Women in this country are largely considered untrustworthy narrators of our own experiences. This is especially true when it comes to women's interactions with men, and even more true for women who say they have been assaulted by men, sexually or otherwise.
Former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields said that she was forcefully grabbed and nearly thrown to the ground by Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at a Trump press conference on March 8. There is eyewitness testimony. There is a photograph of Fields' bruised arm. There is an audio recording and video footage of the alleged assault. And on March 29, Lewandowski was formally charged with battery.
Still, Trump isn't convinced Fields is telling the truth.
On March 11, Lewandowski tweeted that Fields was "totally delusional," and now Trump, whose campaign has vowed to stick by Lewandowski even if he's found guilty, has resorted to textbook gaslighting and victim-blaming.
- Trump has repeatedly suggested that Fields was lying about the whole thing, offering up theoretical holes in her story: “How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?"
He suggested that women who are assaulted must scream to make said assault legitimate: “If you’re going to get squeezed, wouldn’t you think she would have yelled out a scream or something if she has bruises on her arm?"
He blamed Fields for the entire incident: "She's grabbing me and asking questions. She's not even supposed to ask questions."
And he topped the whole thing off by implying that because Lewandowski has a family, he couldn't possibly assault a woman: "I think it’s very, very unfair to a man with a wonderful family."
Trump's comments are incredibly dangerous, not just to Michelle Fields, who has received a barrage of abuse on social media, but to all women who come forward with allegations of assault.
Publicly announcing the innocence of someone who has been accused of assault necessitates we assume the accuser is lying. As writer Aaron Bady beautifully outlined in a 2014 essay for the New Inquiry:
The damnably difficult thing about all of this, of course, is that you can’t presume that both are innocent at the same time. One of them must be saying something that is not true. But “he said, she said” doesn’t resolve to “let’s start by assuming she’s lying,” except in a rape culture, and if you are presuming his innocence by presuming her mendacity, you are rape cultured. It works both ways, or should: if one of them has to be lying for the other to be telling the truth, then presuming the innocence of one produces a presumption of the other’s guilt.
When women are assaulted, they know in no uncertain terms that the culture they exist in is not on their side. They know that the default attitude towards their claims will be doubt and suspicion. They know people will wonder what they did to "invite" the alleged assault. When women who are assaulted choose not to come forward with their allegations, they are often trying to avoid the shitstorm of critique and abuse and re-traumatization that will almost certainly follow them if they go public with their claims. And if they change their minds, and come forward at a later date, they know the public will use that time gap as another justification for why they must be lying.
It is this culture that kept Bill Cosby's alleged victims silent for decades.
It is this culture that allowed a Canadian judge to criticize alleged victims of Jian Ghomeshi for texting each other, suggesting that the communication might be indicative of "collusion."
It is this culture that left Luckiest Girl Alive author Jessica Knoll unable to use the word "rape" in regards to her gang rape for years.
It is this culture that created an atmosphere in which Fields felt so unsupported that she left her job.
I have written before about how as a presidential candidate, Trump's misogyny legitimizes misogyny writ large, giving people permission to hate women. In the same vein, his remarks about assault give people permission to ignore women who come forward about violence they have endured at the hands of men.
As EMILY’s List Communications Director Marcy Stech said in a statement:
Nothing says ‘cherish women’ like questioning a woman’s motive after her assault has been caught on camera. The leader of the Republican Party has repeated over and over again that ‘no one is a bigger supporter of women’ -- but today’s incident underscores Trump’s decades-long record of offensive and misogynistic behavior that gets at the core of his being.
Welcome to Trump's America.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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