In the Matter of Cure v. Disease

Horrors! Advances on a married woman!

Never mind that this person didn't ask to be groped by tiny orange hands attached to an orange subhuman chancre. Irrelevant that she rejected these actions out of hand. The true affront, my fellow Americans, to the entire body politic and to thinking self-determined humans everywhere is the marital status of the vixen in question.

Could Trump not have known that this woman was acknowledged as another man's claim? Is it conceivable that her status as partaker of that hallowed institution rooted in ancient patriarchal property rights had escaped his attention? Surely, surely we can only assume that, had he been aware that the object of his affections was married, instead of groping he'd have doffed his cap and laid his coat upon the ground that her Louboutins need not touch the dirt. Indeed, this is the real travesty – that Ms. O'Dell, whose identity was inextricably bound up with that of A Man – should not have been protected from such indignities, as a married woman.

In response we have Paul Ryan, that “champion” and “reverent” of women, that bastion of chivalry whose anti-woman policies – derived from our own best interests, mind you – are cast from the same mold that kept dainty ladies confined to their parlors awaiting male suitors, segregated women's Olympic sports in a legacy we carry today, led to decades of back-alley abortions and decreased access to preventive health care, and precluded us from voting lest we overtax our delicate ladybrains.

And next to him let's put the coin with the Daughter Clause on one side (not that invoking daughters helps if the father you're talking to happens to actually be Trump) and “sorry, I have a boyfriend” on the other. While both are handy shortcuts to communicating with troglodytes, they stop far short of reaching the real issue of, you know, a woman's autonomy.

That Trump's comments are despicable and deserve condemnation is beyond obvious. But FFS don't base your respect for women on the fact you have a daughter; you let all daughterless men off the hook. Don't “revere” me; you deprive me of the full spectrum of my humanity, and presume facts not in evidence, i.e. that your regard is worth my while. And by almighty science, the last thing I need is a damn “champion.” I need access to health care for less than $322 a month, reduced income inequality, universal parental leave, police who don't inquire what a woman was wearing when she was raped, and policies in general that increase women's participation ergo equality in society and maybe conceivably one day eventually lead to our acceptance as independent self-directed humans, whose “don't grope me bro” is meaningful not because we're married, but because we don't want to be groped.

But in the meantime, consent? Fie on consent! Instead, we must ask the real question: “How will this unwanted sexual advance affect adjacent men?”