That One Thing

What is your non-negotiable?

January 20 is looming like a dark, ominous shadow.

We’re all feeling it—the coming storm. The one that’s already blowing its way into our existence; the one that carries on its back all the foulest, most vile filth thinly disguised as The American Dream.

The one that could irrevocably break us as a nation.

Everyone, of course, has a breaking point; a moment in which there is no turning back; a personal experience that marks the before and the after, the line in the sand.

With this incoming Presidential administration, my line in the sand was E. Jean Carroll.

I mean, let’s not lose sight of the fact that our President-elect is horrible on numerous levels. Let’s not forget that he’s a convicted and sentenced felon, that he is a pathological liar; that he has multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies; that he is a bully of the highest order; that he pretends to be a Christian when he couldn’t spell morality with a dictionary…

But for me, the point of no return is that he is a known sexual predator.

And one out of every six women in America has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape.

One in Six

I remember the pressure of the knife at my throat, the threats of death made with a smug and knowing smirk. I remember thinking I would fight and then acquiescing instead; the notion of survival more important than the possibility of overcoming him. I remember the smell of my musty apartment carpet as he held me down. I remember the timbre of his voice, the framed pictures of my loved ones watching from every angle, smiling because they didn’t know, couldn’t know. I remember floating to the ceiling, an escape, a retreat, and looking down at the horror show beneath me, my body and soul disjoined. I remember shaking uncontrollably when he finally left, his threats of death still hanging in the stale air. I remember the feeling of the boiling shower afterward, washing away the sin, the evil, the bodily fluids. I remember the phone call from my mom after a sorority sister called to tell her, the fear and anger and shock in her voice. I remember breaking up with Chris because I couldn’t bear the thought of any man being close to me, not even the one I’d trusted implicitly for four years. I remember him immediately hooking up with a mutual high school friend and the unknown betrayal that shook me to my core. I remember the police detective asking me to take a lie detector test—just to be certain I was, in fact, someone who needed police protection. I remember sending my only daughter off to college decades later, trusting she would be safe while knowing there was no way to make it so. The surrender. The trade-off of living a full life instead of hiding away for safety. When, in actuality, safety is unattainable.

Because on the night when I was violently raped as a 20-year-old coed, I was not safe in my own campus home.

Thirty years later, I still feel the hairs on my neck stand at attention when a man follows me too closely on the street or stares a bit too long across a crowded room. I don’t trust a smile that might possibly be friendly. There is nothing about the male gaze that is welcome or appealing to me. Nothing. For me, attention from an unknown man always begins with trepidation and often ends in fight or flight—a quick escape, an abrupt end to an uncomfortable conversation.

The notion that anyone—any human with a mother, a daughter, a sister, a vagina—could still vote for our President-elect knowing he is a pussy-grabbing predator astounds me. It is simply inconceivable. We could have taught our daughters they could be anything they wanted to be, and instead we taught our sons they could cheat, lie, and abuse women and still attain the highest, most prestigious office in this country.

For the price of eggs?

He has been accused by over 25 women—over the course of fifty years—of sexual assault. Twenty-five. Across an entire lifetime. And that doesn’t include the young women he ogled at beauty pageants just because he could. Twenty-five women. That’s one every two years or so. Is there another man you know who has been so widely accused of sexual abuse?

I’ll wait while you think about it.

And make no mistake, men across this nation heard that declaration loud and clear, the one announced by our votes. Some outwardly boasted, “Your body, my choice.” Those are the ones we know about. The ones we don’t know about are the ones who ingested that knowledge, who are letting it course through their veins, who are waiting in the wings to degrade and defile and violate women, because they have been told it’s okay. They have, in fact, been told it’s a fast path to power and success.

Let’s also not forget the Cabinet picks who have been accused of sexual misconduct because they are numerous: Pete Hegseth; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Linda McMahon; Elon Musk, Matt Gaetz. The message is clear: The guardrails have been removed.

In every possible way.

Take, for example, how this “top banker” feels about being his freedom of speech being “liberated” from “woke ideology.”

It’s disgusting. It’s regressive. It’s appalling.

But the sexual predators? They’re terrifying. After all, rape is never about sex. It’s always about power. It’s about claiming property. It’s about entitlement.

I’m not afraid of the rape itself anymore. I survived that.

What I’m afraid of is that sexual assault is becoming mainstream. It’s no longer shocking to the masses. This Congressman raped a woman? This Supreme Court judge did the same? This high-powered attorney assaulted his wife? Our President-elect is an adjudicated rapists? He says it’s okay to grab women by the pussy?

So what?

The reports are so widespread, so common, so repeated that we hardly take note of them any more. We are becoming numb to the epidemic of women’s bodies being taken by force in numerous hellish, violent ways by men who believe it’s their right to take them.

It’s toxic masculinity at its most toxic, and we are welcoming it with open arms.

Buckle up, friends. I hope the eggs don’t break during all this turbulence. Because their price isn’t going down, either. We’ve voted ourselves into a lose-lose. For the next four years, at least. And that’s if we’re lucky. Because they’re in it for life. And our lives no longer matter. For the MAGA crowd, they never did.

Especially if you’re a woman.