We women know the guy. Maybe he’s a longtime friend of your dad’s, so you have to make nice even though he smells like booze. His comments to you are laden with sexual innuendo and just on the edge of vulgar, but for dad’s sake, you bite your tongue and excuse yourself as soon as is respectful – to your dad.
This guy could be your uncle, but his eyes don’t find yours, instead they linger on your breasts or your legs and he asks you to turn around so he ‘can look at you.’ Always sizing you up. Measuring.
When he arrives for the bar-b-que, or it’s time to go, his hugs are creepy uncomfortable, so you’ve learned to grasp his forearms to keep him and his hands at a distance.
On top of it all, he’s of that generation just before we learned to keep our ignorant biases to ourselves. His lasciviousness wears no veil. You make allowances for your grandpa, but this guy…
I saw him on national TV recently and recognized him immediately when his wife held him at bay. The spotlight was on them and he wanted to embrace her, give her a kiss for show, but she took his hands instead, flexed her arms and pushed ever so slightly, protecting her space without revealing too much. People were watching after all. And she was repulsed!
Just like the rest of us.
This guy, Donald Trump, is a swollen caricature with money and power and now throngs of people egging on his stunning display of misogyny.
If it’s a woman who questions his knee-jerk, conflicting statements, he responds with tasteless references to her menstrual cycle revealing inch-deep reasoning and a perverse desire to humiliate.
If a woman exercises her right to abortion, he says she should be punished!
His latest exhibition of anti-woman sentiment came when he was asked about the consequences of a woman being harassed in the workplace: She should get another job.
But this is different. Donald Trump is not our dad’s old high school buddy. He’s not our fading grandpa and he’s not the embarrassment that we tolerate because he’s family.
He’s not harmless and he cannot be ignored. We cannot excuse him. But more importantly, we cannot excuse ourselves and simply go wash the bad taste out of our mouths.
A flutter of disapproval is not sufficient. We need too make a noise like Kazir Khan.
Speak out! Speak out daily! Don’t let a flutter of complaints be enough. It’s not enough that ‘somebody said something’ in response to this guy’s blitzkrieg against women. Keep posting every day, multiple times a day.
We can sway the election. Let’s run this guy out of town on a rail.
#CrushTrumpin50states
