I have a message for all the women I've seen on the Internet defending Trump's claims as "just talk." I myself have never been obviously hit on, but I know what it's like to be incredibly afraid that a man who's eyeing you will try to take advantage of you. I realize that while I might never have been the explicit object of a man's unwelcome affection, other women experience that every. Single. Day.
Sexual assault, sexual violence, and rape are real experiences that real women- likely people you know- fight through constantly. Now, I understand thinking solely about your own experiences. Everyone is a little selfish sometimes, and it's understandable. We make decisions based on what impacts us. In fact, this way of thinking is human, but in a presidential election, we cannot afford to have voters who make decisions about policy solely based off of their own personal experience while discounting the personal experiences of millions of people across the world.
Do you know why some men are feminists? Even though they aren't women and don't experience the same kind of social pressures that women do on a day-to-day basis which feminists fight against? It's because they can think far enough outside of themselves to realize that the things impacting their friends, neighbors, and community impact them as well, and that it shouldn't matter if it doesn't impact them directly; they are responsible for it anyway. They have realized that not being the direct beneficiary of something does not mean that it shouldn't be important, and that we are all responsible for creating a community where everyone feels safe, not just a place where people who are exactly like us want to live.
You say that you support him because of his policies and that these comments are irrelevant, but do you not understand that his comments on women reflect how he's going to craft the policies that affect women? Do you not understand that the bill President Obama just signed allowing baby changing stations in men's restrooms would never be signed by a man as misogynistic as Donald Trump? Do you not realize that the things that he says directly impact the kind of policy he's going to create?
These are not just words. Don't treat them as such. Sexual assault is a real issue. Domestic violence is a real issue. Rape is a very, very real issue for millions of women, especially college-age girls. And if you think that these are just words and it doesn't matter, tell that to the survivors of sexual assault. Donald Trump tries to excuse his words by saying that we need to focus on more important things, "real issues," like defeating ISIS, but I'd like to ask you this: since when was sexual violence not a "real issue?" Last time I checked, one in three college-age women will be sexually assaulted by the time she graduates from college; that number is one in 11 for men. You're telling me that's not a "real issue?" I have news for you: just because an experience leaves psychological scars alongside or instead of physical ones does not preclude its definition as a real issue.
What Donald said might be, in his words, "locker room talk," but the men I know don't actually talk like that. Sure, they talk about women. On the flip side, girls talk about the guys they like and how attractive they are. But I have never heard a guy, when describing how attractive he found a girl, say that he wanted to "grab her by the pussy" or anything quite so rape-like. I don't know what locker rooms Donald Trump has been in, but his idea of what talk is acceptable highlights an issue many, many groups have been fighting against.
Talking about people like objects is a problem that needs to be fixed, and the lack of surprise many women exhibited in response to Trump's comments underscores a different kind of issue. When lewd talk is so common that women aren't even phased by a presidential candidate talking about raping women, that's when you know we need to change the way that we look at people and sexuality and stop treating women- and men- like objects.
Just because Trump's words are unsurprising does not make them acceptable however, and if you want to wish his words away by saying that everyone talks like that, I'd like you to talk to your dad. Ask him if he talks like that, because I can just about guarantee you that unless your name is Ivanka Trump, he doesn't.
No, this is not "just" talk. This is a highly publicized example of the kind of misogynistic, degrading commentary women receive on a daily basis. This is what rape culture looks like, and if we excuse his words, we contribute to the continued proliferation of that way of thinking about women and people in general. The #Repealthe19th hashtag proves my point even further: once you open the door to treating women as incompetent, you allow room for large-scale repeals of the gains the feminist movements have made in the past decades. It's been less than a century since women got the right to vote, and Trump supporters are not ironically claiming that they should get rid of it. If you think his words are simply talk, you're wrong. Words are never just words; they impact the social and cultural fabric of our nation.
