pence who, as most members of the Republican Party, seems to understand Christianity in respect to another Christ than the Bible’s Jesus of Nazareth, wanted money allocated for funding research for HIV and AIDS moved to fund sexual conversion therapy, a form of torturing homosexuals into being attracted to people from the opposite sex.
The importance of the conversion therapy in Pence’s perception of the world is reflected in his fear of same sex marriages: he not only believes but is also convinced that same sex marriage would bring about a societal collapse, nothing less.
And finally, when it comes to legacy, Mike Pence will be forever remembered as the signatory of the short lived shameful Religious Freedom Act that allowed Indiana business owners to cite religious beliefs as a non-litigable reason to refuse their professional services to the members of the LGBTQ community.
Forgotten men and women, you didn’t just elect the con man with no grasp of anything that isn’t how hot Ivanka is, you also willingly bought a ticket to the Dark Ages of America, the fifties, with a stopover by the Nixon era. The worse part of this Devil’s bargain is that it was an informed decision. Nobody in this whole administration ever was a progressive! Power didn’t change them! From the President to his daughter, passing by the Vice President, the White House Chief of Staff, and every other cabinet member we ever heard speak, they are all nostalgic of an era when the whole world bent over for straight white men.
Donald Trump, who has no clear position on the issues dividing America except being part of every issue dividing America, had always been an outspoken bigot. In a 1994 interview with ABC News, an official interview not a Billy Bush hot microphone instance, 48 years old Donald Trump volunteered an educational lesson to the viewers and shared his scholarly opinion on working women: I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing. And, shameless as he is, he goes on to say: when I come home and dinner is not ready I go through the roof.
Trump once said that he has the best words. So let’s see what his words tell us about him. According to the now president of the United States, the wife is an easily replaceable commodity – he’s been married three times and tried dating every famous woman in Hollywood – and it bestows on the husband to dispose of said commodity as he pleases, in this case allowing her to join the workforce or denying her the basic right of working outside the household and having a personal source of revenue. A job that isn’t dangerous according to anti-human development studies professor Donald Trump would be a cook or a servant; a creature at the service of the man, who has to abide by said man’s rules and schedules. For a man always complaining about rigged systems, he doesn’t seem appalled by a system rigged to please him.
As for the last man standing between us and World Word III, or as it will be known by The Nuclear Apprentice, White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, he doesn’t fare any better and shows his contempt for women’s rights in a revealing moment during his infamous empty barrel appearance at the White House Press Briefing: when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred and looked up upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore.
Some pundits and comedians called John Kelly out on his apparent hypocrisy. How can he work for President Pussy Graber and lament how women aren’t respected anymore? For a moment I wondered if Kelly is on the same denial drug Melania is on but then I remembered that John Kelly was born on May 11th 1950, which means that he grew up during the fifties. One man gave a gut wrenching assessment of John Kelly’s remarks.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell calls the four stars general out on his nonexistent grasp of historical facts. When John Kelly was a kid growing up, women were not sacred as well as they were not honored. O’Donnell goes on to say: in John Kelly’s neighborhood, in the Catholic parish that he grew up in, in the Catholic parish that I grew up in, women were getting beaten by their husbands, their drunken husbands, as a normal weekly occurrence and their parish priest would tell those women “you can’t get divorced or you will be excommunicated, you’re just going to have to bear it in a barrack for the children, there’s nothing you can do about it”. Women were not honored, most women were domestic servants and the women who had jobs outside the home were not allowed to have of the jobs in America. One would ask oneself if the adult in the room is an ignorant or a bigot who believes women are being honored when they are subjugated by men in their life and society.
This trifecta is backed up by a Republican Congress led by Freedom Caucus picked Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and bipartisan work antidote Senator Mitch McConnell. It would be safe to call this Administration the most conservative in recent history.
And it is to this relic of a disgraceful past that Ivanka eagerly moved in January 2017. But Ivanka’s no Katherine Watson. She didn’t move to that bastion of political and societal conservatism to make a difference! She moved so her shiny hair, her pastel brand and her empowering hashtags distract us from the dangerous policies silently implemented by her father’s abhorrent administration.
New York native Stepford wife Ivanka wants to be seen as a woman who lived by example and compelled us all to see the world through her eyes. But the truth of the Ivanka matter is lurking behind the airbrushed images of women who work outfits and social media feed filled with quoted wise words and impractical advice.
Ivanka was born Ivana Marie Trump to a misogynist with page six sex scandals and his first wife Czech Ivana Zelnicknova.
