“NASTY” WOMAN AND “VERY HAPPY YOUNG GIRL”: THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF WOMEN IN DONALD TRUMP’S AMERICA

Discussions of gender and politics in the present day must include a consideration of the charged atmosphere of our political culture. Americans were embroiled in culture wars for much of the twentieth century—conflicts that included the right of women to vote, the civil rights of African Americans and other minority groups, and the meaning of sexuality. New debates have been added in the last few years—many of which center on gender, sexuality, and race. The culture wars have reached a fevered peak with the election and administration of Donald Trump. Yet Trump himself does not represent a new front in the culture wars, but what might be a climactic battle between the forces of the past and the future of the American nation. The title of this piece is drawn from presidential pronouncements on the meaning of women in public life—the first a tried-and-true insult reserved mostly for offending women, and the second a sarcastic critique that Trump directed towards the teenage global warming activist Greta Thunberg. This Article will focus on the front lines that these two insults represent in our culture wars. What does it mean to be a woman and a citizen and a political actor, and in a larger sense, what it means to be an American in Trump’s America