“Fortunately.”
That’s the word Donald Trump chose, under oath, when asked about the Access Hollywood tape — the one where he bragged that when you’re a star, women “let you do it.” Pressed in deposition, he doubled down: “Well, historically, that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.”
Fortunately.
My bone to pick with the current United States President has to do with his treatment of women, in plain sight for all to see. Everything I’ll quote came out of his mouth and is on the record — in depositions, on hot mics, said in plain daylight to female reporters. When I quote others’ accounts of his behavior, I must make clear I have no way of verifying their claims, so I’ll add that caveat.
What’s a Woman to Do When Molested?
Let’s start with the tape everyone knows. “Grab ’em by the pussy. When you’re a star, they let you do it.” The word doing the work in that sentence is let. What is a woman supposed to do when a man suddenly grabs her? The act is over before she has the presence of mind needed to come to grips with what exactly is happening. The act is unexpected, incongruous, which momentarily robs her of her sense of agency. That is why such an event is traumatic. Only afterward might the women weigh her options: be a good sport and laugh it off? Act like it was no big deal to save face? Sue? What in God’s name is she supposed to do?
This is what makes the deposition answer so revealing. Trump isn’t arguing about how things should be. He’s saying: this is how things are and always have been, like it or not.
Stormy Daniels Speaks Her Mind
Stormy Daniels’ deposition in the hush-money case is worth examining because it illustrates how misogyny can manifest as a man interacts with a woman who isn’t exactly cooperating with his plan. What she and Trump did or didn’t do sexually is not the point. A method of relating is what we are interested in studying.
What follows is an abridged version of Daniels’ account, which I have no way of independently verifying.
Daniels and Trump meet briefly at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Later that day, a bodyguard invites her, on Trump’s behalf, to dinner. Her first response, in her words, is “fuck no,” but she reconsiders after speaking to her publicist.
When she arrives at the hotlel, she is ushered into Trump’s sprawling penthouse suite. Trump purportedly greets her in silk pajamas. Daniels quips, “Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” and asks him to change. He obliges, reappearing in a dress shirt and slacks, and suggests they sit and get to know one another before dinner.
How Men Control the Conversation
What follows is the first red flag. Daniels testifies: “He would ask me questions and then not let me finish the answer. He kept cutting me off, and it was almost like he wanted to one-up me… He just wanted to talk about himself. At this point, I pretty much had enough of his arrogance and cutting me off and still not getting my dinner. So, I decided someone should take him on. So I said, ‘Are you always this rude, arrogant and pompous? You don’t even know how to have a conversation,’ and I was pretty nasty. I snapped. And he seemed to be taken aback.”
Daniels quickly caught on to what appears to be Trump’s style of relating. It appears to be less a genuine give-and-take conversation and more a performance of domination. This is the early, contained version of what is about to unfold: the disregard of her voice, the reduction of her to an audience, the insistence that the evening revolve around him and whatever it is he wants.
When a Man Offers a Valuable Enticement
The conversation shifts to the TV show The Apprentice. Trump floats the idea of putting Daniels on the show. She laughs it off, noting that NBC would never feature a porn star on prime-time television. “I said, even you don’t have that much power. And he said that he did. And he was like, ‘that will really shake things up, and you can go on the show and prove that you are not just a dumb bimbo.'”
OUCH.
Who, exactly, thought that of her? This is the first overt insult of the evening — the second instance of him diminishing her. The interruptions did it conversationally; the bimbo crack does it to her face, embedded in what is supposed to be an enticement: you can be on my show, once you prove you’re not the thing I have already decided you are.
How the Daniels˗Trump Evening Unfolded
At this point Daniels asks to use the ladies’ room. She is directed to the one attached to the bedroom. When she comes out, she is surprised to find Trump sitting on the bed half-dressed, wearing nothing but boxers and a T-shirt.
She tries to laugh it off, struggling to come to grips with the incongruity of what she’s seeing.
She quotes him as saying, just before they allegedly got to it on the bed: “I thought we were getting somewhere, we were talking, and I thought you were serious about what you wanted. If you ever want to get out of that trailer park…”
DOUBLE OUCH. In fact, she never lived in a trailer park.
Surveying the Evenings Antics
In a single evening, Daniels has been called a dumb bimbo and lumped in with trailer trash. The interruptions in the living room, the bimbo crack over business talk, and the trailer-park line mid-seduction form a continuous pattern — verbal diminishment escalating across the evening, each beat louder than the last. He speaks over her, reduces her, places himself above her — now transposed to the bodily.
