@KeruboSk::
A conversation with a man:
Me: All men
Him: Not all men
Me: okay. You have a daughter, right? Would you be comfortable with her going to a party with a bunch of other girls, with no boys present?
Him: yes (without hesitation)
Me: cool. Would you be comfortable with her going to a party with a bunch of boys, with no girls present.
Him: no (without hesitation)
Me: why?
Him: Cause there will be at least 2-3 boys who are a problem.
Me: cool. So if those 2-3 boys do something horrible, will the other boys step in? Say something? Tell someone?
Him: (hesitates)….
Me: exactly. All men.
@lizzkelly7:
“Not all men” , but somehow it’s always enough men for you to hesitate when it’s your daughter.
That pause said everything.
@clapperbygreig:
The fact that Claire Hanna is the only reporter being attacked like this shows how toxic male hockey fans are. 
They learn it from the toxic male playersAnd yet she continues to go out there and do her job at an all star level. We appreciate the work you do.
@AllLoveCoco:
Claire Hanna getting as much pushback for literally just asking “so why did you laugh” than most of those men for fucking laughing is proving the misogyny everyone was screaming about.
@beitz.bsky.social:
as a man … i wouldn’t blame women for never trusting anything i or any other man says.
“not all men” isn’t enough.
might as well cut us all out of your circles of trust until we can all get our acts together, police ourselves, and earn trust again.I’ve been abused by so many men over decades, I finally realized the only way I can keep my body to myself, and remain a tiny bit unstressed, is to avoid being where there are men. For me, it’s not worth the risk. In the days of Trump, it’s greater risk, and more hideousness in male behaviours than usual. Who the fuck wants to be around that?
@marthamvt.bsky.social:
Thank you for writing this. You found the words to describe what my gut has been feeling for days. I’m just so angry and sad at this, yet again, disgraceful display by men.
@Noellenarwhal:
Ok guys…I think you should lay off the American Men’s hockey team. They had to eat cold McDonald’s while also smelling the faint aroma of a full diaper at the White House, when the women got to go with Stanley Tucci to his favorite restaurant in Milan. That’s punishment enough
@rhodepvd.bsky.social:
Laughing in the moment was bad enough, but showing up at SOTU after they’d had time to think and plenty of women’s outcry in their ears?
Maleness in our culture is trash
@PatCSportsFan:
MAGA hockey fans:
“They did nothing wrong” when the U.S. men’s team partied with a pedo protector and laughed when the accused pedo made a misogynistic “joke” about the women’s team.
“She went too far” when a reporter asked Brady Tkachuk why he laughed.
The men’s hockey team failed their female teammates & really all women. And they failed them again with their participation in the SOTU. I wrote about why the locker room moment was so damn upsetting, how we are done with Trump’s misogyny and the men who enable it. open.substack.com/pub/ruthzaka…
Misogyny on Ice by Ruth Zakarin, Feb 24, 2026, Dot Connecting
It was emotional whiplash.
We watched the US men’s hockey team poignantly honor a teammate who died in 2024, celebrating their incredible win while holding his children. A beautiful video of the team surrounding Johnny Gaudreau’s kids immediately went viral, and a whole country celebrated that moment with them.
But then we watched another video. One we weren’t supposed to see. In this video we watched the US men’s hockey team pointedly dishonor the entire women’s team, laughing along with an abusive president who couldn’t get through one damn phone call without demeaning women. Misogynistic religions, notably evangelical and christian, especially catholic, must be delighted! I bet they’ll give Trump huge money for his latest hate fest against women.Egged on by beer swilling FBI director Kash Patel, the team listened to Donald Trump lament that he would have to invite the women’s team to the White House or risk being impeached. (The same Donald Trump, by the way, who claims to be protecting women in sports as an excuse to terrorize the trans community.)
And you probably already know how they responded to the president’s lament — they laughed. They laughed at the expense of women who had just experienced a thrilling victory of their own. Women who are supposed to be their teammates too.
They laughed, and their laughter spoke volumes.
Anger at the men’s team has come down as hard and fast as the blizzard here in Boston. But along with that anger has come plenty of pushback. People saying the men’s team was caught up in the moment. That we who are angry are ruining the celebration of the team’s accomplishment. I’m sorry, but you can celebrate without denigrating others. You can have your joy without joining in the derision of your sister team. Not a single person in that locker room was forced to join in the laughter. Yes, I know it was the President of the United States and it’s hard to push back on him, but… more on that later.
Here’s the thing. If people are still wondering why we women are mad about that video? Because it’s just the latest version of Trump’s locker room talk, and we are so completely done with all of it. Done. From 2016, when Trump waved away his misogyny by dismissing it as locker room talk, to the actual locker room of 2026, we have been subjected to Trump’s hatred of women over and over and over again. His insults of women politicians and reporters (remember the “piggy” comments?), his anti-woman policies and defunding of programs that address gender based violence, the fact that he was held liable for raping a woman, the number of timesOne million! And the criminal fucks in DOJ have reportedly only released 2% of the files! his name appears in the Epstein files — it’s endless. And we are absolutely done with all of it.
But we never get to really be done with his misogyny. We can’t escape it. He’s the Abuser-in-Chief. It never ends. We women have never been able to stop his misogyny. We never will be able to. We need men to do it — even at the moments when it feels the hardest. Maybe especially at those moments.You know what though? I’ve waited decades, it never happens. I think because too many men don’t want to quit raping, and they don’t have what it takes to treat women and girls as equals and not servants/slaves and sex objects.
And I think that’s why so many of us are so angry about this video. We celebrated an extraordinary women’s hockey team after celebrating the extraordinary achievement and sportswomanship of Alysa Liu. We were riding the wave of terrific news coming out of Milan, enjoying the successes of incredible women and athletes and then… Trump. And a group of men in a locker room laughed along with our misogynistic president and our bubble didn’t just burst. It exploded in our faces.