She’s his second child and only daughter unless you insist on counting Marla’s daughter Tiffany who is mostly known as Ivanka’s forgotten half-sister and the butt of most jokes about Donald’s short attention span or his unhealthy obsession with his eldest daughter’s looks. The heiress was raised in her native New York, in a tower branded by her father’s name, and witnessed first-hand Marla Maple’s public takeover of Donald Trump’s bed.
Faced by the bitter reality of her father’s affair and her parents’ divorce, she reacted as a true Trump: she blamed the press! But her most significant reaction would be asking her mother if the divorce meant she won’t be Ivanka Trump anymore. Someone should have told her that parents can’t divorce their children when they meet younger ones! Jokes aside, it would be both safe and fair to assume that Ivanka’s fear of not being Ivanka Trump anymore became her sole motivation as she decided to become the only irreplaceable Ms. Trump. Today with her mother, her father’s second wife Marla and her sister Tiffany all out of the picture for a reason or another and with Melania’s trophy wife status, Ivanka is the only woman Trump that matters.
Ivanka is a self-proclaimed feminist whose highly marketed strategy is empowering women, previously in the United States and nowadays, as first daughter, all around the world.
In its most basic premise feminism is an ideology according to which women are equal to men and deserve to be treated as such. Despite divergences in opinions when it comes to the details of feminism, feminists all share the common goal of defining, establishing and achieving political, economic, personal and social equality of the sexes.
Being first and foremost a Trump, Ivanka has developed her very own perversion of female equality, wrote in beautiful bold fonts and painted it in soft pink. The Daily Show’s Michelle Wolf summarizes Ivanka’s formula for equality in five interdependent points: (1) have a husband, (2) have children, (3) dress right, (4) don’t be poor and (5) don’t get mad when you’re harassed at work.
Have a husband
Ivanka is married to real estate heir Jared My-Dad-Is-A-Convicted-Felon Kushner and revels in repeating what a smart man he is. She speaks of Jared as if he hand the sun and the moon. In her “if being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact” Ivanka shamelessly fawns over Jared: Jared was instrumental in helping my father’s campaign. So, you know, Jared’s incredibly smart, very talented, has enormous capacity. He is humble in his recognition of what he doesn’t know and is tremendously secure in his ability to seek informed viewpoints. There is only one problem: the man she’s married to cannot objectively be the man she describes.
None is better than Bill Maher to tear into Jared’s carefully constructed façade. Young Jared didn’t have the grades on the SAT scores to get into Harvard. But then, his father gave Harvard 2.5 million dollars, and they suddenly realized that Jared was Ivy League material after all. Don’t get your hopes high and expect him to have learned anything at college. After his graduation, the first thing 26 year-old Jared did with his inherited wealth was buy a newspaper in 2006, you know, just as print media was taking off. Then, in 2007, he goes head first in his signature real estate disaster and pays – again using his father’s fortune – the highest price ever for a New York City building, right before the economy and New York real estate collapsed. Maher adds salt in the tremendous bad judgment wound: the secret to real estate is “buy low, sell high”. Four words and Jared got four of them wrong. Then, Jared tries his genius in politics and, should he quit today, he will be remembered as the one who told Trump that firing Comey was a good idea and as the one who thought he could get away with having a secret meeting with the Russian Ambassador who everyone knows is constantly surveyed.
Be a mother
Who can forget Ivanka’s 2016 election ad: I’m Ivanka Trump. The most important job a woman can have is being a mother. Straight to the sexist point I would say. Ivanka, having a woman paying lip service to putting motherhood above all else doesn’t make the objectifying less obvious or dangerous. Portraying yourself as a force for women empowerment doesn’t allow the automatic qualification of everything you say as feminist and supportive of equality. This elevation of motherhood is simply despicable: it blatantly depicts childless women as lesser women. Moreover, Ivanka’s support of mothers is tied to their marital status. Indeed, the first daughter’s maternity leave policy proposal covers only married women. Single mothers, a highly vulnerable component of women who work, are left out! The policy proposal takes away women’s – and men’s – right to choose how to lead their lives and imposes a non-inclusive conservative patriarchal ideal of women.
Dress right
Explaining Ivanka’s formula for success, Michelle Wolf translates the Ivanka Trump brand owner’s marketing strategy in one easy sentence: I’m successful and powerful. How can you be like me? Buy my handbags. The right dress is a recurrent subject for Ivanka. Her clothes, shoes and bags collection is reportedly designed for the modern professional woman. A well-tailored dress, from her eponymous brand, is her secret weapon.
