In this thread about people defending Trump’s “grab them” comments there was this post quoted below by **up the junction **which was kind of interesting.
Re these “rules of the game” in the beautiful woman / wealthy man context, objectively the OP is not entirely wrong as common sense will tell you that there is a transactional “game afoot” in these liaisons, but what *exactly *is the game?
Do they get invites to mansions and luxurious foreign vacations in exchange for … what exactly? Does some handler tell the women X number of blowjobs are expected for room and board? Is cash negotiated before sex at this level? If the beautiful woman is not a professional “Seeking Arrangements” type, but just young and gorgeous is she expected to work it all out for herself and roll the dice hoping he likes her? What’s the inside baseball on these relationships and the “price of admission” involved?
If everyone involved is ok with it, there is no problem. The issue is Trump has been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault numerous times. So not everyone he does this to enjoys it.
You get to keep your job. You won’t be blacklisted. Whether you are an actress or a model or a tv reporter or a secretary or waitress or someone else’s wife - saying no to someone rich and powerful is risking your economic security.
It isn’t free vacations and jewelry. Its saying no means he’ll take out his frustration by ruining you and those you care about.
Play along and pretend to like it until you get bored, and you might get a vacation and some diamonds out of sexual blackmail.
Sort of a random comment, but it’s worth noting that sex is free. There are guys out there who are regularly getting busy with dozens of hot women, one-to-one, in threesomes, or whatever else simply through the process of finding other people who are up for that sort of thing and by not being an asshole. If you have to rely on your position and economic pull to get someone sexy to sleep with you, you’re basically just not all that.
So, yeah, a rich man can find someone to sleep with him who doesn’t call herself a prostitute. A poorer man can find someone who does. In neither case is it worth bragging about. The guys who are doing well with women regularly are doing so, at least partially, by not being the sort of guy to brag about it.
I imagine it’s a similar dynamic to a fraternity or high school “jockcracy”. Whenever you have a group of identifiable people who project power and exclusivity, there will be other people who are attracted to them for one reason or another. So if you become conditioned to the fact that girls are seeking you out for sex, you tend to dispense with the boring small talk.
To play devil’s advocate, Trump probably wasn’t talking about “sexually assaulting” women. He was really discussing/bragging about his experience of women literally throwing themselves at him because of his fame and wealth. These women probably were there hoping Trump would “grab some pussy”.
The problem is when these guys are put in an environment with women who are there for other reasons besides doing it with some rich celebrity (like at work). They still act like a drunken frat guy and now it’s sexual assault.
It’s the same mentality of guys who drive an ostentatious car. They don’t care if some guy who can’t afford a $100k car thinks they are a doucehbag.
Or for that matter, women who put up with abusive partners (which every female Trump supporter looks like IMHO). They can’t be with a “nice guy” because they don’t respect them as being “strong enough”.
I don’t know what Trump was talking about (a reaction I often have to his statements about a variety of things). I agree it’s political spin to say as if a fact it was ‘bragging about sexual assault’, as in Anderson Cooper saying as debate moderator “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?” Copper was editorializing.
Maybe the actual incidents Trump had in mind were sexual assaults, maybe they weren’t, maybe they were in a gray area*, maybe he was just running his mouth and had no particular real incident in mind.
I have long thought Trump is a creep, having grown up in the NY area reading of his tawdry buffoonery for decades, to make that clear.
*Jill Harth is as at least one woman claiming Trump put his hand on her crotch against her will, though OTOH also admits she later ‘dated’ Trump. If it was a clear fact Trump sexually assaulted her but she nonetheless later had a consensual sexual relationship with him the second fact wouldn’t undo the first one, but in the circumstances as known, the second fact calls into question IMO the first claim, the actual context of that event if it occurred.
Imagine George Clooney walks into a bar in LA where the beautiful people hang out, eyes a woman in a corner, she sees him (and knows who he is), he walks over and gives her a kiss. What are the chances he’s going to get slapped, or prosecuted?
This is Trump saying he’s in the same league with George Clooney. The “big league”, so to speak.
Now, you and I know Trump isn’t in the same league as Clooney. But he either thinks he is or wants everyone else to think he is.
THEY LET YOU DO IT. He’s saying that the consent is already there because of who he is. For certain people in certain circumstances, that’s probably true. Or at least more true than not. Trump is projecting his alpha male status as one of those guys for whom it is true.
It is weird though. Imagine you’re a very attractive woman, but for whatever reason do not run in the social circles frequented by athletes, stars and gazillionaires so you aren’t attuned to the sexual expectations, entitlement mentality and power games, you may well be at some hazard as some consent conventions seem to be tossed out the window in these scenarios and replaced with the assumption that if you are within arm’s length you are tacitly agreeing to be sexually handled.
Like Roger Ailes predatory behavior if you are someone seeking stardom or promotion you are basically at their mercy if you are not a super star performer and are dependent on their good will for staying employed or within the circle of power.
Did he actually grab her or was he just being your standard creepy guy?
I feel like I recognize the type from a company I used to work at years ago. We had a lot of these creepy old guys who would push the envelope around the attractive young analysts, waitresses at restaurants, female bartenders, basically any woman whose career depended on their company. They wouldn’t actually grab them obviously. But they would make comments and you could see them testing to see what they could get away with.
Power is attractive. Power and attractiveness breeds confidence, and confidence is attractive.
If you are a rock star, or multimillionaire or top flight athlete, beautiful women can be in sufficient oversupply to seem valueless. I don’t think there are any accepted rates or anything. Don’t underestimate womens simply being attracted to these levels of society.
Thats why Trump sounds profoundly insecure to me. It is a pattern of trying to ostentatiously display or brag about things that should be matter-of-fact at his level. Having to brag means he has a problem.
Nailed it! That is him in a nutshell. Even his bragging in the tapes sounds like someone who is deep down an outsider talking about something he discovered happens on the inside. If her were born to it naturally, he wouldn’t even feel the need to mention it.
Not to hijack the thread, but this is something I’ve wished to see changed in society: I wish people would stop considering confidence to be an attractive trait in and of itself. Plenty of horrible people exude confidence. If anything, jerks, sociopaths, psychopaths, abusers and bullies are probably *more *likely to exude confidence than the average person. Confidence easily goes hand in hand with a wide assortment of arrogant, selfish, conceited or malicious personalities. There’s far more to be said for modesty, humility, a balanced personality and self-control than a big ego.