The most recent (but probably not the last) shocking revelation about Donald Trump’s character came out of the Access Hollywood production archives:
#DonaldTrump: the comments about women you hadn't heard: https://t.co/MyQXnrSPtG pic.twitter.com/sSUK9qqixo
— Access Hollywood (@accesshollywood) October 8, 2016
You’ve probably heard the recording by now, in which Mr. Trump brags about how he can get away with non-consensual groping (a form of sexual battery in California) because of his star power. Trump came up with a characteristically non-apologetic apology, in which he excused his words as mere locker room banter.
I want to be very clear on this, for the sake of those who have never been in a men’s locker room: Boasting about groping is not standard male banter.
During all my years on swim team as a youth, I never heard a young man boast of sexual assault or groping.
During four years at a military academy—a notoriously hyper-masculine environment—I never once heard one of my undergraduate peers boast of sexual assault or groping.
In the last two decades of being an adult in the world, I’ve been privy to all manner of exclusively male conversations. I have yet to hear a grown man boast of sexual assault or groping.
In locker rooms, (not all) men freely brag about their sexual exploits, they chat about which women they have been with or would like to get with, they describe what they have done or would like to do in lurid detail. This bragging is predicated on the idea that the speaker is such an exemplar of masculinity that women actually want to be with them, of their own free will. It is no manly boast to say “I sexually assaulted that woman by groping her crotch without permission,” because literally any adolescent schoolboy can do that; all it requires is an exceptional lack of ethics and self-restraint.
Donald Trump is not an everyman engaging in everyday male talk, he is an amoral aristocratic Übermensch who willfully disregards the moral standards which prevail even in locker rooms. The Christian Right must be damned proud to have him leading the charge for restoration of family values.
