I heard the news.
I watched the debate.
I thanked God I wasn’t on Facebook.
I heard a friend say, “It’s not like it matters who is president anyway. The world will go on.”
I thought of my friends, my family who would vote for him.
I thought of my friends, my family who wouldn’t vote against him because “She’s just as bad, if not worse.”
It made me think…how many woman have been moved on, grabbed, kissed, fondled without consent?
I was a kid when it happened. About the same age my daughter is now. Playing hide and seek. And I had no clue. I never told anyone. I just stopped hiding with him because I didn’t like how I felt when he stuck his hands down my pants. I didn’t even really get that it was wrong or that there were people you should tell until I was an adult. (Hi, my name is Kate and I still live in a bubble of naiveté). And then you find Kelly Oxford’s timeline and realize there are so many of us. Too many of us.
Now there is tape of a 60 year old man bragging about something no one should ever do and ten years later, he’s on presidential debate stage.
His defense is that it’s “locker room talk”.
This isn’t funny or cute or “boys being boys” or acceptable. This is rape culture. And it’s time we stop allowing it and show our girls and perhaps more importantly our boys that women are people. And we don’t treat people that way. And we don’t talk about treating people that way.
It does matter who gets elected. Hillary Clinton is not just as bad as Donald Trump.
And I have no room for debate.