Election 2016: When a Woman Ran Against a Man Who Hates Women

On Friday, an 11-year-old video of Donald Trump came out that recorded him talking about how, because of his fame and wealth, he is able to get away with grabbing a woman's kitty. Sure, that's an easy article to write; Trump is a sexual predator. Pad it out to about 800 characters and call it a day. You're gold. After this weekend and his resulting antics at the debate, I just don't know. I mean, how do you go about single-handedly unloading a supertanker of shit? Where do you even start?

Yeah, the whole flagrant grabbing of a woman's crotch as a come-on tactic is sexual assault. There's no question about that. Especially since a woman says he did that to her in 1997! It's flagrant assault, and it's not locker-room banter. Unlike many other trans women, I was one of those hyper-masculine overcompensators who played high school football and joined the Army. I only heard that kind of talk a few times, and the types of men who spoke like that were generally mocked, ostracized, or even ended up being the kind of people who were actually charged with assault. Most men, while occasionally being crude and lewd, are never blatantly predatory in their behavior or thoughts. Sure, there are some issues with the way men see women as sexual objects, but only a few select deviants actually delight in assault.

Yet as bad as all that was, it got worse. Yes, somehow it got worse. Instead of coming out and trying to apologize in humble contrition, he spent only a few seconds of his apology, based on song lyrics, to defend himself before he began to attack Hillary and Bill Clinton for the latter's sexual misconduct. Look, I don't know how this makes sense in his mind. You can't attack someone for doing the same thing you're accused of. There's even a proper name for it -- it's called tu quoque. It's a French phrase that translates to "you too." It's exactly what you think it means -- defending yourself by saying someone else is guilty. Appeal to hypocrisy. Essentially, it's a confession to being guilty but saying it's not a crime because other people are guilty. This is exactly what your mom was talking about if when she asked if your friends jumped off a bridge, you would do it too. While the people accusing Bill Clinton of things deserve to have their voices heard, using them as a human shield is one of the lowest things I can think of.

Yet on Sunday night, that's exactly what Trump did. An hour and a half before the debate, Trump brought out four women who have accused Bill Clinton of various acts to have them speak to the media. Now, mind you, at the height of Clinton's sex scandals in the late 1990s, Trump was publicly defending Hillary and Bill. No, really, he was. Even as late as 2011, he was talking about how smart and clever Hillary was, how much he respected her. Then he turned on her as soon as she stood in the way of him getting what he wanted, in the most terrible ways. Not only did he play down his own indiscretions, but turned these women, who claim to have been sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton, into a deflection of his own. Right before he is to get called out on the debate stage, he sticks them in front of cameras to take the heat off himself by saying, "See? Look what the Clintons did!"

If you take his comments about sexually assaulting women, his fat-shaming beauty queens, his lecherous comments about his own daughter, his affairs, his objectification of women, all together as one, the only conclusion about Trump becomes clear. Trump doesn't even see them as people. Not even his own wife and children. Women are accessories like bad oil paintings of himself. Decorations to be seen with. Something only meant to gratify himself. Trump is not merely a sexist or even a misogynist. He's a sociopath. Yes, I know this will probably raise a few hackles, but for most people, it's easily and readily apparent. Trump is incapable of seeing women as anything but objects to exploit; as things. No decent human being should be able to look at Trump in his collective actions and see anything but a man who should be barred from coming within 500 feet of women, because he is a predator who will use them and discard them with no regard. It's only his wealth and fame that have allowed him to get this far, and it is an indictment of our society that we allowed him to do it.

AMANDA KERRI is a comedian and writer based in Oklahoma City. Follow her on Twitter @EternalKerri.