I do not consent to this presidency. 

Trigger warning: sexual assault.
.

.

.

.

This morning, woken by another anxiety attack, I texted my friend: “I’m so scared. This election feels like a sexual assault. I said no, over and over, but now it’s coming anyway, and I just have to wait until it’s over.”

Later at my desk, I had a vision of a protest: that on Inauguration Day, a hundred thousand women and men will sit down cross-legged in the streets of Washington, D.C., saying one simple thing over and over: “I do not consent.” And we will not move until removed by force. And then more of us will take their places. And the presidential motorcade will have to stall there indefinitely, hearing us say it over and over, “I do not consent.”

I’ve heard people say, Well, let’s see what he does or What’s the worst he can do. But he’s different from Bush or McCain or Romney. He is a sociopathic sexual predator. I believe nothing can go back to normal. I believe this man–whose name I can’t even say or write–is an existential threat to the country and to the planet. I believe he is the closest thing to pure evil I have ever witnessed in my life. 

I believe an unimaginable amount of human suffering will result from Tuesday’s election, and that it’s our moral duty to limit it.

I don’t yet know how. Except to say over and over, “I do not consent.”