The Line From Misogyny to Trump to Violence Is Undeniable and Unacceptable

It came as no surprise to read that the man who targeted and murdered five employees at Maryland’s Capital Gazette newspaper had a history of violent threats against a woman. As reported by the New York Times, in 2011 Jarrod Ramos pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of harassment stemming from his repeated, violence-laced emails to a female former classmate. “I tried to back away from it,” the woman said per court documents. “And he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop.” Ramos emailed the woman to “go hang yourself” and contacted her job urging them to fire her. After he entered his plea and received a 90-day suspended sentence, Eric Thomas Hartley, then a writer for the Capital Gazette, wrote a column about the case entitled “Jarrod Ramos wants to be your friend.”

Ramos sued the paper, unsuccessfully, for defamation, but reportedly held a grudge that prompted social media threats and culminated in yesterday’s mass shooting. As is the case with scores of this country’s ever-growing number of mass shooters, while Ramos’ motivations were unique to his situation, the root cause is a pervasive and deadly culture of misogynythat goes unchecked in America.

• On June 11 of this year, Gary Lindsey, Jr, injured a police officer and murdered his girlfriend’s four children. Police were initially summoned to the home by a 911 call reporting domestic violence.
• On May 18, Dimitrios Pagourtzis murdered 10 students and teachers at a Texas high school. The mother of one Shana Fisher, one of the victims, said the gunman made repeatedly aggressive unwanted advances toward Fisher.
• On February 14, Nicholas Cruz murdered 17 students and teachers at a Florida high school. Cruz reported stalked and threatened his ex-girlfriend prior to the shooting.

That’s just a sampling of the last five months, but the list could go back for years.

While domestic violence can only be linked to 20 percent of all mass shootings in the U.S., per a 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service, there is an open and unfettered culture of misogyny that is stoked by men in power, particularly the president, which provides the perfect breeding ground for these crimes, and many others, to occur.

Nearly a year ago, in response to the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, at the hands of another man with a history of domestic violence, Sady Doyle wrote, “Once you believe you can violently dominate and control your family or your partner, it’s not such a stretch to believe you should also be able to control the political conversation or the world.” It is this line of thinking that seem to fuel the vitriol of Donald Trump, a man with a long, and well-documented, history of misogynistic comments.

This week the president finds himself in another conflict with Rep. Maxine Waters, stemming from her statements in support of protesting members of the administration in public. The president inaccurately tweeted that Waters had threatened violence and cryptically said she should be careful what she wished for. Today Waters announced that she was cancelling two public events in Texas and Alabama after a “very serious death threat.”

Is the president responsible for this threat? Not directly, no, but it is long past time for the people of the nation to recognize the correlation between his unrepentant bullying and our pervasive culture of misogynistic violence. Donald Trump is both a product and the leader of a society run by men who hate women. We cannot have any other conversation about the betterment of society without addressing the men who feel they are superior, the men who think they are owed something, be it fealty, power, or sex. We will continue to reap the poisoned fruit of our decrepit tree if the toxic masculinity and misogyny of this nation goes unaddressed.

When will we look this in the face?

This week, politicians and pundits engaged in toothless virtue-signaling about the idea of civility. Frankly, every one of them should be ashamed. The president called the press the enemy of the state at a rally this month. He called a congresswoman “low IQ” and told her to be careful what she wished for. Yesterday five people were shot at a newspaper and the congresswoman received a death threat. These are not events occurring in a vacuum, and it’s atrocious that anyone would behave as if they are. Any congressional leader who is not openly and repeatedly taking the president to task for his behavior is complicit. Any member of his administration who is silent in response to his bullying has blood on their hands.

Misogyny is not new. It is a sickness that generations have been socialized to believe is the natural order of things. But it’s not, and it must be refuted from all sides, from the highest offices. Trump has proven himself unwilling and unable to do so; he’s just as sick as thousands, millions, of other men. There is no hope for a reprieve from violence until the very grave misogyny that has infected so many men in this nation, including the president, are addressed head-on.