Why doesn’t spending time with women make men less sexist?

Recent election polling shows that women prefer Hillary Clinton by about 15 percentage points, while men prefer Donald Trump by about 5 percentage points. This points to a gap that could end up being larger than the record-setting 20 percentage-point (or so, depending on the polling outfit) gender difference between voters for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012.

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We’ve grown so used to the gender divide in politics that we don’t even blink at these sorts of numbers. But if you look closely there’s a bit of a mystery here, especially in light of how salient an issue misogyny has been in this campaign. Donald Trump has made it clear — over and over and over again — that he is unabashedly misogynistic. His overt sexism is without parallel in modern presidential history, and is clearly turning off a lot of women. What about their sons and fathers and husbands, though? Why is this not an issue for them? It points to a broader set of questions: Why, for many men at least, does living with and having close relationships with women not make them less misogynistic? Why are there still so many households where the wife is disgusted by Trump’s behavior, but the husband just shrugs?

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