The Audacity of E. Jean Carroll [View all]

[BeyondGeography]

Today she’s typically described as a former advice columnist — but that term doesn’t really do justice to E. Jean Carroll’s career pre-Donald Trump. Long before she was one of the longest-serving advice columnists in America, Ms. Carroll blazed trails as a gonzo-style journalist The Times once called “feminism’s answer to Hunter Thompson.”

She profiled Lyle Lovett and went camping with the notorious New York curmudgeon Fran Lebovitz for a cover story in Outside. She wrote a famous piece on Dan Rather for Esquire, appeared in the “Best American Crime Writing,” and was the first female contributing editor at Playboy — back when people really did read it for the articles.

…as I sat in court in Manhattan last week, watching Mr. Trump glare and mumble at the back of Ms. Carroll’s head — she sat two rows in front of him, pin straight in her chair, the first time she’s been near this man in nearly 30 years — I couldn’t stop thinking that this trial was also about something else: the value of a woman, long past middle age, who dared to claim she indeed still had value. Just how radical was it for Ms. Carroll, 80, to demand that she was worth something?

…When I talked to Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern whose book “Credible” examines why we disbelieve allegations of sexual abuse, she told me that Mr. Trump’s team was “trying to show that she was already past her prime,” that she had “withered on the vine and so whatever was left of her wasn’t enough to warrant a hefty damage award.” She also told me there is no precedent for a case like Ms. Carroll’s, in part because it is so unusual for a woman her age to come forward. Part of that has to do with stigma (people are deeply uncomfortable with the combination of older women and sexual assault, and Ms. Carroll was 52 when the assault took place) and also with statutes of limitations. But it makes her “all the more radical,” Ms. Tuerkheimer said — an 80-year-old woman proclaiming she wasn’t done yet, that her reputation was worth something and that she was owed money from the person who’d trashed it.

More at gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/opinion/e-jean-carroll-audacity-donald-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb