A love letter, via Stormy Daniels, to the women and femmes who did not say no

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CP Illustration: Jeff Schrekengost

Stormy Daniels depicted as a marionette

CW: Sexual assault, coercion, rape

Last weekend, while working in Columbus, Ohio – the same city where, in 2018, Stormy Daniels was arrested while working in a strip club – I watched the new Stormy Daniels documentary that was released on Peacock with a sex worker friend of mine.

In the documentary, one of the commenters posited that the term “hush money” will be forever synonymous with Daniels and the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. This is particularly true now given that this Monday, eight years after Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 (allegedly on Trump’s behalf) to keep quiet about their one-time liaison, Trump’s criminal “hush money” trial kicked off in Manhattan, marking the first time in history that a former president stood trial on criminal charges.

I was working in and reporting on the sex industry when the story of the hush money and everything that surrounded it, including Daniels’ arrest, became national news, so I watched the documentary from the perspective of a sex worker who remembers hearing many of my colleagues herald her as a modern-day hero (while also scratching their heads at her Republicanism).

Certainly, when she stood in front of press conference mics and powerfully proclaimed, “[Trump] has never thought that women like me matter, that ends now,” we wanted to believe her. We didn’t just want to; we needed to believe that “women like us,” and all that we have to say, matter.

Yet, as I watched her tell her story throughout the documentary, I stopped watching it through the lens of a sex worker and saw myself watching it as the young girl who didn’t have any power against the brutality of the adult men in my life, as the grad student who had professors carrot-dangle opportunities they never intended to give me in the hopes of sleeping with me, and as the adult woman who found myself in bed with men who I did not say no to, and yet felt violated by.

As she tells it in the documentary, Daniels’ childhood was marked by abuse, poverty, and neglect. She says, “I was in every way headed down a path that says that I should still be in a trailer park in Louisiana and never seen or done anything.” And yet, by the time she met Trump, she was the second highest-paid director in the porn industry. Through her skill and drive, she had gotten out; she had seen and done things that, given the circumstances of her birth, she should not have been able to accomplish.

Given this background, it’s not surprising to me that when Trump told her he wanted to help her break into the mainstream as a co-host on a future season of Celebrity Apprentice, she so badly wanted it to be true that she believed he had her best interest at heart. “I thought we had this mutual respect,” she said in the documentary.

As I watched, I remembered the time my graduate advisor showed up at my house uninvited, sat beside me on my couch, and rested his hand on my thigh while he told me he wanted to help me get published. I remember cutting myself off from my body and pretending that I didn’t know why he was there because I badly wanted a future that looked different than my past. The ironic part of these wishes, though, is that they often land us squarely in the past – to a place of powerlessness.

In the documentary, Daniels brilliantly articulates what this dynamic looks like. “When I came out of the bathroom and Trump was there in his underwear, he was so entitled. I remember thinking, ‘Oh fuck, how did I get myself into this?’ I felt like I had been misled and tricked.” Daniels maintained that what happened next was consensual, even though she didn’t want to have sex with him. “It was awful, but I didn’t say no. I have maintained that it wasn’t rape in any fashion, but I just didn’t say no because I was 9 years old again,” she says.

She was 9 years old again, in the South, where not only was she abused, she was also taught to respect her elders and to be a good girl. She didn’t say no to an unwanted sexual encounter because that is what she had been conditioned to do. And, because she wanted to believe that she had something to offer besides her sexual desirability to powerful men.

Because she did not say no, Daniels was not surprised when, during his presidential campaign, a video of Trump telling Access Hollywood that women will let him “grab them by the pussy” was leaked. “What he said about grabbing women by the pussy, he wasn’t wrong, women will let you grab them by the pussy,” she says. “He shouldn’t have said it, he should have never done it, but he is not wrong. And I don’t know if they ‘let you’ but they don’t tell you not to, and that is what happened to me.” Indeed, this is also something that has happened to me. It is a thing that has happened to most women I know.

Consent advocates will remind us that not saying no is not the same as saying yes, and they are right. A vast space exists between “not no” and “yes”. And still, it is common for women and femmes to hold themselves responsible for the bad behavior of others, as is the case with Daniels. In a moment of vulnerability, she says, “To this day I blame myself and I haven’t forgiven myself because I didn’t shut his ass down in that moment. The hardest part is that I feel like I’m partially responsible for every woman that could have come after me.” I, too, carry guilt for the times that I have normalized abusive behavior by not stopping it.

And yet, hearing Daniels say that reminded me to meet my own perceived shortcomings with grace. I see in her what I had trouble seeing in myself. Namely, that she was set up for failure by an upbringing that made her feel small, a culture that silenced her, and a criminal justice system that failed her. I see someone who has been wronged, not someone who is wrong.

Daniels’ story is a much-publicized version of many of our stories. It is the story of an ambitious woman from a humble background. It is the story of misogyny and patriarchy, of power and coercion, and of the way that we – as women and femmes – have been conditioned to take responsibility for our abuse, abuse by folks who, in all the ways that matter, outpower us. I hope the story she tells, and the price she’s paid for telling it, isn’t in vain. I hope that we can heed her warning and find a voice with which to say no.