TW/CW: Graphic depictions of sexual, emotional, and verbal violence.

UPDATE: Yesterday, January 30, 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York signed the “Rape Is Rape” Law, nicknamed as such because currently, New York’s legal code defines rape only as non-consensual vaginal penetration by a penis. Many forms of what are commonly considered rape in our society have instead fallen under New York’s legal category of sexual abuse. This was highlighted in the recent civil actions filed by writer and journalist E. Jean Carroll against former President Trump; a jury awarded Ms. Carroll a $5 million judgment against Mr. Trump in 2023 for sexual abuse and defamation, and a second jury awarded Ms. Carroll an $83 million judgment against Mr. Trump last week for further defamation. What Ms. Carroll claimed, and what the jury believed based on the superiority of the evidence, was that Mr. Trump penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his finger in an incident in the 1990s. It could only legally be called sexual abuse in New York until now. But beginning September 1 of this year, what Mr. Trump did – along with many other forms of sexual violence we usually call rape – will be legally known as rape in that state.

This is something activists working on stopping sexual violence in our society have pursued for years. (Before I came back to teaching in 2019, I worked for several years in the field of relationship and sexual violence prevention education, and I hold a state certification as a sexual assault victim advocate.) One reason this is important is that the term sexual abuse encompasses a huge range of violent behaviors, all of which are immoral and illegal. Yet some defenders of sexually violent perpetrators have used the breadth of that term to persuade the public that what they did wasn’t that bad. This was true of Mr. Trump’s legal team, which tried to push the idea that sexual abuse in the incident between Ms. Carroll and him may have been something less egregious, like the unwanted grabbing of a woman’s clothed breasts. (The idea that such a violent act is “not as bad” is quite a perversion of sexuality as God created and ordained it.) This prompted the judge in the case to issue a statement explaining that the judgment was one of rape by digital (finger) penetration, even though it did not fall under New York’s legal definition of rape.

Ultimately, all of this is not about politics. This new law and the jury verdicts in favor of Ms. Carroll speak to the morality of our country and communities. Is American morality going down the toilet? Not based on these developments, which are hopeful signs that there may be more righteousness among us than we thought.

And now, back to my post as published last week:

I still believe, with all my heart, that there is no greater crisis confronting our society than relationship and sexual violence. Even though I concluded my years of occupational work on that issue several years ago, returning to teaching mathematics to middle schoolers and high schoolers, my feelings haven’t changed – relationship and sexual violence is so common, so widespread, and so damaging that there is nothing more important in our communities and our nation than making that evil behavior a thing of the past.

Continue reading “Reposting a Repost: 2017’s “To the Brave 22 Women Who Told Us What Trump Did to Them” and Its 2023 Update” →