Imagine this: You're walking down the sidewalk, broad daylight. Someone runs up behind you and grabs you — one arm around you on the left, across your breasts and grabbing the one on the right; one arm around you on the right, reaching down between your legs, grabbing and pulling up hard enough to lift you off the ground.
You can't move because his arms are around yours. It only lasts that long, up into the air about 2 feet and then back on the ground. During that short time, you feel his left hand squeezing your breast and his right hand digging hard into your crotch. Then he lets go and leaves. For about 5 seconds you can't move. "What the hell just happened?" you ask yourself. Then you turn to see who it was. He's already almost a block away, but you still know who it is. You live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else.
But you say nothing. The tendency is always to blame the girl in these situations. Even though you're only in high school, you know that.
You're in a bar having drinks with a man you have known as a friend for years. He offers you a ride home and you accept. It's a long walk in the woods and it's dark. Instead of driving you home, he drives to the other end of town, pulls into a short road hidden in the woods and begins to "make advances." This is not something you want and you tell him to stop. He begins to insist, so you get out of the car. He follows you and pins you against the car with his body and forces a kiss on you. Another car pulls up to the end of the road and, even though you don't know who it is, you run for it and throw yourself into the car. These guys take you home.
You tell your father, who says there's nothing you can do.
You've moved to "the big city." You've found your first "real" job — full time, paid vacations, medical benefits — mornings in the advertising department and afternoons in the credit department of a department store. Things are going well until your boss in the advertising department resigns for another company. He invites you to dinner to "discuss opportunities for you to move to this new company with him, including a big raise." You discover that you will need to sleep with him for him to really consider this. You don't. Then, the man who becomes your new boss fires both you and the only other advertising department employee, also a woman, and replaces you both with men.
There's nothing you can do.
These things happened to me many years ago. As a woman, I had hoped that the attitudes toward woman that had made these things "acceptable" had gotten better. I do think there have been large changes. But after listening to Donald Trump, it has become obvious it's not enough. My personal anxiety level has shot off the chart at the thought of any man with such a disregard for women's feelings being the leader of this nation.
The one thing I notice in this is the sense of entitlement in the attitudes of the men who are currently in the news — from Donald Trump to Bill Cosby to Bill Clinton. They are rich celebrities who can get away with these things because they feed the fear of repercussions with intimidation. Of course, those who were abused never said anything when it happened. If they were anything like me, the fear of going up against a man that rich and powerful wouldn't have been a consideration. Not a chance.
In my mind, any women who support Donald Trump for president have probably never had any of these things happen to them. Lucky them. I hope they never do.
Beth Bronski lives in Roseville.
