Jill Filipovic on the fad for rapey men in power:

Yes, the #MeToo movement launched a culture- and law-changing reckoning with sexual harassment, abuse, and power, first in the U.S., then across the globe. But in recent weeks it has become clear that the movement also, perversely, seems to have empowered right-wing men to act with even more impunity than before.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet and close staff picks, several of whom have been accused of sexual misconduct—not to mention the president himself, who has not only been credibly accused but found liable for sexual abuse in court.

Credibly accused and credibly heard – we’ve all heard him say it on the Access Hollywood tape. We’ve heard not just his “you can grab them by the pussy” but also his “I wanted to fuck her” – we’ve heard his view of women as things he gets to grab and fuck.

This appears to be the emerging conservative mentality. If everyone is a sexual predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs to be held accountable). MAGA Republicans seem to be having their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.

Of course it may. On the right, women=weak, inferior, second rate. Using them the way they’re supposed to be used is manly and tough. Manly and tough are good, and they can also be funny. Trump’s contemptuous chat about women is funny; he’s a funny guy…provided you’re in on the joke.

In the background of all this, reactionary conservative men are cheering the end of the anti-Trump feminist fight. The white supremacist Nick Fuentes started a social media trend when he posted what may be the tagline of this particular moment: “Your Body, My Choice. Forever.” The line is a reference to the longtime abortion rights slogan “My Body, My Choice,” but it also has an undeniably rapey ring. And that is not a coincidence: The power to legally force a woman to endure the permanent and sometimes dangerous full-body evolution of gestating a pregnancy for nine months, followed by the pain and risk of childbearing, is not so different from the power to force a woman into sex. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the same organs are generally involved; both acts force a woman to suffer a painful invasion of her most intimate body parts; both take what should be happy and pleasurable events (having a baby, sex) and turn them violent and violating; and both assume that a woman’s body may be used against her will, as a vessel for someone else’s desires—a man’s sexual ones, the state’s reproductive ones. “Your Body, My Choice” makes clear the relationship between the forced births and pregnancies of abortion bans and the forced sex of rape—and the desire for misogynistic humiliation and male dominance that underlies both.

That is what it all boils down to, of course. It’s the woman who propels the man’s genes (as well as her own) into the next generation, so she must be both policed and ploughed. Her pregnancy is his property, and so is she.