Thank You, Donald Trump

I was 11 years old when a 16-year-old male babysitter molested me, saying “I’ll cut your t**s off if you ever tell anyone what I am doing.” At 17, a physician casually ordered his nurse to leave the room so he could molest me in private, arrogantly believing he was above the law and ethics of his profession.

These are only two of several experiences where I was abused or objectified by men. As a girl and young woman, I was powerless to defend myself or seek help. Even as a grown woman, I was threatened with termination should I expose the sexual misconduct of a boss. As a spiritual teacher devoted to integrity and God, I receive private messages from some men who desire to have inappropriate relations with me. Some send pornographic photos, videos, and crude sexual references. So, as a woman of 60, I am still objectified and abused on a regular basis.

I seriously doubt any of my women friends here can honestly say they have not once experienced this real and terrifying dynamic between themselves and some men. For too long, females have been silenced and threatened with public ridicule, job loss, bullying, and death if we speak out. For too long, grown men and young men who love and respect their wives, daughters, and sisters have turned a blind eye—not wanting to be seen as weak for confronting male associates who behave badly toward women. For too long, we as a global society have allowed an ancient, outdated status quo of inequality and fear to overshadow our male/female relationships.

In Sex, Time and Power, author Leonard Shlain observes: “Millennia ago males intentionally set themselves above females when they realized women were the only ones capable of birthing new life. Today we continue to live under patriarchal societies with sets of institutionalized social rules put in place by men to control the sexual and reproductive rights of women.” According to Shlain, and in my personal experience too, ancient male-dominated religious beliefs help to perpetuate misogyny. “The history of Christianity, Islam, and Taoism darkly demonstrates that the religions that flowed from the teachings of Jesus, Muhammad, and Lao Tzu have been most unkind to women. In every case, after the death of the founder, men with harsh patriarchal leanings seized the reins of power and revised whatever gentle counsel the originators of these traditions may have had to impart about women.”

This rampant abuse of power against one half of the world’s population is a huge spiritual wake-up call! God is charging each of us to get INVOLVED to become EVOLVED—because NOW is the time for misogyny and the sexual objectification of girls and women to end. This is the defining moment when our brothers, fathers, uncles, and male friends MUST rise in unison to vilify this age-old fear-based dynamic. Now is the time God is giving women and girls courage to speak up and say, “Yes, this also happened to me.”

To have peace, we must respect, trust, protect, and value one another as God values both women and men—equally. God is asking each of us do our part to end this unloving dynamic between the genders. So I thank arrogant, misogynistic, irresponsible, power-hungry demagogue and sexual predator Donald Trump, and others like him, for doing their part to bring this issue into the global spotlight. God does indeed work in mysterious ways.