McCain defends masculinity by resorting to sex-based insults

OK, so this has been mentioned everywhere, but in The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, he claims that McCain responded to his wife's comment about his hair thinning by calling her a 'cunt.'

From the book, via Feministing:

At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day.

For the record, trollop means "prostitute" or "promiscuous woman."

(Interestingly, dictionary.com phrases this to imply that a prostitute is a particularly promiscuous woman, as if prostitution as sex work and individual promiscuity for one's own pleasure -not work- are in fact conceptually related).

See my previous posts on sexed bodies and gendered insults, and on gendered language more generally.

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