Chelsea’s Ivanka Trump, Fortune Feimster, takes a direct shot at Ivanka’s overt use of feminism to sell her products. Answering Chelsea’s question about Donald’s groping habits Ivanka opens up about her views: oh I am a feminist, I am a feminist. All of you women out there go buy my shoes to them you’re a feminist.
Ivanka is literally conning women into believing that shopping her brand is an unavoidable stepping stone towards success.
Don’t be poor
In 2007, I launched my fine jewelry collection…women were interested in buying jewelry for themselves and were no longer waiting for a man to do it.
This quote exposes Ivanka as a privileged heiress disconnected from the reality of the women she aims to represent. Small business owners the GOP loves to use as a scapegoat at every tax cut turn don’t launch their fine jewelry collection lines at 25 and rely on daddy’s name and relations to market it. The worst part is her trying to convey that her line came to respond to women’s needs! Women need health care, reproductive freedom, maternity leaves, childcare plans, protection from abuse and sexual harassment! Women don’t need a fine jewelry collection designed or branded by another woman. If the jewelry issue can be excused as a failed attempt at marketing or the reflection of privilege denial, the childcare plan she is championing is an outright Trump/GOP hypocrisy. The best kind of hypocrisy! Said plan would allow tax paying families to deduct the cost of childcare from their income. According to the Tax Policy Center, most of the plan’s benefit will go to the wealthiest households while many middle class and poor families won’t benefit at all!
The real problem with Ivanka’s approach to working women is that her mental map of working women isn’t inclusive at all, and by “not inclusive” I mean that it actually excludes most of working women, mainly older women, anyone in the working class, anyone who is poor, anyone who isn’t a rich, white, blonde heiress.
She believes she’s a role model for the average working woman yet she doesn’t know that the average working woman cannot skip work if her child gets sick. It would be laughable if she weren’t weighing in on policies.
Don’t get mad when you’re harassed at work
Being the favorite daughter of, and probably the only high end project ever achieved by, one of the world’s most notorious yet unpunished women genitalia gropers, Ivanka had had years to master the art of denouncing sexual harassment all while sending the victims on a guilt trip and giving the harassers an easy, sometimes funny, way out. Sexual assault is never acceptable, and we must stand against it. Then comes the shameless disgusting scolding: to the same time, we must recognize that one’s coworkers come in all shapes, stripes and sizes. What might be offensive to one person might appear harmless to another. Learn to figure out when a hoot or a holler is indeed a form of harassment and when it’s merely a good natured tease that you can give back in kind. And she definitely doesn’t mean a slap followed by a Gloria Allred lawsuit. Oh, and all of her father’s accusers are liars!
So much for changing the patriarchy and empowering women, let alone the middle class working women. Far from holding the promise of change, Ivanka, even before stepping into the political spotlight, had been promoting a stylish and sexy way of adapting to the patriarchy. Empowering women is nothing but a fashion brand marketing strategy she ended up using too as a political surrogate to her father.
I’m the daughter
While being proud of being someone’s daughter is not a flaw but a virtue, hiding behind being a daughter to avoid having a concrete position on anything is, for a women’s right self-proclaimed champion, hypocritical. Ivanka has an office in the West Wing and security clearance. She sits in on any meeting she chooses. She has, as pundits like to put it, the ear of the president as is a moderating force. Sometimes LOL is one hell of a shortcut. Indeed, Ivanka not only seems to know nothing when it comes to real issues and policies, she doesn’t care. She’s in Washington for two reasons: her fear of ending up persona non grata (or Tiffany) and promoting the Trump Brand, including her own brand, as one empowering women and caring about each and every American. She’s not there to make any change. Worst, she’s there to give the impression a change has been made to make it look like women are finally being heard, while she’s actually modeling her dresses on a bigger catwalk and taking credit for anything positive coming out of daddy’s administration, if anything positive ever comes out!
Ivanka’s really talkative when she’s sharing platitudes about her relationship with her husband Jack Of All Trades. He’s her greatest source of motivation and the person [she] leans on the most, as well as a highly intelligent individual. Said highly intelligent individual shared with us common mortals his Ivy League advice to his wife: I always tell Ivanka don’t worry about the things you can’t control, worry about how you react to and deal with the circumstance and situations at hands. Instant translation: don’t worry about your father’s wandering groping hands and 1950s policies, worry about what you’re going to wear or say to deflect from the children sewing your dresses, the administration’s slashing of progressive policies and the family’s Russian ties.
Ivanka’s a successful Wellesley’s girl. She’s quite adept at balancing her obligations. She’s no Katherine Watson. She doesn’t encourage women to reject the roles they were traditionally born to fill and make their own choices. She’s telling them how to carry misogynistic traditions but in shorter hemlines.
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