{"id":7072989,"date":"2026-10-02T14:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7072989"},"modified":"2026-10-02T14:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:39:20","slug":"cornell-rape-and-misogyny-in-the-age-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7072989","title":{"rendered":"Cornell, Rape, and Misogyny in the Age of Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\u2014 from Robert Reich’s Substack<\/a><\/i><\/b> <\/p>\n

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Friends,<\/p>\n

Last month a young woman filed a lawsuit against Cornell University, alleging that two years ago the university failed to protect her from being raped by seven men at a fraternity house near the university campus. She also sued the fraternity. The lawsuit has plunged the university into a crisis and invited criticism of the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, who decided there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the seven men. <\/p>\n

At this point we can only guess why neither Cornell nor Van Houten did more in response to the young woman\u2019s allegations. But it seems to me that we\u2019re living through a time when men \u2014 including privileged young men at a frat house in an Ivy League university \u2014 feel some impunity when it comes to attacking women. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it unrelated to such feelings of impunity that the man now occupying the highest office in the land was found in civil court to have sexually molested writer E. Jean Carroll (and whose behavior the presiding judge at that trial described as \u201crape\u201d). Or that this same man has repeatedly insulted the physical appearance of female journalists, politicians, and public figures. Or that he was caught on a hot microphone boasting about using his fame to forcefully kiss and grope women without consent, stating that being a star allows men to “do anything” and \u201cgrab \u2019em by the pussy.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

When women have spoken out against him, Trump has resorted to smear campaigns, as he did with Carroll, Stormy Daniels, and Hillary Clinton. When women have stood up to him, he has exploded in anger against them, as he did with Megyn Kelly<\/a>, Rosie O\u2019Donnell, Kamala Harris<\/a>, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As Sophie Gilbert wrote<\/a> in The Atlantic,<\/em> \u201cThe misogyny that Trump embodies and champions is less about loathing than enforcement: underscoring his requirement that women look and behave a certain way, that we comply with his desires and submit to our required social function.\u201d <\/p>\n

His administration is the most belligerently misogynistic of any in memory. It has openly equated testosterone levels to strength and courage, conducted a cage match on the White House lawn as part of its celebration of America\u2019s 250th anniversary, fired every senior female official in sight, and accused the Democratic Party of being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor do I think it irrelevant that Trump, JD Vance, and Trump\u2019s erstwhile pal Elon Musk inhabit what\u2019s been termed the \u201cmanosphere\u201d \u2014 a place where the main events are dominance and submission. The whole point<\/em> is to humiliate weak men and to subjugate women.<\/p>\n

An implicit promise of the 2024 Trump campaign was to restore patriarchy to America. Trump voters were overwhelmingly male.<\/p>\n

After Trump\u2019s reelection, sexist and abusive attacks on women \u2014 such as \u201cyour body, my choice\u201d and \u201cget back to the kitchen\u201d \u2014 surged across social media, according to an analysis<\/a> from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.<\/p>\n

A remarkable number of Trump\u2019s cronies are sexual harassers and predators. Trump was introduced at the Republican National Convention by Dana White, chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who was once caught on tape<\/a> slapping his wife in a nightclub.<\/p>\n

JD Vance has claimed men in America are \u201csuppressed\u201d in their masculinity. <\/p>\n

Before becoming Trump\u2019s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault<\/a>. (Hegseth\u2019s own mother accused<\/a> him of abusing women, though she later disavowed her words.) And as secretary, Hegseth has championed \u201chigh-T\u201d men, demanded that women be removed from front-line combat roles, and blocked promotions of female officers. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was accused of sexually harassing his family\u2019s nanny and at one point kept a diary of his conquests<\/a>, which his wife at the time found.<\/p>\n

One of Elon Musk\u2019s companies, SpaceX, reportedly paid $250,000 to a flight attendant who said Musk exposed himself to her. In a lawsuit<\/a> filed last year, former employees accused him of \u201ctreating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most pathetic members of the manosphere is Mark Zuckerberg. After kissing Trump\u2019s derriere, the third-richest man in America called for more \u201cmasculine energy\u201d because the corporate world was becoming \u201cculturally neutered.\u201d He told Joe Rogan that \u201chaving a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump regime celebrated toxic masculinity by smoothing the way for Andrew and Tristan Tate to be extradited from Romania to the United States. The Tate bros had been accused of luring women to Romania and then forcing them to work as pornographic webcam performers. Britain is also investigating the Tate brothers for rape and human trafficking in Britain. (U.S. Marshals arrested the Tate brothers in Miami on July 18, following an extradition request from the United Kingdom.) <\/p>\n

Andrew Tate is a big fan of Trump, championing him to his millions of mostly young male followers on social media. \u201cI\u2019m a Trump fan because I\u2019m a man,\u201d Tate has said. \u201cYou have to support Trump if you\u2019re a man.\u201d <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s authoritarian manosphere is organized around a hierarchy topped by heroic male warriors. Winning is all about getting other males to submit to the dominant male. Women are relegated to subservient roles. <\/p>\n

Anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order. LGBTQ+ people are believed to weaken the heroic male. Hence, Trump\u2019s executive order declaring that the U.S. government will recognize only a person\u2019s sex assigned at birth, limit the definition of a \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d to their reproductive cells, and potentially withhold federal funding from programs that acknowledge transgender people or \u201cgender ideology.\u201d <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to oversimplify a complex social phenomenon or engage in the same kind of gender stereotypes that the manosphere promotes. Male domination is hardly the only characteristic that unites Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Kennedy Jr., Musk, and the Tech Bros. Misogyny is not unique to authoritarian men.<\/p>\n

Nor do I presume to know what happened at the Cornell fraternity house two years ago. But I don\u2019t think it unreasonable to see it related to America\u2019s slide toward a neofascism rooted in deep distrust, bordering on hate, of people who seem weak or feminine \u2014 people who were born as, or have become, women.






_______<\/p>\n

About author<\/span>
\nRobert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock<\/a>“, “The Work of Nations<\/a>,” and “Beyond Outrage<\/a>,” and, his most recent, “Common Good<\/a>“. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine<\/a>, chairman of Common Cause<\/a>, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences<\/a>, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, “Inequality For All<\/a>.” He’s co-creator of the Netflix original documentary “Saving Capitalism<\/a>,” which is streaming now. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n