The saddest part of Stephanie Clifford's interview on "60 Minutes" was not the suggestion of nefarious acts by Donald Trump or his minions. It was her use of the word "deserve."
What Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, had to say about the alleged payoff and intimidation designed to keep her quiet about her relationship with Trump was plenty troubling, sure, but that wasn't the part that struck me and many other women as sad.
According to her story, Trump invited Clifford to dinner during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 — reality TV star meets porn star — and she went to his hotel suite. She asked to use the bathroom and when she emerged, she found him on the bed.
"Perched," she said on "60 Minutes," imitating his spread arms and squinty eyes, a Trump impression so deft that as I sat watching her Sunday night, with several other women, I laughed. We all did. It's possible to laugh even when you're grossed-out.
"And when you saw that," Anderson Cooper, the interviewer, asked, "what went through your mind?"
"I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into," she answered. "And I was like, 'Ugh, here we go.'"
As she told her story, Clifford laughed, sighed, grimaced.
"And I just felt like maybe — (laugh) it was sort of — I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, 'Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.' "
It's a shame-and-blame formulation as old as sex itself: You put yourself in a bad situation, honey, so you deserve this, this sex you don't want to have, that you find repulsive, invasive, regrettable and yet mysteriously unavoidable.
Clifford did put herself in a bad situation. But no woman — no person — "deserves" to feel obligated to have sex, regardless of the circumstances. The fact that many women do is the sad part.
In the interview, Clifford came across as tart and smart, believable and likable, a good storyteller. She was emphatic when she said that sex with Trump was consensual, even though he was 60 and she was 27 and she didn't find him attractive.
"This is not a 'Me Too,' " she told Cooper. "I was not a victim. I've never said I was a victim. I think trying to use me to — to further someone else's agenda — does horrible damage to people who are true victims."
Clifford's willingness to take responsibility for putting herself in a bad situation is admirable. So are her stated desire not to be used for a political agenda and her rejection of the easy "victim" label.
But whether she wants it or not, Clifford's depiction of her thought process in that hotel suite is a "Me Too" moment, even if not for her.
"Me Too" is a movement that's pushing us — male, female, other — to think about our ingrained attitudes and behaviors toward sex and power.
What are the ways, obvious and subtle, that men exercise sexual power over women? What are the forces that lead so many women to accept that domination? What attitudes and behaviors have we taken for granted for so long that we can't even see the pervasiveness and the harm?
We've all heard it: She got what she deserved. She had it coming. She asked for it. She dressed like a tramp, went to his room, led him on.
In the parlance of my high school days, sex was like baseball. First base, second base, third base and home. A girl who "let" a boy get to third had only herself to blame if he couldn't control himself after that.
In that model of sexual relationship, boys are beasts that girls must either tame or oblige — and in a world that trains too many women to oblige, sexually and otherwise, that's bad news.
In the past few months, as the "Me Too" movement has flowered, we've all been called upon to examine the voices in our heads, the ones involving sex and power, that we obey without fully hearing them. Once we can hear them clearly, we can begin to change them. That's true for men as well as women.
Some people dismiss the Stormy Daniels story as a titillating sideshow that distracts from the important questions of Trump's political corruption and incompetence. Others see it as proof of those very things.
But it's also this, a significant story of sex, gender and power, and until we understand the intersection of those forces, we won't get the world we deserve.