"Don't laugh. Just don't laugh. Don't laugh under any circumstances."
In a recent interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News, Donald Trump did not mince words about how he wishes Vice President Kamala Harris would behave. The Democratic nominee for president is known for her easy and boisterous laugh, which contrasts with the unlaughing Trump or his forever stern-faced wife, Melania Trump. As many political analysts have pointed out, Republicans aren't doing themselves any favors by freaking out over the fact that Harris has a sense of humor. The ongoing GOP outrage that Harris sometimes expresses joy only reinforces the Democratic accusations that Trump and his allies are "weird." Laughing when something's funny is normal. Coming unglued because other people laugh is not.
And yet, Republicans keep shaming Harris for laughing, no matter how weird and joyless that makes them seem. The main reason for this poor choice appears to be that Trump is downright obsessed. The GOP is a Trump cult now. Republicans cannot help but reflect and parrot the fixations of their leader, no matter how much it unnerves the un-weird. Trump is not a fan of women laughing, which is no doubt one reason his wife rarely even cracks a smile.
The depths of Trump's loathing for female merriment were exposed during his two civil trials for sexual assault and defamation of journalist E. Jean Carroll, who he attacked in a department store dressing room in the '90s. As Carroll testified, she ran into Trump randomly that day and, as a lark, indulged his request to go shopping with him. During their outing, Carroll teased Trump with jokes about how he should try on lingerie. It appears that her laughing, which would be light-hearted fun to normal men, instead infuriated Trump so much that he responded with a violent assault.
During the first trial, in which Carroll won $5 million in damages, the issue of her laughter didn't come up too much. But in the second trial, there were reports that Trump pushed his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, into going much harder after Carroll on the stand. Tacopina ended up dwelling at length over Carroll's description of her own jokes as if he expected the jury to share his client's outrage that a woman would laugh. The tactic backfired. Carroll won over $83 million in that trial. The judge in the case repeatedly emphasized in court filings that, even though Trump was technically found liable for sexual assault, "Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'"
Feminists have long argued that rape is a crime of power, not of sexual incontinence. The story of Trump's assault of Carroll illustrates this idea perfectly. In her telling, they were having a good time, right up until she told a harmless joke that angered him. At that point, he attacked her so viciously that, as she told the jury, she was too traumatized to be with a man sexually ever again.
On social media, the liberal reaction to Trump's lame "Laffin' Kamala Harris" nickname has been to repeat the famous saying: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." (This is often falsely attributed to novelist Margaret Atwood, who would never be so coy as to use the word "kill" instead of "rape.") As the Carroll assault demonstrates, Trump is indeed apprehensive women are laughing at him. But I'd argue that this isn't merely about his legendary narcissism. Most of the popular clips of Harris laughing have nothing to do with him or with any men at all. For instance, the goofy "coconut tree" video showcases Harris chuckling over the memory of her mother teasing her as a child.
I suspect what sets off misogynists like Trump is the way a woman's laughter reminds them that women are autonomous human beings, who have full interior lives. For such men, they prefer to imagine women as appendages of men, who have no motivations outside of pleasing and serving men. A woman who laughs at a man's jokes is acceptable. You don't see Trump getting mad at the MAGA women who laugh at the faux-stand-up routine that he does at his rallies. But a woman who laughs out of genuine joy aggravates misogynists.
We see this not just in the way that Trump and his allies hate Harris for laughing, they also detest her for dancing. The first attack ad released by the Trump campaign is ostensibly about immigration, but it's also just as much about stirring up outrage that the vice president dares to dance. Within a mere 30 seconds, the ad shows the same clip twice of Harris shaking a tailfeather while wearing a colorful shirt, which is contrasted with a photo of Trump scowling. "Failed. Weak. Dangerously Liberal," the ad intones, which seems like quite the overreaction to a middle-aged woman getting her groove on.
It's all reminiscent of a similar Republican tantrum in 2019 when they discovered that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., once danced in a video in college. Right-wing outrage over the video, which showed her getting down to a song by Phoenix with her college friends, quickly spread online. It just as quickly backfired, when Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, "I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous. Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!"
The hostility to dancing is typical of right-wing rhetoric on Harris. On Fox News, Jesse Watters complained that Harris appeals to "wine moms" and characterized her interviews as "ditsy sit-downs with fan girls" to "talk about date nights." The idea that women might relax with a glass of wine or talk about fun stuff with friends seems banal to most people, but misogynists come unglued. It's the same thing behind their bizarre hatred of cats, or at least of women who have cats. Owning a pet is something a woman does for herself, not for men. As feminist philosopher Kate Manne pointed out in a recent interview with Salon, these men are furious that a woman is "looking anywhere else other than a man's eyes. It's that simple. How dare you avert your gaze from men to appreciate others, including cats."
Sexist petulance is so childish and self-centered that it's easy to laugh at, but as Carroll's experience shows, that level of male entitlement can get dangerous quickly. Men who feel threatened by a woman can and often do lash out violently.
The good news is that Carroll is expected to return to court — and to the news cycle — in September. As the New Republic reported this week, a federal appeals court set September 6 for oral arguments in Trump's appeal of Carroll's legal victory. Trump's team was hoping to have the hearing after the election. Instead, the case will be back in the news, and people will once again be reminded of how Trump used sexual violence to tell a woman, "Don't laugh under any circumstances."
