Trump

I'd love to talk about anything other than Trump but I have to say this and it's too long for a Facebook post.  

As a long-term morbidly obese woman, I'd always had the idea that I was protected from unwanted sexual attention.  Let's face it, not many guys talk about wanting to get into the (granny) panties of someone my size.  So it was a complete shock when it DID happen.  And I don't mean just the talking of it.  

In 1993, I moved to Nashville.  My mom had died 6 months earlier and I just wanted to go to a new location.  I worked at an upscale hotel and was on AOL often.  I'd been talking to a man who lived in Memphis and we planned on getting together in Jackson, about halfway between the two cities.  I took my roommate to work, and then drove to Jackson to meet this man at a McDonald's.  We talked and seemed to get along just fine.  The place got busy but we didn't want to stop talking just yet, so we moved outside to sit in our cars.  He asked me to sit in his vehicle, which I did.  We'd been talking for maybe 15 minutes about cars, believe it or not.  I told him I liked how his van was set up and got out to look in the back better.  As I did, he shoved me into the van, got on top of me and...do I really need to give more details?  I remember thinking it couldn't be happening.  I remember feeling like I was frozen.  I was screaming at myself to do something but I couldn't move.  When he was done, he told me to get out of his car because he had to go to work.

I drove back to the apartment I shared with a good friend and said nothing.  I didn't know what to say or do, so I did nothing.  Two days later, I called the police and reported it.  The officers I spoke with told me that they really couldn't do anything because it was a date, so it wasn't rape.  I found out a few months later that this man had been arrested for grabbing several women at the bus station, raping them and then killing them, so I guess I was lucky to still be alive.

So why am I saying something now?  Because rape doesn't just happen to young, beautiful women.  It happens to children, to handicapped women, to elderly women, to nuns, and even to someone as fat as I am.  You can't depend on the police or the judges to give you justice or closure.  The only one who can protect you to any degree is yourself. Donald Trump talking to Billy Bush, saying "I took her... I moved on her like a b****. I couldn't get there and she was married."  and "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything."  This made me physically sick.  Literally, physically sick.

As bad as that is, what makes it worse is reading comments that dismiss what he says as locker-room talk, as nothing more than a private conversation. Or saying it's not as bad as what Bill Clinton did.  As if dismissing it as idle talk or deflecting the topic to someone else is going to make what Trump said go away.  As if women who heard this and were hurt by it are just being overly emotional.  As if any of this makes it right for him to even think that, let alone say it, and still be a good person to run this country.  

But what scares me most of all is that, given ALL of this, ALL of his inappropriate words and actions, he might still be voted in as President.  Because people really don't care.