A recently released 2005 recording of American presidential nominee Donald J. Trump engaging in what he calls “locker room banter” about forcing himself on women has prompted many people to speak out against his behavior and his excuse of his behavior.
For instance, famed Anita Hill wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe today saying,
“Trump’s language, which he and others have tried to minimize as “locker room banter,” is predatory and hostile. To excuse it as that or as youthful indiscretion or overzealous romantic interest normalizes male sexual violence….Today’s conversation that must extend far beyond the presidential election. We have made strides in how we think about sexual violence but we’re nowhere close to done.”
The most visible response is happening over Twitter. On Friday night, author Kelly Oxford tweeted, “Women: tweet me your first assaults. They aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12.”
By Saturday morning, as many as 50 women tweeted their stories per minute of first-person accounts of sexual violence with the hashtag #notokay. By Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Oxford’s Twitter page.
Incredible, but not surprising. A 2014 study we commissioned GfK to conduct nationally in the USA showed that nearly 1 in 4 women had experienced unwanted sexual touching by a stranger while in a public space.
I can add to that number. When I was 18 years old and standing on the sidewalk in front of a cross country teammate’s friend’s house a few blocks from my college campus, a group of men walked past me. A man at least twice my size reached out and grabbed my crotch, then laughed and walked on. You don’t ever forget the humiliation and fear and disgust of something like that happening. And at the same time, I always feel “lucky” that I have never had to live through a more severe violation.
These are the kinds of stories women everywhere have lived through. To us, it is not locker room banter. It is traumatic, upsetting and memorable. We remember. Our bodies remember.
Anyway, I am really glad to see this huge response to the really alarming evidence of what we many of us suspected: Trump is a dangerous, entitled misogynist who does not respect women (nor persons of color, immigrants, etc). Surely now he will never be president. Surely now the American people will put women’s rights and respectability above any other characteristic they deem presidential about him. Surely.
