Donald Trump and Richard III

Idolized patriarchs and the minimization of misogyny

Content Warning - this essay will contain the account from E. Jean Carroll’s testimony against Trump where he was held liable for battery and defamation. It is explicit, triggering and hard to read. Your peace is more important than anything else, so please protect it.

“Within seconds, E. Jean Carroll says, Trump went from laughing to assaulting. Her encounter with Trump quickly turned dark when she accompanied him into a dressing room, E. Jean Carroll testified. She called it “extremely painful” when he forced his fingers inside of her. “It was a horrible feeling because he put his hand inside of me and curved his finger,” she said.

Carroll described explicitly how he also forced sex on her in the dressing room before she successfully kneed him away from her so she could flee the room.

She said the fact that she went in the dressing room with him still haunts her, choking up as she explained. She said she did not file a police report in part because she blamed herself.

“I always think about why I walked in there to get myself in that situation,” she said. “And I’m proud to say I did get out. I got my knee up, I pushed him back.” - The Washington Post

As their hands quickly shot into the sky, my heart sank to the floor. Watching the majority of GOP presidential candidates declare they’d support Trump if he won the primary was yet another blow to American democracy and morale. Just last week we were graced with Trump’s blue-steel mugshot, inundated with notification after notification of new indictments against the former president, yet he is the republican forerunner with a significant lead over Florida’s negligent Governor, Ronny D, who is polling in second while declaring a war against actual American history because it makes him uncomfortable in his whiteness.

“We know from the history of fascist states and states at war that truth is an early casualty. Around the world, we are seeing a revival of ‘strong men’ in positions of political power who disregard truth. Donald Trump’s survival of impeachment in 2020 is just one example. His ability to tell endless lies without blinking is remarkable in its audacity and it is demeaning of all who surround him and kowtow to him. Thanks to political philosophers and writers like Hannah Arendt we understand that blatant lying is a known method of a successful propaganda machine. We remember George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1976) whose rationale was the spreading of lies that purported to be truth.” - Susan Hawthorne, Vortex: The crisis of Patriarchy

The evidence is endless of Trump’s deceit and despicable behavior, yet he is idolized as a ‘strong man’ within this white supremacist capitalistic patriarchal society that is the American hell-scape at present. His loyal base screaming into the void that his arraignment is just a political stunt as they heal their vocal chords from the most recent chant of ‘lock her up.’ The irony would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. “Every day in America men are violent. Their violence is deemed “natural” by the psychology of patriarchy, which insists that there is a biological connection between having a penis and the will to do violence. This thinking continues to shape notions of manhood in our society despite the fact that it has been documented that cultures exist in the world where men are not violent in everyday life, where rape and murder are rare occasions.” - bell hooks, The will to Change

The guise of a good Christian man haunts many of our childhood memories. The man that went to church on Sunday and screamed at his wife and beat his children the rest of the week. The man that was kind to everyone outside of the house and a nightmare within it, full of charm yet quick to distribute emotional pain. The man that makes you feel as if you’ve lost your mind, questioning your sanity through another remix of “what’s wrong with you?” Too many of us know those men. Piety has never negated harm, yet men within a patriarchy receive a bell-curve to behavioral grading: you can be a bad guy 6 days a week as long as on that 7th day you give the illusion of repenting to your patriarchal deity.

Image captured after Trump ordered an attack on peaceful protesters

This version of manhood is depicted in media time and again, the hero that has to use violence to defeat the ‘bad guys,’ though he is just as guilty of breaking laws to accomplish the task as the men he’s punishing. His anger and law-breaking deemed appropriate after given the arbitrary title of good guy, predicated on the possession of a penis and white skin. The most recent rendition of this still playing in a theater near you. “The fact that men often mix being caring and being violent has made it hard for everyone in our culture to face the extent to which male violence stands in the way of males’ giving and receiving love.” - bell hooks, The will to Change

Being held liable for battery, utilizing disgusting rhetoric towards women, viewing women through their use to him as made evident with the treatment of his deceased wife: Trump’s objectification of women is clear and well-documented. Despite this, in 2016 white women predominately voted for Trump, actively seeking a leader that has proved beyond a reasonable doubt he will prioritize legislation against the very people who helped place him in office. A means to an end. Yet it would be disingenuous to say that just women support Trump. His success in the polls even amidst provable degeneracy and authoritarianism highlights the tight grasp white supremacist patriarchal social norms have upon us here in these united states. We will literally throw out democracy before throwing out the man.

Within a patriarchy, men can behave in atrocious ways. Ways that bring harm to their community at-large, ways that bring those closest to them pain, yet their actions will always be minimized as somehow righteous especially in connection to greed. The conflation of greed as leadership plaguing patriarchal societies, reinforced through unnamed and unconscious biases within the histories. As

Clementine Ford

wrote in her most recent Substack post, “patriarchy conditions men to believe that their perception of the world is the correct one,” their heinous acts are then viewed through the biased lens of patriarchal supremacy, allowed to be rinsed-and-repeated time and again throughout the centuries.

