Trump and Rape Culture

Given the recent news on Trump's highly offensive comments made last Friday, I thought it poignant to make this post about the reaction surrounding this subject while relating it back to what we've been discussing about rape and rape culture this semester.

First, it must be established that what he said definitively perpetrates rape culture.  And it was encouraging to see that the majority of major media embraced this aspect.  There is always a concern on how the media will present a story, but there was no denying that Trump's comments were in reference to sexually assaulting women.  And the media was right to call Trump's comments what they were.  But not only did they recognize it as rape culture, there even seemed to be vitriol and disgust in the commentators voices (at least the various ones that I heard) when they spoke about the video.  This, also, was encouraging to see for we should be outraged when someone speaks about women in this way--let alone actually treat a women in this manner!

But this situation also brought on something that was unexpected.  Enter Kelly Oxford. Just a simple tweet about her first sexual assault and then a call-to-action for others to share.  Expecting only a few hundred at most, but igniting 27 million (!!) women to respond.  And this number says a lot.

In class, we were given the statistic that about 6% of men will commit a sexual assault or rape.  I brought up in class, and I believe it's important to reiterate here, that I question that number.  Rather, I challenge that number.  Knowing that a majority of women do not speak up about any experiences from inappropriate touching to rape, that number is already higher than what we estimate.  But in context of 27 million women responding to and sharing their first sexual assault, I feel that the number of men that commit sexual assault of some sort is even higher that we would like to admit to.

And this gives cause for concern--and to question, once again, what are the circumstances that make sexual assault/rape an acceptable choice? Why is it that some people accept his "excuse" that it's just "locker room talk"?  Why does framing it in that way allow for some people to accept his comments as normal behavior?

And let's look at that fact that he contextualized his comments as "locker room talk."  I find myself once again seeing this relating to hyper-masculinity in sports.  (Especially given that many of the cases that we have discussed have involved sports athletes**.)  There was a sense of entitlement in the way that he spoke; a "matter-of-fact, this is what I do and nobody complains" attitude. 

This is simply not acceptable.

**I must note, though, that this also negatively effects sports athletes that do not (and will not) engage in sexual assaulting or raping a woman.  Just look at the response from athletes that are pushing back at the rhetoric that Trump is spewing about his comments about women.