We’re Not Even Pretending to Care Anymore, Are We?
I don’t know if sexual assault allegations have ever mattered in our society in a meaningful way. But as our president-elect goes on a victory tour with an entourage of allegedly abusive men, it’s clear they don’t matter, right now.
Politics
In October 2016, Donald Trump was caught on a hot-mic tape bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy.” The tape sparked enough outrage for him to pretend to issue a solemn apology. Of course, he still won the election. And between his vile misogyny, degradation of survivors, and successful efforts to violate our bodily autonomy, his presidency helped spark and invigorate the MeToo movement. But if any of that ever really mattered in our increasingly anti-feminist society, it doesn’t seem to matter now.
On Saturday night, President-elect Trump—who, in addition to being accused of sexual abuse by over two dozen women, was found civilly liable for sexual abuse in 2023—triumphantly rolled into Madison Square Garden for a UFC event. He was greeted with uproarious cheers, making his entrance alongside an entourage of allegedly abusive dude-bros. Next to him sat Elon Musk, who reportedly paid a $250,000 settlement to a flight attendant he allegedly sexually abused, pressured at least one female subordinate to have children with him, and more recently threatened to impregnate Taylor Swift. Trump was also joined by UFC President Dana White, who hit his wife on video in 2023; Kid Rock, who allegedly assaulted a woman in 2007, grabbing her neck and trying to force her to have sex with him; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who, in July, seemed to foreshadow that the one, publicly known sexual assault allegation against him may not be the last.
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Even before the skin-crawling UFC jaunt, Trump has been almost smugly embracing allegedly abusive men via his cabinet picks. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, is accused of sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary who’s very publicly criticized the Geneva Conventions and said women don’t belong in combat roles, allegedly paid a woman who accused him of rape to sign an NDA; in college, Hegseth was the publisher of Princeton’s conservative student newspaper and published a column that argued sex with an unconscious woman isn’t rape. Then, there’s RFK Jr., who Trump tapped for health and human services secretary. These are among the most powerful positions in a presidential administration, and sexual assault allegations seem to have been a prerequisite.
We’re living through a blooming renaissance of misogyny. And no one’s even pretending to care anymore.
every single person named in this has sexual violence allegations or in dana white’s case a video https://t.co/8xkNR3YOaM
— Kylie Cheung (@kylietcheung) November 17, 2024
The aftermath of Trump’s reelection has given way to a particularly vicious cycle of cyber-harassment perpetrated by male, pro-Trump trolls. They’ve rallied around the slogan “your body, my choice,” slinging it at mostly young women and feminists in comment sections, on social media, and even in primary schools. The tagline serves as a smug double entendre: Trump’s anti-abortion policies, his reelection which capitalized on a period of anti-feminist sentiment to defeat another woman opponent, and his status as a legally recognized abuser, are inseparable.
For two years, abortion ban horror stories have flooded the news cycle, prompting Vice President Kamala Harris to reference women “bleeding out in a car in the parking lot” during September’s presidential debate. One popular conservative influencer’s response was to post a smirking, viral video denying any of these women exist. As women watch the country become increasingly hostile to us, large swaths of men of all ages seem to take sadistic pleasure in this. For years, they’ve convinced themselves that small cultural gains by some marginalized groups have resulted in their own victimization. Now, they see the election of a sexual predator, the accused men he’s taking with him, and the control these men will hold over our bodies, as the comeuppance women deserve.
During Trump’s first term, allegations against his appointees and staffers inspired some level of outrage, sowed at least performative doubt among Republican leaders, and, in a couple of cases, led to action. Trump withdrew his nomination for former Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder over domestic violence allegations in February 2017, and terminated staff secretary Rob Porter and speechwriter David Sorensen over similar allegations in the spring of 2018. Of course, that same year, we all watched as Trump and the GOP stood by Brett Kavanaugh. Still, the allegations against Kavanaugh at least seemed to matter to the general public; by contrast, since the weekend, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the cheering MSG crowd, the gushing social media posts, the smug smiles of Trump and at least four other allegedly abusive men celebrating their victory with a night on the town. And the response to all of this seems to be a collective shrug.
Naomi Beinart, 16: “We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman…Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.”
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 10:44 PM
For all the right’s years of hand-wringing about “cancel culture,” I can’t point to a time when abuse allegations were meaningfully taken all that seriously, beyond the singular case of Harvey Weinstein—and only after a decades-long reign of terror. After all, the Access Hollywood tape may have sparked intense backlash, and later on, abuse allegations may have impacted at least two Trump staffers. But Trump was still elected—now reelected.
In the final weeks before Election Day, a viral TikTok trend saw Gen Z women and girls listen to the Access Hollywood tape for the first time with disgust. On Saturday, the New York Times published a gutting op-ed from a 16-year-old high school student, who wrote that she and her female classmates recently watched as their world was turned upside-down, while their male classmates, emotionally unaffected, played video games. “We girls woke up to a country… where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President. Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control,” she wrote. “The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.”
Young women and girls now have to worry that men and boys around them will see a model for masculinity in a president who boasted about sexual assault. In 2018, Trump responded to allegations against Kavanaugh by declaring it to be “a very scary time for young men in America.” Six years later, Trump is back in office, and young women—all women, really—are more afraid than ever.
Once, “grab ‘em by the pussy” was something to apologize for. Now, Trump’s supporters chant “your body, my choice.” Once, sexual violence allegations could tank or threaten a cabinet nomination. Now, look who Trump surrounds himself with.