Make Rape Evil Again

Laura   

My first personal experience with sexual abuse was when I was a junior in college.  Donna and I had shared a few Psychology courses over the previous three years and became friends.  I'd visit her from time to time in her dorm room in Dickinson Hall, and Laura roomed a few doors down the hallway from her.  Donna introduced the two of us, and we hit it off pretty well.  After a few weeks and a couple dates, Laura and I commenced our first make-out session on the bed in her dorm room.  It seemed to be going okay for a minute or two but abruptly took an eerie turn.

     Laura's lips suddenly froze and her body, which was partially under my own, stiffened like a mannequin.  When I pulled back my face from hers, I saw she wore a catatonic stare, and her eyebrows furrowed and stuck in position.  Her eyes locked onto mine, but her gaze wasn't looking at me as much as it was looking through me, as if her focus was locked on something ten feet behind me.

"Laura? Laura? Are you okay?" I asked.  Nothing.  No response.  Not verbally, not physically.  Her stare was hauntingly lifeless and cold.  She looked like a corpse, with unblinking eyes and a complexion faded to ghost white.

"Hey, what's wrong? Laura...? What's going on?"  I asked, unsuccessfully trying to wake her from whatever trancelike state she was in. Her hands were up against my chest, and she slowly grabbed onto my shirt and clenched it tightly in her white-knuckled fists.  She coiled beneath me. "Stop...stop", she whispered.  Then louder, "Stop! Stop!".

     "Okay", I said softly, trying my best to remain calm while panicking on the inside. "Laura...Laura, you're okay."  Her catatonia continued for another couple minutes - her piercing, defenseless stare, the twisting grip on my shirt, and her inaudible murmurings of discomfort unnerved me.  All the while, I continued trying to talk her out of whatever traumatic hallucination she was experiencing.  "Laura, it's Johnny.  Hey...you're okay.  I'm here.  Everything's okay."  The couple of minutes seemed like a couple hours.

     Eventually...slowly, Laura's eyes blinked, her normal complexion returned, and her twisting grip on me relaxed. She looked at me now, not through me.  And she returned from whatever nightmarish place she had just visited.  She apologized profusely through tears as I tried my best to console her while trying to hide my own startled emotions.  Even though I didn't know much about it at the time, laying with her on that bed, I knew what she had just experienced.  She had been a victim of sexual abuse, and she had had a trauma flashback.  For the next hour I tried my best to calm and console her.  We lay on our sides facing each other, my hands cupped over her hands.  She didn't say much.  Actually, she said almost nothing. I guessed snapshots of being victimized were still floating around in her mind's eye.  They must have faded enough from the realness of the previous few minutes if she was at least back with me in the present.  Laura understood that I understood, and so talking things over at that time seemed unnecessary. And something she wasn't ready to do.

     I proceeded cautiously with Laura after that.  The next few times in her company I made certain to just be with her, in a way far removed from anything close to physical.  We met between classes, had lunch together, talked about our courses, laughed a lot, and carried on.  The few times we kissed, I was hyperaware of a potential repeat of what had happened, so our kissing was more mechanical and less romantic.  I made a point to minimize body contact with her. 

     But a repeat scenario did happen about a week later.  Our kissing and closeness went from pleasant and consensual to another episode of flashback terrors.  She was not in the present, but somewhere in her childhood past, being sexually abused and raped by a family member.  This episode lasted longer than the first one.  And it was more violent.  Laura pleaded with me to stop doing to her what she perceived I was doing, when I was simply just lying next to her. Her fearful stare into my eyes wasn't seeing me, but her abuser.  What she felt was him forcing himself on her again, and she couldn't stop it.  And there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I just had to wait it out until her flashback ended.  A similar occurrence happened a third time a few days later.

   

     Laura and I never became a couple in the boyfriend-girlfriend sense.  We never got past that initial relationship phase of a few tryout dates.  We did remain good friends for the next year and a half up through graduation.  When she felt like it, Laura was comfortable enough with me to discuss her abuse history from time to time - though only superficially.  She didn't go into great detail but would share with me her struggle to survive and carry on every day as normally as she could.  She had a therapist she liked and would tell me the progress she was making thanks to her.  A strong safety net of friends was important, she told me.  She said I was a part of that for her. 

