Donald Trump successfully tricked America into talking about his recorded boasting about his sexual assaults as “locker room talk”. He admits not being proud of his recorded language, but he’s clear that to linger on the topic of his abuse of women would be giving in to political correctness.
When I first heard Trump’s comments, I honestly didn’t think of locker room talk. Instead, I thought of crook’s bragging caught on a hidden wire worn by a jail house cellmate who was hoping for a reduced sentence for his own misdeeds.
Trump didn’t just speculate about his future success with a particular woman or all women or all pretty women. He described actual past and current actions. He was bragging about his past assaults. He was planning immoral actions which, it turns out, he routinely carried out in the real world.
Locker room talk like Trump wants us to associate with his recording is often focused on sex and the speaker’s desirability to the people he, himself, lusts after. You use words that you don’t want your grandmother to know that you know.
But, locker room talk, at least in my decades of personal experience, carries an element of respect for the lust object and a hope that the lust object will really return your feeling.
“How can anyone resist me? I know they want me!” is different than Trump’s historical-sounding report on how he takes what he wants from women. More than anything, Trump’s words belong in a how-to book on molestation.
Of course, the serious problem from Trump is that more and more real-world women are coming forward to say that he did to him what he bragged about on tape and in other interviews. He has committed a series of sexually motivated batteries. He is right, though, that his perceived wealth and social power have inoculated him against any legal consequences so.
Early on Friday, Trump’s running mate, Governor Mike Pence, proclaimed on the Today show that evidence disproving Trump’s accusers would be released in hours (see the Today show news.) No evidence has been released so far. For good reason, I suspect. I can believe that the Trump team may find a discrepancy in a detail, or perhaps one of the many women coming forward will be a publicity-seeking liar. Maybe. But, there’s no body of evidence ready to clear Trump of his immoral behavior. There just isn’t.
Donald Trump’s own boastful jail house words clearly set out his pattern and behavior toward women. His ongoing public comments about women’s looks, his rating of their attractiveness, and his comments on their menstrual cycles are consistent with his Trump-take-all physical actions.
If objecting to a powerful, wealthy man forcing his physical attentions on women is simple political correctness, then I guess I am simply politically correct. If objecting to the judging a woman on her appearance and seeing her only in sexual terms is politically correct, then, sure, color me politically correct.
On the other hand, if you believe that bragging about your assaults and your ongoing abusive behavior is simply forgivable locker room talk, then I hope you (if you’re a woman), your wife, your mother, your sisters, and your daughters grow strong and gain self-respect to protect themselves against predators like Trump.
Trump was bragging about his deeds like a bad guy in the jail house caught on a wire. He wasn’t just sleaze talking in the locker room.