Will Trump Finally Pay a Price for his Misogyny?

Accountability, or its absence, sends a powerful message to young men and boys

By Jackson Katz

Donald Trump is in political trouble over the Epstein files, but it remains to be seen just how serious and lasting it will be. One superpower he has displayed throughout his lifetime in the public eye is a savant-like ability to evade accountability for his innumerable misdeeds, sexual misconduct, corrupt practices, and petty cruelties.

This includes, of course, his long history of misogynous comments and behaviors. As the dominant political figure in the U.S. over the past decade, and the man with arguably the most ubiquitous media presence in the Global North and perhaps the entire world, he’s played a central role in the sexual objectification of women and girls and the normalization of misogyny.

Until now he’s largely gotten away with it. Over the years he’s had some awkward and uncomfortable moments, like when the “grab ‘em by the pussy” clip went viral a month before the 2016 election, and he was forced to make a rare apology. He has survived dozens of credible accusations of sexual assault and harassment, but in 2023 he was found liable by a New York City jury for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, and ordered by a judge to pay millions in damages.

But somehow he’s been able to weather those crises, either by bullying his friends and allies in politics and media into complicit silence, or by distracting people with reality TV-like stunts. That’s worked for him in the past. But for a variety of reasons, and as many pundits have observed, the Epstein files scandal feels different.

Nonetheless, it’s still far from clear whether Trump ultimately will be held accountable for his actions – or inactions -- over the course of his long friendship with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, our era’s most notorious and prolific sexual abuser of girls. Will this finally be the moment when Trump pays a real price for his misogyny?

Many people are skeptical. As reported in The Daily Beast, the comedian Jon Stewart put it like this: “Every time, we keep thinking, 34 felonies—that’ll get him! Oh my God, that thing he said on Access Hollywood! And every time, Trump just comes in and goes, ‘meep-meep’ and flies away. And I think it’s the same thing with the Epstein files.”

“…Even when the level of ‘boys will be boys’ rises to the level of felony convictions,” Stewart said, “nobody seems to bat an eye. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I’m telling you, that’s (sexual predation) what their relationship was steeped in. It was not a shared love of ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’”

Many feminists are skeptical as well. They’ve seen Trump slither away unscathed too many times. Soraya Chemaly, author of the new book All We Want is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy, told Amanda Marcotte from Salon.com:

“Right after the grab ‘em by the pussy tape we should have seen this (accountability)…and that’s not what happened. And then after the more than two dozen women came forward with detailed stories that were similar, we should have seen it grind to a halt. But the fact is we don’t care about that kind of predation… we just don’t care. And that’s a function of sexualized violence as a tool of male supremacist oppression in the home, in the street, in politics.”

Commentators in both mainstream and independent media tend to see the Epstein files as a traditional scandal with an initial crime(s), followed by an even more damaging cover-up. Feminists, by contrast, understand the transgressions of Epstein and his associates not merely as the depredations of individual bad actors, but as the product of deep systemic misogyny.

In this case, a deeper systemic analysis includes recognition of the fact that accountability goes far beyond Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the many powerful and wealthy men whose sexual exploitation of vulnerable girls and women they facilitated.

It might be tempting – and oddly comforting -- to “monsterize” these perpetrators. People across the political spectrum can decry the evil and sick pedos! But the urge to pathologize the abusers – while understandable -- diminishes the urgency of calls for broader societal introspection.

Part of that introspection involves acknowledging the unpleasant reality that the sexual exploitation of women and girls is a ubiquitous feature of American commercial culture in the 21^st century, from images in mainstream advertising to the sexualized cruelty of misogynous porn that is readily available at the touch of a button.

Feminists have been analyzing, writing about, and protesting sexual exploitation since the 1970s. That includes a longstanding focus on the sexualization of young girls, and the ways in which it has eroded their self-worth and confidence in other areas, and made them even more vulnerable to predatory behavior from older men.

In recent decades, a small but hearty movement of profeminist men from across the ethnic-racial spectrum has produced a growing body of academic research and pedagogical practice that examines and seeks to counteract the effects of misogyny in the sexual socialization of boys and young men, and the ways in which that socialization contributes to the normalization of men’s violence against women.

In that respect, it’s important to remember that the sordid saga of Jeffrey Epstein and company has unfolded over decades; survivors and others close to the case claim there are more than 1000 victim-survivors!

