Rosemary McLeod: Babies grow up, but will Trump?

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton listens to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St Louis. Photo/AP

"Are we babies?" asked Donald Trump. It was a cosmic question, and he was just the man to ask it.

Others have pondered the proposition and found a similar answer: to name a few, Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Saville, and Roger Ailes. I'll tuck Galbe Tostee in here, currently accused of killing a New Zealand woman he met on Tinder. He was in the habit of boasting online about how many women he'd had it off with, knowing that quantity is all-important. Delusions of your own fabulousness can lead you to dark places, I guess, even when you're young, with all your own hair.

And then there's Trump, of the ultimate comb-over, who boasted to a radio jock that his fame meant beautiful women let him grope them and slobber over them without resistance.

Other men dream of such invincibility. I guess. How we all wish we were young and perfectly formed, because then they'd want to honour us, too, with the activity that they place at the core of their self worth, and snigger about afterwards. We'd be so lucky.
Former Italian premier Berlusconi, ex French presidential hopeful Strauss-Kahn, and Fox News's now ex-boss Ailes share with Trump a remarkable lack of physical attractiveness and a lot of weary years, but their women must be young, and ever younger. Trump cuts women off at 35, half his age. He says they don't rate after that, yet fortunately he does. It must be the money.

Berlusconi's bunga bunga parties, where women were hired to have sex with him and his cronies, were popular, but an under-age girl proved to be a mistake; justice has no sense of fun. Strauss-Kahn was the go-to man if orgies were your thing. Due to misunderstandings about sophistication, and a protesting American hotel maid, he also fell from grace. As for Ailes, many years of sexually propositioning female employees finally cost him his job at Fox, which goes to show what misery can be caused when women turn an old man down.

The common theme here is entitlement, which is where Jimmy Saville, a weirdo and creep beloved of the British for unfathomable reasons, had free rein with sick children in British hospitals, and young girls living in what was euphemistically called "care". His fame and fund-raising meant other adults turned their backs and left him to it.

Bill Cosby's popularity as a comedian and TV star meant he felt entitled to his share of attractive young women too, with the original twist that he is accused of rendering them unconscious before using their bodies.

All around the world men are doing similar things and boasting about it in what Trump calls "locker room talk". That's okay, according to Trump, because women should never get to hear about it because he loves and respects them too much, and besides, there is a special magic seal on what takes place there. The locker room is like AA meetings, or the confessional: it is another country, and they do things differently there.

Priests can't reveal what they're told by sinners making a confession, but the locker room is a new holy space. Outside it women might find the bragging that goes on there offensive, but what women think anywhere doesn't count for much, however good-looking they are. In any case you lie to each other in the locker room. You never did those things. It's all part of the fun of pretending to demean women.

It was in the locker room, that special male space, that shock jock Howard Stern asked Trump if he'd ever had a threesome. "Haven't we all?", replied the future presidential contender, "Are we babies?" Which is the point where I began.

A baby is a human being driven to attach itself to a woman's body, after its birth, for its very survival. It knows only its own needs, and can't imagine anyone else's. It is the centre of its own universe, cared for by those who keep it alive and protect it. And so Trump and his kind are indeed babies, throwing their toys out of the cot, wailing for the breast, and making messes for other people to clean up. But the similarity is unfair to infants. They get to grow up.