It isn't unusual to experience shock and awe during the U.S. Presidential run-up and Campaign, patricularly when it comes to the Republican candidates. But even those low standards were exceeded in the recent republican debate when Donald Trump turned his arrogance and sexism towards moderator and fox news commentator Megyn Kelly. Trump used social media following the event to crticize Kelly for "behaving badly" when she pressed him to account for his past comments calling women "fat pigs." His Twitter comments launched a barage of sexist and hateful comments and he followed with the suggestion that Kelly's bad behaviour was the result of her menstruating.
Donald Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he is a sexist and a bigot, his pompasity and absurdatiy bettering itself with each comment. It is easy to dismiss Trump as an extremis that can't be taken serously. But the fact that Donald Trump is running for the candidacy of the President of the United States, was a former TV star, and has his name on a new development in Vancouver BC, not to mention all over the world, is a sad comment on equality. Many republican candidates have indicated they will cut funding to Planned Parenthood if elected and candidate Marco Rubio insisted that rape and incest victims should carry pregnancies to term.
At a time when so much progress has been made towards eqaulity, we are still faced with open discrimination and sexism in a very public forum. While the reaction, including the reaction from the Republican party, has been generally negative, the fact that he is even listened to, no matter how begrugingly, is a reminder that more work must be done to achieve gender equality.