The pathway forward also entails critiquing – and moving beyond -- the typical frames of conventional media. Chemaly made the following observation in a recent Substack post:

“Rather than ‘cover-up,’” she wrote, “we should be thinking in terms of ‘cartel.’ The Epstein case in particular is a paradigmatic example of patriarchy as cartel. His ‘product’ was access to and sale of young girls, with impunity. His ‘distribution network’ included groomers, assistants, co-conspirators, and facilitators. His ‘protectors’ included the global and elite people and financial, educational, and justice systems that turned a blind eye, managed his money, and burnished his reputation. His ‘users’ were men, most apparently elite and wealthy men. Even his death lends itself to the analogy. For many years, Epstein was protected by clients and a justice system that looked away from his crimes. This was true until protection was no longer viable, after which protection turned into a strategy of containment in which he and Maxwell were sacrificed to maintain order.”

The American president helps to shape masculinity norms

Another way to think about the scale and systemic effects of this scandal has to do with Trump himself, and the example he sets for other men and boys. He is, after all, the defining political figure of our time. Millions of young Americans don’t remember a time before he dominated the airwaves and the national psyche.

Along those lines, whether or not Trump is held responsible – including by his fellow Republicans, right-leaning “brocasters,” and other influential voices in right-wing media – is infinitely more consequential than it is when an ordinary man abuses women and girls, or enables that abuse.

As I wrote in my 2016 book Man Enough: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, the American president – more than any single person -- embodies the national identity. This in a country that sees itself as exceptionally “masculine.” (One of the chief reasons we’ve never had a woman president).

As the patriarchal “father” of the nation, (he) plays a powerfully symbolic role, in addition to fulfilling his material responsibilities as chief of the executive branch of government:

“The man who is the American president plays an important function in the gender order that transcends his purely political duties. How he performs his manhood -- and how his identity as a man is described and debated through the filters of a 24/7 media culture -- both reflects and simultaneously helps to produce and reinforce masculine norms. In one sense he is analogous to a national alpha male; the leader of the pack against whom other men measure their status.”

As a result, what the president does – and in the present moment, what he is or is not able to wriggle out of – sends a powerful message about manhood and entitlement not only to female victims and survivors everywhere, but to the millions of men, young men, and boys that identify with and even idolize him:

“The presidency itself can be understood as a kind of teaching platform, with the president as a kind of pedagogue in chief. He literally teaches -- by example -- what one highly influential version of dominant masculinity looks like. The cultural theorist Henry Giroux, in a critique of the Hollywood movie Fight Club, argues that certain Hollywood films play a role as teaching machines that purposely attempt to influence how and what knowledge and identities can be produced within a limited range of social relations. The presidency as it is constructed in media culture plays a similar function, especially insofar as it defines the masculine ideal, and thus serves to model for boys and men the most socially acceptable and validated qualities of manhood at a given cultural moment. Like masculinity itself, this masculine ideal is not static, but instead is ever-changing and subject to ongoing historical evolutions, retrenchments, and assorted other pressures.” (Man Enough, p. 29)

In other words, when the highest status man in the country commits, encourages, and/or condones misogynous acts, and he’s not held accountable either by the legal system or the American people, it sends an unmistakable message to highly impressionable boys and young men about women’s worth and masculine entitlement.

Thousands of emails from Epstein’s estate have already been released by the House Oversight Committee that reveal the depth and scale of Epstein’s sexual abuse and exploitation of teenage girls, some as young as thirteen or fourteen. Alongside these revelations comes growing evidence of Donald Trump’s active complicity – including knowledge about, and possibly direct participation in – this unimaginable depravity. Much of the documentary evidence reaffirms what we already know from the brave testimony of numerous survivors.

The challenge this poses to supporters of the president is clear, especially adults responsible for the socialization of boys and young men: parents, mentors, teachers, coaches, and influential voices in media, along with faith, community, and political leaders at all levels.

They can choose -- for whatever reason -- to deny and/or minimize the negative impact on young people of the president’s long-running relationship to the notorious rapist and sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

But they need to know that the cost of them shirking their responsibility to hold the president and other powerful men accountable for aiding, abetting, and participating in misogynous abuse is a growing societal acceptance of men’s violence against women, and all the tragedy and suffering that comes with it.