     Michelle

     Michelle was a twelve-year-old girl of Laotian descent.  I was a 23-year-old social worker in my third month on the job with the Department of Social Services.  Me and a co-worker had to investigate the sexual abuse allegations of Michelle by her stepfather.  Michelle had a mother and younger brother, both Laotian.  After interviewing Michelle, her mother and younger brother, and stepfather, we determined the allegations were likely true.  We removed Michelle from the home.  She entered the foster care system, and eventually her stepfather was convicted and sent to Cedar Junction Prison for the molestation of his stepdaughter, which had been going on for about three years.  Michelle's mother wasn't happy about the circumstances.  Not so much about what her husband had been doing to her daughter, but for what Michelle had done - telling a teacher at school what was happening at home.  Michelle's mom was angry at Michelle and blamed her for causing this family rupture and sending her husband to prison. Whatever had happened, Mom did not think Michelle should have told anyone.  I believe the traditional patriarchal cultural roles of Laotian women played a part in Mom's point of view.  For the two years I was Michelle's caseworker, I learned how devastating and traumatic it is being the child victim of sexual abuse.  I also learned the horrible truth about how common it is for a child to be shamed and blamed by her own mother for being the victim.  That added emotional abuse can sometimes be more damaging for the child than the actual sexual abuse itself. 

     Laura and Michelle were the first two girls I knew of personally who were sexual abuse and rape victims.  That number increased exponentially each year afterward because of my work.  My guess is that at least half to two-thirds of the girls and women clients and patients I've counseled in my 35 years in the psychiatric and social service field, have been victims of sex abuse.  A rough estimate in numerical terms would put that at about 1,500 (not including males).  Outside of work, I've known probably 200 or so women who have been raped/sexually assaulted.

      Rapist-In-Chief

     I don't think there are any words in the English dictionary that sound as awful as the words "rape" and "rapist".  No other words conjure up anything more vile and evil in my opinion.  "Murder" or "murderer" doesn't.  I don't think "kill" or "killer" does.  Probably the word "genocide" comes closest.  But rape and rapist have such an emotionally abhorrent association to them that it provokes an involuntary, physiological reaction.  At least it does for me.  Phonetically - that hard A, bookended by the harsh R- and -P sound harsh, cold, and emotionless. Which in part describes the act itself.  And while murder is an act of violence leading to physical death, rape is also an act of violence.  It doesn't lead to physical death, but it does lead to a lifetime of emotional and psychological trauma.  An argument can be made for rape being worse in many ways.  That survivors of sexual assault are ten times more likely to attempt suicide than non-victims, proves its devastating effects.

     1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped at least once in her life.  1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape.  Half of all women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.  These numbers are likely underestimates of true statistics, as many sexual assaults go unreported.

And yet...

We elected a rapist and serial sexual assaulter to be President of the United States.

Twice.

     Three times he was chosen by Republicans and the GOP to be their nominee.  The party that claims to be the party of family and Christian values thought Donald Trump was the best choice to be the leader of the country.  Hell, many claimed he was chosen by God Almighty himself.  Because apparently in Republican World, God bestows favor upon men who break at least nine of the 10 Commandments, and literally every other command Jesus beseeched.

     Roughly 80% of white evangelical voters cast their presidential ballots for Donald Trump in all three election years: 2016, 2020, and 2024.  The majority of Catholics voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024, and only voted for Joe Biden, a Catholic, by a slim 4-point margin in 2020. An astounding 46% of women voted for the adjudicated rapist in 2024, up from 44% in 2020.  The majority of white women voted for Trump in all three elections.

     

     I could rattle off 500 reasons for despising Donald Trump without pausing to think about it.  And none of those reasons would include his sexual predator history.  (His racism, bigotry, serial adultery, pathological lying, sociopathy, stealing from charities, stiffing contractors, draft dodging, denigrating war heroes and Gold Star families, dismantling dozens of necessary federal agencies, his tax evasion, capitulating to dictators, his admiration for Putin, Orbon, and Bin Salman, mocking the handicap, his liability for hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths, his billion dollar grifting, his tax evasion, his childish and profane tweets, stealing and selling classified documents, his total disregard for the law and the Constitution, constant acts of retribution, January 6th, Alligator Island, his utter incompetence, laziness, greed, loathsome character, his sick and sinister enjoyment in hurting people (especially the poor and marginalized), illegally kidnapping and deporting people, his sheer ignorance of basically everything the job of President entails, and on and on and on and on....) 

     Yet if those 500+ reasons were nonexistent, this one and only reason - his undeniable history of sexual assault and documented perverted sexual behavior - would be reason enough for me to hate him.   And it would certainly be reason enough to disqualify from holding any public office, let alone the United States Presidency.  I don't even factor in the surmounting evidence and continuing revelations of his grotesque involvement with Jeffrey Epstein's rape and sex trafficking enterprise. Consider me bewildered, baffled, stunned, and stupefied... that still, nine years later and counting, how any normal-minded, morally conscious person would ever vote for this lowlife scumbag.  Let alone more than once.

