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Meghan Daum
E. Jean Carroll’s Advice and Non-Consent
Shouldn’t a rape allegation against the president be bigger news?
On June 21, New York Magazine published a 6,000-word excerpt from a new memoir, What Do We Need Men For?, in which the Elle Magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll describes Donald Trump raping her in a department store dressing room more than two decades ago. Carroll didn’t use the word rape — she has also said she does not see herself as a victim — but by any reasonable definition, even considering that the encounter began as a flirtatious game, the word applies. The president has denied Carroll’s account, saying that he doesn’t know her (never mind the photo of them together) and that “she’s not my type.”
Carroll’s story was almost immediately followed by the story of why it wasn’t a bigger story. Out of the more than 20 women who’ve publicly accused Trump of assault or sexual misconduct, Carroll is only the second to recount an incident involving forced penetration. (The other was his first wife, Ivana Trump, who recanted her story after their divorce settlement.) In any other presidency, this would almost certainly have been thunderous news, but the only major newspaper to put it on the front page was The Washington Post, which ran it under the fold of the print edition. New York Times editor Dean Baquet later admitted that editors had been “overly cautious” (the paper had buried the story in its books section) and, indeed, the Times then followed up, running a powerful audio interview with Carroll and two friends she’d told about the assault at the time.
To many observers, it seemed that stories of Trump’s sexual misconduct had become so commonplace that even this frightening new revelation was effectively old news. Assault had become normalized. As Moira Donegan wrote in The Atlantic, “we have become comfortable with the hideous, made a friendly acquaintance with it, and are now at home being ugly, content to live alongside horrible things.”
That is undoubtedly true. But I wasn’t sure two weeks ago and I’m not sure now that Trump’s great numbing effect is the only reason the media hesitated on Carroll’s story. There’s no telling what goes on in the mind of any given reporter or editor during any given news cycle, but…
