Brett Kavanaugh vs Christine Ford hearing: The entitled boys’ club continues to defend its own
Women who speak out about being sexually harassed are shamed, silenced, threatened.
Men who boast about sexually harassing women can become the President of the United States, after winning a democratic election.
Such men then nominate other men to positions of power, and rage and rant when this brotherhood of favours is interrupted by a woman, who demands that they actually be held accountable for their actions.
This was in grotesque display on September 27, when Christine Blasey Ford, a Professor at Palo Alto University, California, testified on Capitol Hill against Brett Kavanaugh, the man Donald Trump has nominated to become an Associate Justice of the American Supreme Court. Ford claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school — more than 30 years ago.
The deposition — Ford and Kavanaugh’s testimony, their words and their body language, the senators’ treatment of them — was a theatre of how shameless patriarchy operates, how the most powerful institutions around the world are essentially entitled boys’ clubs, and the tremendous battle any woman who chooses to challenge them must face.
Ford was competent, clear, articulate. Kavanaugh was all bluster and hyperbole, interspersed with tears, even as he steadfastly refused to have the FBI look into the allegations against him. (After Ford, two other women have accused him of sexual misconduct).
And soon after his testimony, which was essentially a long tantrum dotted with dire predictions — “For decades to come I fear the country will reap the whirlwind [brought about by his sufferings]” — endorsement for him came from the man holding the highest office in the country.
“Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!” President Trump tweeted.
And, of course, no one was surprised.
In the 21st century, in the time of #MeToo and #Timesup, in one of the most developed nations of the world, a man accused of attempted rape could become a judge in the most powerful court of the country — with the full and public backing of the country’s President.
This is what women are up against. This is how deeply entrenched patriarchal power is. This is how men escape accountability for their actions. This is proof that for any woman who chooses to challenge these power structures, the judge, jury, prosecution are still men.
But this is also a reminder on the need for women to speak up, to keep raising their voice, to not be cowed down, to not be guilted, shamed, bullied into silence.
Ford has claimed that at a house party, Kavanaugh forced her into a room, pinned her to the bed, and tried to yank off her clothes, with his friend, Mark Judge, present in the room.
At Thursday’s hearing, she was asked what she remembered most clearly about the incident. Her answer is chilling: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense.”
The situation is universal: teenaged boys, drunk on liquor, but more potently, on the knowledge of being male, violating a girl’s right over her body as a source of merriment, a fun group activity.
Every woman around the world can relate to what Ford described.
The feeling of being alone and powerless, your dignity seemingly so easily violable, your trauma, a source of amusement to others.
In many ways, what was happening on Capitol Hill on Thursday was another manifestation of this male impunity: men who have gotten away with everything for years, now suddenly aghast, aquiver with rage at actually having to face accountability.
Every word Kavanaugh spoke reflected the sulking resentment, the uncomprehending rage of being told that the world did not actually revolve around him and his fun pursuits, his love of beer and his apparent ardent belief in virginity, and that indeed, beyond all the BS, fingers would be pointed at him.
His defence was made up of denying all allegations, crying, saying he loved beer (it was a running theme), and terming the charges everything from “Democrats’ revenge for the Clintons” to “foreign interference” to a giant “Left conspiracy”.
He was not asked, and did not answer, questions of a more specific nature — how was he so sure the FBI “would come to no conclusion” against him, why should Judge, an alleged witness to Ford’s assault, and who later wrote a book on the drunken exploits at the school he and Kavanaugh attended, not be subpoenaed, why should his other two accusers not be brought in for questioning.
“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” Kavanaugh said at one point during the hearing. “You have replaced advise and consent with search and destroy.”
“This is a circus!” he said another time. “The consequences will extend long past my nomination.”
“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” another senator, Lindsey Graham, said. “If you’re looking for a fair process, you came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.”
Graham also warned other senators: “If you vote no, you are legitimising the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”
The Kavanaugh-Ford story is another edition of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas saga, played out in 1991. Hill had accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his process of confirmation as Supreme Court judge.
Her testifying against Thomas — a black women being grilled, insulted, dehumanised by 14 white male senators — is a defining moment in recent decades of American history.
Less than seven years later, 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky was crucified by public morality for having an affair with President Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party.
Joe Biden, who headed the committee that grilled Hill, was later Barack Obama’s Vice-President.
And now, we have Trump and Kavanaugh.
The stories are reinforcers that patriarchy has the world in a chokehold, that the boys’ club will continue to defend their own, that sexual assaulters will always find powerful backers.
But they are also reminders of the earthquake a single voice can cause, that every woman who speaks out makes a difference, if not to get the men punished, to encourage and empower and embolden other women.
The senate is set to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination soon. Whether he wins or loses, the blanket of impunity that people like him have enjoyed has unraveled a little more.
That, for justice and equality the world over, is a victory, however small.
Also read: Amitabh Bachchan's silence on Tanushree Dutta's allegations has let all women down