The Importance of Pro-Sex Feminism in the Time of Trump

When Shane Michael Singh, the Executive Editor of PLAYBOY called me and asked if I would write for him, I was thrilled. For one, I grew up in the 1980s, a time when PLAYBOY was one of the most venerable literary forces in the publishing world. The other reason is more complicated, and it has to do with the rise of Trumpism’s weirdly sexually repressive undertones. We are living in uncharted times and in a world of misogyny not known since the Salem Witch trials—a world in which the needs of women are subjugated as never before. We are living in a time of repression and regression, a time of oppression and opposition. We are living in the time of Trump.

Trumpism is filled with contradictions. One of the worst contradictions of Trumpism has to do with sex. Our president loves sex. He loves sex with porn stars, sex with actresses, sex with models. He’s even paid women, such as Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, after having sex with them. But do not confuse the president’s lust for members of the opposite sex with his being pro-sex.

President Donald J. Trump may enjoy having copious amounts of sex, but he is not pro-sex. He does not support the reproductive health rights of women. Last month, Planned Parenthood left the Title X program, which formerly provided the health clinic with funding, due to the Trump administration’s implementaton of a “gag rule” preventing Title X recipients from providing or refering abortions. President Trump is also the leader of a political party that has made a calculated assault on a woman’s right to choose. In May, Alabama signed into law The Human Life Protection Act, a near-total ban on abortions that outlaws the procedure even in cases of rape or incest. The Human Life Protection Act is expected to escalate to the Supreme Court and supplant Roe v. Wade should a Trump-appointed conservative bench deem the law constitutional. And the president does not support the sexual freedom of any individual—whether gay, straight, bi or trans. In April, the Trump administration ordered the Armed Services to begin discharging transgender members. Similarly, the Trump administration has offered zero support for the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The president loves sex, but that does not mean he is pro-sex.

The president loves “beautiful women,” but that does not mean he’s not a misogynist pushing anti-women agendas. “I love going out with beautiful women, and I love women in general,” he has said. No, loving women as objects is not the same as being pro-women.

To say the president of the United States is a misogynist is in itself a gross understatement. If even a fifth of the allegations about the president are true, he is not just a criminal, but a monster. The allegations I speak of range from rape to casual sexual assault, the victims numbering as high as 23 by some counts. But beyond the crimes he’s been accused of, or the way he’s treated his wives—his first who he cheated on with his second, his second who he disposed of with a prenup and a gag order, his third who he cheated on right after she delivered his fifth child—this is not a man who “loves women.” This is a man who uses women.

He has described women as “dogs” and “fat pigs” and said he could grab them by the pussy. In both his personal and his political life, the president of the United States has used sex as a tool—something to push his repressive legislative agenda on to women and to push his repressive personal agenda toward the use (and abuse, inadvertent or otherwise) of women.

“There should be some form of punishment,” Trump once said of women who have abortions. It was indeed a strange reversal from the guy who once said he’s pro-choice. But then again, Trumpism is all about reversals.

And so, why is it important to be a pro-sex feminist in the time of Trump? After all, Trump admitted to adultery more than once while running for office—and won. Republicans seem not to mind. Wouldn’t that be a step toward sexual liberation? Sadly not.

The president’s hyper-promiscuity seems to exist largely in a bubble. Just because the president has copious amounts of sex doesn’t mean the Republican party is no longer bigoted. In fact, it means quite the opposite. Trumpism exists in a vacuum: The president can get away with stuff that other people—even other Republicans—couldn’t imagine admitting to. Futher complicating the matter, Trump’s strange and awful misogyny is more about repression than it is about expression.

The Republican party has never been “pro-sex” or “pro-sexuality,” but the party is now in a strange pocket it’d never thought it’d be in. The Republicans are led by a morally reprehensible man who demonstrates neither family nor values. Yes, I’m old enough to remember when the Republican party called itself the “party of family values,” which was code for “No sex, we’re Republicans!” But no one can accuse a thrice-married adulterer of valuing family highly. If, anything quite the opposite.

So where does that leave Republicans? And where does that leave the party that is largely the opposite of everything that represents Trumpism?

It leads us here, to this fact: Someday, Trumpism will end. “Never Trumpers” will go back to being insane zealots, Democrats will go back to being what they’ve always been (totally self-defeating) and then—what will happen to sex? What will happen to some feminist movements’ relationship with sex once feminism snaps back; once women realize just how oppressed they had been under Trumpism? What will happen when women wake up, post-Trump, to realize they are less free and more oppressed than they thought possible? What happens to sex then?

Will sex be blamed for the president’s promiscuity and larger sins? Will sexual repression be used as a tool against Trumpism? I hope not…but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

Trump has upset the natural order of things. He has changed the political calculus of things in ways we have not yet begun to understand, and won’t for years into the future. What the backlash to Trumpism will bring is anyone’s guess. If it’s a fraction as violent as Trumpism, we may be in a lot of trouble.

How it will end and when it will end—none of us know. But! Eventually it will end. And then we will be a shattered country scrambling to pick up the shards of the great experiement that is America. The reaction to Trumpism can take many forms. The forms we must prevent it from taking is a wave of anti-sex feminism. A wave of more repression and regression. A wave of more oppression and opposition.

This is why I am extremely pleased to write for a magazine that has always encouraged a connection between progressive politics and a healthy sexuality. Liberals wouldn’t want to find themselves on the wrong side of sexual freedom and free expression. They shouldn’t find themselves at odds with the notion of having sexuality. But I worry they could, if they aren’t completely vigilant. And unapologetically pro-sex.