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THE PLATNER PATTERN – ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS AGAIN?  
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Jessica Valenti
July 8, 2026
Abortion, Every Day
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_ The hatred of women is serious - and the left's inability to accept
or grapple with that fact is no small problem. In a country where men
are perpetually protected, women talking about assault is the real act
of violence. _

Late Wednesday evening, July 8, Graham Platner announced he had
suspended his campaign for Senate in Maine.,

 

Earlier this week, a woman accused
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U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner of raping her. Jenny Racicot’s
story is devastating, credible, and entirely unsurprising. From _The
New York Times_
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exposé on Platner’s history of mistreating women to the Maine
politician’s now-removed Nazi tattoo
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all that smoke, there was bound to be fire.

Just today, another woman came forward: Lyndsey Fifield told _The
Washington Post_
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that Platner would stealthily remove condoms during sex against her
wishes.

“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I
was not on birth control and how dangerous that was…He would act
like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”

This is the man we’re meant to believe would protect reproductive
rights?

Chances are, more women will come out—as will more stories of
various kinds of wrongdoing. After all, men who rape women and sport
Nazi tattoos don’t tend to be standup guys otherwise. Abuse of women
has long been the canary in the coal mine—a bright red waving flag,
warning of broader offenses yet to come.

Ignoring it has always come with a cost, and not just in political
races.

United Nations officials
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call misogyny “the gateway, the driver, [and] the early warning
sign” of extremist violence and terrorism. Mass shooters often have
a history of domestic violence that, if taken more seriously, could
help prevent future tragedies. The connection isn’t limited to
individual acts of violence, either: one of the earliest signs of
fascism is attacks on women and their rights. And before
authoritarians subject entire nations to violence, they often start
with individual women. (We should know
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The hatred of women is serious - and the left's inability to accept or
grapple with that fact is no small problem.

Don’t get it twisted: I’m not suggesting Platner is akin to a mass
shooter, or even Donald Trump. What I am saying is that THE HATRED OF
WOMEN IS SERIOUS. And the left’s inability to accept or grapple with
that fact is no small problem.

_New York Times_ columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom got at something
important when Platner’s Nazi tattoo became news in 2025. She
pointed out
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that Democrats appear to believe that poor white people aren’t just
racist, but “uniquely ignorant of their racism.” Their belief, she
wrote, is that ”Democrats have to accept a little racism to win the
working class.”

I think the same is true of the left’s willingness to overlook
misogyny. It comes from a place of believing that men are _just like
this_—white working class men, especially. I don’t think I need to
explain why that’s so dangerous. It’s not normal for grown men to
call women “HATCHET WOUNDS,” as Platner did, or to leave Reddit
comments suggesting that women are to blame for their rapes.

Up until the most recent allegations, Platner’s team and supporters
treated his history of sexist statements and abuse as the acts of a
damaged guy who didn’t know any better. Some asked detractors to
give him a break, pointing to his mental health struggles. _Didn’t
we know he had PTSD? Don’t we think people can change and grow?_ As
if Platner was a young wide-eyed boy rather than a middle-aged man
running for the United States Senate.

Others insisted that the whole thing was a coordinated smear campaign
targeting a non-establishment candidate. As if it were Platner who was
in need of protection from the women sharing their stories. (We saw
this often amid #MeToo: in a country where men are perpetually
protected, women talking about assault is the _real_ act of violence.)

In a country where men are perpetually protected, women talking about
assault is the real act of violence.

And while women were asked to suck it up and support yet another
abuser for the good of the country, let’s not pretend everyone
around Platner was holding their nose—or saw his racism and sexism
as hurdles.

Part of the reason men voted for Trump in the first place is because
_they liked his misogyny_. Does anyone really believe that thought
hadn’t occurred to Platner’s team? It would be foolish to think
that this fetishization of white working-class voters isn’t also, in
part, a fetishization of the racism and sexism they’re assumed to
carry.

At the end of the day, apathy to misogyny isn’t just a moral
failing—it’s a political one. Anyone who cares about
progressivism, or purports to want to build a better world, CAN’T
TREAT SEXISM AS AN ACCEPTABLE TRADE-OFF. Not just because the hatred
of women predicts broader harm antithetical to the values we all claim
to hold, but because _women are people_. In a moment when that fact is
up for debate in half the country, we need a movement that’s crystal
clear about where it stands. (And it can’t be just short of rape.)

Right now, conservatives are going all in on women’s subjugation:
debating whether we should be executed for having abortions, fighting
court battles to let us die in emergency rooms, and floating the idea
of taking away our right to vote.

When Fifield spoke to the _Times_ last month, she said Platner had
left marks on her, yanked her, and once twisted her arm behind her
back. “It hurt,” she told them, but, “it didn’t break my
arm_._”

That can’t be the standard—for any of us. A world worth fighting
for won’t need to twist our arms to win it.

_[JESSICA VALENTI is the author of eight books, including her latest
__Abortion_
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and the New York Times bestseller __Sex Object: A Memoir_
[//www.harpercollins.com/products/sex-object-jessica-valenti?variant=32210164023330]_.
Her groundbreaking anthology, Y__es Means Yes: Visions of Female
Sexual Power and a World Without Rape_
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legislation of the same name, setting what’s now considered the gold
standard for sexual consent._

_Jessica has also been credited with sparking feminism’s online wave
by founding the trailblazing blog Feministing. She’s been a
columnist for The Guardian and The Nation, and her writing has been
published everywhere from The New York Times and The Atlantic to Bitch
magazine and The Toast. After the demise of Roe, Jessica founded
Abortion, Every Day, an urgent synthesis of anything and everything
happening with abortion rights in the United States, published on
Substack.]_ 

* Women
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* Rape
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* sexual assault
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* Sexual Violence
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* Accusations of sexual assault
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* Graham Platner
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* Maine
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* the Left
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* Elections 2026
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* 2026 Midterms
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* Susan Collins
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* Democratic Party
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* populist movements
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* alcholism
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* misogyny
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