SYTFE
Gold Member
- Banned
- #1
Thirty-five years ago, Beth Anderson was raped by a man who’d offered her a ride home.* Unlike most victims, she found a modicum of justice: Her rapist was arrested and, after a plea bargain, served a year and a day in prison. “I moved on,” says Anderson, now 56 and a web developer living in a small town in western Wisconsin. “I’ve never had any issues with having sex. I was able to separate that out. It’s never bothered me. Until now.”
Ever since a 2005 tape emerged of Donald Trump boasting of grabbing women “by the pussy,” the election has been dominated by talk of sexual abuse and misogynist bullying. Watching it unfold, Anderson says, has brought memories of her ordeal flooding back. “It really kicked in with this whole conversation about how rape-y he is,” she says. “The entire conversation has been taken over by sexual assault. And it’s really hard.” Hardest of all for Anderson has been seeing men she knows and trusts defend Trump. “That’s the part that makes me cry,” she says, her voice breaking over the phone. “Because even the men you think are safe, aren’t safe.”
All over America, the squalid denouement of the Trump campaign is forcing women to think anew about abuse they’ve endured. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, the weekend after the release of the Trump tape saw a 33 percent increase in people turning to its National Sexual Assault Hotline for support. Traffic to the group’s website was up 45 percent. The writer Kelly Oxford says that 1 million women responded to her call to tweet their first sexual assault. On MSNBC, the journalist Ana Marie Cox choked up while discussing sexual abuse allegations against Trump. “I have to say, I’m very concerned for a lot of women out there, because I was brought back by that statement to something that happened to me when I was a young woman,” Cox said. Michelle Obama spoke for many when she said that Trump’s attitude toward women “has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”
Read the rest here:
Donald Trump Is a Human Trigger
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Really disturbing. If this doesn't make you sick, then YOU are part of the problem.