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Facebook still remains a social media hub that dinosaurs like me can master. And so, it remains a communication tool for the older crowd. As this election careens in slow motion toward us, my professional FB page has been devoted to trying to humanize Hillary and her supporters to those hell bent on hating her and/or loving Trump. My goal has been to model and encourage constructive, productive and civil discussion, to lighten up the convo, create common connections, and help the frustrated feel heard.
What I have found trying to help people accept the "possibility" of a female president is for those who vigorously endorse him and condemn her, there is no empathy for her whatsoever. Those who support her are also viewed as evil and are accused of slighting mankind as a whole for pledging their votes to her over him.
The venomous rage for her and about her on my page goes hand in hand with another theme that has repeatedly emerged: Trump knows things that will make his supporters' lives magically better. Facts, reason, and logic have nothing to do with it. It is the online version of who can hold their fingers in their ears and "yell" louder and longer while hurling threats and insults until the other party backs down.
Instead of being able to engage in respectful dialog, it's a bottomless pit of ugliness; comments that evoke intimidation, suspicion, fear, and shame are rampant. There are clear attempts to cyber-bully people into voting for him, or attack their character for supporting her. My repeated pleas for civility seem to create even more disdain and disrespect, and there are threats to my licensure and numerous questions about my ethics and professionalism. There is rabid rage in the ranks, and for some, it's primal too, as if ensuring Trump's victory is preserving "mankind" and "history," at all costs.
In the media, across the country and across gender there are people who vehemently deny any disgust, or even discomfort that our next Commander and Chief might be female. Rather, they claim their hatred of Hillary has nothing to do with her being female, and everything to do with how horrible, corrupt and evil she is. For weeks I have encouraged, participated, and whenever possible, monitored, censored and edited the intense comments and replies on my page. Amongst the Trump supporters that ring in, there is a full-fledged refusal to acknowledge even one positive attribute of hers, or to concede one flaw of his. Every opportunity is seized to tear Hillary down, to vilify her, and vilify her husband, our former President of eight years under whom many of us experienced relative peace and prosperity.
The relentless disdain for Secretary Clinton, her husband and her daughter, coupled with an extreme, blind reverence for Trump and his family make it painfully apparent that beneath the "liberal" vs "conservative" choice, at the highest level, some people are just not able to accept a female authority figure. They short-circuit at that possibility, or they are just not wired for that possibility, period.
For many Trump supporters, the root of their vitriol may lie in the early relationships and experiences that shaped them. In situations where children are abused or neglected, grow up in poverty-stricken homes where rage, paranoia and fear already dictate the household climate, it is often the mother or mother figure who absorbs the blame for how unsafe life feels and is. Historically, it has been mother's job to protect, soothe, and make things better. For many Trump supporters, it is possible that their mother figure was disappointing, absent, undermining, unsupportive, ineffectual, abusive, or benign, but subordinate to male authority figures. Being devoid of a healthy mother figure or positive associations to females can easily and readily contribute to the horror and disgust that is being expressed about a person who most definitely has flaws, but is also wife, mother, and grandmother, and who coined the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child."
The irrational rage that Hillary Clinton is subjected to is meant for many disappointing mothers out there. And for some it is not about a mother figure but is an inability to compute that a female could be President. In either situation, they're not necessarily aware that her being female is a factor, as she has been buried under such a litany of accusations, character assassinations and a relentless email avalanche that not only buries her gender, but has dehumanized her altogether.
This election taps into a primal formation of belief that a female cannot be the Commander-in-Chief of men. And, it is not a phenomenon exclusively experienced by men. The inability to compute that a woman could be the "official" head of household is a structured belief system that has been embedded in many people, often through no fault of their own because that was the imprint left on them by their early or later formational relationships, experiences, and beliefs. What you are exposed to through the course of your life, your personal biology, and how your perception of females as authority figures has been expressed; how it has shifted, evolved, expanded or constricted over time determines your personal threshold to accept a female Commander and Chief.
Again, it is no one’s “fault” that many households that shaped voters’ beliefs were organized around religious and traditional principals. In many religions, God is referred to and experienced as male, the first woman was created from the rib of a man, and through time and tradition, in many households, the man has always been considered head of household, breadwinner and protector, while the woman, is a nurturing support system. When your life – your world, regardless of your gender has been oriented to a specific expectation of what "the man's" role is, it makes the idea of a woman in charge inconceivable. From this perspective, Hillary is stepping out of her place. Defending her requires fighting a bully culture that, for these reasons and more, can't see past its patriarchal wiring.
No matter how you are voting, this election has been a cesspool of rage, disenfranchisement, bullying and intimidation tactics. The amount of false accusations, promoting and pandering to fear, paranoia, deception and overwhelming truth with lies goes beyond anything we have seen before. It is impossible to understand this level of venom toward a candidate for President, without respecting its primal, psychological underpinnings; the fear that somehow the male gender itself will be annihilated if she wins.
