Is Trump's Campaign The Last Gasp For Misogyny?

You would be forgiven for assuming that I spent this weekend raising a glass to Donald Trump 's downfall. For here is a man that embodies everything the Women's Equality Party is fighting against. And finally equality appeared to have trumped misogyny, marking the end of his presidential campaign.

But as messages flooded in from our supporters proclaiming a win for women's rights, I was left wondering how it is that he has come so close to being the leader of the free world. And in that moment, I dared to ask myself -- in a whisper -- whether last night's presidential debate was the last gasp for misogyny or the last, desperate gasp of the consensus against it?

Watching Trump's campaign has been like watching Louis Theroux meet Jimmy Savile. Everybody knows that Trump is a predator because, just like Savile, he speaks the truth as though it were the opposite of the truth, daring us to call his bluff. His fame makes it especially hard for people to challenge his behavior, and when they do he is protected by the institutions that legitimize it.

Friday's revelation that Trump used his fame to prey on women apparently crossed a line. Somehow it stood out from the previous allegations of sexual assault, Trump's depictions of women as 'fat pigs' and 'disgusting animals,' and his suggestion that women would have to face some form of punishment if abortion were made illegal. It could be distinguished from his proposed ban on Muslims, and his pronouncement that Mexicans are rapists. [As Women's Equality Party Leader, Sophie Walker, said at a recent rally "Racism seldom travels alone. It travels with its counterparts -- sexism, misogyny and homophobia."]

Because if we can move the line freely, then we will always find ourselves on the right side of it. Ahead of last night's presidential debates, unable to claim misrepresentation in the face of audiotape evidence, Donald Trump did the unthinkable. He held a five minute public meeting with women who have accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual attention or rape. Not to listen to these women's experiences or take them seriously -- this is a man who won the Republican nomination in spite of a federal lawsuit filed against him for rape of a minor -- but to use them as pawns in his political game-playing. And as the debate unfolded, 'locker-room talk' was pitched against presidential impeachments, and groping was contrasted with the actions of Isis.

Rather than feeling outraged at Trump's misogyny, we were expected to feel grateful to have escaped Bill Clinton's: 'Mine were words, his were actions,' Trump said.

Trump's attempt at moral relativism minimizes the abuse that women experience and trivializes our role in preventing and responding to it. It means Nigel Farage can affectionately describe Trump as a "big alpha male" in the post-debate analysis, after explaining to Women's Equality Party Co-founder, Catherine Mayer, at Progress 1000 last month that he hadn't endorsed Trump because "He's a bit of a sexist." It means Louis Theroux can develop a friendship with Savile while reporting to his superiors that a woman had contacted him to say she had been abused by Savile at the age of fifteen. It means the remaining GOP leaders can continue to support Trump because 'he gets it right on the other issues.'

And in this way, we fail to understand how misogyny is connected to all the 'other issues.' We fail to see how characterizing Muslim women as unable to speak without permission, is linked to a national security strategy that relocates people to the other side of a wall. We fail to recognize how describing breastfeeding as 'disgusting' is the preamble to an inadequate parental leave policy. We overlook the fact that appointing an all-male team of economic advisors is the basis for having no policy on equal pay.

The Women's Equality Party was created just over a year ago to join those dots. Recognizing that partisanship too often clouds judgement when it comes to equality for women, we decided to open our membership to people from right across the political spectrum. We went out with six goals -- equal pay; equal parenting and caregiving; equal education; equal treatment in and by the media; equal representation in politics and public life; and an end to violence against women -- because we understood that progress on gender equality required progress on all of these fronts.

Post-debate analysis suggests Clinton won last night's debate. But 42 percent of people still backed Trump and so the Women's Equality Party will continue to fight to our last breath to win the battle against misogyny, at home and abroad.