Trump’s fetid misogyny isn’t new.

The evidence is everywhere… in print… in video… in audio. More and more and more of Trump’s vile and fetid misogyny and sexism. Trump is a predator – the kind of predator to which you fear the women you love will be subjected. It’s not new and barely shocking anymore. I wish Trump and the pornographic nature of his attitude was a singular example of the worst in men that women face. Disturbingly, that’s not the case… Trump is only the most public example of a poison in our society women have always faced, that decent men – and we women know that’s most men – do not and/or will not see. You choose NOT to see our reality – this should never be our reality.

There’s an undercurrent of humiliation that the Trumps and the Billy Bushes of this world have made a numbing constant in the lives of girls and women. It’s part of an everyday, everywhere message that we don’t matter enough to be respected as a person. The personhood women is subsumed by the personhood of men… we are women before we are human.

I make a plea on behalf of women and girls everywhere: As long as other men continue to tolerate that kind of speech and attitude, even in the locker room, the misogyny and sexism and chauvinism and gender discrimination and sexual harassment and rape culture will continue to plague the lives of every woman you know. Please – EVERY decent man – stand loudly and always against the rampant misogyny and mistreatment of women that the 2016 GOP candidate represents. Be the voice and leader of decent men standing as one against the Trumps of this world. You’ve condemned his latest revelation of vile and repugnant sexism and predation. Please make it your personal crusade to end this assault on women and girls everywhere from men like this. It may only be a few men who think this way, but they are everywhere as we women try to navigate our lives. IT IS OPPRESSION – it makes us feel marginalized. 

It makes us afraid to go alone to public spaces like clubs or restaurants or the gym or even to walk alone in our own neighborhoods at night. It hurts us when the men who should defend us just say we shouldn’t have been in the public spaces where we are harassed and abused. It breaks us to be held accountable by the men who should defend us for the abuse by the Trumps of this world.

If you love a woman… if you know a woman, get out front and lead all decent men to stop the Trumps of this world, to educate the next generations of boys who will be the men in the lives of your daughters. Be the leader of change!

As a woman who has faced the groping Trump describes from early adolescence onward, too many times to count…

As a woman who has faced gender and sexual harassment in public leisure spaces…

As the friend of women I’ve known (most of them) who also had to and still have to face gender and sexual harassment in public leisure spaces…

As a woman who has faced gender and sexual harassment in the workplace…

As the friend of women I’ve known (again – MOST of them) who also had to and still have to face gender and sexual harassment in the workplace…

As a woman who has more than once been personally inundated by such vile speech…

As a friend who has heard and hears other women subjected to such vile speech…

As a woman who is a surviver of an incestuous pedophile…

As a woman who has more than once dealt with attempted acquaintance rape and dealt with acquaintance rape…

As a sister of a sibling who was a victim of acquaintance rape…

As the friend of a woman who was the victim of incestuous rape…

As a woman who, as an adolescent, lived through violent, attempted gang rape IN MIDDLE SCHOOL…

As the sister of another sibling who was a victim of violent rape…

As the friend of a woman who was stalked, raped, and nearly killed…

As the mother of a young son whom I know has already heard this kind of puerile and VILE speech from some of his peers…

I wonder how many men have listened to such reprobate and repugnant humiliation of women from their peers? I wonder how many men have watched porn and admired characters who, like Trump, revel unchecked in such narcissistic self-entitlement?  I wonder how many men perhaps saw that character’s sense of entitlement as a kind of power they wish they held? I wonder how many men, now so appalled by Trump’s degenerate speech towards women, laughed and tittered over it just as Billy Bush did when they heard one of their own peers talk that way in the locker room?  

I wonder if the men, now so appalled by Trump’s contemptible denigration of women will finally understand that every single woman you know has been and will be subjected to that kind of misogyny throughout our lives. No… it’s not everyday. No… it’s not ALL – nor even MOST men… Yes… it’s only a few men – BUT THOSE MEN ARE EVERYWHERE as we women try to navigate our daily lives.

Once again, Trump didn’t originate the poison – he only displayed the putrid rot that everyone was ignoring. He’s not the only man who thinks and behaves this way. Billy Bush isn’t the only man to empower such disgusting misogyny with his skeeze reveling. This is… and has been… and continues to be the reality of women’s lives.

Your mothers… your sisters… your wives… your daughters… We live every day of our lives with the knowledge that our bodies – our personhoods – are not safe. This kind of predator has been and continues to be our reality – dismissed… demeaned… ignored by the men who love us, befriend us… by the men who should be on the forefront in holding the Trumps of this world accountable. Every time you DON’T speak out… every time you DON’T intervene, you enable the sexual predator.

YOU personally know women who have been subjected to the Trumps of this world. If you do nothing, you put your own hand with his grabbing at us, groping us. PROCURER!

If you, the decent men in this world, do not hear us now and stop Trump and all men like him then how can we trust any of you?

