This is another short, “express my outrage” blog post. Because if at this point you don’t get it, I don’t know how to explain it so you do.

Women (and other survivors of sexual violence) in the U.S. are being gaslighted on a massive cultural scale. We are being told by political candidates that sexual assault is a casual occurrence, that we deserve it, that men in power can do it to us anytime they like.

In a ranty but worthwhile Medium post, sex educator Crista Anne talks about this largescale gaslighting, the verbal abuse tactics Trump is engaging in to defend the actions that he’s simultaneously bragging about:

Earlier Trump said, after repeating a victim’s story incorrectly (because of course) to his massive crowd to “just take a look. Take a look at her” while talking about how beautiful his wife is. That the reporter was too ugly to be assaulted. Because that tactic works…. And people are going along with it. Heads of government. The elected officials in my area. Media folks. Thought Influencers. Reporters. Political experts. Not to mention tens of millions of people who live all around me.

Of course hearing this impacts us. Of course it does. As Amanda Marcotte asserts, the “assertion that our bodies and the decision-making power over them should belong to men” is everywhere in the media and in politics. The question of, “Are women people?” haunts voters and politicians and bloggers and policy-makers.

Michelle Obama stated in her recent speech:

And I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.

I think that’s a lot of us right now. We are shaken. We are re-traumatized.

Obviously it’s painful to hear that nearly half the country views our bodies as bargaining chips, and is so sex-negative as to embrace a double standard where it’s okay for famous white men to brag about assaulting women. Another lovely facet of rape culture to contemplate, eh?

But worse? Worse is the gaslighing. Worse is the insidious normalizing of this behavior, the implication that it’s in our heads, it’s harmless, if it had been harmful we would’ve spoke up earlier or done something about it.

Holy fuck I’m sick of this. I don’t even have a very extensive trauma history and I’m having trouble dealing with all this right now. Now seems like a good time to remind folks that I’ve compiled a list of evidence-based self-care techniques to use when coping with stress and trauma. Because wow, we’re going to need oodles of self-care to get through this.