Moira Donegan

I don’t think this is exactly what’s going on, or all that’s going on. It’s not that Republicans are constructing an elaborate psychological defense against evidence that Trump is a rapist. It’s that they like that he’s a rapist, and they like rape: it enacts the power of the strong over the weak.

That’s also why Vivek isn’t exactly lying when he says he didn’t mean to say Acton lied about being raped as a child. He doesn’t think she lied; he thinks that being raped disqualifies her from office, because she belongs to the class of people power is wielded against, not the class that wields it.

Ramaswamy’s ad aimed to enforce the stigma against rape victims that positions them as objects of suspicion and disgust at worst, patronizing pity at best. The Acton campaign now has to pitch a rape victim as something audiences aren’t used to imagining them being: competent, capable, and dignified.

These people don’t want to win; they don’t even want to persuade. They want a world where they are a pure and rarified elite, with none of the responsibilities of actual power, only the smug gratification of being right.

“If suburban moms become convinced of the righteousness of socialist politics, we might win. But what’s much more important to us is being self righteous online.”

These people don’t want to win; they don’t even want to persuade. They want a world where they are a pure and rarified elite, with none of the responsibilities of actual power, only the smug gratification of being right.

“If suburban moms become convinced of the righteousness of socialist politics, we might win. But what’s much more important to us is being self righteous online.”

Yeah

The range and effectiveness of hormonal birth control has gotten wildly better.

Also, I think everyone kind of forgets how many people were uninsured before the ACA.

The range and effectiveness of hormonal birth control has gotten wildly better.

Friend very rudely cancelled our lunch plans because she was “in labor” and “literally having a baby right now.” 🙄

I really do think that Bard is an instructive example, where the pro-perpetrator, anti-Title IX commitments of the President, Leon Botstein, served him well in ingratiating himself with members of the donor class who shared those values—like Jeffrey Epstein.

We actually do know how to reduce rape. We do it the same way we disincentivize other behaviors: we punish it severely and consistently. The issue is not that we don’t know the solution, but that we lack the will to carry it out.

This is alway why our culture has a profound cognitive dissonance about sexual violence, wherein every institution will abhor and condemn it in the abstract—“We take sexual violence extremely seriously”—but will begin equivocating and making excuses as soon as they’re confronted with an actual case.

We actually do know how to reduce rape. We do it the same way we disincentivize other behaviors: we punish it severely and consistently. The issue is not that we don’t know the solution, but that we lack the will to carry it out.

Leftist men when you tell them that it actually does matter that their favorite theorist was a rapist.

In a floor speech last year, Nancy Mace accused her former partner of assaulting her while she was unconscious, photographing her naked without her knowledge, and sharing the images with his friends. Now, three of the men she accused have been criminally charged. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/u...

I wrote about Mace for the New Yorker. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Sojourner Truth's life was insane. Did you guys know she was put on trial for murder