Paul Waldman on "macho men".
Former Vice President Joe Biden, age 75, and President Donald Trump, age 71, get into an argument about which one of them could beat up the other.
Let's just think for a moment what it would look like if these two septuagenarian marauders really went at it behind the gym. Not exactly Ali-Frazier.
Biden may be placing himself as women's protector in this scenario, but he still validates the idea that the way to stop sexual assault is for other men to mete out punitive violence, so the transgressing man can be brought to heel. The women in this case have no agency of their own; they're the victims or the audience for Biden's display of chivalry.
That is certainly a contrast with Trump, whose audience has always been other men. Throughout his life, Trump enacted a very public performance of dominant male sexuality, one built not on handsomeness or physical prowess but on possessing desirable women, even if it took simply buying them — or pretending that he had dated them when he didn't (ask Carla Bruni). Men were the ones he played to, to show them that he was superior. Consider that when he was engaged to Marla Maples, he negotiated with Playboy for her to pose nude, but she refused to do it. What kind of man would pressure his fiancee to take off her clothes for the world to see? A man who wants other men to desire his woman, in order to elevate his own status.
http://theweek.com/articles/762394/retrograde-fantasies-trumpbiden-rumble
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