To hear the GOP members of the judiciary committee talk, you’d think all they were asking Christine Blasey Ford to do is wander casually into small claims court and talk about the lawncare guy who didn’t mow her grass properly.
It seems that a lot of men (not all, but a lot) can’t understand what a woman in Ford’s position is going through. You’d think they’d learned nothing from the Anita Hill case in 1991. And Hill was an adult, dealing as an adult, not someone who was a minor at the time of her assault. And Hill wasn’t assaulted, just INsulted. (Not to underplay the damage done to her by Clarence Thomas, but there is a vast difference between words and deeds.)
Why can’t men understand that being assaulted, especially as a teen, is absolutely devastating, not easy to talk about then or later, and inflicts lifelong scars? As a sexual assault victim myself (and I was only a couple of years older than Ford when it happened to me) I can tell you that the PTSD you suffer, even decades later, is as real and as painful as anything suffered by any other trauma victim. Ask my husband, who wakes me from my nightmares, and has to watch me weep and tremble when the topic is treated glibly.
The GOP on the committee wonder why Ford didn’t come forward earlier. When it happened to me, I never reported it either. It was in a small hick town in Pennsylvania, and I feared that I would be told it was my fault for dressing provocatively (which I hadn’t) or that I should have just “laid back and enjoyed it” or that I must have done something to bring it on myself and “boys will be boys.” And Ford was facing a much larger stage on the national front than I would have faced in my small college town.
Though my trauma took place almost 40 years ago, it seems things haven’t changed much. Since Ford has come forward, reluctantly, she has been publicly shamed, called a liar, threatened, and had her address and phone number splattered across public media so that her family has had to go into hiding.
Gee, why don’t women voluntarily come forward more often?
Since 45 himself has made it clear that he not only considers sexual assault okay, but something to be bragged about, it is no surprise that he sees these allegations as no bar to a SCOTUS appointment. He probably would feel the same about murder allegations, as long as the appointee had indicated a willingness to cover 45’s ass for him. Jeff Sessions is doing every single thing 45 wanted him to do, as far as policy is concerned — but is 45 delighted? No, all that matters to him is that Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. With this president, it is all about what his sycophants are willing to do for HIM. Nothing else — not even truth or justice — matters.
Actually the unfortunate truth is that a murder allegation might carry more weight with the Judiciary Committee than allegations of sexual assault. Sex crimes often don’t seem to bother men as much as murder does — perhaps because it is harder to sexually assault a man than a woman, but murder is a non-gender-specific crime, and therefore more of an outrage in male minds.
You will also notice that Kavanaugh is considered truthful until proven to be lying, while Ford is considered a liar until she is proven truthful.
No double standard there.
The GOP’s desperate rush to get Kavanaugh confirmed is sickening evidence of hypocrisy and fear on a grand scale. They were breathlessly eager to find excuses to leave a SCOTUS seat open for a year when Justice Scalia died, but now Kavanaugh’s confirmation has to happen IMMEDIATELY. The reason is not difficult to assess: their asinine leader, the “president”, needs immunity from his many pending indictments, and Kavanaugh will deliver. But if his appointment is delayed till after the midterms, and the elections go against the Republicans, POTUS might actually have to take the fall for his many sins! God forbid! Or if the Mueller investigation winds up before they can seat Kavanaugh, and POTUS is proved to be guilty of a multiplicity of crimes, which seems likely, then Kavanaugh won’t be there to save his sorry hide. Either way, Kavanaugh has to be seated NOW, without proper vetting or investigation of Ford’s claims, which is all she is asking for before she testifies. Without that investigation any hearings would simply be a charade of “he said, she said” which will gain us nothing.
We are now a nation without laws, without due process, without compassion, without even common sense. Our Founders would be appalled and ashamed.
Kavanaugh’s claim is that he never did any such thing, and he may well be speaking the truth — although how he could remember anything through the haze of alcohol which apparently surrounded his high school years is a mystery. His buddy, Mark Judge, has even written a book wherein he recounts their youthful benders and misbehavior, in which he includes someone he calls "Bart O'Kavanaugh” who is a part of the “fun.” Judge also says, in an article he wrote for the Daily Caller:
"Of course, a man must be able to read a woman's signals, and it's a good thing that feminism is teaching young men that no means no and yes means yes. But there's also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her. And if that man is any kind of man, he'll allow himself to feel the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.”
I think I’m going to be sick…
I don’t believe that a woman subjects herself to the sort of public scrutiny and vilification which Ford is suffering if her story is false; she has absolutely everything to lose and nothing to gain. I also can’t imagine a SCOTUS appointee responding in any other way than Kavanaugh is doing — in part because he knows he can depend on POTUS to take the investigations no farther, and in part because the weight of conservative and Senate opinion is on his side, even in the “ME TOO” era, so he has little to fear. If he is innocent, why does he fear an investigation? If she is lying, why is she PLEADING for one?
If Bill Cosby can be investigated decades after the fact for sexual assault, why can’t Bret Kavanaugh? Surely a SCOTUS appointment has far deeper implications for America overall than the fate of an entertainer, no matter how beloved, and no matter how disillusioned we may all be by Cosby’s behavior.
There is so much riding on this issue, and it carries so many implications for our future as a culture and as a nation. Are we a people who degrade women and subject them to this sort of abuse without apology? Are we a people who excuse sexual assault as “boys will be boys” and react as if it is a trivial social faux pas, with no repercussions for the woman? Do men consider this sort of behavior their right? Do we assume that what people do in their formative years is no indicator of who they will become? And should they not be held to account for it? (Remember the case of the college student who assaulted the woman behind the dumpster, and there was a call to let him off because indictment might ruin his professional swimming career?) Are we unwilling to take the time to give “due process” even in matters of national importance, merely because it suits the party in power to do so? Are we subject to the rule of law, to decency, to compassion, to common sense? Does anything matter in the Age of Trump except giving POTUS what he wants, no matter the damage done?
I’m afraid I know the answers to all these questions, based on current events. And the answers are not encouraging...