When powerful men are revealed to be sexual predators, the backlash against the women they have assaulted ends up burnishing their power. Recent events only confirm what has long been a part of America’s history. It may be 2016, but any woman who doesn't know her “place” will still find herself reviled and punished.
Hatred of women is such a sickness in this country that even women participate in it.
Let us put Donald Trump’s treatment of half the human race to good use. Let’s make the most of what he shows us when he calls women “pigs” and “dogs,” when he declares female bodies and their workings “disgusting,” judges women solely on their sexual attractiveness to him, invades women’s bodies as if they are created for his pleasure and their own — their owners’ — desires are irrelevant.
Donald Trump doesn’t only reflect the way many men feel about the women who live with and among them: his is a mirror of the voice inside many women’s heads, the interior monologue most of us live with, the poison we voluntarily swallow with our cultural training. Trump’s vile and violent words lay bare exactly what we lose in our willingness to do whatever is required in order to be liked, likable, loved.
Let’s deny that inner voice the oxygen to thrive. Let’s recognize the toxic spill for what it is, whether it comes from without or within. If we reject that training, work on weakening its hold on us, we can stop being accomplices to those who would diminish and damage us.
Of course, those who reject the dehumanizing boxes men and women are even today supposed to inhabit are not the only ones under attack. With his hate speech toward anyone “other” — people of color, immigrants, LGBT citizens — Trump exposes the contempt and fear with which so many Americans are treated — an increasing majority of Americans, whose differences form the very essence of our country, the principles on which it was founded. We can chose not to silence those who speak violent words but meet them head-on, respond to every cruelty with kindness, meet ugly speech with patience but refuse to capitulate.
We can refuse to be silenced.
Domestic terrorists have reached the highest levels of power, and the damage will surpass anything ISIS or similar organizations outside this country can do.
It’s hard not to surrender to hopelessness; it’s imperative that we don’t.
Most people in this country believe in fairness and basic decency. Equality is worth fighting for, and the fight begins today.