Modern man

Ghandi once said the test of a society's humanity is how it treats its animals. As much as I can see the simple truth of this sentiment, as a feminist who has long studied men and women in various cultures, it is all too clear to me that the much more profound and ultimate test of our humanity is in how women are treated - by men; a test that all societies fail in some degree and most fail almost completely.

Men in all societies in some degree fail to treat women with the respect and dignity we deserve for all that we have done and continue to do for humankind. There are exceptions of course, and Obama is perhaps the best of these exceptions. In the genuine respect, affection and admiration he has for his wife, he has shown the world what a man should and could be in this first duty of treating women with respect. Trump is showing the world, in the most brazen and base way possible, the very opposite; the sadly much more common way that men mistreat and disrespect women, beginning with their girlfriends and wives.

If you want to know a violent man before he commits any actual physical violence, the research on domestic violence says look and listen to the way he speaks about women. Most male violence in the world is based first and foremost in misogyny.

This video of these two men arriving with their wives to be sworn in as president of the US, with one waiting for his wife to exit the car and following her up the steps, the other charging up first leaving his wife - his third wife - to trail behind, says it all, really.

In this respect, Obama shows us the way forward to a fundamentally less violent world, Trump shows us the way back to the violent world from which we are just beginning to emerge. As I've said here before, it is possible that we needed to go back in this way to expose the reality that only marginalised and hated feminists have long recognised, to SEE what we cannot seem to believe otherwise, just how much hatred so many men have for women and womankind and how much damage this hatred inflicts on all of our lives.

Obama is the best of men, Trump the worst, it's as simple as that. And how poignant it is that one should follow the other into the most powerful political position in the world to accentuate the contrast and highlight the truth that our very humanity rests on exposing and eradicating misogynistic men like Trump and celebrating and encouraging men like Obama.