When news broke that Ivana Trump, the mother to three of Donald’s children, had been laid to rest within the grounds of a Trump golf course in New Jersey, we were given yet another front row seat to witness the greed behind the patriarch. Turning his golf course into a cemetery plot has tax implications that further line Donald’s pockets through the utilization and objectification of a woman’s body. Though this decision likely came from a Trump adviser, it’s important to note that Trump wouldn’t have had power in this decision and ultimately Ivana’s children were complicit in this obvious business move amidst the failing brand. The minimization of the mother has long been practiced within patriarchal histories. Read: The Three Mothers, by Anna Malaika Tubbs

August 22nd marked the 538th year since the passing of Richard III, the final Plantagenet king. Richard was the last king of England to die in battle, and has had his historical presence marred by ableism and Tudor propaganda. As I scrolled through my heavily historical Instagram feed, I was inundated with post after post dedicated to the misunderstood king, the marred king, the warrior of law-and-order king. Yet there are so many examples, as with Trump, of Richard’s hatred towards women. Unsurprisingly, these accounts are often downplayed or left out of the historical narrative altogether, reinforcing the bias Ford asserted above.

Richard, inspiring patriarchal loyalty far beyond the grave, has a flourishing worldwide society dedicated to clearing his atrocious historical presence, yet to do so has required the further erasure of women and minimization of misogyny. Gregory rightly asserts that “an account of a society that does not look at the lives of half of the population is only half an account.” To recreate the man without including the parts that challenge your perception of him is just another form of patriarchal projection and propaganda, furthering the oppressive societal structures most of us find ourselves within present day.

Investigating Richard through a trauma informed lens requires us to acknowledge a few truths:

1. Richard has absolutely fallen victim to centuries of ableist propaganda. When his remains were found, it confirmed that Richard did in fact have a curved spine from idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis. In a time when deformity and disability were seen as demonization within a human form, the burden of carrying a mostly hidden disability must have been an internal weight upon this prince of England, impacting not only how he saw himself, but how he needed to manage how other’s perceived him. Reminder: patriarchy harms men too.

2. Shakespeare has so heavily impacted Richard’s historical presence that it is almost impossible to distinguish fact from fiction in terms of Richard’s character. However, I see this a karmic comedy. Richard is responsible for a lot of reprehensible things, even if he didn’t deliver the blows by his own hand. Elizabeth Woodville’s historical malignment is in large part due to Richard’s misogyny.

3. It’s anachronistic and highly misogynistic to imply that Richard’s treatment of women was a product of the times he existed within. There are plenty of examples available around and prior to Richard where women were treated with respect and held in high regard. Richard’s misogyny was a choice he made, and made again, and again.

Richard III as depicted by Shakespeare

Like all men existing within a patriarchal society, Richard benefited from his maleness while equally benefiting from the imperialistic structures his family upheld. As a prince of the realm, in all situations he was in a position of power regardless of his age. His biographers have a habit of excluding his brutality towards women while simultaneously singing his praises for uplifting the lay-man within the legal system. You can not be progressive while also being oppressive. Historians will site the malcontent and avarice of the women around Richard, casting them as catalysts for dynastic destruction, while actively suppressing his oppressive behavior. Yet Richard’s regard towards women is clear within two specific cases: his treatment of both the dowager countess of Oxford and the dowager countess of Warwick.

Elizabeth Howard, dowager countess of Oxford knew loss. Her eldest son and husband had been executed as traitors while her second son’s lands were forfeited to the crown due to his involvement in the reinstitution of Henry VI upon the throne. At the time, Elizabeth was in her early 60s, living during both the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses; her lived reality saw many hardships. Retired into a religious house either due to her family’s treason or from a personal choice, Elizabeth was surely envisioning an end of life dedicated to her faith in quiet reflection. In 1472, Elizabeth’s situation would become drastically worse when Edward IV granted her son’s lands to his brother, Richard, then the duke of Gloucester.

Methodically acquiring land in the north of England, Richard was positioning himself as an extension of the throne, a powerful vassal with ruling rights of his own both through loyalty to his brother and his wife’s family name of Warwick. “By a series of conveyances in 1473-1474 the duke also acquired all the extensive lands of the Dowager Countess of Oxford.” By a series of conveyances. Michael Hicks provides the most detailed description of this conflict while Richard’s most devout historians omit it all together or defend the actions, stretching legal realities of the Middle Ages.

Though Edward IV was behind the directive of confiscating the lands of Elizabeth’s son, Richard took the acquisition a step further. Along with an intimidating procession of loyal retainers, Richard barged into the nunnery at Stratford le Bow and announced that he had been given custody of both Elizabeth and her lands. Forcing the elderly woman to hand over “keys to her coffers,” Elizabeth was promptly moved to Stepney, where Gloucester’s household had taken up residence. Assuming that the forfeiture of her son’s land meant the forfeiture of Elizabeth’s land would be incongruent with inheritance practices of the time, as women could inherit family lands barring a male heir, as well as dowager lands upon the passing of her husband. The decision to treat Elizabeth so derived directly from Richard, furthering his interests at the cost of a woman’s livelihood.

