The Tribune

Synonyms for toxic: poisonous, virulent, noxious, dangerous, destructive, malignant.

Former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, famously known for his extreme anti-immigrant and xenophobic views, delights in bluntly expressing his outlandish feelings on a range of topics.

Interviewed recently on Jesse Watters Primetime on Fox News, the host asked Miller: “Our audience at Primetime believes you are some sort of sexual matador. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Miller responded: “If you are a young man – it’s very important in election season – who’s looking to impress the ladies, to be the alpha, to be attractive... The best thing you can do is wear your Trump support on your sleeve.

“Show that you are a real man. Show that you are not a beta. Right? Be a proud and loud Trump supporter and your dating life will be fantastic.”

What curious dating advice from a man who would not exactly grace the cover of a fashion or sports magazine. Recall that those who often boast the most of a certain prowess in public forums are barely matadors of any sort, though they are expert at talking bull.

Still, many men revel in this sort of sexism because it communicates to other men in a feral manner that they too are tough, highly sexual men. Much of it is farce. It is obviously ridiculous. It is laughable. But, it so often works politically.

It is similar to the mock masculinity of television wrestling matches with its manufactured violence, blood, and gore. Nevertheless, it is also deadly serious because it too often results in domestic violence and violence against women.

Blatant misogyny is not simply tolerated. It is celebrated, lauded, trumpeted. Donald Trump and many of his supporters wear their supposed machismo and sexism on their expensive tailored sleeves. This impresses many men who see it is a sign of strength and virility, which they may attach themselves to vicariously.

Trump knows that his behaviour attracts many men, including young and typically college non-educated men who superficially see him as the alpha male ejaculating emotional pheromones from his testicular misogyny.

These men desperately want to be a part of tribes that reinforce their sense of masculinity and supplant their feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

Others have described Trump’s “feral genius”, his capacity to incite the basest instincts in supporters: fear, violence, hatred, racism, misogyny, victimhood, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, impotence, sense of failure, powerlessness, and other primitive instincts.

This incitement is in service of his own pathological demons and lust for power to quench his bottomless insecurity and egotism.

In response to last week’s column, a beloved friend noted a “sad and secret truth of the impending presidential election in the US: a dominant thread of misogyny that has imprisoned men in their impotent rage against women who demand their freedom to think and live their lives, and against men who reject their definition of masculinity”.

The friend observed: “Power, violence and oppression express themselves in many different ways. Biblical suspicion of women’s intelligence and resourcefulness continues to wreak havoc.”

Much of this toxic masculinity is ironically superficial and deep. The conceit: Men are more intelligent and powerful and should be able to dominate women, all of which is literally a God-given right, which the state must zealously uphold.

For easy and sorrowful reference see: Commonwealth of The Bahamas where men can still rape their wives and where the male-dominated political directorate steadfastly refuses to enact simple legal changes that will remove this antediluvian law.

A septuagenarian Bahamian woman who experienced racism growing up in The Bahamas and who supported majority rule notes that she no longer experiences such racism at home.

But nearing 80, she laments that open and toxic misogyny still reigns as king in The Bahamas. It evokes an image of the male genitals as a sort of scepter and orb emblem for such a sad monarchy.

Recall the remarks of the self-described potcake, former cabinet minister and member of parliament, Leslie Miller, in the House of Assembly of all places some years ago. Miller’s vile remarks were reported in one of the dailies: “‘That’s like beating your wife or your girlfriend every time you go home. You just beat her for looking at her. I love ya. Boom, boom, boom. I had a girlfriend like that.

“‘When I didn’t beat her she used to tell me I ain’t love her no more cause I don’t hit her. But seriously I had one like that. I had one. She used to tell me,’ he insisted as other members murmured and chuckled.

“House Speaker Dr Kendal Major injected, ‘We know that you’re joking with that.’ “However, Miller said he was ‘serious with that’.

“‘I tell her I get tired, man,’ he continued, laughing. ‘My hands hurting a little bit … give me a break.’

“After a comment from a sitting member inquiring whether he was joking, he reiterated, ‘I am telling you the truth. One thing I don’t do is lie’.”

Stunningly, no male member of the House rebuked his remarks then or later. The mostly men’s club embarrassed themselves and the country. They bargained that if they criticised Miller, many Bahamian men would not be pleased.

Miller’s female colleagues in his party also remained silent, a telling sign. Had his remarks been racial in nature he would have been roundly condemned and perhaps censured.

One can imagine a cartoon of a man grabbing a woman by her hair dragging her into a cave, with the words “Home, Sweet Home” in a frame on the cave wall, as the man roars and brags, while beating his chest, “If she doesn’t do what I say I’ll beat her. I is man.”

Miller has also thundered elsewhere: “If my sister marries a foreigner, I expect for that foreigner to take her home to his country and support her.

“What they bringing him here for? Don’t come to my country and take a job from one of my Bahamian brothers.” Miller managed to sound like a sexist and a xenophobe in one breath.

He failed to note the number of households in which women earn more than their partners. Sadly, many women and men still agree with his antiquated worldview.

Many people of faith and church leaders note the radical dignity of women made in the image and likeness of God. Yet religion, including Christianity, is a great bastion of patriarchal dominance and sexism, with women locked out of ordained ministry, church governance and polity at the highest level.

For millennia, male religious leaders have with condescension and contempt controlled and characterised women’s intellects, ambitions and especially their bodies. Female sexuality and natural body functions were often classified as impure.

A female religion writer once observed that she was less concerned about what her church said about women and more disturbed about what her church suggests that God supposedly ordains about the equality or inequality of women.

Many men continue to defend all manner of theological gobbledygook and tortured arguments about why women cannot become church leaders.

Those long-dominated by others often tend to internalise and justify their position in society as well as the discrimination meted out to them. Women are no different. At home and abroad many women view as normal their treatment as unequal.

In reaction to the vulgar misogyny of Trump, Michelle Obama once lamented: women: “I feel it so personally. And I’m sure that many of you do too. Particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies.

“The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel. It is frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts.”

If a black Bahamian man wants to better understand the pain of sexism, imagine being demeaned on a regular basis because of one’s race. This is the quality or moral empathy still absent from so many men who claim to adore their back mothers, daughters, sisters and wives.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari once dismissed criticism by his wife of his government with this reply: “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.” In other words, shut up and know your place, woman.

Today, all too many men would applaud Buhari or at least remain silent so that their masculinity and membership in the all-male club is not questioned.