Donald Trump, Perverted Men, and Me

From my earliest recollection, I have always wanted to keep my body covered.  It was instinctual.  A little voice inside my head kept me in the modest zone.  It was revolting to me – even before I knew about sex – that a man might look at my body and objectify it.  The thought of a man looking at me in a sexual way made me want to vomit. It still does.

With the passing of time, I have had little blips of memories of certain times in my childhood.  But like the sun trying to peek out from behind the clouds, the memories are never fully exposed.  I think it’s a protective mechanism keeping me safe from the memories in the same way the clouds cover us from the sun.  Somehow, deep down, my brain knows that I don’t have a sunscreen powerful enough to protect me from the full impact of the rays.

The blips of memories include a man asking me inappropriate questions that I can’t bring myself to type, that same man pinching my waist and telling me I needed to lose a few pounds, and when I was really young, that same man asking me to sit on his lap.  That’s when my mind goes blank.  And it is a slate that I want to keep uncolored.  There is just enough hue there to make me know to protect myself and my daughters from perverted men; to turn away, to not engage, to speak up and say enough is enough.  Jokes about women are not funny, and no man that I associate with would ever degrade a woman in my presence and live to tell about it.

The Access Hollywood video of Donald Trump has been like a hurricane to me, forcibly blowing the clouds to and fro, with rays coming and going.  Even though the tape is revolting on every level, it has actually been helpful to me because it is a verbal record of what perverted men think.  It’s a “Hallelujah!” moment.  Now there are words and a visual for my experience.

Poor Arianne Zucker in the purple dress had no idea that she was being burned alive by a bus full of cacklers seconds before their meeting, behaving like the men who clapped and cheered while watching Jodi Foster’s character get raped in The Accused.  The sun was fully exposed in that moment, yet it was never darker outside.

with my husband and daughters/2015