The pro-rape administration

Jill Filipovic points out that the prevalence of accused sexual assaulters in the Trump administration, starting of course at the very top, is not a coincidence:

Of the more than two dozen Cabinet and staff members Trump has nominated, there are nearly as many accused sexual abusers as there are women. And that sends a pretty clear message about who Trump Term Two is for.

But it also demonstrates the efficacy with which conservatives have undercut #MeToo, and women’s claims to bodily autonomy more broadly. The first election of Trump, after the publication of the Access Hollywood tape on which he bragged about sexually violating women by grabbing them by the genitals, was part of what fueled the Women’s March and later #MeToo, both furious responses to the sexual impunity of powerful men. And while #MeToo managed to hold a handful of prominent men accountable and change laws across several states, many other men dodged accusations and either retained or ascended to important roles. The most notable among them is arguably Brett Kavanaugh, one of Trump’s Supreme Court picks, who was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford while they were both in high school. Kavanaugh denied the accusations; Blasey Ford gave incredible and compelling testimony at his Senate confirmation hearing; and despite Kavanaugh’s angry and reactive testimony, he was confirmed to the bench—the highest court in the land. It was from that perch that he then went on to sign on to the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the era of abortion rights across the United States.

In the background of all this, reactionary conservative men are cheering the end of the anti-Trump feminist fight. The white supremacist Nick Fuentes started a social media trend when he posted what may be the tagline of this particular moment: “Your Body, My Choice. Forever.” The line is a reference to the longtime abortion rights slogan “My Body, My Choice,” but it also has an undeniably rapey ring. And that is not a coincidence: The power to legally force a woman to endure the permanent and sometimes dangerous full-body evolution of gestating a pregnancy for nine months, followed by the pain and risk of childbearing, is not so different from the power to force a woman into sex. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the same organs are generally involved; both acts force a woman to suffer a painful invasion of her most intimate body parts; both take what should be happy and pleasurable events (having a baby, sex) and turn them violent and violating; and both assume that a woman’s body may be used against her will, as a vessel for someone else’s desires—a man’s sexual ones, the state’s reproductive ones. “Your Body, My Choice” makes clear the relationship between the forced births and pregnancies of abortion bans and the forced sex of rape—and the desire for misogynistic humiliation and male dominance that underlies both.

I think in historical retrospect it will become clear that the Kavanaugh nomination was a watershed event in the political fortunes of Trumpism. The real defense of Kavanaugh is that he did in fact do what he was accused of doing, but what he did wasn’t really very bad, or bad at all, because what man from Kavanaugh’s demographic, roughly speaking, hasn’t done similar things?

This is the logic whereby if everyone is guilty then really no one is guilty, and it’s a key to understanding the psychological attractions of Trumpism.

Trump is coming into his second term as the president who ended legal abortion in all 50 states. He is also the first convicted felon to hold the office, and the first to have been found liable for sexual abuse. He ran a campaign catering to disaffected and often misogynistic men (“Get every man you know to the polls,” Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller tweeted on Election Day) and saw a 12-point advantage among male voters under 30 compared with female voters the same age. It is hard to see this as anything other than an anti-feminist backlash.

Joe Rogan and the Incels isn’t the worst band name ever, but it’s a combination that played a big role in getting a career rapist re-elected president.

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.”

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment