I 100 percent disavow everything Donald Trump said during his interview with Billy Bush. Honestly, I disavow everything Trump says, is, and stands for, but right now I’m disavowing his deplorable statements about women. This shouldn’t come as much surprise based on my body of work. I’m saying this not because of how it affects my mother, though that’s certainly part of it. I’m not saying it just for my female cousins, or my grandmother, or my aunts or my female friends, or my female peers. I want the record to show that I am disavowing this because I want my son to know that this is not how to treat women.
Everyone jumping off the Trump train seems to be doing it for the women in their lives, which is fine. But just once I want someone to cite their son, or their younger male cousin, or their nephew or any other impressionable young man as the biggest reason they’re condemning Trump’s words.
I need my son to know that he is why I’m taking this particular stand. I want him to find this article one day and find that his father’s words matched his father’s actions. I want him to know that even as a young 21 year old, a member whose sexist acts are often trivialized by “boys will be boys”, I do not support this heinous treatment of women.
My parents taught me and my brother how to treat women, and everyday I am grateful for that. I am grateful that they instilled in me and Nathan the better sense to see women as human beings equal to ourselves and not as sex objects. My mother would have killed me if she had heard that I made those comments about a woman, she still would. But what really drove it home for me was the way my father taught me how to treat women by how he treated his mother and sisters and my mother.
Growing up I never got a sense that my father was in anyway misogynistic or would ever treat the women in his life the way Donald Trump treats the women in his. Part of that is because I know my grandmother would have killed him. If you never had the chance to meet my paternal grandmother all you need to know was that she was a small woman who could easily cut you down to size.
For the record, I am saying that Donald Trump should have had a small feisty southern woman for a grandmother. He should have also had a strong southern man for a grandfather, and a strong hardworking farmer for another one. He should have had a tough but caring Norwegian woman for another grandmother, and many other strong women for cousins and aunts.
My respect for women comes from the strong women in my life and the equally strong men who supported them. I want my son to know that I, as a strong man, will support every strong woman in my life and he must do the same. Trump’s words, while unfortunately pretty standard for the current way society teaches men to treat women, will not be the words used in my house. Trump's actions will not be the actions in my house. My son will know and understand that women are so much more than something to be grabbed by the… kitty cat.
