The Failure of Patriarchy: When a President Sides with the Accused in Allegations of Domestic Abuse

Earlier this week, White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned in response to allegations of domestic abuse. He denied the allegations as “outrageous” and “simply false.” We may never know one way or the other. His resignation potentially preempts further discussion where perhaps more scrutiny would prove his innocence or his guilt.

Despite not knowing whether the allegations were true, Trump tweeted this morning in apparent sympathy with a nameless Porter becoming a victim of “mere allegation”:

Due Process, When Convenient

In principle, I agree with the notion of Due Process, but as CNN writers Jennifer Hansler and Sophie Tatum pointed out in their follow-up article today, Trump is hardly the purveyor of legal principles. He has, as they put it, a “history of lobbing allegations” with absolutely no proof to back up his claims.

The two most salient are the whole “birther” debate concerning Barack Obama’s nationality, and Trump’s repeated calls to “lock her up” in his various allegations against his former political opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Due process shouldn’t be a partisan tool. And perhaps it isn’t. If I were an optimist, I might see this as Trump finally taking his oath of office seriously, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. But in the past, Trump has demonstrated his willingness to use any tool in his arsenal to advance his poitical agenda. His selective inattention to other parts of the Constitution are significant.

He and his party are great supporters of the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), but he’s a terrific violator of the First Amendment (freedom of religion, speech, and press). A #FreePress outlines a role for the media in a democracy as watchdogs, who will occasionally call political leaders out. Trump, by contrast, will characterize anything as #fakenews that doesn’t support him or that casts him in an unfavorable light.

And in his denial that #BlackLivesMatter (a movement that is about institutional racism and the unequal treatment of blacks by law enforcement), he demonstrates his indifference to the Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing equal protection to all persons) even while he seems to be defending the Fifth Amendment (claiming that no one can be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law).

Can anyone doubt that in the protection of Due Process, Trump is prepared to defend only the rights of those who best suit his needs and support his agenda?

Justice for All (Boys?)

Missing from Trump’s tweet is any mention of or compassion for the women who may have been the victims of domestic violence. Perhaps that’s too delicate a tightrope for him to walk. Let’s face it--Donald Trump isn’t a person known for skillfully managing any kind of middle ground. So why expect him to remain neutral on the subject of he-said/she-said?

Well, here’s one reason. Conversative supporters of Trump seem to like his Father-Knows-Best style. Good fathers don’t habitually side with their sons against their daughters. If Trump really were a good father figure, he would have reminded his Twitter followers that peoples lives are also shattered by domestic violence. He would have pointed out that justice demands that perpetrators should never go unpunished. And that if it turns out that the allegations are true, the loss of career is a minor punishment by comparison.

The Failure of Patriarchy

I’ve never been a fan of #patriarchy. As an ideology, it teaches that women are second-class citizens. It treats fathers as the rightful heads of households. And it extends by analogy the notion that our political leaders should be men.

Some of that is changing, but not enough to have kept an unqualified reality-TV star (Trump) from winning the US presidential election over an opponent who was undeniably more experienced for the job (H. Clinton).

The problem here, however, isn’t the triumph of patriarchy, but rather its failure.

Clinton’s loss is a temporary blow for women’s equality, and one I felt deeply and personally. But there will be a pushback because patriarchy, like all idelogies, has to constantly reproduce itself. Its power comes from being able to point to examples of its success. This is where conservatives are in trouble.

Donald Trump is a bad patriarch.

He proves daily that his interests aren’t with preserving the American family. He’s devisive. He’s self-interested. He plays favorites. He doesn’t take responsibility for his own failures and is quick to point the finger at others, which demonstrates a deplorable weakness of character. These are not positive traits that we associate with good fathers.

Patriarchy isn’t just an ideology that demands subservient women. For women, as a group, to be complicit in their own subjugation, patriarchy must prove, time and again, that it is capable of protecting women against bad men. That, too, is part of the promise of patriarchy--or, rather, its most unforgivable lie.

A Conservative Mistake

For myself, I say, forget it to patriarchy. Sisters are doing it for themselves.

But for the thousands of women who still believe in these traditions, conversatives may have made a monumental mistake in electing Trump.

As far as patriarchy goes, Donald Trump is not a good standard to follow. He’s a rather odious human being who demands loyalty and respect from others without reciprocity. He lacks the charisma and morals of a decent father figure. He lacks the strength of a leader, more often than not painting himself as the victim of #fakenews.

He is also proving to be a bad provider, willing to squander tax dollars on a #militaryparade to feed his addiction for adulation at the expense of putting food on the table for impoverished Americans. Which raises an interesting question?

Can patriarchy survive Donald Trump?

That depends. If good men continue to do nothing about Trump, good women will step in and fix the problem. We won’t have much need for old men with worthless ideologies after that.