In 30 years of marriage, Nancy Fagin had never told her husband about “the handling” — how, as an eighth grader volunteering at a small natural history museum in Chicago, she was sexually molested by a security guard.
That changed last week. As the couple discussed Michelle Obama’s speech condemning Donald J. Trump’s treatment of women as “intolerable,” Ms. Fagin, 62, who spent her career running a specialty bookstore in Chicago, turned to her husband and said that something had happened to her.
.. Couples say they are talking to each other about the degradation of women in new ways and revealing assaults that had been buried for years.
.. She said Mr. Trump’s remarks and the subsequent allegations were “like seeing a public service announcement warning you about abusers.”
.. “He was a guy’s guy,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Trump, noting that he had run beauty pageants. “He was surrounded by beautiful women. He shouldn’t have said them, I agree. That being said, we have so many larger problems to worry about.”
Thank You, Donald Trump
For decades, feminists have tried to stir outrage about how women are routinely groped, belittled, and weight-shamed. Yet Mr. Trump’s words and boasts have shown millions of voters, including people who believe feminism is a dirty word, what women endure every day.
This was supposed to be an election where Hillary Clinton had to convince voters that a woman had the fitness and temperament to be president.
Yet instead of worrying whether a woman is too emotional, impulsive and unqualified for high office, voters have been weighing whether that’s true of the man running to be president.
.. Indeed, Mr. Trump is not just a gift to feminists – he is breathing renewed life into a movement to redefine just what a real man is and ought to be.
.. The Access Hollywood tape induced a stream of defections from high-level Republicans who had not broken with him over the attack on a war hero’s family, the impugning of a judge of Mexican ancestry, or his threats to ban all Muslims from these shores.
.. This has turned out to be an election in which many of the old dog whistle issues about women – working motherhood, single mothers, a woman’s ability to be commander-in-chief, women’s assertiveness and self-confidence – have not seemed to resonate.
.. She did not shy away from defending late-term abortions – often a political minefield.
Melania Trump Mimics Hillary Clinton to Defend Donald Trump
Hillary’s conspiracy was on the right and Melania’s is on the left. Other than that, it’s the same argument.
Melania went further and bought into her husband’s argument that he couldn’t have harassed or assaulted a woman he deemed unattractive, even though such behavior is not about desire but power, control and hostility.
.. On the other hand, a political professional probably would not have encouraged Melania Trump to compare her husband to a small boy. “Sometimes I say I have two boys at home — I have my young son and I have my husband,” she said.
Donald Trump in 1994: I tell my friends to “be rougher” with their wives
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump once told an interviewer that he advises his friends to “be rougher” with their wives, and that he sometimes goes “through the roof” when he comes home and dinner isn’t ready.
“Psychologists will tell you that some women want to be treated with respect,” Trump told Nancy Collins in a previously unreleased 1994 transcript from ABC’s Primetime Live. “I tell friends who treat their wives magnificently, get treated like crap in return, ‘Be rougher and you’ll see a different relationship.'”