We needed these men to step up and make the explosion stop. They didn’t.
A side note, but an important one — I wish the men’s team realized is that Trump is the most fickle and disloyal of fans, only interested in your success if it boosts his ego and gives him the spotlight.
He couldn’t even let the victory be theirs. Within hours of that final overtime goal he posted an AI video (have I mentioned how much I loathe AI?I hate it too, it’s just more rape, more violent and widespread, impossible to heal from) of him playing with the team, scoring a goal, and punching the daylights out of a Canadian player. Mind boggling, embarrassingly childish stuff unbecoming of a world leader. The US men’s hockey team may have won that game but Trump’s response to the win was to center himself in the entire operation. Because he always makes every single thing about him. He doesn’t care about these players. He cares about getting one up on Canada. He cares about being able to make a spectacle. He only cares about himself and his feelings and his power. The men’s team chose to get into bed with that, and when they did they disempowered their sisters in the game.
Yeah, I am still angry. I also can’t imagine how Ellen Weinberg-Hughes feels. If you don’t recognize her name, she is the mother of Jack and Quinn Hughes, one of the sets of brothers who played for the men’s team. And importantly, she is also a former hockey star herself who now serves as a player development consultant for USA hockey. USA women’s hockey. And I bet she is plenty mad at her sons right now.
Okay, last part of my rant. The men disrespected their female teammates in an awful way. They didn’t step up when their teammates needed them to. But they also modeled that disrespect for a whole generation of younger players. I can only imagine how every youth hockey player in the United States hung on every minute of Olympic play, cheering their teams on to victory. When the men’s team won, I thought immediately of all the high school hockey players in Rhode Island who had just been through the profound trauma of a mass shooting and how this win must have been such a nice moment for them. Youth hockey players now have some new heroes on these teams, but the behavior of one of those teams was far less than heroic. What message does the laughter of the men’s team send to those kids? I fear that it sends two very strong messages. To the boys: that it’s quite alright to laugh at your sister team when you think no one is looking. And to the girls? Damn. Yeah, I am angry.
Trump will undoubtedly have something more to say about this whole thing, and I fear it will be at the State of the Union. It won’t be an apology. The Abuser-in-Chief never apologizes. He will never choose to admit he did something wrong. But it seems to me that the men of USA hockey do have some choices to make. They dishonored their female teammates. Yes, I know it was the President of the United States. I know it would have been really hard to break from their teammates at that moment and refuse to join in the laughter.FFS! It would have been easy to do, if any of the men had integrity and had been raised appropriately but misogyny runs deep and religions keep it raging.But if they couldn’t do it in that moment, they have lots of moments ahead. USA hockey has lots of moments ahead, and the NHL too. They can think about what happened and take some responsibility. They can issue an apology even if their president never will. Are you kidding me? The fuckers won’t.We women will never be able to end misogyny. We will never be able to change who Trump is in the world. The change can only come from other menCriminalizing religion must happen first. People can still believe in god, jesus, genocide like Israel does, whatever, without organized misogynistic religion and rape pounding women and girls every fucking minute of every fucking day. Including the men who missed an opportunity in a moment of celebration. We need them to make some other choices in a moment of reflection. We need some accountability. And we need them to model accountability for the young athletes who have watched that video.
They have some work and some explaining to do. The question remains whether they will choose to do any of it.I am sure, they will not. I expect their behaviours will get much worse with rapes and gang rapes in hockey and other sports sky rocketing because of those fuckers and their stupid orange rapist
AKH:
Can’t disagree with a word you wrote. I was so excited to see Team USA win a thrilling and hard fought game against their biggest rivals. It was not the Miracle on Ice, but thrilling none the less. But allowing that little pissant Kash Patel into the locker room to join a celebration he had nothing to do with? The phone call to the most self-obsessed man in the world…the laughter… It is incumbent on USA Hockey to offer a statement that apologizes to the Women’s team. Their accomplishments are just as important as the Men’s team and they deserve respect.
Ruth Zakarin:
So far, nothing from Team USA. Infuriatingly.
Alison Kemper:
The only signal I’ve seen from the team since is the Fox item that they were singing the national anthem
in a Miami bar. No apology. No official response to Trump’s invitation.
It’s clear this was not a mistake or a glitch. As they say, “when they tell you who they are, believe them.”
Ruth Zakarin:
Yep. You are absolutely right.
Kristen:
The whole country cheered on the USA men’s hockey team and was celebrating their win — and with that locker room laugh, they slapped back at half of the people cheering for them. And that, unfortunately, feels all too familiar.
Ruth Zakarin:
Agreed!
Susan Martin:
You again have written an essay that nails the strength of the status quo of misogyny in this country. Then, you rightly pointed out the fact that the men on the hockey team may have been caught up in the moment. But they can now reflect and atone for a public display of hatred against women, particularly the women’s team. We will see.
Ruth Zakarin:
Thank you for reading it. A couple of players have spoken some words of regret, but not enough.
Julie Campbell:
Very well written. As a hockey mom of two girls and a boy who are now young adults I am sad to say that their reactions did not surprise me. I saw the same all the way through my kids youth especially when my daughter played on a boys travel team for two years. I want to see these adult reflect, apologize and be part of a future solution. They owe service to the women’s program or women’s sports as a whole. If I were the mom of Hughes brothers I would be going FULL MOM MODE on their adult asses right now. They disrespected her in the process.
Inky Feather Pen:
Yes. My reaction surprised me in its vehemence last night when those guys walked into that room. “You fucking tools.”
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