It can be confusing, tracking the multiple lawsuits journalist E. Jean Carroll filed against Donald Trump, who sexually abused her in the 90s and then lied about it. This is no doubt why U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote a brief that bluntly laid out the main takeaway: Trump raped Carroll, as the word "rape" is commonly understood.
"The fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused — indeed, raped — Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established," Kaplan wrote in a court filing. This document allows journalists to use the R-word when discussing what Trump did to Carroll in a department store changing room in New York.
Considering that they back Trump, you'd think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing.
So considering that they back Trump, you'd think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing, much less something to get worked up over. Yet Republicans in the MAGA era have embraced total shamelessness as a political weapon. That means Republican women gleefully exploit sexual violence, crying giant crocodile tears over rape and other gendered violence, when in reality, they do everything they can to screw over actual victims.
During her response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address Thursday night, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., recounted a lurid story of a girl "sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12." Britt suggested this was Biden's fault, saying, "Biden's border policies are a disgrace." Britt's story was swiftly exposed as thoroughly dishonest. Yes, there was a 12-year-old who was sex trafficked. But, as journalist Jonathan Katz demonstrated, the ordeal happened not in the U.S. under Biden, but in Mexico in 2004-2008 — when George W. Bush was president. The victim herself, activist Karla Jacinto Romero, denounced Britt on CNN. She said that Britt was "using my story and distorting it for political purposes" and it's "not fair at all."
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When she was confronted — surprisingly — by a Fox News host over her dishonesty, Britt signaled that she intends to keep exploiting this rape victim's tragedy to stir up racist fears of migrants. She denied lying, claiming that a 20-year-old story was necessary to illustrate "what is happening now at an astronomical rate." (Then why not use a more relevant — and recent — example?) The depths of Britt's depravity are only more obvious when one considers how vulnerable migrants are to sex trafficking if they are denied safe harbor in the U.S.
Fake concern that is selectively employed is much worse, especially in service to Trump, a man who does everything he can, personally and politically, to inflict more suffering on women.
Considering that there's a wealth of other issues Britt could have lied about (and did), one has to wonder why she centered her speech around a graphic story about rape. The reason is as cynical as her lie: A growing number of female voters are turning away from the GOP, out of anger over the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the worship of a sexual predator like Trump. So it seems the way Republicans think they can get those women back is with threats: If you keep voting for Democrats, dark-skinned men are going to rape and kill you.
We see this in the grotesque exploitation of the murder of Laken Riley, a junior at the University of Georgia, which has been getting non-stop coverage in right-wing media. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, has been arrested in what police call a "crime of opportunity." Republicans have been cynically hyping this story as "evidence" that undocumented people are especially dangerous — even as Republicans refuse to pass border security legislation, on the orders of Trump.
Riley's murder is an outlier, in one sense, because all evidence shows immigrants, especially undocumented ones, commit crime at lower rates than native-born people. But her murder was typical in another way: It was committed by a man. As Salon's Gabriella Ferrigine wrote, "This is the reality of running as a woman. Cities, suburbs, rural roads — male violence and harassment manifest ubiquitously, anywhere we run." Ibarra's alleged crime is part of a larger tapestry of gendered violence that goes straight to the top, with Trump's lifetime of assaults of women.
But at the State of the Union, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tried to make a racist spectacle of Riley's death. She co-opted "Say Her Name," a rallying cry meant to bring attention to Black women victims of police violence, and screamed Riley's name at Biden, pretending she was standing up for silenced victims. Turns out Greene herself could not say her name, calling her "Lincoln Riley" instead of "Laken Riley" in an interview with NewsNation. The error was richly symbolic of how Greene is erasing the reality of this young woman's life and death, and distorting it into a warped fairy tale to justify pre-existing hatred of immigrants.
Over the weekend, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., made an even bigger fool of herself than usual by justifying her own betrayal of rape victims, by hiding behind her own past as a survivor. ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked Mace how she can continue to support Trump, even though two separate juries have determined Carroll told the truth and he lied about the rape in the department store. Unable to answer that question with anything resembling dignity, Mace instead melted down with obviously false accusations that Stephanopoulos was trying to "shame" her about being a rape victim herself.
"I find it offensive that as a rape victim you’re trying to shame me for my political choices," Mace squawked, in response to Stephanopoulos calmly asking, "You don’t find it offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable for rape?"
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Mace sounded like the ridiculous caricature of feminists propped up in right-wing media. She acted as if having been raped gives one a lifetime pass to abuse and mistreat whoever you wish. And she is absolutely mistreating Carroll, who is not a "potential rape victim," as Mace said, but a woman who has been suffering from trauma for nearly three decades due to this assault. Mace should be ashamed. Not of being raped, but of her willingness to throw other victims under the bus, and acting like a brat when held accountable for supporting a system that protects and rewards sexual predators like Trump.
It's rare for a male journalist to handle himself as George Stephanopoulos did. He held a Republican woman to account for her misogynist views.
It would be better if Republican women just admitted they don't care about rape victims. Fake concern that is selectively employed is much worse, especially in service to Trump, a man who does everything he can, personally and politically, to inflict more suffering on women. Last week, journalist Kelly Weill wrote about how disgusting the feigned outrage can get, in an article for her MomLeft newsletter. She noted that anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians keep accusing reproductive health care providers of "trafficking." In-vitro fertilization is called "trafficking of human embryos." Abortion provision is routinely equated with sex trafficking.
"The argument erases any of the agency of the person seeking an abortion," Weill writes. Agreed, and frankly, it also erases the agency of rape victims. This framework rejects the concept of consent altogether. In this worldview, a woman's right to say "no" or "yes" simply doesn't exist. All women are simply objects to be acted upon, not people who can decide for themselves what they want. It's why Republicans shrug it off when Trump assaults a woman, but flip out if a woman chooses abortion for herself. If he wants to force her into childbirth and "grab them by the pussy," well, that is all fine by them. They just want it to be a conservative man, and not the woman herself, who is in control of a woman's body.
This view that women — and girls — are passive receptacles was articulated with chilling clarity by Laura Strietmann, the head of Cincinnati Right to Life, in a recent testimony before the Ohio state legislature. "While a pregnancy might have been difficult on a 10-year-old body, a woman’s body is designed to carry life," Strietmann said. It's well worth watching the clip, just to get a full sense of how angry Strietmann is at the very idea that anyone with a uterus, even a literal child, should be allowed to decline childbirth.
What rape and forced childbirth have in common is a belief that a woman has no autonomy worth respecting. That her vagina and uterus are "designed" to be used by others how they see fit, and women themselves have no say.
There remains this gendered assumption in the Beltway media that Republican women, being women, are inclined to have more concern and sympathy for other women than Republican men do. So they're often deployed, as Britt was, to talk about reproductive health care and sexual violence, in hopes that their awful beliefs sound less bad, coming from a woman. Unfortunately, this trickery sometimes works on a male-dominated media. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got a pass for her anti-abortion views when the men running in the GOP presidential primary did not. It's rare for a male journalist to handle himself as Stephanopoulos did. He held a Republican woman to account for her misogynist views. But as this past week reminded us, Republican women can be just as cruel to women as the men can be, even if they deliver the hateful message from their kitchens.
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