Trump advisory board member: Women should strive to be “handmaidens,” stay out of the workplace
Trump surrogate Clarence Mason Weaver on women: “We don’t care how smart you are. We don’t care how strong you are”
Written by Eric Hananoki
Published
Right-wing pundit and recently announced Trump advisory board member Clarence Mason Weaver has said that women aren’t equal to men and that they damaged society when they won the “‘right’ to leave the home and go to work.” He has claimed that women who report sexual misconduct at work are the reason “why we don’t want to be around you in a business.” And he has told women that they should carry themselves as “handmaidens” and “be submissive.”
The Trump campaign recently launched its “Black Voices for Trump” coalition, with President Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Atlanta, GA. The campaign also announced the members of its advisory board, which includes numerous right-wing media personalities such as radio host Herman Cain, Fox Nation hosts Diamond and Silk, and Fox News contributors Deneen Borelli and Alveda King.
The campaign lists the involvement of Clarence Mason Weaver (who usually goes by Mason Weaver in media appearances and also lists his name as Clarence A. Mason on his website), a right-wing author and purported motivational speaker. Weaver has made numerous appearances on Fox Business and Fox News over the years, including on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, and Trish Regan Primetime. He attended the coalition launch in Georgia and posted on Facebook that he got to “meet the President [and] shake his hand again.” He also met Lara Trump.
One of Weaver’s philosophies is that “men and women are not equal.” In a recent video about the subject, Weaver said that women shouldn’t be “queens” because “we do not look for queens. Queens is hard work. We look for handmaidens, sweetheart. We look for a helpmate out here, girl. And no king is looking to share their kingdom.” He later suggested that if a woman isn’t as strong as he is, she should “be quiet, and be humble, and be submissive.”
His views on male and female contributions to society are summed up in a January video description, which reads: “Men have created, maintained and developed EVERY social improvement in our history. The current attack on masculinity, led by feminist and their weak beta male enablers, are attacking the very men because they hate our society. It is time for aggressive masculine men, and the women who love us, to answer.”
On his website, he wrote: “Women have won their ‘right’ to leave the home and go to work, serve in combat (no draft), serve in government and crack nearly every domain once controlled by men. So, ladies, how are your children doing? Your lack of family time, raising and nurturing them has done great harm to them.”
In a video, Weaver criticized the idea that men like educated women, stating: “We don’t care how great you are at work as the co-worker. We don’t care what kind of career you have or what your college degrees are. That’s not why we marry you, woman -- that’s not why we -- we don’t care.”
Similarly, in a May video criticizing women for allegedly being “so masculine,” Weaver said: “We don’t care how smart you are. We don’t care how strong you are. We don’t care. It is masculine. You look like a dude. You talk like a dude.”
He’s also pointed to women reporting sexual misconduct in the workplace as a reason they shouldn’t be there.
Weaver said in a December 2017 video that “women in the workplace use their sexuality, taking advantage of their sexuality, taking the offers of sexuality, and these women will come out against you guys.”
He then complained that a woman who is competing against a male for a promotion can tell a manager, “So-and-so molested me, so-and-so made a comment. A comment now. Folks, you can’t even say the wrong thing, hurt their feelings. And that guy will not get the promotion and no one will know why. Women are setting themselves up to be so fragile that we can’t even blow on them without them coming against us. So who wants to hire a female now?”
He later added: “Ladies, you do not want your husband working with a female in your office nowadays because 30 years later you may have a problem.” (Overall, false reports about sexual misconduct are actually very rare.)
In a similar video, he said: “We’re not predators. We’re not rapists. But we’re aggressive people. Do we make you nervous because we’re strong and aggressive? We’re loud. I’m loud but not mean. Somebody frighten some woman and 20 years from now she’ll say, ‘Mason made me feel uncomfortable with him.’ That's why we don’t want to deal with you. That’s why we don’t want to be around you in a business. That’s why we really can’t trust ourselves to be with you because you have the power of the accusation.”
After the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump says “grab them by the pussy” was released, Weaver said of Republican critics of Trump: “Every man talks like that, every man thinks like that, and stop quivering behind the skirts of the feminists.”