Presidential candidate Donald Trump, women owe you a vote of thanks. Your off hand statements, made public, objectifying women as sexual objects available to you at your whim, has allowed the sexual discrimination issue shoe to drop for us with a loud thud.
It has been clear all along that economic issues and reproductive issues are key for the liberation of women. Sexuality issues, not so clear and not so easy to talk about. Women are encouraged to be desired and beautiful, sexual.
When Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner, she became a “beautiful woman,” dressed in a sexy outfit on a Vanity Fair cover. That is what defines desirable womanhood after all. One step ahead for the transgender community and one step back for women.
Women have been and are encouraged to pay great attention to how we look. And the social norm for defining beauty is, well, skin deep, and unattainable, even unhealthy, for most women. Of course, it totally ignores other key and more important aspects of being: simply having value as persons, being endowed with a variety of gifts, living as whole persons for whom sexuality and spirituality can be integrated, both important. Reducing women to sexual objects is the other shoe of sexism.
Of course, sexuality and its expression is an important part of who we are as human beings. As women, we want to own our bodies and enjoy them. They are ours to share as we please. This turns out to be harder than it should be. Because sexuality is important, it is all too easy to misuse and abuse it. And in this day when we are supposedly all more sexually liberated than our forebears, it is hard to set sexual boundaries and address sexual ethics. Donald Trump is helping us figure out what they are.
It is wrong for men to see women as sexual objects even if they say they love them. Most men know this intellectually. The trouble is, Trump represents a cultural reality that still plagues us, the conflagration of power and sexual entitlement.
Trump is quick to deflect criticism of him by pointing out ex-President Bill Clinton’s sexual transgressions. His too are wrong which doesn’t let Donald Trump off the hook. It is wrong to engage in sexual activity, even where there is consent, where there is a professional power relationship…not to mention a marriage. It is wrong to exploit people in your care or employ, be they students, patients, clients, or young aides. Sexual harassment. Where there are spouses involved, they are violated too. Are they really supposed to look the other way and share the blame even when they may be experiencing lasting trauma themselves?
Sexual issues are the “other shoe” in identifying matters at the heart of discrimination against women because of the many many ways in which they tug at an important part of our identity. We can affirm our sexuality without being defined or exploited by it, or encouraged to use it for material gain.
How can we stop the sexual abuse of women and some men whose bodies are violated for pleasure, punishment, and the exertion of power from incest and rape to sexual harassment, to human trafficking, to daily insults. We need to name the offenses, prosecute them to the fullest extend possible. We need to distinguish between pathological behavior and healthy sexuality.
We want to affirm sexuality and enjoy its expression in healthy reciprocal relationships of consent. To do this we need to confront the objectification not only of women, but of sex. Sexually abusive people mess not only with our bodies but with our minds and psyches. The sexual abuse of women functions to keep women in their place and elevate men’s entitlement.
Of course, sexual discrimination and the violation of women and children is nothing new. It is age old and world wide. Still, it garners headlines in recent US history. Lawyer Anita Harris confronted now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment. More recently, we have had to confront pedophilia among priests, and following that, date rape on campus, and sexual violations by teachers, coaches, therapists, clergy and on and on. Now Donald Trump with his easy access to women mind, makes public a generic kind of the objectification of women. He calls it “locker room” talk, or is it prep school chatter. He digs the hole deeper.
What Donald Trump has enabled is the surfacing of and reflecting on these matters by sensitive and sane women and men. People who have had sexual sins perpetrated against them with which they have lived silently are speaking out. They speak out to finally liberate themselves and future generations from sexual violations too often taken for granted as inevitable.
A Minister friend is led to recount never spoken of unwanted sexual assaults and the affect they have had on her life. A teacher friend becomes more conscious about how he is “seeing” his female students. A parishioner who was dying recounted the affairs her husband had had over the years about which she had never spoken felt unable to shake the “traumatic shock” that had haunted her life. A relative expressed the trouble he had forgiving his wife for her unfaithfulness.
I remember things still on my mind that I never told anyone when they happened. Men exposed themselves on public transportation when I was commuting to High School. I turned away and thinking of them as perverts, I never spoke out and not wanting to talk about it, didn’t report it. There were other stranger violations and a violation by a therapist that I never said anything about those either. These experiences left me with a feeling of vulnerability and confusion. I chalked it up to being a woman in our society and went on with my life. Now, thanks to Mr. Trump, I feel the anger of having been violated. I want to stop other men from demeaning women. I want the world to pay attention to how serious Trump’s sexism is.
So now that the shoe has been dropped quite visibly in public, we are called upon to address sexual discrimination in earnest, not only for the exceptionally heinous situations some women have faced, but for the daily ways in which women of all walks of like have been objectified and violated and diminished. We will reclaim our sexuality and celebrate its expression with those who respect and love us. We will be grateful for the men who stand with us.
Donald Trump has done us another favor. He has allowed us to talk about sexual morality without sounding prudish. We have too often silenced ourselves for fear of being sexually prudish or perceived as “goody two shoeish.” Those who turn away unwanted advances are not cold, they have self respect. Those who do not find men making unwanted sexual advances are not sexually unattractive (which is about more than breast size, weight, or age.) And men like Donald Trump are not just being men, they need to be called out for being the sexual predators they are.
One Biblical incident comes to mind as I think about these things. As a minister I often wonder what Scripture has to say. I think of Jesus saying to the crowd about to stone a woman caught in adultery, “Let those without sin cast the first stone.” And everyone puts down their stones. These are pretty universal issues.
I wonder, where the man was with whom she was caught. Did he have a wife? Why isn’t he being stoned. And I know the answer. That was a sexist culture. The thing is, even in that patriarchal context, Jesus stood up for the woman who was about to be stoned, not to excuse her sexual transgression but to call the crowds attention to their own sins and the injustice of the situation.
Jesus knows what we all know if we stop to think about it. At some level, we are all complicit in sexual sin and discrimination against women, even if our sin is simply accepting cultural norms. Do we know the serious effects of sexism in society? Like racism, it is deeply embedded in all of us and in our society. Those who suffer most are those most violated. But we are all hurt and diminished by it.
It is essential to social well being, and the liberation of women and men together, to sort these things out. Sexual discrimination stands in the way of seeing women and men as whole people and experiencing the pleasure and fulfilling intimacy that can be ours through the healthy expression of our sexuality. We do know this if we stop to think about it.
I confess, I found myself reacting emotionally as long silenced issues surfaced in me the night of the second Presidential debate. Trump was clearly in the wrong. Of course, so had Bill Clinton been. Now why was Trump trying to hang her husband’s offenses on Hillary Clinton? Why were we even talking about sex front and center in a Presidential debate?
In many ways, this election was a show down between machismo and women’s liberation. Patriarchy is as important as any other issues facing our nation and world. Gender equality will go a long way toward addressing poverty and violent mind sets around the world.
So I wade into deep waters and many things rise to the surface. As I do, I experience a new personal freedom and new hope for society. Thank you Mr. Trump for going public with your sexism. If you win the election today, Secretary Clinton, governing will not be easy, but the glass ceiling needed to be shattered and the majority of Americans agree.