At a rally in Pennsylvania 6 weeks ago Trump announced that he would be a “protector” of women. “You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free.” This was enough to set the teeth of the leftist media and academia on edge. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University told Associated Press, “this notion that women need to be protected, that women are somehow weak or vulnerable—this sort of protectionist, patronizing tone … I think for a lot of women will just add to that sense of he doesn’t understand their lives, that he doesn’t understand where they are on a whole host of issues”.
An analyst on CNN went further: “Oh my goodness it is so disgusting. Seeing that line, ‘I am your protector’, makes me think about the fact that he was found liable for sexual assault. Some women would say he is their predator, right?”
True to character, Trump doubled down at a rally near Green Bay, Wisconsin last Wednesday when he said “I’m going to protect [women] from migrants coming in, I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles, and lots of other things”.
Then he ensured that his message would be echoed around the US and the world by taking it a step too far: “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not”. Cue outrage.
The Harris campaign, as usual, was incapable of resisting the bait.
The @KamalaHQ account on X ran the video and rapidly acquired over 8 million views. Kamala Harris’ personal account retweeted the video with the non sequitur “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.”
Usual suspects the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN and the rest gleefully repeated Trump’s line, failing to realise that, once again, he intends to be taken seriously, not literally. Amid the ridicule and outrage and laughter and criticism, Trump’s core message lingers: that women generally need to be protected from violence, and that protection is a priority for him.
Kamala Harris complained that “it is actually very offensive to women, in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives,” as if she believes that women will use their agency and authority to make decisions to become victims of violence. A timely US YouGov survey, however, suggests that most women agree that “when men claim that women need to be protected, it generally is more an acknowledgement of genuine concerns about their safety than a way to assert power and restrict women’s choices”.
The question of whether men should protect women against violence presents a bit of a challenge to the pundits of gender relations and politics. On the one hand they reject this epitome of patriarchy and gender-stereotypical chivalry which implies “that women are somehow weak or vulnerable”. On the other hand we hear constant complaints from the same pundits that women are experiencing violence at an alarming and unacceptable rate.
An uncomfortable truth for the gender activists is that, in reality and in comparison with men, women are weak and vulnerable—it goes without saying that I mean only physically, only in terms of body size and raw muscle strength. However intelligent and empowered and motivated and talented and educated and proficient a woman may be, she remains vulnerable to an attack from a man. The difference in body strength between men and women is huge. The average man has greater upper body strength than 99.9% of women. Another way of looking at the difference is this: the very strongest 10% of women—the young, fit, gym junkies and athletes—may be able to defend themselves against an attack by the very weakest 10% of men—the ageing couch potatoes and beanpole wimps. For everyone else there’s no contest.
I have noticed a disturbing trope developing in film and television recently. In the typical modern action/thriller fight scene, the heroic woman launches an attack against the evil man—and defeats him. This is pure fantasy, which is fine to some extent—these shows are fantasies, after all. But if this kind of portrayal leads some young woman to believe that she is capable of defeating her able-bodied male opponent in real life she is almost certainly mistaken and may possibly be very badly injured in the attempt. While most regular men would never physically attack a woman, many might be inclined to defend themselves against one somewhat… energetically. People could get hurt.
A priority for women—perhaps the highest priority—is physical safety. And women know that they are not safe if they find themselves alone with an unknown man. The Albanese government says it has an “Ambition: end violence against women“, but while men are still allowed to roam freely and women choose to exercise their autonomy, that ambition, sadly, is unachievable.
(There’s a new TV series streaming on Paramount+ in the UK. Curfew is a murder mystery set in a world where, to protect women’s safety, men are bound by a curfew from 7pm to 7am. If the government is serious about its “ambition” they might consider implementing such a policy here.)
In my view we should consider and explore a new, constructive, cooperative relationship between women and men. Most men reject violence and many will stand against it. Most—perhaps all—women fear violence and are vulnerable to it. There is an opportunity here.
Meanwhile the outraged critics of Trump’s promise to be “the protector” don’t generally claim that women don’t need to be protected—only that they don’t need to be protected by Trump. (Protected from him, sure.)
This article was first published in The Spectator Australia.
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