O. M. G.

Well, it happened again. Just before the second presidential debate, a video was released showing Donald Trump talking about how he can do just about anything with a woman and get away with it. In case you are among the very few who hadn't heard the it, here is John Oliver showing both the tape and Trump's apology, on his show Last Week Tonight. I must warn you that there is a considerable amount of vulgar dialogue both by Trump and by John Oliver.

To be fair, I will give Trump credit for actually apologizing for what he said, rather than apologizing for the offence others might have taken--an issue to which I will return in the final part of a three-part post on political correctness that had to be delayed to post this. But in the debate, he excused his comments as being just "locker room talk" and went on to say that he was going to "knock the hell out of ISIS." I'm a little confused about the connection between his bragging about the sexual assault of women and the defeat of a terrorist uprising, except that both involve testosterone (and, frankly, narcissism).


Meanwhile, Trump and others have been quick to point out Bill Clinton's many indiscretions with women, including the débacle with Monica Lewinsky. And, loath though I am to reference anything from the Sun-Myung-Moon-founded Washington Times, Hillary Clinton  tried to discredit the women affected.

Step away from the judgment

Before we start lambasting Donald Trump for his insensitivity, and deriding Bill Clinton for his indiscretions, I would like us to pause. I would like us to avoid judging, to delay drawing attention to the sexual indiscretions of our brother, and to examine ourselves. This is what, in Matthew 7:1-5, Christ calls us to do. The series Coffee with Jesus puts it brilliantly:

(Also, the Rev. Coleman S. Glenn has an excellent sermon on Matthew 7:1-5, titled The Plank and the Splinter.)

The plank in our own eye

How often have we engaged in this same "locker room talk"? How often have we blamed the victim of sexual assault? I have written on this before, in the post Anna's Dilemma, but today I want to take a slightly different approach. We--and in many ways I am here addressing only the men--all like to think that we respect women; so why do we so often find ourselves engaging in behavior that, in retrospect, demeans women?
The answer is that we start thinking of women as depersonalized objects. Of course we don't objectify all women in this way; there are some--our friends, relatives, wives--whom we get to know as people. But then there are all the anonymous women around us--the ones on billboards advertising watches or motorcycles, the waitress at the diner, the cheerleaders, the work colleague, the intern--whom we view as something less than a real person, and so fair game for our "locker room talk."

We have got to pull that plank out of our eye. We have to come to see all women as people deserving our full respect. (Yes, even Hillary Clinton is a real person who deserves respect.) Because until we do, it doesn't stop at locker room talk, or pinched bottoms, or unwelcome hugs and kisses. Too often, it ends behind a dumpster.

Why do prominent men do these things?

We have a problem in the military. It seems that senior officers, who have led exemplary careers, suddenly get themselves into all kinds of trouble through extra-marital affairs or inappropriate behavior. Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were both able and tempted to do what they did because they were in positions of power. It's not just that these are the cases we hear about; there is a human tendency to engage in these kinds of inappropriate behavior when we are in positions of power and privilege. It literally goes to our head. As Ludwig and Longenecker explain in their article on the Bathsheba Syndrome, this is so much a part of the human experience that we find it in the Bible, in the story of David and Bathsheba. (The full text of the article can be found here.)

Listen to the victims speak

The Internet has had a significant effect on how we process reports of sexual assault, because they become very public, but also very depersonalized. The comments we make on-line are made from the safety of distance: we don't have to look the person in the eye as we call them a slut.
So let's use the Internet for good this time, by giving the victims a voice. I realize there are a lot of embedded videos in this post, but these three are important. I urge you to watch them.
We start with the letter Brock Turner's victim wrote to him, as her victim impact statement to the court.


In the next case, "the click that reverberated around the world" caused Monica Lewinsky to go "from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one, worldwide."

And finally, Ione Wells explains how to use the Internet for good, if only by what we do not do.