Believe Women!
#MeToo and #TimesUp are more important than we might think because they show that we are starting to ascribe credibility to women approaching that which we automatically ascribe to men.
But this is about to get put to its toughest test yet when Christine Blasey Ford sits down with a Rethuglican Senate committee to fill them in on her violent run-in with Brett Kavanaugh, Pumpkin's pick to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court (seeing as how Michael Cohen is not available).
I have visions of another Anita Hill situation. I hope not. But having faith in this patriarchal society to do the right thing by women is not much of a +EV position. Also, this way I remain capable of being pleasantly surprised.
In any case, a lawyer buddy of Kavanaugh's tweeted last week (before Ford's identity was even known)
“Wonder if accuser will say she was sober at time of alleged incident at drinking party. If drunk, how drunk? Cognitive dysfunction, impaired memory, mistaken identity, all compounded by 35 years? (I am of course not saying her drunkeness would excuse anyone else’s conduct.)”
So - he wonders if she was drunk. Then he assumes she was but wonders how much. Then he assumes however much she was drunk, it was plenty because she, of course, has all kinds of mental breakdowns as a result. Inability to think, or remember events, or identify people. And even though she was blind, blackout drunk (see what I did there?) it does not excuse someone else's bad behavior toward her. But of course, none of this has the least little thing to do with his buddy,
When he got called on this, his reply was along the lines of, Are you saying that extreme drunkenness does NOT cause these mental deficiencies? He's already entered into evidence the fact that she was extremely drunk because... he imagined it, and he has a penis. So, QED.
No, it does not HAVE to go this way. Not now, in 2018. Not even with the pussy-grabber-in-chief squeezing his blackheads in the west wing. But is that the way to bet?
Surprise me, America.
via Rebecca Solnit, whose book, Men Explain Things to Me is the awesome and you should grab a copy RFN.