     Christians For Rape

     When the Access Hollywood audiotape became public a month prior to the 2016 presidential election, the political experts (and rationally sound Americans) predicted Trump's chances for winning were next to zero.  His admission to hitting on married women, kissing women without consent, and "grab(bing) them by the pussy" was considered the nail in his political coffin.  Except that it wasn't. For the vast majority of Americans who self-identified as Christian, Trump inexplicably was their choice. The white evangelical vote put him into office.  In the world of Republican politics, Christianity is a badge worn like a sponsor, or like a team jersey worn by someone who knows nothing about the sport or the team they're cheering for.  Being Christian is simply a label for Republicans, not a lifestyle practice.  Jesus is their mascot, someone to be invoked or used as a sideshow selling gimmick to attract members into their exclusive club of elite self-righteousness.  The biggest selling point?  There's no need to actually pay the dues of following the teachings of Jesus.  Give to the poor? Feed the hungry? Heal the sick? Welcome the foreigner? Love your neighbor? That's all woke liberal socialism nonsense.  None of that wimpy empathy stuff is in the GOP's version of the Bible.

     "Family values" and "Judeo-Christian values" parroted by the conservative right are favorite oft-quoted holier-than-thou catch phrases.  They're used in attacks upon the opposition in an attempt at differentiating themselves from the "secular" and "demonic" Democratic Party.  But when one of their own partakes in something deemed incompatible with said values, then the mental and theological gymnastics of minimizing, excusing, and justifying it reach Olympic level.  Just compare the years-long Republican attacks regarding the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal compared to the shoulder-shrugging, "nothing to see here" response to the Donald Trump/Stormy Daniels scandal.  That's just one of countless examples.

     Republican Values

     I've heard it all from Trumpers who take issue with my protest signs:

     "He didn't rape anybody!"

     "They're all liars!"

     "There's no proof."

     "Biden's the rapist, not Trump!"

     "E. Jean Carrol is a liar.  She just wants his money."

     "He kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Largo when he found out about him."

     "Bill Clinton did way worse things than Trump."

     How one justifies their support for a well-known and well-documented serial sexual assaulter and adjudicated rapist is beyond my scope of understanding.  This grotesque man was credibly accused of sexual assault by at least 26 women.  A jury concluded that Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.  He admitted to watching teenagers undress in locker room.  He's on tape saying he grabs women by their genitalia without their consent.  Ex-wife Ivana claimed he forcibly raped her.  He (allegedly) raped 13-year-old Katie Johnson along with Jeffrey Epstein.  And now that his association with former best friend Epstein and his "Rape Island" sex trafficking business has been well established, he still has unwavering support from his cultish base.  As vile as it is for denying or excusing Trump's behavior for political purposes, the self-serving, unethical values of Republican politicians can be expected.  But for anyone else I ask, where are your morals?  What are your values?  What do you tell your children about Trump's sex crimes? Is sexual assault and the rape of children not a concern for you as a parent? What kind of person, for whatever reason, doesn't see being a rapist as a deal breaker when it comes to supporting a politician?  As baffling as it is for me to understand all of that, what is utterly incomprehensible to me is how a woman could support such a person.  The reasons, justifications, and excuses a man uses are bad enough.  They range from convincing themselves Trump is not a sexual predator, to blaming the alleged victims, to claiming they are all lying, to believing everything is a conspiracy against him, to claiming that they support Trump based on his policies, not on his personal life.  But for a woman to excuse Trump's lifelong misogynistic and assaultive treatment of women, is dumbfounding.  If a female Trump voter is not one of the 40% of women who have been sexually assaulted or raped in her lifetime, certainly they have known someone who has been.  In all probability, they know several or many.

 

    Conservative Gymnastics 

     Different from confirmation bias (believing what you want to believe despite evidence to the contrary), I think intentional ignorance is the way most Trump supporters mentally process his history of abusing women.  They consciously and deliberately avoid news and information about Trump's sex crimes to protect themselves from having to honestly question their support.  Ask any normal person whether rape/sexual assault is a bad thing and 100% would answer yes.  Ask whether a rapist is a bad person and 100% would again answer yes. Now insert Trump's name into the equation as said rapist and the Trumper can't defend that.  So instead, they will ignore or deny any report or evidence that shows Trump as an abuser of women.  Like hitting the MUTE and then the OFF button on a remote - nothing to hear or see here.

