Three lessons in gender and sexuality in this election

The nation spent the last month or so deciding whether to mind that one of the two major party candidates, Donald Trump, had been recorded on tape bragging about using his money and power to kiss and grope women without consent, including the line about 'grabbing women by the pussy,' that spurred the wondrous range of 'pussy grabs back' memes. This came on the heels of disrespect toward Mexican Americans, Muslim Americans, African Americans and those with disabilities. Was it mere 'locker room talk,' descriptively if not prescriptively normal?  Many athletes rejected this defense, while others noted that the talk was more typical of middle school than the adult phase of the life course. The Republican women who wore the 'Trump is welcome to grab this (downward arrow),' shirts tried to move the focus away from the absence of consent by blazoning their permission across their bodies. In an extraordinary speech on Oct. 13 in New Hampshire, the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, channeled our collective disbelief and the affective toll of hearing the recording: 'I can't believe that I'm saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women;' 'I can't stop thinking about this - it has shaken me to my core.' The words were especially powerful coming from Michelle Obama, who had run an equally extraordinary 'United State of Women Summit' at the White House in June 2016. This summit centered the intersectional nature of gender and sexuality: sexism does not exist in a power-neutral, binary male-female gender system, but is always already part of intersecting hierarchies of race, sexuality, ableism, and power.