America's Favorite Rapist
The man who has an allegation for every year I've been alive is going to be the president again
Trigger warning: The following contains several mentions of sexual assault.
Donald Trump was first elected when I was a freshman in college. It took no more than seven minutes to climb out of my lofted dorm bed and make it to my music theory lecture at 8 a.m. Class was fuller than I expected it to be that Wednesday, maybe even fuller than usual. Maybe everyone wanted to come and see what would happen, what would be said — to see if the strange, new world resembled the old one.
I was already reliving that day when I opened my eyes Wednesday morning last week, this time in my apartment in Chicago. I’m not sure if it was my first conscious thought upon waking, or if I’d been having a strange, liminal dream about music school, as I so often do, and the feeling hadn’t yet fallen away.
My time at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music is what I credit the foundation of my political radicalization to. Not that I wasn’t already interested in Marxism and feminism, or that Jacobs was full of left-wing radicals — quite the opposite. It’s curious to me that anyone would think the U.S. would allow its universities, whose express intention is to create productive members of American society, to promote ideology that undermines American society or the obligation to contribute to it.
Yes, Americans with college degrees are more likely to vote Democrat than Republican, an education gap that has increased since the 2016 election cycle but is still only slightly true. Of course, this statistic is meant to imply that the more formal education a person undergoes, the more left-leaning they will be. But I would argue the opposite is true when it comes to prestigious (read: exclusive, elitist) universities.
And in the case of music school, a field which is too impractical and inaccessible for the vast majority of Americans to pursue, this is especially magnified. Create a pocket within said music school of predominantly white men from privileged, sheltered backgrounds, add no more than five women, and it would be a miracle if it didn’t devolve into the Stanford Prison Experiment.
There is constant scandal at Jacobs, specifically pertaining to rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by its male students. Just last month, the Indiana Daily Student published yet another investigation connected to the Jacobs jazz studies department. I was one of the many former Jacobs students interviewed and I highly recommend giving it a read.
In the piece, aptly titled “Neverending: Sexual Abuse Persists in the IU Jacobs School of Music,” one paragraph in particular stood out to me, a quote from Zoë Peterson, a researcher at IU’s Kinsey Institute:
The issue may be a byproduct of the culture itself which can play a role in facilitating sexual violence, Zoë Peterson of the Kinsey Institute said. Peterson, who researches sexual violence at the institute, said men are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence if they are part of a peer group where men are supporting violence against women, particularly in male-dominated groups. These spaces can be rife with sexism and “sexual assault-supportive attitudes,” which includes victim-blaming or dismissing sexual assault allegations.
I published a guest column in the IDS last year essentially summing it up in a similar way:
My abuser enjoys success in an environment that not only condones abuse but rewards it. I don’t find it a coincidence that some of Jacobs’ most prolific abusers are often some of its most celebrated students — the privileges that allow them to succeed are the same privileges that allow them to abuse those who don’t have that privilege and get away with it. They don’t even need to apologize or even acknowledge what’s happened, it’s as if they’re pre-forgiven for anything they might do.
E. Jean Carroll is just one of at least 25 women who have accused Trump of sexual abuse or misconduct since the seventies. In 2019, Carroll — a fellow IU alumna, fun fact — published her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal” in which she alleged that Trump had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. In January of this year, a judge ruled that Trump did rape Carroll and owes her $83.3 million in emotional and reputational harm and punitive damages. And he still went on to be elected last week.
To me, it’s not so much a personal affront that a rapist can become the leader of a country that routinely conducts crimes against humanity, in the same way that an Asian woman becoming president wouldn’t make me feel anymore valued or represented. What’s so disheartening is that Trump’s popularity is all the evidence we need to prove that rapists’ lives are not ruined by allegations. Rapists go on to be husbands, fathers, Supreme Court Justices and President of the United States. Remember when we thought “Grab her by the pussy” would be the end of him? Yeah, no, of course not.
In some circles, being accused of violence against women might even improve a man’s reputation instead of tarnish it. The accused becomes the pitiable victim of a so-called witch hunt. I’ve had that fear when discussing my own experiences — that in outing my rapist or abuser as such, I might have shunned him among some, but emboldened him among others.
My familiarity with this cult-like, incel mentality that I was first introduced to at Jacobs has helped me feel less afraid of the misogyny and violence to come. These men are dangerous, yes, but it’s imperative we understand that they are becoming increasingly dangerous because they are losing their grip on women, on everything they were told they would inherit as the patriarchs of tomorrow. It’s an extinction burst. That’s all.
So, the famous question: What is to be done? What can women do to build power and fight back?
In April of this year, I published an anonymous statement on Instagram on behalf of a victim of physical and sexual violence. I was more than happy to do this for her, because it is my personal belief that men like the rapists of Jacobs, the far-right podcasters and Donald Trump should be afraid to show their faces in public. They do not get to perpetrate and promote violence against women and continue to live in peace.
It’s daunting to break from what has always been laid out to us as acceptable forms of dissent. We must all realize that the privileges that come with being a woman in good standing with men, these privileges that women are so desperate not to lose, are not really privileges at all — they are only temporary comforts on loan to us under very strict conditions.
According to NBC News exit polls, 53% of white women voters voted for Trump this year. Feminist author Jessica Valenti made a fantastic assessment of why these women vote against their own interests — they cling to the illusion of being the exception to the rule.
And this is what I realized, years later, was the greatest gift my falling out at Jacobs gave me. If I had become the kind of person who could enjoy relative comfort in that space, I would have simply been maintaining that delusion that I was the exception to the rule. But I wound up proving the strength of my character to myself instead. One day, I realized I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by refusing to quietly go along with my own subjugation. It is truer now than ever. I wish that sense of freedom for every woman.
Margaret Atwood was asked in an interview earlier this year if she believes her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” is coming true. She said the future comes in parts — it’s unevenly distributed, some of it is already here. There will be no more shuffling our feet or mincing our words. Women must understand that the men who want to keep us in our place are depending on us to be paralyzed into inaction. They have been very active and unabashed about who they are and what they want to do to us — let’s do the same.
TDS 😆