  

     Recently the topic of former middle and high school teachers came up when I was in the company of a few friends.  A few teachers we collectively remembered as being creepy or "handsy" with the students. A couple teachers we talked about ended up with molestation or sexual assault charges years down the road, and we weren't surprised.  We all voiced our disgust with these predators, none more vociferously than Susan, a three-time Trump voter.  An avowed Christian and mother of three, Susan is the typical Trump supporter who denounces any immorality when she sees it, and champions "Christian family values".  Yet her support for the most immoral and unchristian President in history is unwavering.  Knowing Susan and her Trump-loving husband Kevin like I do, I have no doubt both would become volcanically enraged if any man were to touch their daughter inappropriately.  I'm sure Kevin would at least ponder the idea of using the concealed carry weapon he owns, if only as a fleeting thought of just retribution.  And yet, Kevin and Susan are unaffected by the idea of Trump doing such a thing to someone else's daughter (or sister, or mother).  That's not something they see worthy of their attention or condemnation.  It's willfully invisible on their radar of wrongdoing.  Intentional ignorance is a strong trait in the mind, eyes, and ears of Trump's supporters. 

 

     Women For Trump

     I've spent countless hours trying to wrap my head around the "Women-4-Trump" phenomenon ever since the Rapist-in-Chief entered the presidential spotlight in 2016.  And I think I've come up with a reason why some women support him, which I haven't heard elsewhere. Denial is a very real and strong emotional defense mechanism for victims of rape and sexual assault.  There is a large percentage of women who have been sexually abused in their past and have kept it secret, or have never addressed it in any therapeutic way.  For the faction of abused women who support Trump, denying or ignoring he is a sexual predator is their way of keeping hidden their past from entering their present consciousness.  It's a coping mechanism that protects the psyche from reliving or confronting their hurtful past.  Subconsciously, these women are probably thinking something like this:

     "If I deny he did anything wrong, and if I support him with my vote and my voice, I can convince myself that sexual assault isn't really a thing.  That it's made up.  That any sexual contact that took place was consensual. And any talk that it wasn't consensual is pure conjecture.  So, if Trump did nothing wrong, and nothing happened like they say it did, then nothing bad happened to me either." 

     Rape is not debatable

      Condemning rapists and sexual abusers in the harshest way possible should be a no-brainer.  Any human being with an ounce of decency does so.  It shouldn't be limited to only those having suffered from personal experience or to those who know a victim personally. I'm certain that my opinion about abusers like Trump would be the same had I not known my college friend Laura or 12-year- old Michelle from my days as a social worker.  I'm fairly certain had I not felt the heartache and empathy I felt for them (which I still do almost 40 years later) I'd still feel immense sorrow for victims. I'm certain I would feel the same contempt and hatred toward sex predators had I not entered a profession where abuse victims are common.  Under no circumstance would I have the cognitive dissonance or intentional ignorance these Trump supporters have.  I know this because I'm a person with a moral compass.  I have a fundamental understanding of right and wrong, from both a criminal and ethical perspective.  The same can't be said for 77 million Trump voters. I also possess traits called compassion and empathy, two things rarely and only selectively used in the MAGA-sphere. 

    I feel fortunate having grown up with five sisters.  It's rewarded me with certain social and psychological advantages and maturity I wouldn't have had otherwise. Studies show that males with sisters compared to those without, are more attuned to the needs of women, are more empathic, more androgynous, and typically have a higher emotional intelligence (EQ).  My anecdotal evidence seems to bear this out.  I've noticed any personality traits hinting at misogyny or sexism in someone is usually someone who doesn't have a sister.  Growing up with a mom and five sisters, I learned from early on that all girls and women should be treated as equals and with respect, something that is woefully lacking in MAGA culture.  My ten years of Catholic catechism reinforced these values. 

 

     Christianity to me has always meant following the teachings and examples set by the actual person the religion was founded upon. The red-letter Jesus parts of the Bible are certainly not a tenet for the Republican voting base, no matter their claims it is. I've voted against politicians and officials from all parties with far less serious moral shortcomings than Trump, so political bias doesn't influence my decisions.  What does are moral standards that work for the common good and opportunity of each member and group in society.  I've separated from many acquaintances, co-workers, and friends for what I considered their lack of integrity or moral decency.  One would think the moral standards expected of the President of The United States would be at a level higher than a person wanting to date his own daughter. Or a person calling a woman dumb, mentally disabled, horseface, a dog, a fat pig, or a fat slob.  Or claiming a woman is too ugly for anybody to want to rape.  But for Trump, this is the standard.  He has no decency. He has no morals.  Forget the red-letter parts of the Bible, Trump has never read any part of the book his followers claim they believe in.  Plus, he is a rapist and pedophile.  Doesn't sound very Jesus-y to me.  But his supporters either don't believe that he is, don't care, or don't consider all this something bad enough to lose their support.  Which will forever be utterly incomprehensible to me.  Which leads to one question:  If rape or being a rapist isn't that bad for these people, then what the fuck is?