People downplay that Access Hollywood tape, but he wasn’t joking. He was completely serious. In his mind, he could - and did – literally grab women’s pussies because he thought they’d just let him do it.
Here’s the thing, as an SA survivor, there are several natural reactions to situations like that – fight, flight, or freeze. In close quarters, you often can’t flee, and with a large attacker, you can’t always fight. Freezing is a very common response to sexual assault.
So all these years, when he says ‘they just let you do it’, he’s been describing his victims’ freeze response. You don’t have to be a star for that to be your victim’s reaction. And yet his followers and the media have turned it into a joke.
I think I can speak for many SA survivors when I say that’s disgusting, appalling, and hurtful.
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