It’s difficult to put into words what your support of him means to me, but I feel it’s imperative to try.

I’ve known you my whole life, or a good portion of it, and it’s heart-wrenching for me to watch you defend and support a man who is an admitted, accused and convicted sexual predator.

When you tell me it’s not because you’re a racist or sexist, I want to remind you that I grew up in the same family and /or neighborhood as you did, and I’ve heard your jokes and the names you casually use to describe women and people of color.

When Christina Blasey Ford testified at the Supreme Court hearings regarding her assault by Brent Kavanaugh, millions of women knew she was telling the truth because many of us had similar experiences. There are the boys who assault, and those who stand on the sidelines watching and laughing.

When you look in the mirror you must ask yourself if you’re the kind of man who would step up and stop the abuse or stand on the sidelines and laugh.

Whether or not he is a sexual predator isn’t up for debate as there is plenty of evidence to support this conclusion, with most of it coming from his own lips. Here are a few examples.

He admitted on the access Hollywood tape that he sexually assaults women and gets away with it.

He lusts after his own daughter to such an extent that he is comfortable stating publicly that ‘if she wasn’t my daughter perhaps I’d be dating her.’ Dating implies intimacy. Think about that.

When asked during an interview what he and his daughter had in common the first word out of his mouth was ‘sex.’  If you have a daughter, ask yourself if this is a statement you would ever utter. Or if you had a friend that talked this way about his daughter, you wouldn’t think there was something terribly wrong with him.

While being interviewed on camera in 1992, a group of ten-year-old girls were riding up an escalator and he turned to the camera and said, ‘I’ll be dating them in ten years.’ He was forty-six years old at the time. How often do you look at a group of little girls and fantasize about dating them?

During an episode of the Howard Stern show, he bragged that because he owned the pageants, he would walk into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen America and Miss America while they were undressed and watch them rush to cover up. Once again, laughing at his own lechery.

There is plenty of video and photo evidence of him being close friends with Jeffrey Epstein, who is one of the most notorious sexual predators in history. The victims of Epstein assert that he was at the parties and part of the abuse going on there.

Two dozen women have accused him of sexual assault, and he’s been found liable in a court of law of the sexual assault of one of them.

The 2019 book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator, alsosites accusations by dozens more women.

If you have an ounce of honesty in you, you will admit that if anyone else had this kind of obvious history of sexual predation you wouldn’t hire them to fix your toilet, let alone sit in the most powerful office in the world.

The fact that you can ignore that this man is a sexual predator tells me things about you I wish I didn’t know. It tells me that either you are a man who chooses to ignore the facts when they make you re-examine your beliefs and prejudices, or you’re a man who doesn’t think being a sexual predator is a serious offense.

It tells me that you are not someone who protects women, but someone who turns a blind eye when it’s inconvenient for you to see the truth.

It tells me your racism is stronger than your integrity.

It tells me that while you may not be someone who would sexually assault a woman, you are someone who would sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

Because that is exactly what you’re doing now.

If a man who sexually assaults women isn’t a dealbreaker for you, then you are not someone who is a safe space for women.

You may pound your chest with bravado and vehemently proclaim what you’d do to any man who assaults a woman you love, but your actions speak louder than words.

Your support of him tells the women in your life that you are not a protector, but an enabler. Your support of him tells the women around you that their sexual assault is a joke to you, and it tells the young men around you that it’s acceptable to assault women. At the very least it tells them that sexually assaulting women will have no consequences for them. Is that the legacy you want to create for yourself?

This is what I see when I look at you now. Not that I didn’t know you were racist and sexist before. I did, and I loved you in spite of it.

But I would have bet my life you would never be the kind of man who enthusiastically supports a blatant sexual predator, and I am heartbroken to be wrong.

Rich, white, powerful men made the laws we follow in this country, and they bend and break them at their leisure. They aren’t victims, they victimize. How a rich, white, powerful man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has never faced accountability for any of his actions has convinced so many that he is being victimized and needs them to defend him would be amusing if it didn’t have such dire consequences.  

 I will continue to love you and speak cordially to you during our encounters, and we will never speak of this.

But know that from now on in my heart I know you are not a man who would be a heroic protector of women, but a man who supports and encourages a man they need protection from.

And we will both have to find a way to live with that. –Mary Long

Madonna recently appeared at Coachella with Sabrina Carpenter, and the vitriol and criticism online was swift and brutal.

Being a classic rock girl, I’ve never been a fan of her brand of music. However, I am a fan of women supporting each other as they do whatever the hell they want with their lives.

I started going to concerts as a teenager decades ago and it’s still one of my favorite things to do. Having a cocktail and the ‘warm smell of colitas’ while listening to my favorite band play live is absolute heaven for me. For those few hours I’m seventeen again, dancing and singing like life hasn’t had its way with me yet.

Most bands I see are decades from their heyday but still drawing crowds. The long-haired rock and rollers are now grandpas with respectable haircuts but still playing their hearts out and bringing joy to those in attendance.

However, it’s not only their looks that have changed. With few exceptions, most of them do a kind of talk-singing now, their voices no longer powered by youth.  They often sound a bit raspy and don’t always reach those notes that came so easy before time took its toll. Those in attendance couldn’t care less. We’re there to have a good time and listen to some of our favorite tunes and we never leave disappointed. The guys in these bands look and sound their age and nobody cares.

Certainly not the press. They never call them grandpas or say their time has passed. They may use some gentle language in their reporting regarding sound or appearance, but it’s never vicious. I don’t know if I’ve ever read any of them criticize what they’re wearing or say they’re too old to be performing.

That kind of reporting is reserved for female artists. Take note of how often the reporting on a female artist whose been around for awhile is reviewed not for her artistry, but for how her looks and voice have withstood the passing of time.

Mick jagger is eighty-two years old and the Rolling Stones are doing their final tour this year.  Alice Cooper is seventy-eight and touring in 2026. Bruce Springsteen is seventy-six and out on the road again. (Madonna is younger than all of them) I challenge you to find one article about any of them that mentions how old they look or sound or that these grandpas should hang it up. Instead, what you’ll read is respect and admiration for these icons of music, and the reverence that inspires.

The normalization of insulting and abusive language used on women in our media will only stop when we make the decision to stop contributing to it. When we stop buying the magazines and watching the shows that use criticism of women as entertainment.

Women make 80% of purchasing decisions in this world and the people in power got there and stay there because our money put them there. Every purchase we make, every website we support is either contributing to the continuation of our discrimination or taking a stand against the normalization of our abuse.

The next time you write a post or comment criticizing another woman’s looks or artistry, ask yourself what purpose you’re serving. Who programmed you to believe that criticizing other women is in any way appropriate behavior?

Then ask yourself if you’re ready to stop being part of the problem and now choose to be part of the solution.