One of the most bewildering anecdotes of the 2016 campaign was how so many evangelical Christians continued to rally behind Donald Trump even after the “Access Hollywood” tapes came out. You would think that hearing Trump on tape revel in how he felt his celebrity status gave him carte blanche to degrade and assault women would have finished him. But it didn’t. Instead, the nation’s so-called moral guardians told us that it didn’t matter as much as ending abortion and marriage equality.
One big reason why so many rank-and-file fundies bought this line was that a significant number of them still believe that when sexual assault happens, it’s the victim’s fault. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch recently dug up a lovely example of this mentality. A fundie pastor would have us believe that there are times where the woman is guilty of sexual assault–merely by what she’s wearing.
One of Trump’s most rabid supporters from the pulpit was Carl Gallups, a Baptist pastor from the Florida Panhandle. Gallups is one of many conspiracy theorists who have latched on to Trump. He’s a full-blown birther and Sandy Hook truther, and believes Obama had many of the characteristics of the Antichrist.
That alone would be enough to give us pause about what comes from Gallups’ pulpit. But on last week’s edition of “Freedom Friday,” his weekly radio show on WEBY in his hometown of Milton, near Pensacola, he gave us a particularly revealing example of what makes him tick. He brought on his executive editor, Mike Shoesmith, to discuss sexual assault–specifically, what Shoesmith calls a “parallel culture of assault by women on men.”
Earlier in the week, Shoesmith took to Facebook to contend that women who wear “sexually suggestive clothing” are “guilty of indecent visual assault” on men. He went further in a post on Gallups’ blog, in which he argued that the sight of a provocatively dressed woman sets off chemical reactions in men’s brains, giving them “an involuntary surge of pleasure.” He further argues that women are well aware of the effect this has on men, and dress to match their desired audience. Actresses, for instance, regularly dress in a way that we might as well be watching “an R-rated soft porn spectacle.”
Shoesmith went further on the show with Gallups. Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Shoesmith repeated his claim that women who dress provocatively are guilty of “indecent visual assault” which causes “mental anguish and torment” on men. He claimed that men are in “a constant state of sexual assault” by women who either don’t know what they’re doing or “know the feelings it stirs and like the control they have over men.”
Gallups lapped it up, saying that if a man came out of an office bathroom wearing “a very sexually suggestive outfit” and walked through the office, there would be almost instant claims of sexual harassment. For that reason, he wondered why a woman wearing sexually suggestive clothing wouldn’t be guilty of sexual assault. To Shoesmith, there really was no question about it, considering that it was the product of an “involuntary” reaction.
Gallups stressed that men needed to fight off the temptation to “do something they shouldn’t do.” If they gave in to it, they would have to answer to God, their family, and the law. However, they were merely discussing something that should be “obvious” to all of us. After all, “the science supports us in it.” Shoesmith said that men faced a daily battle to fend off a “chemical sexual assault in their brains” every day. Gallups replied that for that to happen, “women need to help the men.”
When I listened to this, I wondered where I’d heard this before. Then I remembered how Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar slow-walked reporting their eldest son, Josh, for fondling and molesting his sisters. The Duggars, you’ll recall, are big fans of Bible teacher and homeschooling guru Bill Gothard, who taught that a sexual assault victim could be responsible for his or her ordeal if he or she “defrauded” his or her attacker. That is, if you dress or act in a way that stirs up lustful thoughts in someone, you bear responsibility for anything that happens as a result. Supposedly, a woman can defraud a man with a mere toss of the hair.
What Gallups and Shoesmith are saying sound like the logical end of suggesting that a woman can “defraud” her attacker. And it’s no less degrading, even when Gallups tries to acknowledge that it’s ultimately the man’s responsibility to not give in to temptation. But to even suggest that a woman is responsible for tempting a man is simply outrageous.
For some time, a lot of people have wondered how the fundies who bowed down to Trump could have allowed Trump to remain standing when the “Access Hollywood” tapes came out. Now we may have at least part of the answer.
(featured image courtesy Gallups’ Facebook)
