UNITED STATES
NJ.com
By The Washington Post
on October 12, 2016
By Joy Beth Smith
When I hear Donald Trump talk about grabbing a woman by the p–y, I can feel his hand on my vagina. I can feel the weight of his body against my breasts. I can see his sickly smile, the “thank you” he throws my way when he’s finished. I can imagine it — quite vividly – because it happened to me at the hands of a co-worker.
Every day it happens to countless women. It’s been happening to me for 20 years.
The first time, I was a naïve 9-year-old girl. It was my first year riding the school bus and my first week in a new public school. With the residue of South Carolina summer still warming the air, I got off my bus and started walking the sticky, humid half-mile home.
Trump’s bragging about sexual assault went too far, the lapdog governor says. But he snuggles back in to say he endorses the Donald anyway.
With my house in sight, I heard a truck barreling up behind me. Then the yelling started. I was already just over 5 feet tall, and I looked to be at least 13 years old. For these men, that was old enough. Their first pass was a blur of crude shouts I could barely hear above the blood pulsing in my ears. I felt my face flame with shame.
I ducked my head and shuffled faster toward my front door, where I’d arrive more world-weary than when I’d left that morning. The truck turned around to head back in my direction. This time, the men were hungry, almost feral in their need to remind me, a prepubescent girl, that I was theirs to harass. The shouts increased in volume as my feet picked up speed. I slammed the door with their laughter still ringing in my ears.
That was the day I learned that I existed for the sport or pleasure of others, that my body was not my own.
In the years to follow, this message has been reinforced time and again — including by my church. Perhaps especially by the church. While the world taught me my body was not my own, it was the church that taught me my body was shameful, inherently inviting aggression, seduction and sin.
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