“Elizabeth was confined to a chamber until she agreed to sign over her lands to Gloucester. The countess sent for one of her feoffees, Henry Robson, and said that if she did not sign over her lands to Gloucester, he would send her to Middleham, a journey the old lady doubted she could survive considering her old age and “the grett colde which thenne was of Frost and snowe.” She added that she was grateful to have the lands which now would save her life. Meanwhile, the countess’s confessor, a Master Baxter, was being bullied by Gloucester’s crony Thomas Howard, who called him a false priest and a hypocrite, evidently because Baxter, another feoffee of the countess’s, appeared to be having misgivings about the proposed transaction.”

Elizabeth eventually signed over her lands after a third move to yet another household loyal to Richard during the harsh months of a northern English winter. The countess, having already told Robson that “she was sory that she for savying her lyff had disheritt her heires,” returned to the nunnery and died in early 1474. “Before her death, she asked a former servant who came to visit to remind her son John that she had released her estates out of fear.”¹

“Richard’s supporters have often praised his piety, but it was Elizabeth who was the hapless source of some of the duke’s most notable gift-giving. Richard gave the countess’s manor of Foulmere to Queen’s College, Cambridge, in 1477.” While divvying up additional land to other religious and educational institutions, masking greed as generosity, much of Richard’s piety can be linked directly to an avarice-fueled act of the past. Richard was strategic, and I don’t wish to insinuate in a Machiavellian sort of way, but in a way that allowed him to survive within the patriarchal structures his reality enforced. He was the youngest son of a great magnate raised to believe his family’s superior claim to the throne and greater ability to govern meant that he needed to project a certain presence and perception. (Sound familiar?) As the last son, had his brother not taken the throne, his inheritance would have been far less than that of his elder brothers, if at all. From a young age he would have understood the need to secure his own success, whatever that looked like for him. The binding reality of patriarchy limiting the ability to be as pious as the projection. Unsatiated greed set as a behavioral guide post.

While the dowager countess of Oxford was fighting for her livelihood, Richard was acquiring a wife with a strong name and an even stronger inheritance. Warwick the Kingmaker, slain in battle for rebelling against the Yorks, left his two daughters quite the inheritance of land, money, and transferable titles. Warwick’s widow, the dowager countess, was in sanctuary within the walls of Beaulieu abbey lacking access to her own hefty inheritance, under constant threat from her sons by-law who actively sought to acquire her fortune. Kendall implies that as the hostess of a younger Richard during wardship, the dowager countess wanted Richard to posses her inheritance through her daughter, but this view is contradicted from the reality of the countesses later efforts. Anne Beauchamp, dowager countess of Warwick, “petitioned Parliament from her sanctuary at Beaulieu, asking for her lands to be returned to her. She wrote in her own hand, ‘in the absence of clerks’, not only to the King but to the Queen, to the Duchess of York and to many other royal and noble ladies.”²

Anne Beauchamp, dowager countess of Warwick

Eventually Edward IV had the very much alive Anne Beauchamp declared legally dead, allowing her daughters (and more importantly their husbands) to claim rights to a portioned inheritance, settling a very public dispute amongst the younger brothers. Kendall, always allowing grace towards Richard’s deeds, claims that Richard rescued the countess from her dire existence within sanctuary, yet accounts vary around the comfortability of her state of occupation within the Gloucester’s household.³ Did Richard truly move his mother by-law into his home to bring joy to his bride, Anne, or was he keenly aware that to possess the countess was to have a better claim to her property as contemporary rumors suggest? Richard hadn’t even waited for a papal dispensation to marry Anne, his cousin, yet he shrewdly negotiated a settlement that would have given him his bride’s lands should the pope annul the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity. Richard’s love for Anne looks more like coveting a prized possession than a mutually beneficial partnership, but like everyone else, I am viewing this through many layers of biases and 500 years.

As bell hooks implies, some men are drawn to dominating women and children as it is their only access to assert a patriarchal presence. These men are then deemed as ‘strong men’ by patriarchal historians and the cycle of harm is repeated throughout the ages, mutating to match the current cultural acceptance of harmful masculinity. Like Donald Trump, Richard III was able to wage a cultural war against the women that stood in his way, being praised by men that also benefit from the continued domination of women. “In a society that has embedded and supported misogyny for so long, it is not hard to see why violence against women is commonplace, ignored, minimised and even supported. When we challenge the norms of violence against women, we are going up against thousands of years of misogynistic values, beliefs, faiths, rules, laws, control and abuse.” - Dr Jessica Taylor, Why Women are Blamed for Everything

1. Gloucester, Greed, and Granny: Richard III and the Countess of Oxford, by Susan Higginbotham - https://www.susanhigginbotham.com/posts/gloucester-greed-and-granny-richard-iii-and-the-countess-of-oxford/

2. Richard III: England’s Balck Legend, by Desmond Seward

3. Richard the Third, by Paul Murray Kendall