The Politics of Sexual Violence
Hostility towards a politician almost invariably comes before the inclination to see him as a sex offender.
Those most disgusted by Trump’s comments in his rape tape that surfaced last October, in which he confessed to being a sexual predator and serial groper, are really those who never liked him in the first place. The same is true of those who emphasize Bill Clinton’s sex crimes, or those of any other political figure for that matter.
Two standards, the first that people are innocent until proven guilty, and the second that accusers should receive the benefit of the doubt, are applied on the basis of political opportunism, not on any consistent theory of justice. Admittedly, this logic cuts against me also, as I despise both Trump and Bill Clinton and am convinced they are both sexual predators.
So far, PBS has published the most comprehensive list of Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims. Fifteen women have accused him of this crime, the most corroborated account is that of Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter from People magazine. She said that during an interview about his then recent marriage to Melania Trump, Trump pinned her against a wall and forcibly kissed her.
This is not at all different from what he claimed to do in his leaked interview with Billy Bush: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
Trump has also been accused by two women of trying to “grab them by the pussy” to which Trump likewise confessed. The themes of unwelcome kissing and genital grabbing is common to most who have accused Trump so far.
Recall that Trump began his campaign by accusing Mexican immigrants of being rapists, with far less evidence than that levied against himself.
Rape myths are peddled to encourage ethnic bigotry at such a rate that it’s almost boring. When asked at a town hall in Bridgton, Maine, in January 2016 about heroin addiction in his state, Gov. Paul Lepage of Maine, a Trump supporter, claimed that drug dealers with names like, “D-money, Smoothie and Shifty” come to the state, and, “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave.”
Anne Coulter, a white nationalist author and Trump supporter, wrote a book called Adios America!: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, which is largely about rapes committed by Mexican immigrants. Trump claimed to have read it from cover to cover.
“A 16-year-old girl at her homecoming dance was gang-raped and left for dead because the Democrats need more voters,” Coulter wrote. “We could save a lot of soul-searching about ‘our’ violent culture if journalists didn’t hide the fact that gang rapes are generally committed by people who are not from our culture.”
There are also several Twitter accounts, such as that of former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke and one called “Rapefugees” (which is frequently banned and remade, but which also exists mainly as a hashtag), that argue Syrian refugees and others should not be allowed into the U.S. because they will rape white women. Have Duke, Coulter or LePage denounced Trump’s actions or words yet? Of course they haven’t. But why would they condemn whole ethnic groups without evidence, and refrain from doing the same with Trump despite the evidence?
Because they hate one and love the other.
Donald’s reaction to the battery of assault accusations was bold, to say the least. He claimed at a rally in North Carolina on October 14 that Jessica Leeds in particular was essentially too ugly to be assaulted, saying, “Believe me, she would not have been my first choice”. A strange rejoinder, considering that even if Leeds had been Donald’s fifteenth choice he still left open the possibility that he groped her, and that presumably the words “I am too good of a man to assault women” were unavailable to him.
His immediate response was bolder still.
Up until October 2016, Trump had avoided bringing up the rape claims against Hillary Clinton’s “husband”. We can be nearly certain, at this point, that he likely feared retaliation in kind if he accused Hillary of having a sexual predator campaign on her behalf . After having nothing to lose, and perhaps something to gain, Trump invited Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, and Kathleen Willey as his guests at the Second Presidential Debate, two days after the rape tape surfaced.
When discussing sexual violence was a political liability, Trump demurred. When it was an opportunity, he pounced. Opportunist though it was, accusing Bill of being a sexual predator is one of the few things Donald is right about.
The two most damaging claims against Bill Clinton came from Juanita Broaddrick, a nurse who said he raped her in a hotel room in 1978 while he was campaigning for governor of Arkansas. The second came from Kathleen Willey, who said Bill Clinton groped her in the Oval Office in 1993 after she asked him for a full-time job. Both women had formerly been Democrats and loyal supporters of Bill Clinton. Both of their stories have been corroborated by several of their friends.
When both Willey’s and Broaddrick’s claims became public in 1998 and 1999, respectively, they did not receive the support from celebrity feminists and Democrats that Anita Hill received in 1991 when she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of repeatedly asking her on dates and discussing pornography, including bestiality, with her. Willey first came forward in an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes on March 15, 1998, and claimed that Bill Clinton had forcibly kissed her, touched her breast and placed her hand on his genitals.
One week later, professional feminist Gloria Steinem, published an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Feminists and the Clinton Question.”
“The truth is that even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment,” Steinem wrote. “He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life.”
Even if the allegations are true. Steinem entertains the hypothetical that if Willey’s claim were to be 100 percent true, it was simply a breach of taste, not sexual assault. In the same article, Steinem also claimed that there was an important difference between the accusations made against Clinton and those against Justice Thomas because Clinton only groped Willey once, but Thomas harassed Hill repeatedly.
No, the important difference is that Clinton was a pro-choice Democrat and Thomas a pro-life Republican.
The resurfacing of Bill Clinton’s sexual assault allegations also made life more difficult for poor Hillary. On Sept. 14, 2015, at a town hall in Cedar Falls, Iowa, discouraged by millennial women supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over her in the polls, Hillary Clinton addressed sexual assault victims.
“I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault…You have a right to be heard. You have a right to be believed, and we’re with you,” Hillary Clinton said. A similar message surfaced on her campaign website later that week, only to be taken down by Feb. 4, 2016. Earlier that winter, Broaddrick had begun tweeting about what happened in 1978.
The boldest of these tweets from Jan. 6, 2016, is still, as of today, her pinned tweet.
Hillary’s original stance on burdens of proof became harder and harder to maintain as she was bothered with pesky questions about Broaddrick’s claims that winter at town halls leading up to New Hampshire and Iowa. Her adopted standard, that the burden of proof is on the accused, was convenient when it was adopted; and when it stopped being convenient, she dropped it.
Politics should not play a role in whether an accuser, or the accused, is believed in the court of public opinion. But they do. In fact, they appear to play the only role.