Trump’s Practice of Insulting the Female Press Corps
Next, we move to consider a pattern well known to the White House press corps: Trump’s penchant for insulting, shaming, and name-calling female journalists who put him on the spot, ask him questions he doesn’t like, or are dogged in their pursuit of answers. The evidence here is overwhelming; the pattern, unmistakable.
In April 2026, mid-flight to Las Vegas, Trump tweeted that Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov was “one of the least attractive and talented people on all of television,” with a “voice so grating and terrible.”
There are many such instances. Trump called Katy Tur (NBC) “a third-rate journalist,” Abbey Phillip (CNN) “stupid,” Paula Reid (CBS) “disgraceful.” He told Cecilia Vega (ABC), “I know you’re not thinking. You never do.” He shushed Nancy Cordes (CBS) — “Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.” He called Catherine Lucey (Bloomberg) “piggy” and Katie Rogers (New York Times) “ugly, inside and out.”
Trump cuts women off mid-question, demands they sit down. The recurring vocabulary — stupid, ugly, low IQ, incompetent, unattractive — is largely reserved for women. Men who ask the same questions rarely get targeted in the same manner.
Kate Manne’s Down Girl Spells Out Misogyny
In 2017, Kate Manne, a Cornell philosopher, published Down Girl. When I first read the title, I took down to be an adjective; in fact it is a command — the kind you’d use on a dog. Down!
Manne sees misogyny less as a given man’s hatred of women than as a social device for keeping women in their place, enforcing what certain men view as a woman’s duty: to service, support, provide for and nurture men. After all, isn’t why they were put on Earth?
The male ego is fragile. Men seek external validation from women and recognize they are susceptible to female assessments of whether they are manly, attractive, sexually proficient. So it falls to women, or so some think, to keep a man’s ego afloat. Women are expected to know their place and not get uppity by calling a man’s views or position into question.
Manne sees misogyny working on a systemic level, as the enforcement arm of patriarchy — patriarchy’s way of policing female behavior through threats, contempt, and sexual degradation. Anything that might get a woman back in line will do. Manne believes misogyny does not reflect a general hatred of women. In her opinion, it amounts to a mechanism that can be brought to bear when a woman dares to transgress.
Misogyny is built on patriarchal distinctions that designate women as givers — providers of emotional support and children. Men feel entitled to provisions: praise, admiration, attention, care, deference, anything that props up the male ego. If a woman fails to perform — doesn’t smile, talks back, disagrees, encroaches on such male territory as leadership — the system kicks in to return her to her assigned role. She may be ridiculed, mocked, harassed, threatened, or doubted.
The Nerve of Women Speaking Up at Senate Hearings
Dare a woman challenge a man at his Senate confirmation, all hell breaks loose. Anita Hill was maligned and her credibility challenged when she testified against Clarence Thomas in 1991. The all-male Judiciary Committee, led by then-Senator Joe Biden, framed her as confused, fantasizing, or politically motivated. Christine Blasey Ford got similar treatment in 2018 when she testified against Brett Kavanaugh. How dare these women speak against such stellar men — that is how it came across.
What is Misogyny All About?
The pattern Manne describes is not a psychological state but a functional posture — the enforcement of the giver/taker arrangement. By her own report, Stormy Daniels retrospectively realized she was expected to dine with Trump, engage in conversation, and have sex on his terms. When things didn’t unfold in that manner—when she didn’t put out as women are expected to do—she reports having been corrected — interrupted, demeaned, then . . . I’ll leave it at that.
Female reporters are supposed to give deference and admiration; when they ask questions instead, they’re called “piggy,” “stupid,” and “ugly.” Hill and Ford were supposed to stay silent; when they testified, they were attacked and condemned.
When women stand up to men, putting them on the defensive, men collectively circle the wagons. These maneuvers represent efforts that intend to enforce the order, ensuring women do what women they have always been expected to do—provide, service, and obey. Certain men won’t have it any other way.
The reason this deserves our attention is not partisan and not prurient. It is diagnostic. Trump’s alleged behavior is not so out of the ordinary. It shows us how masculinity sometimes manifests. When the man’s expectation of what the woman in question is thwarted, the man becomes loud, aggrieved, and punitive. It is not quite hatred, but it is more than irritation. It is what misogyny looks like when patriarchy begins to lose its grip — and the men raised to benefit from it find themselves unable to let go of it.