If you're following this year's upcoming election (as you should be), or have been on ANY form of social media recently, you've probably heard of the Donald's newest scandalous phrase, "Grab them by the Pu**y" and I hope you're as heated about it as I am. In this crucial time in the election, just a month beforehand, a 2005 Access Hollywood tape was leaked to the Washington Post where Donald Trump is being recorded saying, "I grab women by the pu**y," and other lewd comments objectifying women that he's simply dismissed as, "Locker room talk", while he's literally bragging about sexual assault.

Trump also goes on to say how when you're a star, "you can do anything" with women, not only is this concerning for the woman in question, but for the women of our country. Many are arguing how this was a tape from a decade ago but can this misogyny really be cured in a decade? This tape is displaying a man who is confident in a month he'll be running our country talking about women like they are objects - and this is not the first time, either. There's no easy way to put it, Donald Trump is completely promoting and appropriating rape culture, something that's already so prevalent in our underlying societal values.

For those of you who need a definition of rape culture:

"Complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture, both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change. Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words, and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as 'just the way things are.'" -Emilie Buchwald, author of Transforming a Rape Culture

Now, as a woman and a millennial (the generation that's going to be leading this country sooner than any of us imagined - like, today.), and as a person, I can't have this man in the oval office. As a woman, I already don't feel comfortable walking through the parking lot after I get out of work at night, and I'll be damned if I don't have my keys in between my fingers during that walk, just like I was taught, because these things don't just happen on Law and Order, it's something I actually have to worry about. And the guy running for president? Well, he thinks that's totally okay, and sexual assault is totally cool with him. And these things are not okay with me.

The thing about Donald Trump and women is that he doesn't treat them like people. For him, they're nothing but sexual objects. Like when he said he'd have sex with his daughter? Or when he wanted to fire women who weren't "pretty enough?" And as far as his campaign with Clinton, Hillary is only an extension of her husband to him, which, last time I checked, he wasn't running for president again.

Not only did Trump try to dodge the questions regarding the Access Hollywood tape, but he deemed it as normal, thus appropriating rape culture even further. Using the good old, "boys will be boys" theory by deeming this "locker room talk." Now, if this "locker room talk" is being used in every men's locker room, America's got more problems than we thought, because that means every man in America thinks rape is okay. Now, I know that sounds crazy and we all know that's not true, but that's basically what Trump is telling us at this point, that that's just how men talk about women all the time.

And in all honesty, I think possibly the scariest part of this is his family's reaction to this. Now, many of us may think, "Oh, he's got a wife, a mother, a daughter, how can he talk about women like that?" But, to him, it doesn't matter. Not only does he treat them that way, but they must believe it, too, because they're still fully supporting him. The women in Trump's family are allowing themselves to be manipulated to the point where they've given into that misogyny and they're accepting it as well.

I've heard time and time again that someone is supporting Trump because he's "honest," and "speaks his mind," and that's something I could normally respect if the person speaking their mind wasn't advocating sexual assault and facing rape charges, on top of being incredibly xenophobic. This is a former celebrity running for president in an attempt to keep his popularity with America, facing charges for raping a 13-year-old and is basically saying sexual assault is okay. There are thousands of unreported rapes in our country, and there are thousands of unused rape kits collecting dust on shelves even when those rapes are reported. I don't want to live in a world that puts women in even more fear of coming forward against their attacker, and Donald Trump becoming president is going to do exactly that.