Trump brags about sexual prowess to label himself 'super-macho, ultra-man' as he objectifies women, author says
President Donald J Trump has boasted about a lot of things over the years, including how easily he can get women. From the infamous "Access Hollywood tape" to marrying three women in his life to allegedly having an extra-marital affair with a pornstar, the president has done it all and visibly regretted none of it. But this raises a question – why has establishing his sexual prowess always been an important part of his identity – which according to him, cannot be compromised?
According to award-winning journalist and essayist Abigail R. Esman, whose upcoming book is called 'Rage: Narcissism, Patriarchy, and the Culture of Terrorism,' sexual prowess for a man like Trump meant establishing his image as the ultimate man in front of his adoring fans and supporters, which would automatically qualify him to become their idol.
"Sexual prowess is part of the idealized image of the ultra-man, the super-macho, hypermasculine man Trump and other narcissistic men desperately try to be," Esman told MEA WorldWide (MEAWW). "That man is powerful. He is a hero. Men want to be just like him. Women want him to want them. They are revered by all other men, irresistible to women. They are the bare-chested men with spears in their hands on the covers of paperback romance novels, the princes who rescue princesses from their evil captors. They are the men who fight for the honor of their people, their nations, and they always, always win. They are the stuff of legends."
Back in 2016, when Trump was fighting his GOP presidential rival, Marco Rubio, he felt the strong need to defend himself when the latter claimed that the then-business mogul had "small hands" compared to his height, insinuating, in an albeit tasteless insult, "you know what they say about men with small hands." Hitting back at Rubio at one of the rallies, Trump made it clear that attacking his manhood was off-limits. "He referred to my hands – if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem," Trump affirmed. "I guarantee you."
So, we have always seen Trump being extra protective when it comes to questions on his sexual prowess. Esman said there might be some sort of a connection between this incessant need to show himself as the macho-man and the lack of love that he received from his father as a child because according to Fred Trump Sr., "he was never good enough."
"And that is what Trump desperately wants to be. It is who he, in his most narcissistic (and simultaneously, most vulnerable) moments believes himself to be.
And although that belief is fragile and breaks often, it is the only way he can keep the pain and the memory of his father’s contempt from overwhelming him. And if it did, he would drown," she said.
Nevertheless, it did not mean that Trump always had the healthiest relationships when it comes to women, of or even a high opinion of the female gender. In this regard too, he took after his father, said the president's niece, Mary Trump, who wrote the book, 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man' speaking to Slate's Trumpcast podcast.
"So for women, because my grandfather had a bit of a reputation too, it's the objectification of women as objects to be taken, controlled...it's not so much about the physical pleasures as it is about the control and the getting away with something, but then it's also this weird way he has certainly...but of reducing women to their parts. So he can't even see them as fully whole human beings and how can you engage in any substantive, interesting, romantic loving way with somebody if that's the only perspective from which you...experience them,'' she said.