I’m going to wade back into US politics for a moment, with your indulgence…the situation with Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, has gotten really out of hand, and the woman who has alleged he sexually assaulted her, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, needs all the public support she can get. Even if it comes from another country.

And I know that some people, after reading that first paragraph, will react along the lines of: “Of course she supports Ford. She’s a woman, she’s a liberal, and she hates Trump.”

Image Description: A 2018 publicity shot of Brett Kavanaugh, a middle-aged white man with short, graying hair. He wears a dart suit and blue tie. He smiles directly into the camera, an America flag hanging just behind him and to his left.

Content Warning:  #MeToo, #WhyIDidntReport, “Boys Will Be Boys”, Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Christopher McFadden, Politics,  Rape, Rape Culture, Sexual Assault, Trump

Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh – For the Record

I don’t like Brett Kavanaugh, and didn’t before the allegations surfaced (for a variety of reasons), but I’m not operating right now on the assumption that he’s guilty – I don’t like trying things in the court of public opinion. That being said, I believe that when a woman or man makes an allegation of sexual assault against a public figure like Kavanaugh, it needs to be investigated – regardless of how long ago the alleged incident occurred, and especially in a case like this, where the public figure involved is being vetted for a such a high-power, high-influence position to be retained over such a long term.

I think that makes me more objective about this than any of the GOP voters interviewed in the first part of this video:

The GOP has been pushing to confirm Kavanaugh as quickly as possible, even knowing about Blasey Ford’s allegations, which is icky enough.  I’m not saying he’s guilty, but why not take the time right now to fully investigate before rushing to confirm him? Because if there’s one thing you should have learned over the last few years, America, it’s that it’s much harder to get rid of sketchy guys in high places in your political system once they’re in.

But there are ickier…and quite frankly, really disturbing things about the way this whole thing is being handled. It’s like the Senate has completely blocked any memory of how Anita Hill was treated in the 90s, including what they should have learned from how her allegations against Clarence Thomas were handled (yes, I remember this; I was young, but I remember), and it’s fucking painful to watch.

Back in Blog History…

In 2014, I wrote a piece about Georgia judge Christopher McFadden’s decision to get personally involved in the jury’s verdict on the case of a young woman with Down Syndrome who had been raped three times in 12 hours when she was staying at friends while her parents were out of town. The accused, who had been staying in the  same house at the time, was found guilty by the jury and had been sentenced to 25 years in jail. McFadden decided to overturn the verdict and call for a new trial (over which he would preside) based on his opinion that the young woman didn’t “act like a victim” and the man didn’t  “act like someone who had recently perpetrated a series of violent crimes”

After all, she’d waited until she’d been attacked three times, after 12 hours had passed, before she’d said anything to anyone. And he really didn’t seem like the type…

Backlash was swift and brutal, and he eventually recused himself from the new trial.

I said about that case, “Welcome to living in Rape Culture in America, folks,” and that phrase has never been far from my mind as I’ve followed the coverage of what Blasey Ford has had to live with since she made her allegations against Kavanaugh.

Now, Blasey Ford isn’t saying that Kavanaugh raped her. But as author Emilie Buchwald says in her book Transforming a Rape Culture:

A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women…women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.”

I picked a few examples of things I’ve heard the GOP say about Blasey Ford in the last week that show rape culture on full display.

Rape Culture – A Primer in a Passage

Lance Morrow,  a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal: “The thing happened — if it happened — an awfully long time ago, back in Ronald Reagan’s time, when the actors in the drama were minors and (the boys, anyway) under the blurring influence of alcohol and adolescent hormones.”

Serveral things about this are icky. The quote reads like it’s  lifted out an essay called, “What is Rape Culture?” Rape culture is the narrative that:

• Survivors make false reports about being sexually assaulted
• Assault committed by a minor against a minor isn’t a “real” assault
• People who have been drinking can’t commit sexual assault or be sexually assaulted
• “Boys will be boys” – Teenage boys can’t help their hormones and will sometimes act on them in inappropriate ways

Let’s address these briefly, one by one.

• Survivors make false reports about being sexually assaulted – The false report rate by sexual assault survivors in the US and Europe is 2 – 6%.
• Assault committed by a minor against a minor isn’t a “real” assault – This gets complicated, because laws vary from state to state, but ultimately isn’t true. It’s absolutely possible for one minor to legally sexually assault another minor, and for the same feelings of shame, fear and confusion to be involved for the survivor, as numerous tweets appearing with the recently-created hashtag #WhyIDidntReport demonstrate.
• People who have been drinking can’t commit sexual assault or be sexually assaulted – Again, laws vary by state, but this is ultimately not true. Sometimes drunk people can consent, but sometimes intoxication reaches a point where a person lacks the capacity to consent.
• “Boys will be boys” – Teenage boys can’t help their hormones and will sometimes act on them in inappropriate ways – This last one is particularly annoying, and insulting to teenage boys in its implication that as a a group they are a) not intelligent enough to grasp what consent is b) don’t care c) are unable to control their hormones enough so that they can stop themselves from assaulting girls and women d) some combination of the preceding things. It’s also infuriating in its implication that teenage boys  should get a pass for sexual assault because it’s behaviour that they all engage in.  That should insult us all.  Attempts to normalise sexual assault do teenage boys a disservice and put girls and women in danger. Sexual assault is not a “thing” that teenage boys naturally do, and there need to be consequences when they choose to do it.  Because Lord knows the girls live with the consequences, and everyone who’s prepared to see Kavanaugh confirmed with no investigation of Blasey Ford’s story needs to remember that.

