Huffington Post reported on a new survey geared to finding out about how sexual violence and harassment impinge upon not only girls' daily lives but also upon their life altering decisions such as whether to drop out of school or not. Incidents of sexual harassment are on the rise, and in the climate of the Trump administration fully 1 in 6 of teenage girls surveyed said that they had been harassed since Election Day, if you can believe that.
On Wednesday, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) released a survey about the sexual violence and harassment teenage girls face ― and the findings are startling. The report revealed the sexual violence and harassment many young women face, and how these experiences often lead teens to drop out of school. The researchers found that instances of sexual violence and harassment were so pervasive that 1 in 6 of the teen girls surveyed said they had been harassed since Election Day.
According to the report, 1 in 5 girls between 14 and 18 years old (21 percent) reported being sexually assaulted ― defined by NWLC as “they had been kissed or touched without their consent.”Girls of color and LGBTQ girls experience sexual assault and harassment at higher than average rates.
These statistics take on new weight given that the president of the United States is an accused sexual predator. According to the survey, more than 1 in 6 teenage girls (or 17 percent) reported that they had experienced harassment since the 2016 presidential election.
Many advocates worried that there would be an uptick in violence against women when President Donald Trump took office. Directly after the election, many incidences of sexism and harassment happened, along with an increase in hate crimes.
President Trump has been accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women, and has publicly defended other men who have been accused of sexual harassment and assault, like Roger Ailes and the recently-ousted Bill O’Reilly.“
My concern is based on not just what [President Trump’s] behavior has been, because he is an individual, but what he can do to influence other men’s behaviors and other women’s perceptions of their value,” Rita Smith, the former executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told The Huffington Post in November. “Even just the election itself had an impact on how men treated and talked about women.
Here's just a sample of what was tweeted Day 1 of Trump's presidency.
My mom literally just texted me "don't wear the Hijab please" and she's the most religious person in our family....
My mom and my sister are actually having the conversation on whether or not they should continue wearing hijab for their own safety.
3 of my muslims friends, whom i've never seen without a hijab before, came to school without them today, because they were afraid.
And Rita Smith predicted that violence against women may increase under a Trump presidency.
“I’m not sure we will be able to see it, because you have to report it,” she said. “If someone is being violated and the president of the United States doesn’t see that as a problem, they may not tell anyone.”
Jackson Katz, an author and co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, a gender violence prevention program taught at colleges and high schools across the country, called Trump’s election a “disaster” for those working to end domestic violence and sexual assault. Historically, he said, the presidency plays an important teaching role about what qualities Americans value and respect in men.
“We elected a man who is openly misogynistic, who has a decades-long public life of ridiculing, belittling and sexually objectifying women,” Katz said. “The fact that we have lifted him up to be the president makes a powerful statement about our society and what we accept.”
I remember reading a fairy tale book, "Tales Of The Arabian Nights," when I was a small girl and the imagery has stayed with me all my life. At one point there was the release of an evil spirit and the rocks trembled and moved and the sky darkened, vultures started circling overhead, and the characters in the story felt a chill wind as Evil Incarnate was released. This is what happened November 8, 2016 in the United States.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported a spike in hate crimes, and now we find out that there's a spike in sexual assault of young girls. This is disgusting. The election of Donald Trump has had a toxic effect on our culture and most especially our young people. Thinking back on my own experiences as a young girl, I never had to deal with anything even remotely like this. Whether it was Johnson in office, or even Nixon, whom I loathed, but admittedly he wasn't a sexual predator, he was a chilled out Quaker as a matter of fact — I never had to deal with the fact that the sitting president was a sexual predator. This is a “case of first impression” as they say and our young people are living through it. Our young women are suffering through it, that much is certain.
Trump has poisoned the national discourse. He has soured the milk, withered the grain -- the man is poison, there's no question about it. We need to get rid of him by all means available to us as soon as humanly possible. We need to excise the cancer that Donald Trump is before it metatasizes any further. Or America, as we know it, could be terminally ill.