Forest Benedict, LMFT

Trigger Warning: This post contains discussions of rape, sexual violence, and abuse of power. Please use care while reading. If these topics feel overwhelming or triggering, you are warmly invited to prioritize your wellbeing and skip this post if needed.

Imagine a nation where the person wielding the highest power mirrored the behaviors, mindset, and tactics of a rapist. What would that look like? How would it impact the collective psyche of the people, especially the most vulnerable among them? And more importantly, how would we recognize the signs and protect ourselves?

The Characteristics of a Rapist – and How They Would Manifest in Leadership

Research on perpetrators of sexual violence reveals consistent patterns of behavior that center around power, domination, and the dehumanization of others. These characteristics are chilling on an individual level — but when amplified through political leadership, they could corrode the very soul of a nation.

Here are some of the key traits of rapists and how they would unfold if such a person rose to the presidency:

• Entitlement: A belief that others exist to serve their needs. In leadership, this would look like using national resources, policies, and institutions for personal gain or ego gratification, regardless of public well-being.
• Dehumanization: Stripping certain groups of their humanity, portraying them as “others” or “less than,” justifying cruelty, exclusion, and violence.
• Exploitation of Vulnerability: Targeting the poor, the marginalized, the isolated — those least able to fight back — to consolidate power or to use as scapegoats.
• Control and Domination: Aggressively dismantling protections, rights, and freedoms to assert unchecked authority over people’s lives, bodies, and choices.
• Lack of Empathy: Showing open disdain or indifference to suffering, mocking the weak, blaming the oppressed for their own oppression.
• Blame Shifting: Refusing accountability, gaslighting the public, and finding enemies and scapegoats to deflect criticism and consequences.
• Deception and Manipulation: Flooding the nation with lies, misinformation, and doublespeak, making it difficult to distinguish truth from fiction.
• Violation of Boundaries: Shredding the norms, ethics, and laws that maintain public trust and safety, and normalizing abuses of power.

The Impact on the Nation’s Most Vulnerable

If a rapist were president, the first and deepest wounds would be carved into the lives of society’s most vulnerable — children, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ individuals, people of color, the economically disadvantaged, survivors of abuse.

We would see cuts to programs that protect and nourish them. We would see attempts to erase their voices, their identities, and their histories. We would see their pain used as a political tool rather than addressed with compassion.

The entire country would feel the ripple effects: a culture of fear, the corrosion of trust, an environment where cruelty is not just tolerated but rewarded.

How Citizens Can Protect Themselves When Power Mirrors Abuse

History, psychology, and survival wisdom all teach us that when faced with abusive power, certain strategies can help individuals and communities stay safer and stronger. If the highest office of the land mirrored the tactics of a rapist, here’s what we would need to remember:

• Stay Awake: Gaslighting thrives when people doubt their own perceptions. Trust your instincts. If something feels wrong, it probably is.
• Strengthen Community: Isolation weakens resistance. Connect with others who share your values, organize, and support one another.
• Set Clear Boundaries: Even when national leadership violates boundaries, individuals and communities can uphold them — legally, socially, and ethically.
• Use Your Voice: Silence feeds abuse. Speak up, share information, and shine light where darkness tries to grow.
• Protect the Vulnerable: Be especially vigilant to defend those at greatest risk. An attack on the marginalized is an attack on all.
• Prioritize Emotional and Physical Safety: Trauma-aware self-care is critical. Therapy, mindfulness, art, activism, and grounding practices can be lifelines.
• Resist Normalization: Abusive leadership tries to normalize cruelty and oppression. Refuse to accept it as “just the way things are.”
• Vote, Advocate, and Hold Power Accountable: When systems allow for change, use them fiercely and relentlessly. Every act of resistance matters.

Conclusion: The Power of Refusing to Be Silent

If a rapist were president, it would not just be a political crisis — it would be a moral one, an existential one, a humanitarian one.

Recognizing the signs, naming the reality without euphemism, and committing ourselves to fierce love, solidarity, and resistance would be our only antidote.

We would not be powerless.

We would be the rising tide.

In empowering support,
Forest Benedict, LMFT

For more articles on political anxiety, self-connection, IFS, sexuality. religious trauma, CPTSD, codependency, healing, and embodied transformation, I invite you to follow and explore my blog and follow along for future posts.

Created in collaboration with AI