{"id":29813,"date":"2016-07-26T13:17:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=29813"},"modified":"2016-07-26T13:17:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:17:31","slug":"donald-trump-roger-ailes-and-bill-gothard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/07\/donald-trump-roger-ailes-and-bill-gothard.html","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Bill Gothard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Roger Ailes, the long-time chief executive director of Fox News, announced last week<\/a> that he was stepping down amid sexual harassment allegations lodged against him by Gretchen Carlson numerous and other female Fox News employees, including the popular Megyn Kelly. Donald Trump responded as follows<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he\u2019s helped them, and even recently. And when they write books that are fairly recently released, and they say wonderful things about him. And now, all of a sudden, they\u2019re saying these horrible things about him,\u201d Trump said in an interview with NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Saturday evening. \u201cIt\u2019s very sad because he\u2019s a very good person. I\u2019ve always found him to be just a very, very good person. And, by the way, a very, very talented person. Look what he\u2019s done. So I feel very badly.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm, I wonder what this reminds me of. Oh right! Bill Gothard\u2019s defenders. For those not already familiar, Bill Gothard ran the fundamentalist Institute for Basic Life Principles, amassing a far-reaching\u00a0following among Christian homeschoolers. Gothard founded his organization in the mid-1980s, and spent the next three decades sexually harassing and molesting the teenage girls and young women who served as his personal assistants. Gothard\u2019s sexual predation came to light in 2013, when a snowballing number of women told their stories on the website Recovering Grace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many within Gothard\u2019s following have defended him, arguing that the women in question had misunderstood his actions, that he only meant to mentor or encourage them, or that they knew Gothard and he was a very, very good person. The common themes between this defense and Trump\u2019s defense of Ailes are perhaps most disturbing in what the lack of understanding of sexual harassment (and sexual abuse more generally) that they reveal.<\/p>\n

For starters, it is very common for victims of sexual harassment to not report what they are experiencing, or to be disbelieved if they do report it. Both Gothard and Ailes were in positions of power. Both were able to charm the men around them. Both created cultures of secrecy. This is precisely how sexual harassment frequently\u00a0works\u2014it is committed by those who believe they can get away with it because of their position of power or their popularity. It is not at all surprising that Ailes victims wrote \u201cwonderful things\u201d about him up until the moment they felt safe to go public with their allegations.<\/p>\n

The scary thing here, though, is that I\u2019m not entirely sure Trump sees anything wrong with Ailes\u2019 alleged actions.\u00a0\u201cI can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he\u2019s helped them, and even recently,\u201d Trump stated. Well yes\u2014that is how this apparently worked. The several dozen women who have come forward so far have alleged that Ailes made promotions and advancements contingent on them offering sexual favors. In other words, he \u201chelped them\u201d in exchange for sex. And I\u2019m not entirely sure Trump sees that as a problem. He may see it as a fair exchange, goods in turn.<\/p>\n

Both Gothard and Ailes\u2019 alleged victims remained silent for similar reasons\u2014the power their abuser held, the (very warranted) fear that no one would believe them, the understanding that their abuser could destroy their career (or, in Gothard\u2019s case, their position within their family and church). Interestingly though, in both cases there were allegations that had been around for years. A 2014 book critical of\u00a0Fox News<\/a> included a woman\u2019s story of\u00a0being sexually harassed by Ailes in the 1980s, but the allegations made little mark. As for Gothard, his predation was so obvious to those around him that at one point during the 1990s his organizations\u2019 board of directors sought to prevent him from having teenage girls and young women as personal assistants. Even with these leaks, though, the culture of silence within\u00a0each organization was enough to keep\u00a0the problem bottled up for decades<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Let me note\u00a0one more thing. Bill Gothard selected a very specific type of teenage girls and young women to serve as his personal assistants over the year\u2014and those around him knew that. It was fairly common knowledge<\/a> that Gothard had a \u201ctype.\u201d In fact,\u00a0his promotion of this specific look as especially godly and upstanding\u00a0was so pervasive that teenage girl sand young women like in his followers, most notably the Duggar girls, often curled their hair to achieve that specific look. Fox News, for its part, has had an infamously blond female anchor lineup. One wonders whether\u00a0Ailes, too, has a type.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t just about Ailes or Gothard or the similarities between these cases.\u00a0It\u2019s also about Donald Trump.\u00a0Trump\u2019s defense of Ailes makes it only more obvious\u00a0that a Trump presidency would be bad for women.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Ailes, the long-time chief executive director of Fox News, announced last week that he was stepping down amid sexual harassment allegations lodged against him by Gretchen Carlson numerous and other female Fox News employees, including the popular Megyn Kelly. I’ve noticed some interesting similarities between the allegations against Ailes and those against Bill Gothard. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":29817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[196,568,597],"class_list":["post-29813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism","category-politics","tag-bill-gothard","tag-donald-trump","tag-sexual-harassment"],"yoast_head":"\nDonald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Bill Gothard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Roger Ailes, the long-time chief executive director of Fox News, announced last week that he was stepping down amid sexual harassment allegations lodged against him by Gretchen Carlson numerous and other female Fox News employees, including the popular Megyn Kelly. I've noticed some interesting similarities between the allegations against Ailes and those against Bill Gothard. 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