Last month, the night before E. Jean Carroll’s civil sexual assault and defamation trial against former president Donald Trump began, I posited that she just might be the first person to hold Trump legally accountable. And if she secured a verdict in her favor, Carroll — and not any of the prosecutors pursuing criminal cases or investigations of Trump — would be the hero of the hour.
Indeed, in her triumph, Carroll has been heralded for not only for her bravery and persistence, but also praised for her personal evolution from publicly “fabulous” yet silent victim to outspoken advocate for survivors and imperfectly perfect avatar of the post-#MeToo era.
Good men, he suggested, both play hard and respect others’ boundaries. Healthy men, he implied, understand trauma, grief and recovery.
And from her courthouse exits each trial day to her morning show appearances on Wednesday, Carroll has been flanked consistently by another, agreed-upon hero of the story: famed litigator Roberta Kaplan. Yes, Kaplan is the architect of Carroll’s legal strategy writ large. But perhaps more importantly, she is the unseen lawyer questioning Trump during his now-infamous videotaped deposition. Thanks to her focused, restrained questioning, Trump himself furnished the most damning evidence in the case despite never putting on a defense.
Still, without diminishing either woman, there are other, more unexpected heroes without whom Carroll might not have won. They include multiple jurors and another of Carroll’s lawyers. And the biggest surprise of all? Each of them is male.
But maybe this shouldn’t be revelatory. After all, the flip side of the “perfect” rape victim trope at the heart of Team Trump’s appeal to the jury is toxic masculinity, a collection of ideal male traits and behavior that hurt everyone. As author Liz Plank explains in her 2019 book “For the Love of Men,” in a world that exalts toxic masculinity, boys don’t cry or play with dolls; they sublimate their feelings and fears…
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