Dear Men,
If you know a single person who is or was raised and socialized as a woman, you know someone who probably can’t hear Mr. Trump’s words as just words. We hear a credible threat. I can’t think of one of us much over eight or ten who hasn’t experienced something along the continuum that leads from words like that to a shallow grave after violent stranger rape. It happens to virtually all women, from the most conventionally feminine to the most masculine, conventionally attractive and otherwise, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. It happens to people who aren’t women but have been perceived as such at some point in their lives. I’ve racked my brain for anyone I know who has ever been viewed as a woman or girl and hasn’t had this kind of thing happen. I’ve come up empty. It’s certainly happened to me.
I can tell you about the bone-deep fear we’ve all felt when we run into behavior along the continuum of sexist harassment. Sometimes, usually, hopefully, the bad behavior doesn’t escalate. It stays at yelling, groping, leering, standing too close. It’s hard, though, not to think about that shallow grave. Words like Mr. Trump’s brings back bad memories of the night someone got handsy despite a vehement ‘no’ and we were afraid more would happen, the night when more did happen, trying to decide whether to report that boss for sexual harassment. They bring back memories of trying to decide what to do in the aftermath: report it and risk retaliation and blame or let him get away with it knowing it’s probably going to happen again.
That is what Mr. Trump is, what he represents, what he stands for, what he excuses. Can you live with a president, who, called on that kind of behavior, calls it locker room talk and implies that all men do it? That you do it? I’ve spent a lot of my life among men, brass-playing men who march and play and work on obscenely heavy instruments for fun, men who make their living building, fixing, or lifting things, men who can’t take enough showers to stop smelling like heavy grease, motor oil, and cigarettes, men more masculine than Donald Trump will ever be. I’ve heard men (and, for that matter, others) say things in general category as locker room talk. I’ve heard it turn anatomical. Whatever athletes say, musicians are probably worse. What I haven’t heard are many fantasies about sexual assault because the men talking were moral beings. I’ve seen men I know encounter individuals who talk like Mr. Trump, watched them shun those men as losers and creeps. The vast majority of men aren’t the insatiable predators he says you are. Don’t let him say that about you. Tell him, loud, clear, and at the ballot box, that he’s wrong.
A candidate for the U.S. presidency thinks you’re monsters who can acceptably treat the rest of us as prey. You have to make up your mind: do you agree? Will you join Mr. Trump in living into this bleak outlook on human potential, or will you live in hope? Will you do your part to carry the burden of making the society in which we live slowly, incrementally better? Are you with perpetrators of sexual assault, or are you with the rest of us? The presidential election is a moral contest at this point, with imperfect-but-worthwhile, human progress on one side and sexual assault and threats to democratic values on the other. The choice has never been more clear. Are you brave enough to put down the security blanket of the illusion of control? Are you tough enough to watch someone who doesn’t look like you take power when that is in everyone’s best interests? There isn’t really middle ground here. It’s time to take a stand. I hope you pick the right side.
