The lewd stares. The elevator eyes that travel up and down your body, making stops along the way when they see something they like. The whistles, the winks, the catcalls shouted out of car windows or delivered across the sidewalk with a smirk.
All of it unsolicited, all of it unnecessary.
And that’s the baseline. That’s the guarantee, the expectation, the established norm you learn to accept. As a woman, you’re lucky if this is all you’ve ever encountered.
You hope that no one will ever force himself on you without asking for your consent. You hope that no one will ever reach out and grab you by your genitals.
And yet, a man who feels entitled to do just that wants to be my president.
I don’t think he should get what he wants. I don’t think he deserves to.
If someone decides to crudely objectify me as I walk past him on Kirkwood Avenue, I can ignore him. Depending on my mood and the time of the transgression — night is invariably scarier — I can limit the effect that person has on me.
What will I do if a similarly despicable individual is not merely on my campus, but in the Oval Office? I cannot control the extent of his influence on my life. He won’t just be some creep. He’ll be the leader of my country.
As if things weren’t bad enough.
To be a college-aged woman is to be fundamentally paradoxical. At a time in which I am learning to fully wield my autonomy, to go forth confidently into the world and assert my place in it, I am also becoming more aware of the barriers that stand in my way and of the dangers to which I am particularly vulnerable because of something I can’t change.
It is endlessly frustrating to live this way.
I want to snap back when someone decides to tell me what he thinks of my skirt and of the body underneath it, but I know that at best I’ll be ignored. At worst, he might feel provoked and decide to follow the example set by one of his presidential candidates.
I expect my male friends to treat me as their equal, but I frequently rely on them to feel safe. If I’m walking home from a class or meeting after dark, I will almost definitely have a moment of fear. More than once, if the walk was especially far or the hour was exceptionally late, I have called and asked to be accompanied.
Waiting for me when I return are my roommates, my pajamas and the familiar exasperation of admitting that there are things I’m not comfortable doing on my own.
And now this? I have been witness to Trump’s sexism for months. But the comments he makes in the video of a 2005 interview published Friday by the Washington Post feel different.
Rather than an immature huff about blood coming out of a woman’s “wherever,” these statements are directly abusive and undeniably predatory. Imagine being Arianne Zucker, the actress who does not join the interview in which Trump makes those remarks until after he’s made them. Did she have any idea?
If she didn’t then, she does now. And so do we.
mareklei@indiana.edu
@foreverfloral97
