Sexist Leaders: The Flipside of #MeToo

Bolsonaro, Trump and Duterte win elections despite their confessed lack of respect for women.

It is a fact that feminism does not form part of the DNA of the most conservative and populist movements, which claim to defend equality but often make it harder to achieve. In Hungary, for example, the government of Viktor Orban, disregarding European Union rules and denouncing immigration, has declared war on the “feminist lobby,” in the words of a sociologist linked to the executive. It also aims to ban gender studies in universities. It remains a nascent offensive, but one of great importance in a society which has prioritized science, culture and equality.

In France, the government faces certain difficulties in its attempts to legalize artificial insemination for single and gay women. Who opposes this? The far right and populist National Rally of Marine Le Pen and Laurent Wauquiez’s conservatives.

This type of tension is nothing new. What is new is the rise of leaders who triumph at the ballot box despite their confessed lack of respect for women. The case of Donald Trump is the most well-known, but it is not the only one. Rodrigo Duterte won the Filipino presidential election despite an unacceptable stance on crime, but also with scandalously sexist comments. “For as long as there are many beautiful women” he declared, “there are plenty of rape cases as well.”

Far from the Philippines, a country of 100 million people, in Brazil, a country of 207 million people, the candidate Jair Bolsonaro, winner of the country’s first round of voting this Sunday, embellishes his racist, homophobic and authoritarian discourse with messages as offensive as those of Duterte. “I wouldn’t rape you because you don’t deserve it,” he told a congresswoman. His right hand man, Hamilton Mourao, has warned that households without a man are “factories for maladjusted elements.” Brazilian women are angry and have taken to the streets in huge numbers, but their protests have not been enough to stop the far right candidate. The same happened with Trump.

That this drift further and further to the right is happening in the midst of the Me Too era seems paradoxical, save from the link between women’s advances and the frenzied reaction of the most recalcitrant elements of society. The reaction takes place in areas away from sexist crimes, which are usually the brutal and violent response of a resentful man in the face of a woman’s attempts to leave him. The positive side of the story is that this reaction shows the power of the feminist movement nowadays. The negative side is obvious: the millions of votes, including from women, that these candidates receive, despite the fact that their atrocious sexism is incompatible with the most basic democratic principles. Sexism, like homophobia, is populism’s calling card.