We must answer Don!
ONE WEEK AFTER Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, a Manhattan school administrator says she was groped on the train on her way home from work.
Thea Heninger-Lowell doesn’t blame Trump for the attack, but she says his sexist, misogynist campaign rhetoric helped create a climate for deviant men to operate in.
That, Heninger-Lowell says, is why she is joining tens of thousands of women who will march on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration.
“Every woman who responded when I shared my story replied with messages of support, and of empathy,” Heninger-Lowell (photo inset) said. “This has been our experience as women long before Trump joined the political scene, but now the Presidentelect, whom I reject, has told all other men it’s OK.”
Heninger-Lowell, 31, said she had panic attacks and crying fits in the days after Trump’s election.
All she could think about, she said, was how a man who bragged about being able to grab a woman by her private parts could explain it away as “locker room talk.”
“There is no such thing as locker room talk,” Heninger-Lowell said. “There are anti-woman sentiments so deeply ingrained in the male psyche that they are more often than not taken for granted as inevitable in our society.”
Heninger-Lowell said she reported the groping incident to the MTA.
Heninger-Lowell, director of operations at the Washington Market School in Tribeca, said she will attend the march with her mother. “I think marching serves multiple functions,” she said. “It is empowering to remember that there is a tireless community of women and that when we feel diminished, we can draw from each other’s strength.” Heninger-Lowell also said she is marching to send a message to white women who helped to elect Trump. Exit polls show 53% of white women said they voted for Trump.
“I would say that white women, myself included, have a lot of work to do,” Heninger-Lowell said. “White women who are marching need to search ourselves and educate ourselves to figure out how we can use our sources of privilege to raise up the voices of women of color. Women’s rights and racial equality cannot be mutually exclusive demands.”