Women try to make sense of progressive men's rush to excuse Graham Platner

The latest sexual assault allegations against Graham Platner early this month not only severely dampened Democrats’ dreams of winning back the Senate in November, it revealed a schism in progressive politics and gender relations.

With the margin razor thin, Democrats need to hold all of their current seats and flip four Republican seats if they are to regain power, and Platner seemed poised to achieve one of those critical flips in Maine. 

Then, Platner was accused of raping his girlfriend in 2021. Despite his denials he eventually agreed to exit the race and the Democrats’ chances at a Senate majority were dealt a serious blow.

Though this latest allegation follows a long history of troubling behavior by Platner, a subset of men almost immediately began talking around or even seeming to downplay the allegations on social media and within progressive political circles. They questioned the woman’s credibility and motivations; they accused Democrats of “once again eating their own” even as Republicans steadfastly refuse to hold their bad actors accountable; they argued that it was too important to democracy itself to force Platner out; they insisted that, without proof, the judgment against Platner was unfair and that his innocence was to be presumed.

The reaction from women to what they saw as a blithe dismissal of the charges – by progressive men, no less – was swift and incisive, the back and forth increasingly rancorous. Women saw the defense of Platner as an all-too-common refusal by men to condemn other men for inexcusable behavior, as a shrugging off of something even as serious as rape. 

They pointed out Platner’s history of previous domestic abuse and infidelity; disturbing sexually explicit texting; Reddit posts that made light of sexual assault claims in the military; and other behavior that, while not overtly of a sexual nature, painted a more complete picture of a man who certainly did not deserve the benefit of the doubt he appeared to be receiving from these men. 

‘I was appalled’

The women also pointed to statistics that show that only an estimated 2 to 10 percent of sexual assault allegations are demonstrably false, that the disincentive to bring such claims is more than sufficient for us to assume that a woman would rarely subject herself to the trauma of coming forward with false reports.

The men in these discussions seemed largely unmoved by the women’s arguments and flummoxed that their own progressive bonafides were suddenly being questioned. It turns out that the differences in men’s and women’s understanding and experience of the world may be every bit as great as those between MAGA Republicans and liberal Democrats.

We wanted to hear the thoughts of women in the Fox Cities around this disconnect. 

Irene Strohbeen, President of the Appleton Area National Organization for Women, pulled no punches in her denunciation.

“I was appalled at reactions from Democrats that surfaced after the first sexual misconduct allegations surfaced before the Maine primary,” she said. “They were willing to dismiss the allegations just to have a progressive candidate on the ballot; even Maine women. If you believe women, and believe in zero tolerance for violence against women, then Graham Platner had no place being on the ballot, and the Maine Dems, including Bernie Sanders, should not have agreed to move ahead with him.

“There should be zero tolerance for this.”

Cindy Fallona, a member of the League of Women Voters and a Democratic activist, said she can’t help but wonder if men who refuse to condemn Platner haven’t also been guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior toward women. 

Another local activist who chose to remain anonymous said men don't have the same lived experience as women and aren't inclined to consider that fact.

"Women have to be wary of men in a lot of situations and let a friend know where we are if we go on a date with someone we met online," she said. "We aren't surprised when men take credit for our ideas at work. We know doctors don't always take our pain seriously.

"So we aren't shocked when we hear about a man's disturbing or even criminal behavior. I don't think men share this conditioning and are reluctant to believe that other men, especially men that they admire or who are hero archetypes, would be capable of that kind of behavior."

On the front lines of progressive activism

We went into greater depth on the subject with one young woman who has been on the front lines of progressive activism. She was more than willing to deconstruct this cultural divide and to offer her own ideas for navigating difficult discussions with men within her own progressive circles who have surprised her by their own similar responses.

Isabel Dorn is a recent graduate of Lawrence University who is now in law school at Seattle University. Dorn is an Asian American woman who grew up in conservative New London before obtaining an English degre in 2025. The previous year, Dorn, who had dabbled in on-campus politics, first with the Lawrence Democrats and later with the Democratic Socialists, became a part of the pro-Palestinian protests at Lawrence. Dorn saw first-hand as the student government liaison between the Lawrence administration and the protesters the growing tensions around Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza. She thinks those tensions helped to inform some of the responses she witnessed to allegations around that time of an alleged sexual assault by someone within their own movement. 

“Particularly for young progressive men, it almost felt like since it was somebody that was very close to them and in our movement, it got downplayed, and that it was like, ‘Well, we'll deal with that later. He's still our comrade,’” Dorn said.

Wanting to see men as allies

Dorn suggested that the solidarity of the movement itself created an insularity that made some of the male members of the group hesitant to come to terms with the assault.

“It was a really weird kind of mental gymnastics thing they were doing,” she said. “Where it was like, ‘we have nothing against the girl, but we are having a hard time holding it against the guy. And maybe this is just a messy situation.’ It was like they knew somebody did something wrong here, but they were reluctant to just pull the plug. Full stop. And say, this guy's a bad person.”

Dorn has a lot of ideas about what prompted those reactions which shook but didn’t shock her. After all, she said, as part of a movement for social justice, women want to see the men as allies, someone they can trust to support them. This was certainly not that.

