The encounter everybody is talking about involved Rowanne Brewer Lane. "Donald J. Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes."
Lane is quoted in the story, "Donald was having a pool party at Mar-a-Lago."
"He suddenly took me by the hand, and he started to show me around the mansion. He asked me if I had a swimsuit with me. I said no. I hadn’t intended to swim. He took me into a room and opened drawers and asked me to put on a swimsuit."
At the time, Lane was a 26-year-old model. At a pool party. At Donald Trump's mansion. When she put on a swimsuit, and Trump saw her, she said, "he said, 'wow.'"
A twenty-six year old model was objectified. The horror, the horror! Note that Lane has responded to the article by commenting that The Times "did take quotes from what I said and they put a negative connotation on it."
In other words, the woman who was interviewed is calling bullshit on the Daily Show-style selective editing and bad faith. Not that the world much cares about what a man says to a woman in private anymore. The tacit acceptance of Bill Clinton's behavior pretty much ended that.
Don't think I can muster any vicarious rage because some woman was objectified, either. Here's a news flash: women objectify men! They don't usually see men as sexual objects, the way men see them.
But women view men as a resource to be exploited for a their comfort and security. That is commodification no less pronounced than seeing a woman as a sexual receptacle. The disposable man is the basic premise and selling point of feminism. There has never been an effort to understand or care why men die earlier than women. It is taken as a social good.
So spare me the crocodile tears over Trump's male gaze.
When a thought-leader among women condemns one of her sisters for silently calculating the net present value on each and every male she meets, then we'll talk.
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