Look, I don’t usually get ghetto up in here, ‘but I’m bout to. I want to know what kind of man excuses his statements of sexually assaulting women as locker room talk. Apparently, a man like Donald Trump.
I’m not a political blogger and I’m not trying to tell you who to vote for, but I do feel I have to address what was said. Why? Because Donald Trump just told men, women, boys, and girls that it is ok to brag about sexually assaulting women.
Locker Room Talk is NOT Ok
When confronted with why Donald talked about degrading and sexually assaulting women, he claimed it was just “locker room talk”; something our society could do without. While I know that coarse joking about women occurs, it is simply not ok.
The message that is being shared with our kids and teens is that it is ok to talk that way about women. It’s just words, after all.
No One Has to Put Up With Locker Room
This whole idea of boys will be boys has got to go. No one- not men, women, or kids, have to put up with locker room talk. The message we need to be sending to our society is that there is no room for the types of things that Trump had to say about these women.
Sexual Assault is Real and Can’t Be Excused
Along with the disrespectful things he said about the specific woman, Trump also described sexually assaulting women. He talked about how he could just grab them by their genitals and they would let him because he is a star. That is feeding into our rape culture.
Misguided Memes
What’s more frustrating is to see the memes that are coming out of this. I’ve seen two that have really bothered me.
Fifty Shades of Grey Meme
One of the memes asks this- “80% of the readers of Fifty Shades of Grey are women? Tell me again how women can justify being angry about Trump’s lewd comments?”
This way of thinking is so misguided. The message we are sending to sexual abuse victims is that they should be ok with it, because people read books like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Even if a woman chooses to read that type of book, it doesn’t give a man the right to touch her.
Stars Can Dress The Way They Want to Meme
The other meme I’ve seen has several female stars posing in sexual manners, or completely naked. That meme says- Remember: The same women telling you how Trump’s comments at disgusting, will tell you that these women are empowering.
First of all, that is not true. There are plenty of women that find both Trump’s comments and the way those women dress to be disgusting. However, just because women dress a certain way, doesn’t give men the right to sexually assault them.
What We’re Saying to Sexual Abuse Victims
Between Trump’s video and the internet memes, we are telling sexual abuse victims that they just have to deal with it. Trump claims that it’s just locker room talk. The memes say that it’s just what women want.
Can we please stop feeding into the rape culture? We’ve got rapists like Brock Turner that raped a girl and then got out of jail after 3 months, because they didn’t want to ruin his life. What about the victim? She has to live with the pain of his actions forever.
We’ve got men like Trump, saying that since he is a star, he can grab a woman by her genitals and get by with it.
We Have to Be Intentional in Teaching Our Children
There’s nothing any of us can do about the things our kids see. We can do our best to keep them away from social media and news stories, but that will only last for a short time.
What we must do is tell our kids that it is not ok. It’s not ok for any person to speak of other humans the way Trump did. It’s not ok to touch someone in a sexual manner without their permission. It’s not ok to justify sin on account of the sin of others.
Be intentional with your kids. Have these conversations. I know you don’t want to, but it’s going to be hard to hide it from them during this election year.