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To you defenders of Trump…

To you dismissing those tapes as “locker room talk…”

SHUT UP! Just slither back under the rock you oozed out from under and SHUT UP! Women have had to face the Trumps of this world all our lives! ON OUR OWN because of people like YOU! YOU and every enabler are more guilty than the Trumps of the discrimination, harassment, abuse, assault, victimization, marginalization – OPPRESSION – that is the reality of women’s lives! YOU make women’s oppression our reality because YOU DO NOT STOP the Trumps of this world! There is no defense! There is no joke! That you think there is any humor or that it is in any way appropriate to dismiss the kind of sexual predation Trump has ALWAYS – YES ALWAYS – lived out, screams FREAKING volumes ABOUT YOU!

JUST SHUT UP YOU MORALLY BANKRUPT ENABLER!

Terror from the right

How – in this “land of the free…” this would-be haven of inclusivity and democracy for all – in these UNITED States of America are so many Americans embracing Trump, making jokes or excuses for his despicable character – or worse, loudly and even violently agreeing with him? How can so many Americans who so proudly and loudly proclaim their perceived constitutional rights to freedom want HIM – that admitted from his own lips sexual predator – for president? 

He revels in the most vile misogyny, sexism, and chauvinism about women – the evidence is from his own lips, repeated again and again for DECADES! His mind, his speech, his behavior toward women and girls – even his own daughters – is the most degrading and pornographic imaginable.

He mocks the disabled. He mocks Native Americans – truly, no one is American enough NOT to be a target of his rampant and despotic bigotry. This man is a pandering, self-aggrandizing, hate-mongering, cheating, thieving, racketeering, mobbed-up, pro-Russian, incest-fantasizing misogynist, isolationist, racist, bigot, xenophobe, serial-adulterer, serial-divorcer, fraud, narcissist, sociopath, and poster child for corporate welfare who delights in profiting off other people’s suffering, and keeps putting forward outrageously UN-constitutional – if not outright illegal – plans for this country and for the world. He is the antithesis of our American ideal.

AMERICANS! We are NOT just electing our own POTUS! We are choosing the leader of the entire free world!

What is so deeply wrong in the hearts of the right that could give rise to someone like Trump for president? How can so many ignore the undeniable parallels between Hitler’s regime and Trump’s rhetoric? How can anyone look at that jaundiced countenance and listen to his demented rhetoric and not realize that he is a very sick man? How can anyone make excuses for supporting someone with whom Skinheads, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, WBC, and even ISIS agrees? When those groups agree with your positions, it’s time and past time to examine your positions and change – it’s time to examine your soul.

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It really is frightening, especially for folks like me and my family. With kids already calling my half Persian, Christian son “ISIS” and talking about Trump sending Middle Easterners to “concentration camps” or the “gas chambers,” the prospect feels like real and present danger to me – My son has already been assaulted and injured by those same bullies. What Trump proposes is TERROR. It is terror on a grand scale – a scale comparable to Hitler… to Mussolini… to Stalin… to Mao…  to Saddam Hussein… to Bashar al Assad.

And, Trump is making the GOP over in his image… orchestrating global terror from the American right. He is making the GOP into the so-called Alt-Right… into a white supremacist party.

For those folks contemplating not stopping Trump, please consider: When you enter the voting booth, remember, you are not – NOT – choosing for YOU when you vote. This election is not some philosophical exercise in democracy. You are choosing with your vote FOR every parent and child in America, FOR every woman and girl who has been or ever will be victimized and oppressed by the self-entitled Trumps of this world… FOR every not white, not male, not rich, not ChristianISH child in America and around the world most imperiled by a Trump presidency… or you are voting against them.

Even when Trump backs off hateful, Hitler-esque rhetoric, as with his “Ban on Muslims,” he really just finds a new way to double down on his plans for targeted marginalization (creating an avenue for genocide) of now EVERYONE from Muslim majority countries. Everything he says and plans specifically targets peoples of already marginalized ethnicities – You are deluding yourself if you believe he won’t ultimately target everyone who are the NOT-white-rich-ChristianISH-men of the world.

Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST women and girls. Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST Americans like my husband and son, Hamid and Graham Mehrzad (“Mehrzad” means “born of love”). Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST every ordinary, hardworking Middle Eastern-American family and every immigrant family and every minority family in the UNITED States of America.

This is my plea – When you enter the voting booth, remember these names: Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. 

Hamid is the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known. He’s proud of his citizenship and he always tells people that they don’t realize what they have in America; he says there’s an essential “freeness” that exists no where else he’s ever been. And, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe, and has lived in three countries. 

Our son, Graham Mehrzad is a brilliant, funny, loving boy whom we are raising Christian. He made his personal commitment to Faith four years ago. He’s just been invited into the Duke Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) for academic excellence. Graham Mehrzad has always had a heart dedicated to charitable service, from personally raising thousands of dollars for the AHA, to charity walks for ALS and Cancer, to homeless outreach, to volunteering in the local food pantry, and more… and he’s only twelve years old.

Remember Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. Remember their faces pictured below when you enter that voting booth. These are the real people for whom you are really voting.

Graham Mehrzad and Hamid through the years