Do you stand with survivors?

There was a lot going on today in Boston. A marathon. Patriot’s Day. The beginning of school vacation week. And a whole lot of people are riveted by the news of a historic trial of a former president accused of messing around with his financial records to cover up his messing around outside his marriage.

Donald Trump has a long, well documented, and prominently litigated history of horrible behavior towards women, which includes being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. But I don’t want to focus on Trump in this piece - honestly, I don’t ever want to focus on that horrible man - I want to talk about the scores of people who have lined up to support his ongoing abuse and disrespect of women. Who will claim to care about sexual violence while supporting policies and candidates that harm survivors. Sadly, though not surprisingly, this includes plenty of women.

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This has been painfully apparent for a long time now, but the hypocrisy has been in stark relief these past several weeks. Think Senator Katie Britt’s breathless and over acted response to the State of the Union, where she talked about the story of Karla Jacinto Romero, a survivor of horrific sexual violence. A story that was soon found to be grossly misleading, particularly in her attempt to place blame at the feet of President Biden. The survivor, whose abuse took place in Mexico, not in the U.S., later slammed Senator Britt for taking advantage of her story for political purposes.

Essentially, Senator Britt exploited the experiences of a survivor of sexual violence to prop up the candidacy of a perpetrator of sexual violence - Trump.

Not even a week later Representative Nancy Mace, herself a survivor of sexual violence, went on George Stephanopolous’ show. When questioned on how she could support Trump, a known perpetrator, her mental calisthenics to justify her loyalty were absolutely painful to watch. I cringed to see her come out swinging in service to a man who is openly misogynistic and a party whose policies would ultimately cause her - and her fellow survivors - harm. The entire package of Britt and then Mace claiming to support survivors while enthusiastically supporting a man who they would likely be loathe to leave their own daughters with? Horrific, but certainly not shocking. There is much to say about white women who work against their own interests to uphold candidates and policies that will ultimately harm them too. But that will need to wait for another post.

Fast forward, we’ve got conservative politicians railing about “immigrant crime” using individual cases of violence against women and children to assail entire immigrant communities. It was particularly galling to have Representative Jim Jordan say he was launching an investigation into a rape that happened at Massachusetts hotel that is sheltering immigrants. Yes, Jim Jordan. The very politician who refused to apologize for a tweet describing the story of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim as a “lie”. The same person who ignored and likely enabled rampant sexual abuse at Ohio State. That Jim Jordan now very much cares about sexual assault, but only when perpetrated by people he refers to as “criminal aliens”. Mind you, when a white man (such as Trump!) sexually assaults a woman you don’t hear conversations about “white male crime” or “criminal white men”. Because such concepts and phrases do not exist in our national dialogue. But the concept of immigrant crime sure does.

The common thread in all of these scenarios are the craven and performative claims of caring about violence against women, but only when such caring helps advance a political agenda (or candidate) that ultimately harms women. It’s only interesting to speak publicly about sexual assault when you can speak in the same breath about Joe Biden being a horrible president or immigrants being a danger to this community. This is no service to survivors - U.S. or foreign born. If you stand with survivors you stand with all survivors, and not just when it suits your political aspirations or worldview. Additionally, it’s beyond hypocritical to scream about sexual assault in service to a political party that seems to be committed to putting survivors at further risk.

And here is the moment of exquisite hypocrisy. Last week’s Arizona Supreme Court ruling that essentially banned all abortions, INCLUDING in cases of rape and incest, showed just how little care will be afforded to survivors in a country that is lurching to the right. I know conservative politicians were all over the place in their responses to this ruling but that was driven more from concern about elections than concern about survivors. Their linguistic cartwheels were also driven by their desire to ensure their chosen candidate - Donald J. Trump - is elected again this November. Their worry about an abortion ban has nothing to do with protecting those impregnated as a result of sexual violence, but instead to help a man who is a perpetrator of sexual violence ascend to the highest office in the land.

If conservative politicians truly cared about sexual assault, their policy priorities would look very different. They would not have held up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act for years. They would fund shelters, increase access to health care, champion sex ed and school based healthy relationship programs. They would work to make reproductive health services available to all, and hold all perpetrators accountable. They would work towards a world that values safety and affirms the dignity of all people.

This, however, is a policy platform that is completely incompatible with supporting the presumptive GOP presidential candidate. Simply said, you cannot say you stand for survivors while standing in service to Donald Trump.

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