This is an especially weird year for dissecting gender politics. On the one hand, we have Hillary Clinton, who, unlike any other presidential candidate, has the added advantage in appealing to women of actually being a woman. On the other hand, there is Donald J. Trump, whose predominantly white, male supporters delight in him saying “politically incorrect” things, even when that means implying that his opponent’s wife is unattractive.

Mr. Trump is also running a campaign that answers the question, What if male voters were treated like female voters? What if they were reduced to a single issue, condescended to, and counted on to show up anyway?

There are plenty of examples of how campaigns have done just that to female voters for years.

In 2014, the College Republican National Committee released a series of ads aimed at young women, based on the TLC program “Say Yes to the Dress,” with Republican candidates for governor standing in for garish taffeta creations. In one of the ads, a young woman models a strapless wedding gown called “The Rick Scott,” to her female friends’ delight. Her mother wants her to wear the frumpy “Charlie Crist” dress.

In his re-election campaign that same year, Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, ran ads contrasting his record on supporting access to abortion and birth control with that of his challenger, Cory Gardner. At one point in the campaign, ads about abortion and birth control made up more than 50 percent of the television spots Mr. Udall had on the air, earning him the nickname “Mark Uterus.” In the end, Mr. Udall won the female vote by an eight-point margin, but still lost to Mr. Gardner.

To Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar Media, which tracks political advertising, that recent example shows how self-defeating chasing votes by gender can be.