Moving on. Let’s also look at one of Donald Trump’s tweets:, from September 21:

“If the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local law enforcement authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

Not only is this tweet based on an assumption that Blasey Ford told her parents about the assault immediately after it happened (which she didn’t; she didn’t tell anyone about it until 2012, in a couples therapy session with her husband), it’s also grounded in rape culture narrative that says that if someone makes a sexual assault allegation after a significant amount of time has passed (as little as 12 hours, as we saw in the case I talked about earlier), they’re probably lying.

Can we please keep in mind that Blasey Ford was 15 years when the alleged assault took place? Is it really that difficult to imagine why she may have been too confused and frightened to report what happened to her, even to loved ones?

Melissa McEwan writes in her essay on rape culture:

“Rape culture is the pervasive narrative that there is a “typical” way to behave after being raped, instead of the acknowledgment that responses to rape are as varied as its victims, that, immediately following a rape, some women go into shock; some are lucid; some are angry; some are ashamed; some are stoic; some are erratic; some want to report it; some don’t; some will act out; some will crawl inside themselves; some will have healthy sex lives; some never will again.”

Trump’s tweet also fails to take into account that there are good reasons why people don’t report an assault, as Blasey Ford is discovering herself now that she’s made her allegations:

• Public backlash, especially when the person is a popular figure, including death threats in Blasey Ford’s case
• The allegation isn’t taken seriously – They accused the wrong person, they misunderstood the accuser’s innocent intentions, they “made” the accuser assault them, they just need to get over something that wasn’t so bad and that happened so long ago that they shouldn’t be stressed out over it anyway
• They aren’t believed – They made a story up to further their own or someone else’s agenda, they’re disregarded because “I know that person and they wouldn’t do that”, they’re disbelieved because of any number of myths about how victims of sexual assault look/act
• They’re put on trial themselves: Specifically, they’re asked a lot of questions that have nothing to do with whether an assault took place – What were you wearing? Were you drinking? How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had? Had you and the defendant been intimate before?

Why *would* someone come forward? Despite assurances from the Senate Advisory Committee that they want to hear Blasey Ford’s story and think that it’s important that she be allowed to speak in an environment that makes her feel comfortable and safe, it’s hard to see how Committee Leader Sherman Grassley’s failure to address the inappropriateness of comments from the President, the GOP, and other Kavanaugh supporters who have done everything from hassle her on Twitter to send her death threats would make anyone feel remotely safe speaking to anyone at this point.

Blasey Ford and Brett Cavanaugh – Bottom Line

Washington may be patting itself on the back for all it’s learned from the #MeToo movement, but the reaction to Blasey Ford and her allegations has showed that the GOP has learned nothing but the right words to throw around, like “We want to hear her story;”

The underlying attitudes haven’t changed a bit.  For all the GOP’s concern about the Democrats’ interest in Blasey Ford extending only to the length of time that they can use her allegations to put off Kavanaugh’s confirmation, they are no more concerned about getting to the truth than the claim their opponents are. Their only concern is that a woman with a story is jeopardizing what was practically a cake-walk confirmation of another conservative SCOTUS judge, so they’ve got to get her out of the way, fast – whether her story is true or not. And all their talk about about wanting to cooperate with her so she feels safe to talk to them can’t stop their ugly beliefs about sexual assault from leaking out into their media interviews, their writing, and their social media postings – especially those of the President.

The concern here, for both the GOP and the Democrats, should be evaluating the suitability of Kavanaugh for SCOTUS, no matter how long that takes – not rushing it through, not unnecessarily prolonging it, but taking the time to do a proper vetting process.

Dr. Blasey Ford has put herself out there to be involved in that vetting process, and everyone involved needs to make sure that she feels safe and respected, not frightened and retraumatized.

The members of the Senate Judiciary Committee just need to do their fucking job  like the grown-ups they’re supposed to be.  Hold their feet their to the fire, American friends, and insist that they do it.

Being professional and treating people with basic dignity and compassion shouldn’t be this difficult.

The post Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Needs Your Support appeared first on Girl With The Cane.