“I want so badly to believe that every guy that I'm sticking my neck out for would also stick his neck out for me, and that we're in this together,” she says. “So I think that there’s almost this hesitance to believe the worst about it from the women because we don’t want to have to acknowledge there’s gender-based violence in movements that are supposed to be where we're supposed to be trying to find empowerment for ourselves.”

 Difficult conversations

Dorn said she felt bound to have difficult conversations with people, including friends within the progressive movement. One friendship was affected by her challenge to him, even though she approached him, she said, in the only way available to a woman of color confronting someone who, coming from the echo chamber of young progressive mostly white activism, was not inclined to hear her: with deference. Dorn remembered having to make immediate concessions just to keep his defenses from immediately going up.  

“I felt like I was trying to explain very basic concepts, but like padding it with a lot of understanding,” she said. “It felt like I had to almost suspend what I normally would believe or say with my girlfriends. I had to put all these disclaimers on the conversation to be able to approach and make myself seem as unassuming as possible.

“I got more adept at doing it just because before this incident, I didn't even know how to address it and I just let it slide. I feel like even now having to have the conversations about Platner with people, I’m still finding myself having to be like, you know what? I'm getting why you're seeing it this way. But that doesn't mean it's right. And I don't think you're a terrible person, but I think that you're choosing the one like mental path that is going to let you avoid all these uncomfortable things.”

A reflexive defensiveness

Dorn said she doubts that men would extend to her such grace if she took a position that seemed objectively wrong-headed. This, she suggested, is an example of how the patriarchy works and maybe even offers a glimpse into how those men came to look at the Platner case. She said she thinks progressive men in particular have a default setting that bestows an immediate benefit of the doubt upon themselves. She has plenty of thoughts as to why that is but it starts, she said, with how they compare themselves to truly toxic men on the right. We’re not that, they think, but never get beyond that self-assessment, and a reflexive defensiveness sets in.

“I think that especially with more progressive guys, they think they are more socially aware because they're comparing themselves to conservative men,” she said. “They're like, ‘I came from a family of these openly misogynistic kinds of super conservative men, and so I'm out here and I believe in these basic human rights.’

“And I think the more they depart from the stereotypical masculine baseline they think they're more evolved and therefore maybe they’re less accountable. And they don’t really deconstruct that.”

Dorn suggested that because these men are young and idealistic and passionate in their views and their embrace of certain candidates, they can look past some pretty basic moral precepts. They become so invested in their work toward justice and progress they can lose their own identity, she said. 

“They’re like, ‘my job is progress and who I am doesn't really matter anymore,’” she said. “I've seen guys who commit to it so hard that they aren't really focused on personal growth because they see themselves as a soldier in this fight. Versus the guys I've met in law school, for example, where they're like, ‘Yeah, of course I'm committed to progress. But I'm also getting my own life together, and I'm here to appreciate the world and try to contribute to it and keep pushing myself.’ And I think you need that kind of growth mindset.” 

Deconstructing misogyny

Dorn went on to suggest that there is a dearth of older progressive men` to serve as mentors for young progressives. Indeed, it was older progressive men showing up in those contentious threads who appeared to be every bit as willing to confer the benefit of the doubt on Platner as those young progressives Dorn encountered.

Dorn said she sees many of these reactions as part of a larger patriarchal, white-privilege issue. While she believes that progressive men are earnest when they voice their support for women’s issues, she wonders how much they have internalized what it actually means for women and how much of it they see, conceptually, as a mere political issue.

She also said she’s noticed how women who join the movement are seen as less serious-minded, even frivolous. They are mocked, she said, for being bourgeois and not anti-capitalist enough if they, for instance, wear certain clothes or makeup. She has seen the men roll their eyes and make jokes while they themselves wear basic T-shirts and portray themselves, she said, as “hardcore Spartan men who claim they have divested themselves from capitalism.”

“We all need to deconstruct this misogyny within our culture,” she says. 

‘I’m not going to throw my whole identity behind this …’

Dorn suggested you can’t talk about this issue without addressing another issue that undergirds many of those disturbing attitudes. As a queer Asian American woman from small-town Wisconsin, she is open-eyed about a culture that still undervalues certain people. While white people – men, especially – can tend to go all in on certain candidates, treating them as saviors or heroes who are going to change the world, Dorn said she recognizes just how fallible all the candidates are, especially when it comes to issues that disproportionately impact vulnerable groups and minorities.

“I think something that I observed from the discussions around Platner was that these guys were invested in the campaign because they felt represented,” she said. “And usually, when we talk about people getting too invested in a campaign because they feel represented, we usually think of minorities.” 

For her part, Dorn said she has resisted the temptation to go “fangirl” on gubernatorial front runner Francesca Hong even though as a six-year old in New London she probably would have been gaga over the idea of a progressive Asian woman being Governor.

“She seems like a good candidate, but I'm not going to throw my whole identity behind this because once I throw my identity behind any candidate, I'm surrendering my own ability to think critically because suddenly that's not your representative anymore,” she said. “That's your friend, and politicians are not our friends, and I think that men haven't necessarily gone through that kind of hard realization at a young age.

“I have never been of the mindset that any politician is going to save us, and I think there's almost a little bit too much optimism from folks who haven't been in the trenches. We (minorities) have to inherently distrust the system and I think for young men they haven’t gone through that.”