Misogyny on Ice

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. 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 times 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.

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?) 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. 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. 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 men. 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.