Women Have Sacrificed Too Much for the Careers of Powerful Men: Analysis

May 12, 2026, 8:30am

Mia Brett

Cesar Chavez, Eric Swalwell, Justin Fairfax, and the gender politics of keeping their dirty secrets.

News about powerful men committing violence against women has bombarded the United States in recent months.  

On April 16, 2026, Virginia’s former Lieutenant Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, and then himself inside their family home. The shocking news came days after Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, resigned from Congress following multiple sexual misconduct allegations. 

A few weeks prior, in March 2026, an investigation about labor movement leader Cesar Chavez revealed a decades-long pattern of sexual abuse, including against another farmworker icon, Dolores Huerta. 

All three of these powerful men had known patterns of alleged predatory sexual behavior. But their secret was protected—in some cases for decades—not only by other men, but also by some of the same women they’d hurt.

Somehow, no matter how much progress we think we’ve made, women keep being sacrificed—or sacrificing ourselves—for men’s accomplishments and legacy. Our lives and futures and mental health are even sacrificed on the altar of their potential political accomplishments and legacy. 

The Al Franken effect

I’m a legal historian and commentator on sexism and gender-based violence. I’ve studied violence against women and the criminal trials that let male perpetrators off the hook. I’m also a woman who experiences sexual harassment so often that it has become a dull hum following me throughout my day. 

This self-sacrifice seemingly stems from what seems to me to be a societal belief that the men who commit harm are more needed than the women who are harmed. Our ideas, organizing, and logistical labor—often dismissed as “secretarial” work—can’t compete with the fear of losing a single powerful man. 

When the allegations against Swalwell first broke, some on the left rushed to defend him. Some on social media claimed it was a Republican smear job because he’s been opposed to Trump’s policies and was running to be the next governor of California. 

Eventually, as more women came forward and D.C. insiders said that they’d heard rumors about Swalwell’s behavior for years,  Democratic leadership called for Swalwell to drop out of the governor’s race. 

Women often come forward with their stories when a man is running for political office because they feel that information is relevant to voters. Or, they may speak out because it’s difficult to see one’s abuser portrayed so incompletely in the news. 

Yet some people cast doubt on the timing of the Swalwell accusations, suggesting people were out to get attention or take a “good man” down before he can further ascend in his career. On social media, posts compared the situation to Al Franken resigning from Congress in 2017 over sexual misconduct allegations. 

Franken’s resignation is often treated as an example of #MeToo going “too far,” because some reporting suggests that the initial accusation against Franken may have been trumped up. But he was sexually inappropriate with women both before and after taking office. His resignation was important to live up to progressive values, and the left didn’t actually lose any political clout over it: Franken’s replacement, Tina Smith, has been a fantastic senator.

It’s relatively rare for members of Congress to resign after being accused of sexual misconduct. According to the National Women’s Defense League, 23 lawmakers with public accusations are running for reelection in 2026 in 16 states, including nine people running for Congress. 

The group held a press conference on April 21, 2026, to discuss two new reports on sexual misconduct in Congress and state government. According to its research, 80 percent of candidates publicly accused get reelected. 

Cesar Chavez’s legacy

The calculus for marginalized women to come forward about sexual assault is even tougher. 

The first line of Dolores Huerta’s public statement about her abuse says she kept quiet for nearly 60 years because she “believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.” 

I believe many women stay quiet when they think coming forward could hurt a movement—in this case, one Huerta helped to build. But they may tell their story if they’re worried not doing so could cause even more harm.

Her story details two incidents of sexual assault that resulted in two hidden pregnancies. She gave both children up for adoption.

Soon after the investigation broke, Chavez’s name was erased from monuments across the country. That’s not necessarily an indication of local leaders taking sexual violence seriously. In some places, it may just as well reflect a desire to erase Mexican American achievements and the progress of the United Farmworkers Union in securing rights for migrant laborers, some of the most marginalized workers in the country. 

