The current court case against Donald Trump involving E. Jean Carroll is not about whether he sexually abused Carroll. Last year, a New York jury found that Trump both abused and defamed her. This current case is not about his guilt or innocence; it is about how much he should pay for his actions.
But you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Trump has insisted on his innocence even after the verdict, even after being admonished by the judge, in a rhetorical tactic that keeps press headlines and political discourse trapped in the he said/she said ambivalence of sexual abuse cases.
Only 2 out of 3 rape cases are even reported to the police. Of those cases, only 5.7% of reports lead to an arrest, and only 0.7% lead to a conviction.
Our culture is not used to seeing sexually violent men, especially rich white ones, punished for their crimes against women. According to the Department of Justice only 2 out of 3 rape cases are even reported to the police. Of those cases, only 5.7% of reports lead to an arrest, and only 0.7% lead to a conviction.
The Me Too movement, which was reignited in 2017 after allegations surfaced about many prominent men, trapped news stories and cultural narratives in cycles of telling the stories of women’s abuse, subjugation and victimization at the hands of so many, many men.
These stories were and are important to tell, because they reveal to the world the endemic nature of sexual violence. But if we are going to move forward we have to find a new way of talking about sexual abuse. We have to find a different way of understanding consequences, accountability and what it means to be a victim.
In the stories we tell about rape and abuse, women are the victims, men the violent perpetrators. When women are allowed agency in the stories, frequently they are framed as monsters fabricating lies to bring down the men who are the object of their fixations. Rarely is there recourse for justice, for agency or for vindication.
In the stories we tell about rape, women are so often the objects of violence, lacking agency to stop it, subject to terror. Every woman, whether she’s been a victim of sexual abuse or not, has a story of fear, of walking alone at night with keys poised in her hands like tiny daggers, cold dread tickling her neck. Through these stories, even ones where there is a form of justice, women learn to be afraid. We walk through the world on unsteady feet, knowing that at any moment we could become victims of a crime for which there is little justice. In one moment, one night, the hands of one man, our bodies will be, we are told, ruined. In all of these stories women are disadvantaged, unable to defend ourselves. We are always the subject, never the actor, the one taking control of the narrative. And the men who abuse us are almost always invincible — rarely reported, rarely caught, rarely prosecuted.
But the story we are watching unfold with E. Jean Carroll is different. It is not one of determining guilt or innocence. It’s not even one of empathizing with a woman’s victimization or casting doubt on her story. A jury determined that Trump sexually abused her. And now, what we are determining is how much that will cost him.
Culturally, it has cost him little, if anything. He remains popular in his party. Running as the presumptive nominee. Even his few Republican critics will eventually get in line to support him. As they have before.
Through the court cases, Carroll is trying to change the narrative.
But through the court cases, Carroll is trying to change the narrative. She has never wavered from her pursuit of consequences. She is as relentless and determined as the attacks on her have been vitriolic and terrifying. And because of that relentlessness, she’s proving that people who abuse are not invincible, that there is a way to hold them accountable.
In refusing passivity and placid acceptance in the face of one of the most powerful men in America, Carroll is showing us that subjugation and fear do not have to be part of the female narrative. She’s doing what no one else has the guts to do — she’s showing that Trump isn’t as powerful as we think he is. That his relentless march over our country and our rights can be curtailed. Carroll is refusing to accept the power of his attacks, and in the process she’s revealing how little power he has when face to face with the law.
The longtime columnist is writing a new narrative: that women can fight back and we can refuse the narrative of powerlessness in the face of relentless attacks. We do not have to walk through this world in fear. Whether we choose to learn that lesson remains to be seen.