F.A.D. Repost: 2017’s “To the Brave 22 Women Who Told Us What Trump Did to Them”

TW/CW: Sexual and verbal violence.

I first posted this piece back in January of 2017, the same month Donald John Trump was sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States. Since then, the number of his accusers has grown beyond the number noted in the title above.

One of the women who came forward to tell her story in more recent years is journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who just won a legal victory against Trump in a New York civil court. A three-woman, six-man jury found unanimously that the former president is liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll back in the 1990s and for defaming her when she told her story publicly a few years ago. So confident was this jury in its decision that it awarded a $5 million judgment that Trump must pay her.

Ms. Carroll, once upon a time. (Twitter)

I am happy for Ms. Carroll and for the many other women who have suffered for years from the trauma that Trump inflicted upon them. They won’t get the justice they deserve, at least not in this lifetime. But I hope they experience a small measure of healing from this verdict, though Trump will likely appeal.

These are courageous women, some of whom I have gotten to know through my past work in the field of sexual violence prevention. They are neither political agents, fame seekers, nor gold diggers. They have endured death threats and rape threats, threats against their families, getting blacklisted for jobs, and having their reputations smeared with lies for telling their stories, and they knew they would. I repost my piece in their honor:

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Feminist Asian Dad and Daughter Read Ali Vitali’s Book “Electable”

A few months ago, my 16-year-old daughter and I posted our conversation about the movie She Said on this blog, and several readers encouraged us to do the same thing for other topics! That meant a lot to us, so here’s a transcripted version of our latest chat. It’s about the popular 2022 nonfiction book by NBC News correspondent Ali Vitali titled Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet. Our discussion has been edited for length and clarity, and as in our previous convo, I’m denoted by F. A. D. (Feminist Asian Dad) and my daughter by J. J. for 姐姐 (Pinyin: jiĕ jie), which means older sister in Chinese.

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When My “A-Gong” Led “Chinese Taipei” at the “World Baseball Classic”

That’s a ton of quotation marks, isn’t it? I’ll be sure to explain all of them in just a moment. But first … (drum roll) … the 2023 World Baseball Classic has begun! It’s kinda like the World Cup, but for baseball instead of soccer. Like soccer’s grand quadrennial event, the WBC is played every four years (although this year’s edition was a postponement from 2021 due to COVID). And it has the national teams of 20 nations from five continents competing for world bragging rights. It doesn’t have the prestige of the World Cup, but it has a huge following outside the United States, and even within the U.S., interest is growing fast. The first rounds of games will take place in stadia around the world over the next couple of weeks, all leading to the final games in Miami.

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