What Are Golden Showers? And How Trump Used Them To Punish Obama
Why is Trump so pissed off?
If you’ve been watching social media today, you might’ve noticed that the term “golden showers” is trending worldwide.
And you also might’ve noticed that Donald Trump tweeted this:
FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
What’s the connection between golden showers and Trump’s short, angry outburst?
Today, Buzzfeed published the full text of an unverified intelligence report that has been making the rounds in Washington DC. The report presents evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump for a long time.
The big bombshell revelation in the unverified report — which is causing all the online chatter — is that the Russians allegedly have video of Donald Trump involved in a “golden shower” party with sex workers in a Moscow hotel.
What is a golden shower?
It’s related to a particular fetish, also known as urolagnia or water sports, where a person experiences sexual gratification by interacting in some way with urination. It can take many forms — getting a sexual thrill from watching other people urinate (in a voyeuristic way), wetting your pants, or holding your urine for an uncomfortable amount of time (also known as omorashi), among other acts.
The term “golden showers” usually refers to the act of watching someone else urinate, being urinated on, or urinating on someone else to get sexual pleasure.
(Remember the episode of Sex in the City where John Slattery wanted to pee on Carrie? That’s one example of golden showers.)
Here’s the thing — there is NOTHING wrong with consenting adults participating in golden showers.
No one should feel ashamed about having a sexual kink that doesn’t hurt anyone involved.
Urine play is a fairly common sexual practice. (Even singer Ricky Martin once admitted that he enjoys golden showers.)
We shouldn’t malign Donald Trump if he does have a legitimate sexual kink for golden showers. That’s his business and the last thing we need in this country is more sex shaming, even towards a conservative politician. (And even if it’s easy to make funny jokes about someone getting peed on.)
HOWEVER… that doesn’t mean that, if the report is correct, Trump didn’t do anything wrong.
First of all, the description of the recorded sex acts in the report allege that Trump specifically initiated the golden showers as a show of disrespect to President Obama and his wife.
Here’s an excerpt:
However, there were other aspects to TRUMP's engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit TRUMP's personal obsessions and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable "kompromat" (compromising material) on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP's (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a "golden showers" (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.
IF that’s true (and that’s a big IF), that’s a fairly disgusting reason to participate in such a sex act, particularly from someone who has spoken so frequently about America’s “greatness.” That has nothing to do with urination for sexual pleasure — that has just everything to do with being needlessly gross towards the sitting President of the United States.
The other REALLY troubling aspect of the report is the suggestion that the Russian government might have been collecting blackmail material on Donald Trump for years.
There is a perception held by many Americans that Donald Trump is beholden to Vladimir Putin’s government — charges that Trump has secret Russian financial holdings, that Russian hacking helped his campaign, and so on. (There are mostly unverified.)
So the idea that the Russian government might actually have a sex tape — and a fairly atypical, kinky sex tape — of Donald Trump is disturbing on a few levels. If those tapes exist, it would be fair to wonder if the Russian government could leverage them for political purposes.
Should we believe any of this?
It’s up to you.
That’s almost literally what Buzzfeed said when it published the report. Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith emailed his staff after publishing the report, saying:
As we noted in our story, there is serious reason to doubt the allegations. We have been chasing specific claims in this document for weeks, and will continue to.
Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017.
But Trump should have a thick skin by now (and he’s going to be the leader of the free world soon), so it’s not that hard to realize what so many people online don’t seem to have much sympathy for him, particularly with his own history of personal attacks on his political opponents).
We should feel bad for people who legitimately are into golden showers.
It’s just a kink. A fairly benign kink. Which is now going to be the world’s biggest Twitter punchline for a few weeks.
There’s nothing wrong with golden showers or urine play when consenting adults are into it.
It’s really no weirder than someone calling their husband “Daddy” or asking their wife to dress up in cheap lingerie they bought at the local sex store.
But when kinks like these get brought onto the international stage, they get mocked, which is a shame.
So, if Donald Trump is into golden showers, we support him 100%. (He always has had a thing for gold, now that you mention it.)
But if the story of his golden showers lead to revelations of blackmail, treason, and paying sex workers to symbolically defile the President and his wife — that’s just not something we’re into.