The recent backlash to the feminist gains of the past several decades has been brutal. Roe fell. In the Trump administration, it almost seems as though, for cabinet members, sexual assault allegations are a badge of honor, rather than something to be soberly investigated. In part because of pressure from the president and his cronies, corporations are now trying to erase women’s achievements, rather than tout them.
Though I have been lamenting this state of affairs, this month the lawless nihilism of the anti-feminist backlash is looking less appealing, with real consequences for Representative Eric Swalwell of California and Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas, who have both been credibly accused of sexual misconduct.
Swalwell, a Democrat, suspended his run for governor of California and said he would resign from Congress on Monday. Swalwell’s resignation came days after CNN spoke to a former staffer who said that he raped her when she was intoxicated and “left her bruised and bleeding,” an accusation that the congressman denied. Other women have come forward to report other kinds of sexual misconduct, like unsolicited photos of Swalwell’s genitals and unwanted kissing and touching. On Tuesday, a second woman said that Swalwell raped her. She also accused him of drugging her.
Gonzales, a Republican from south-central Texas, has been accused of coercing a staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, into a sexual relationship; that staffer died by suicide in 2025. Gonzales also said he would resign from Congress on Monday.
I don’t think either Swalwell or Gonzales would have quit Congress without the whisper network of online feminists. My framing on all of this has shifted a bit lately. Instead of seeing the strong anti-feminist backlash of the past few years as a sign of weakness in the movement, I now see it as a mark of strength. If women had not been accruing real social and political power in the 2010s, there would have been no need to forcefully put us down.
It has become fashionable to argue, as Helen Lewis did in The Atlantic last month, that the feminism of the 2000s was a failure. Lewis lumps together all of the women’s websites of the early 21st century, “girlboss” culture, fat positivity and “the great awokening” to claim that “Millennial feminism failed because it was suffocating, immiserating and often at odds with observable facts about human nature.”
As someone who worked on some of those websites, I can tell you what Lewis got wrong. First, I wouldn’t call it “Millennial feminism,” because many prominent feminist websites were founded by Gen X women. Jezebel, most notably, was founded by Anna Holmes, who is not a millennial. What’s more, these sites were made up of many different writers of different ages, and we all disagreed with one another a lot of the time.
For example, I recall bloggers arguing endlessly about Hillary Clinton for years, privately and in writing. Some of them loved her and thought her candidacy was a soaring win for female progress. Others hated her because they thought she was a war criminal and felt that a woman president would be a categorically meaningless symbol. It’s funny to think that, years later, the collective memory is that we were all speaking together with one censorious voice.
I also don’t agree that the feminism that was happening on the internet from roughly 2005 to 2020 was a debacle. It was messy and fractious and we made mistakes, but overall, it was moving forward and toward more freedom for women and more acceptance for different ways of living. To my mind, the greatest enduring triumph of online feminism is that it changed the way the world thinks about consent and sexual assault, thanks in no small part to Tarana Burke, the Gen X activist and organizer who started the #MeToo movement.
The online stew of social media and women’s websites created an opening for many people (and not just women) to tell stories of sexual assault they had buried for years, and some very famous people were ultimately held accountable for their crimes. It is never easy to go public when you are sexually assaulted, especially when you are assaulted by someone you know. When you are accusing someone prominent of assault, it’s even more difficult — you risk opening yourself and your family up to horrifying harassment.
With Swalwell, the online ecosystem of feminist creators played a critical role in bringing his misconduct to the public. Two California-based left-leaning influencers, Arielle Fodor, who goes by the handle @mrs.frazzled and who focuses on education policy, and Cheyenne Hunt, who is a lawyer and activist, were posting about Swalwell in the days and weeks before mainstream journalists reported out the allegations.
Hunt explained why women started coming to her in a thread on X on April 6. She said that a “close friend” approached her with allegations, so she made a video about it. Hunt then connected these women with pro bono legal representation and reporters who could help break the story with more detail.
Just a few days after Hunt’s thread, The San Francisco Chronicle published the first of the news stories relaying one of these allegations. The staffer who told The Chronicle that Swalwell assaulted her in 2019, and again in 2024, said that she remained silent because she was afraid her experience would destroy her career. Right before the story came out, a lawyer for Swalwell sent her a cease-and-desist letter: “The credibility of your accusations is fatally undermined by your voluntary and cooperative relationship with Mr. Swalwell over the course of many years following the period in question.”
Perhaps if this all had happened in 2002, this woman, or the reporters working on this story, might have been cowed. That’s what happened with Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein — they used their money and power to suppress allegations against them for years before they were held accountable.
In 2026, the fallout for Swalwell was much quicker once multiple women started coming forward. While of course there may always be people who dismiss such allegations, even when there are so many detailed stories of abuse, it has been heartening to see a community of mostly women on social media rise up to support Swalwell’s accusers and demand justice.
The swift defenestration of Swalwell after his accusers went public put pressure on the House to take care of Gonzales, too. Republican Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Nancy Mace deserve credit for their earlier attempts to hold Gonzales to account for his transgressions.
Despite the meaningful setbacks American women have experienced, the feminists of the 2010s never stopped fighting the good fight. We finally won a round.
End Notes
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I started watching “Pagan Peak,” an Austrian-German crime show, originally titled “Der Pass,” streaming on Amazon. It reminds me of the David Fincher movie “Se7en,” because it is about an extremely creepy serial killer who keeps leaving clues about his murders. Come for the gorgeous alpine setting — much of it takes place in the mountains between Austria and Germany — stay for the knotty plot. I have been enjoying more foreign film and TV lately because it makes me pay deeper attention; if I’m not following the subtitles, I’m going to miss something important.
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