I say that because we have the perfect replacement for Chavez’s legacy in Huerta herself. It would be so easy to simply rename every street and monument after her, rather than simply erase commemorations of the movement. 

Huerta was already forced to sacrifice so much by Chavez, must she now watch as her life’s work goes down with him, too?ire News Group is a reader-supported, independent nonprofit newsroom.

Jewish history

In my own Jewish community, there is a long history of pressuring victims of domestic violence and sexual assault to stay quiet—and not air their suffering outside the community. 

Doing so would be an example of “lashon hara,” or evil speech or gossip. If we report our abuse to police, we are contributing to negative ideas about the Jewish men in our community. Some men in the Jewish community even claim that because of Jewish teachings and customs, Jewish men can’t ever actually abuse their wives, because domestic violence is a Christian affliction of gentile culture—that is, a non-Jewish problem. 

This myth persists outside the Jewish community, and it can impact how Jewish women are treated in secular American courts. 

My doctoral dissertation research covered a case of a Jewish woman in New York City murdered in 1875. Both suspects in her killing were Jewish men protected by the community. During the trial, the victim was used as a cudgel against her own people to prove that Jews were dangerous. 

If she had survived and was given the choice to report the violence she faced would she have feared exposing a man from her community to the criminal justice system?

This concern is even more heightened for Black women. If their abusers are Black, they know that reporting them means increasing exposure to a racist criminal justice system. 

Research also suggests Black women are less likely to be seen as victims by the dominant society and more likely to be blamed for harming men of their own community, or accused of trying to “take down a good man.” (Think back to how accusations against R. Kelly, Mike Tyson, Bill Cosby, and Clarence Thomas were greeted.)

As Aishah Simmons, Black feminist and activist, explains, many people “think that exposing and addressing intra-racial sexual violence against Black women divides the community … and we should only focus … on racism since that is the ‘real problem.’” 

This community protection can feel even more important when the abuse comes from a so-called “good Black man,” as author Kaitlyn Greenidge wrote on April 19, 2026, of Cerina Fairfax’s killing. The promise of a Black middle class life with a politician husband like Justin Fairfax is supposed to guarantee a safe and protected life.

Cerina Fairfax stood by her husband even after two women accused him of sexually assaulting them; one alleged incident occurred back when he and his accuser were undergraduates at Duke University.

The accusations against Fairfax came to light during a crisis in Virginia politics when he was poised to possibly take over the governorship from the scandal-plagued Ralph Northam. Fairfax denied any misconduct and refused to resign. No criminal charges were filed. He ran for governor in 2021, and lost. 

Fairfax later sued CBS for defamation (the suit was thrown out) and claimed he was experiencing a form of lynching (taking a page out of Justice Clarence Thomas’ book after Anita Hill’s accusations). 

In this case, Democrats did lose leadership of the state. Before the sexual assault allegations, Fairfax was seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. Had his accusers not gone public, he might have become the state’s next governor. 

But it’s equally true that had he resigned in 2019, after they did, a new Lt. governor could have stepped in and potentially run successfully in 2021.

Sacrificing for the cause

It irks me that Fairfax ran for governor after being accused of sexual misconduct. It irks me that Swalwell did, too. 

Swalwell’s name remains on the primary ballots in the California governor race, and that will hurt the Democrats’ chances to hold onto that post. It was Swalwell’s hubris and entitlement hurt his party—not the women who came forward to prevent him from accruing more power. 

I wonder: How many young staffers left politics because Swalwell was allowed to prey on his subordinates? What progress could have been made in the labor movement if the women abused by Chavez had instead been in leadership roles? Would Cerina Fairfax still be alive if her husband had been prosecuted in 2019? 

We’ll never know how the world would look if the well-being of the women in these cases had been prioritized over the careers of their abusers. What I know is that the harm done to us as women is more important than the potential of the men who hurt us. And I know that the goals of movements or political gains can no longer rest on our silence and our labor.