why I believe her
I suspect I’m not the only woman who finds herself thinking about truth and sex and high school this week. As supporters of Judge Brett Kavanaugh mount their crusade against Christine Blasey Ford, many of us are wondering what we would do in her shoes.
If it were me, could I endure the pressure and continue to stand my ground for the sake of the integrity of the Supreme Court? Would I have the courage to show up on a national stage and speak the truth, despite the massive attempts on the right to undermine me? Sitting alone in the safety of my own quiet home, my heart goes out to this deeply private woman who made the brave choice of stepping forward, only to be forced into hiding by death threats. I honestly have no idea whether I could put myself through the hostile process that will surely unfold next week if Dr. Ford decides to testify under oath even in the absence of the FBI investigation she has rightfully requested. But there’s one thing I do know: I absolutely believe she is telling the truth.
In the photo above, I am fifteen or sixteen, close to the age Dr. Ford was when she was assaulted in a locked room by a drunk older boy while his buddy first urged him on and then warned him to stop. This picture brings back all sorts of memories – of the kitchen in my house where it was taken, of the time it spent to blow dry my hair into that careful pageboy, of the shark-tooth choker I’m wearing around my neck. I remember the shirt, too – it was my “going out” blouse, an ivory smock I thought was soft and pretty and a bit bohemian. As soon as I came across the photo, I remembered another thing about that top: I always wore it with a leotard underneath. In those pre-camisole days, a leotard meant you had to get completely undressed to go to the bathroom. But a leotard under a loose blouse was also a necessary, albeit thin, line of defense against an unwanted male hand grabbing at your breasts.
As I approach sixty, I realize how much of the past I’ve forgotten over the years – the little things, the passing moments, the sweet ordinary memories that add up to a good, decent life.
But there are also incidents that remain indelible, even now. And many of those moments have to do with early sexual experiences, both good and bad. My own most intimate memories from high school and college are especially, sometimes painfully, vivid. The more disturbing ones are irrevocably lodged in my body, in my mind, and sometimes, still, in my dreams.
Coming of age, coming into our own as women, coming into our sexuality, navigating our way through our own first, fumbling sexual encounters — whether we initiate them, welcome them, or survive them; whether they are exhilarating or terrifying — this is big stuff.
You’d think it would go without saying.
And yet, today I feel the need today to say it: When it comes to sex, women don’t forget what we did or who we did it with, no matter how many years have passed. We most certainly remember, with precise and painful clarity, what was done to us. And we remember who did it.
This, apparently, is news to the men who now claim Christine Blasey Ford must be suffering from some kind of confusion or amnesia about exactly who assaulted her. How else to explain their latest line of defense of Brett Kavanaugh?
That seventeen-year-old kid who clamped a hand over fifteen year-old Christine’s Blasey’s mouth to keep her from screaming while he tried to rape her? That guy couldn’t have been our Supreme Court nominee! It must have been some other guy. Poor, confused Dr. Ford just doesn’t remember who.
Forty-two years after graduating from high school, I can still name the gropers. I remember exactly who they were. I remember what they looked like. I remember exactly what they did. I remember how ashamed and humiliated they made me feel. I remember keeping quiet, because to speak about these unspeakable things would somehow mean acknowledging the truth of them, and that would have been sickening and terrifying. And, while I did not find myself trapped in a room with a potential rapist at age fifteen, it requires no great leap of imagination on my part to envision the horror of such an assault or its after effects: a lifetime of nightmarish remembering, coping, healing.
This kind of pain doesn’t fade and get blurry around the edges over time. The face of one’s attacker doesn’t gradually morph into some other vaguely familiar face from the past. No. Just ask any survivor: the memory is the thing lasts. A woman who has been physically attacked by a man does not forget the experience, she relives it. Over time, if she’s lucky, she finds a way to move forward, albeit haunted by the ever-present, sharp-edged awareness of what was done to her. She lives while also knowing that the very person who inflicted that harm has rewritten the story so that he can live with himself: as if innocent, as if blameless, as if it never happened at all.
The men (and they are, for the most part, men) who are mounting a defense of Brett Kavanaugh on the basis of “mistaken identity” may look back on their own sexual exploits as a series of successful conquests or humiliating failures in which their consensual partners or unwilling victims were indistinguishable from one another and therefore forgettable.
It’s an appalling thought. But it seems that’s really how it was for these guys. They would have us believe that their youthful “escapades” meant little then and less now. To them, we were randomly appealing teenaged bodies to be lured in, pinned down, used and walked away from, with nary a backward glance.
Apparently that’s the way the Republicans on the judiciary committee still see things. How else could they so glibly justify Kavanaugh’s questionable past and, at the same time, work so vehemently to erode Dr. Ford’s credibility? Why else would they adamantly refuse to step on the brakes and call for an investigation that could either clear Judge Kavanaugh’s name or shed objective light on the facts as Dr. Ford remembers them? And how else could they expect anyone to buy this ridiculous line of defense?
And yet here we are, being told to shut up and swallow it as Brett Kavanaugh’s champions race him toward confirmation. It’s quite a disturbing glimpse into the inner workings of the mind of a certain kind of man. A man who experiences sex as being disconnected from feelings. A man who sees sex as his right. A man for whom sex is something to be done, denied, forgotten. A man much like the one in the White House.
further . . .
After a summer away from this space, I did not intend to resume writing with a post about politics. In fact, my intent was to share some reflections about reconnecting with my beloved first grade teacher. That story will wait. This one couldn’t. I felt moved to gather my own thoughts after listening to Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan recall being assaulted by a high school classmate, and the effect of that single traumatic incident. You can listen to her interview on the New York Times Daily here.
Dr. Ford’s credibility is supported by this NYT article by a psychiatrist who explains the neuroscience behind memories formed under the influence of intense emotion.
Michele Goldberg’s voice on the NYT opinion pages always makes me feel smarter and less alone. Read why she hopes Dr. Ford will testify next week here.
Twenty-seven years ago, Anna Quindlen wrote this piece about the Anita Hill hearings. She just reposted it on Facebook, acknowledging how dispiriting it is to realize that she could have as easily written it yesterday. As Anna pointed out then, and as so many of us agree now: “It is difficult to feel polite watching the white men of the United States Senate and realizing that their first response when confronted with a serious allegation of sexual harassment against a man nominated to the high court was to rush to judgment. It is difficult to feel polite, knowing they were more concerned about how this looked for them, for their party, their procedures and their political prospects than in discovering what really happened.” Yes.
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