It Took Trump
Trump came into office a year ago and has since catalyzed a movement with no clear end in sight. His presence in the Oval has served as a call to action for women of all backgrounds to step forward, speak up, and utter the words with confidence, resilience, and pride, “me too”. We are seeing the beginning of women being able to speak about various forms of violence they faced in recent times and even decades prior to this point in time. Violence against women has been a phenomenon that has been normalized for such a long time that the voices of women who are not victims, but survivors of violent acts like rape, domestic violence, and sexual assault, had their voices silenced for decades. This past year, these survivors were finally given a long overdue platform and were embraced by the public with open arms and open ears.
Through out the whole year that Trump has been in office, men who were once acclaimed for their contributions to the entertainment industry are now under the spotlight of having to answer to crimes they committed against women. Celebrities like Kevin Spacey — one of the initial celebrities that started the wild fire of accusations, Harvey Weinstein — the man who has the most sexual assault allegations against him, Matt Lauer, Anziz Ansari, and the most recent, James Franco all have to answer to the allegations they are facing. Many of the stories come from courageous women who were strong enough to confront these demons and show how these men should not be idolized as they were by the mass public — and instead, expose them for what they really are. In many cases, the public thought to scrutinize these women rather than to accept the realities of these men — their followers were in denial that these notable people, if prosecuted, can be convicted of being sex offenders. The Anziz Ansari story seemed like the hardest story to accept for many because he had defended women to the extent that he wore a Times Up pin to the Golden Globes and even gave a favorable interview about the #MeToo Movement. These men were taking advantage of the power that they had and it seemed like their actions were never going to become exposed because of their incredible influence, and because our culture constantly swept violence against women under the rug for these types of individuals.
Jay-Z never comes to mind as an intellectual, rather just a rapper whom is married to Beyoncé, yet the words he said about the #MeToo movement during his interview with CNN, resonated with me. He states how “for women, to go to work knowing that this sort of abuse was happening everyday… logically you’ll say why would you stay there. What’s the alternative?… You have to survive in America and in order to survive you have to normalize it…This has been going on, so for everything to get uncovered and the world to correct itself, this is what has to happen.” This part of the interview was profound to me because of how well he understood the struggle that women have to go through — deciding to stay quiet because they had the fear of losing their job and potentially ruining their careers. For example, if any actress, would have spoken against Harvey Weinstein, the public would dismiss what they said and would believe Weinstein instead, and would therefore ruin that actress’ career because people in the industry would think she reported false accusations against that man and would prefer not to work with her. He also mentions how “this movement and everything that’s going on and what we’re finding out, it’s like everything else It’s like racism — it existed the whole time.” The points that Jay-Z states in his interview connects a lot to what Kimberle Crenshaw mentioned years prior in Mapping Margins. Kimberle Crenshaw connects with Jay-Z when he mentions racism in the sense that in her article she makes the point that, “there is general tendency… to regard the problem of violence against women of color as just another manifestation of racism.” Jay-Z and a majority of other men, understand the feminist ideals and understand what this current movement is about, but others, like the President of the United States, does not.
Depicted above is the tweet Trump wrote in regards to the Women’s March, showing how ignorant he is about the movement, also showing why women stand together in solidarity against him and others who abuse and undermine women. It takes a lot of strength in women to be able to come together and ignore the biases they have towards each other, but it shows that the issue of violence against women affects every woman — regardless of class and race; Kimberle Crenshaw connects on this point when mentioning how sexual abuse is “not exclusively a problem of the poor and minority communities…it equally affects all races and classes.” This year exposed a large majority of men who were idolized by many, and created a turning point for women. There were civil rights established for women, but even since that time, the days for women have yet to be brighter. With the exposure of all these men and women saying enough is enough, brighter days are coming for women today and it will be even brighter for future generations to come because of the #MeToo Movement.
Having a conversation about the violence that women face is no longer seen as a taboo. All women are now involved in the conversation — all races, all body types, all sexualities — they blend the various representational intersections that did not allow them to blend in the past to allow for this united conversation to exist. This is a movement. A movement that took a bigot to take Presidential office in order for it to happen. A movement that was NOT created because this man created a better and more inclusive nation that allowed for there to be a safe space for women to talk about these issues. Rather, this women’s movement was created in spite of a man who is documented of speaking of how he sexually assaulted women. This is probably going to the only good thing that comes out of his presidency, and it is not even something that he did not purposely want to happen.
