A predominant defense for Donald Trump's rhetoric has been that voters should care more about Hillary Clinton's actions in office rather than Trump's frequent degradation of multiple groups of people. Even now, those who lack the decency to condemn the latest development of the most disgraceful campaign in modern presidential history cling to the justification that we should not concern ourselves with what Donald Trump said ten years ago. The problem is, even if the "actions against words" argument ever contained viability, this time it's different. This time is not just about what Donald Trump has said about other people, this is about what he has done to other people. These are the words of his latest controversy:
"I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful- I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
What Donald Trump admitted to, or rather bragged about doing is sexual assault. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, sexual assault is defined as "any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault is sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape." When "The Donald" says, "grab them by the pussy," he is advocating fondling. Again, that's sexual assault.
I know something about fondling. Last year I started my Junior year of college after transferring to a new university, and during the first week, I went to a concert with a few people. It was a free concert for the students held on campus, and many people were there. I stood in the crowd, already irritated by the overload of people who continuously bumped into me as they did the "point and jump thing" that I guess we're supposed to do at concerts. Which was fine, some people enjoy that setting, I just don't.
After some time a girl emerged and tried to talk to me, but it was so loud that I couldn't understand most of what she said. Then she started grinding on me. Grinding is the act of when two people dance in a way that the buttocks of one individual rubs against the groin area of another. It was a strange thing because at first, I didn't realize she was doing that. At first, I assumed she was simply being obnoxious and inadvertently bumping into me, so I just stepped back. When she moved closer, I realized what she was doing. So I continued to step backward, and so did she. That's when she put her hand down my pants, and at that point, I had had enough. I pushed her hand away from me, turned around and forced my way out of there.
When I arrived back at my room, I took a shower. In the minutes directly after the event, I didn't regard it as anything significant. It seemed so casual, and even normative, that I almost felt guilty for my response, because while I know that it would be grossly inappropriate for me to place my hand down the pants of a woman, a standard of toxic masculinity in our culture seemed to be in place to where perhaps I should have welcomed the unwanted sexual advances of that woman. But as I stood in the shower, I found myself startled by the way I was affected by that situation. I don't know how to describe it other than I simply didn't feel right. My knees felt weak, and my legs shook. I'm cautious to use the word, but I believe traumatized would be appropriate. In the moment of that event, my right to the control over my own body was compromised, and my privacy breached, and that wasn't alright.
I've always been frustrated by how sexual assault is handled in this country, and I've tried to do my part to educate myself and be active in addressing it. But while I had listened to so many people, read so many articles and statistics, and even ran a student government campaign almost exclusively built on a platform to institute policies to combat sexual violence on campus, I didn't really realize what all this was and how much I didn't understand until I reflected on how I felt about what happened to me, as well as how I felt about how I felt about that event, because even now, I feel strange and uncomfortable identifying this event as what it was, and can only do so because I know how I felt. And by acknowledging how I felt, I really don't have the words to describe how angry I am about what Donald Trump said.
What Donald Trump said he did to women is in many ways like what that woman did to me. That said, in many other ways, it was completely different. I've read the articles on Jill Harth's experiences with Donald Trump, and accounts from other women have come out as well. The primary difference, I think, is that I was never in any impending physical danger. I am over six feet tall, I'm 200 pounds, and I was in a very public area. She was only about half my size, and when I needed to get out of that situation, I was able to escape. "The Donald" does it a little bit differently than that random girl at the concert. He likes to lure women, and single them out. When Donald "grabs the pussy", the woman doesn't have the advantage of size, as Donald is even larger than I am. Donald likes to invite them into his office, or intrude upon their private rooms, where there are no bystanders. Even if there are witnesses, Billy Bush didn't seem so alarmed by Donald's actions, and I imagine many others aren't that concerned either.
With this comes the fear of escalation, because when Donald does this to them, they are in an incredibly dangerous position. I wonder if Donald ever considered while operating under the philosophy that "when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything," that when they "allowed" him to "grab their pussies", it wasn't because they were infatuated by his power and wealth, but because they were afraid of it. Maybe what Donald didn't understand, or even more disturbingly understood far too well, is that sometimes when a woman refuses sexual advances, she gets beat. And sometimes she gets raped. Sometimes, she gets killed. Maybe, they "let him do it" because they were trying to survive.
I've been appalled at Donald Trump's rhetoric from the beginning. I've been appalled by the people that support him from the beginning. I think that when Hillary called half his base a "basket of deplorables", not only was it appropriate to do so, but her statement was a grave underestimation. And I can see that when I look at the comments under Donald's "apology", where people normalize his behavior as "locker room talk" claiming "boys will be boys", as if Donald's crime of sexual violence is somehow socially acceptable, because they are complicit in crafting the culture so inept at taking these situations seriously. What that woman did to me was wrong. What Donald Trump presumably did to those women was wrong. We as a society need to recognize that as wrong, and then properly address it.
"I apologize if anyone was offended."
That is Donald Trump's initial response to answer for his sexual transgressions. He seems utterly oblivious to what he did wrong, probably because due to his unparalleled narcissism, he's completely convinced of his entitlement over the bodies of other people that meet his sexist standards. So I'm mad, and I'm not even writing this in support of Hillary Clinton. While I am voting for her, this and so many other things that this man has said cannot even be adequately addressed within the context of the binary American electoral system. Any reference to Hillary Clinton in favor or against when addressing this situation simply seems inappropriate. I think about how I felt that day a year ago, I try to imagine how those women must have felt, and I just can't, because I remain startled by my own emotional response to my experience, and I only know that if I had the same experience that many of these women did, I would find myself startled once again by how little I understand about the culture of sexual violence. Donald Trump is a predator, he is a sex offender, both objective terms for the self-description of his actions, and we cannot let that become our nation's standard bearer. If you vote for that, you are complicit with that.
