During the most recent presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump was asked questions about his treatment of women and whether or not he has sexually assaulted women. There was a video of him speaking in an extremely vulgar way about how he acts towards women that was posted online. Donald Trump first tried to distract the moderator by rambling on and on about ISIS, then dismissed his disgusting behavior as "locker room talk". He continued on to say that he is not proud of it and is respectful of women, although it is obvious that is not the case.
Trump on his lewd comments about women
"This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologized to my family and I apologized to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk. You know when you have a world where we have ISIS chopping off heads ... where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times," -Trump
The way that Donald Trump speaks about women is completely sexist and sounds grossly perverted in every way. In the video that was mentioned earlier, he says, “I Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything”. This is assuming that the women he does this to actually want to be kissed. Chances are that not all of them do. Without consent, this can actually be considered sexual assault.
Another memorable quote from this particular video that people have been referencing a lot recently is when Donald Trump said, “Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything". This is just blatant sexual assault in itself. It is implied that there has been no consent given by the women he has done this to. Donald Trump believes that just because he is rich and well-known that all women are just going to let him do whatever he pleases to them. It doesn't matter who you are, how famous you are, or how rich you are; Sexual assault is always sexual assault and it is always revolting, perverted, and just plain awful.
The way that Donald Trump dismisses all of this by saying it was only "locker room talk" promotes rape culture. He tries to normalize sexism and sexual assault by referring to it as typical locker room conversation. Even though the video was from 2005, Trump has shown through various actions that his views and behavior have not changed since then. For example, he wants every woman that gets an abortion to be punished for doing so, no matter the situation, including rape. This is another part of rape culture that places the blame on the victim and not the one who did it, and takes away the victim's ability to choose what they do with their own body. This is one of the several reasons that I, along with many other Americans, would rather have anyone else but Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.
