Power Over People: The Democrats’ Gender Problem
What Cuomo’s comeback—and the silence around it—reveals about the Democratic Party’s moral bankruptcy on gender-based violence.
Last week, I wrote about the urgent need to reckon with the patriarchy we live in—and the zero-sum thinking that props it up. That piece became my most-read to date, with strong engagement across restacks, comments, and likes. I don’t measure success by clicks (if I did, I’d be failing by design), but the response tells me this conversation matters. So let’s keep going.
Today, I want to speak directly to the Democratic Party—especially those in New York who are now floating support for Andrew Cuomo. Yes, that Andrew Cuomo. Or, as philosopher Kate Manne rightly called him: the sex pest.
We can’t call out the toxic manosphere in one breath and support candidates like Andrew Cuomo in the next. This isn’t just about Cuomo—it’s about a Democratic Party, and a broader system, that claims feminist values while routinely protecting power over people. Calling for his resignation then and backing him now isn’t principled; it’s political theater rooted in the same patriarchal playbook we claim to reject.
Take Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Once vocal in calling for Cuomo to step down, she now says he deserves a second chance. Let me be clear: I’m not against the idea of second chances. I am against the idea that harm can be papered over by framing it as a relic of “old-fashioned” behavior, and that the men who cause this harm can then gaslight their victims, deny responsibility, and destroy reputations as they claw their way back to power.
Cuomo’s resignation speech and tepid “apologies” were not accountability. They were crisis management crafted by political advisors, PR flacks, and even, let’s not forget, leaders from Time’s Up (a legal defense fund for survivors of sexual violence) who advised him behind closed doors.
This isn’t new. This is the playbook. It even has a name: DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It’s the strategy used by abusers and enablers alike, from Cuomo to Weinstein to Baldoni to Trump.
And here’s the hard truth: DARVO works because our national response to gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) is not only insufficient—it’s fundamentally broken. We treat GBVH as an individual aberration, not a structural failure. We focus on the optics, not the outcomes. We protect power, not people.
This broken system doesn’t just fail survivors—it shapes all of us. Over time, we’ve become desensitized. From an early age, we’re taught to see sexual harassment as normal, expected, and even necessary to perform masculinity. Researchers like Dr. Nicole Bedera have found that many boys harass not out of malice, but because they believe they have to in order to fit in. We dismiss it as “boys being boys,” but that excuse is the foundation of a culture that protects abusers and punishes truth-tellers.
If the Democratic Party wants to claim feminist values, it has to act like it. Gender-based violence and harassment are not personal failings — it is rooted societal, cultural, and structural norms that uphold patriarchy and enforce rigid, binary gender roles of masculine versus feminine based on sex assigned at birth.
If we’re serious about ending GBVH – which judging by the complacency of many Dems right now, I am less than convinced, we need more than performative apologies and recycled talking points. We need to dismantle the culture that enables harm in the first place—starting with our own institutions. To once again quote
“politicians do not grow on trees. They grow up in communities that WE raise them in.”That means refusing to elevate those who harm others without meaningful moral accountability. Cuomo’s comeback campaign is a case study in how not to respond to abuse: discredit the accusers, downplay the harm, and carry on as if nothing happened. As Kate Manne puts it, this is “exactly how not to hold people who cause harm morally accountable.”
I, like Sen. Jessica Ramos, wish to live in a city [or country, for that matter] where voters [and my political party] cared about women getting harassed. The difference between me and Sen. Ramos, though, is that I mean it and she does not.
