Pauli Murray (Adrienne Williams) talks about being a co-founder of the
National Organization of Women as other women look on.
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Month: September 2018
Men Are Afraid of Women Now? Good.
Published on
by
Protestors rally against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh as they march on Capitol Hill, September 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
As the rolling saga of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination progresses ― with more allegations emerging and staunch defenders of the nominee making proclamations on the Senate floor and cable news ― I, like many sexual assault survivors, have begun living in a kind of bifurcated time. I am in the present, in which the news continues to relentlessly unfurl. And I am in the past, where the pain lives, and it keeps pulling me back to the worst moments of my life.
On the one hand, I am living my life, here in September of 2018. I am doing my work; I am drinking my coffee. I am typing with hands still brown from the summer sun; the cold rain of autumn cools my cheeks.
“In the real con game, we are asked not to take it personally when people in the highest levels of our government attack survivors of sexual assault.”
And on the other hand, I am suspended in a series of awful moments, recalling themselves to me from puberty onward. I am recalling each grope, each unwanted incursion into my body, each mortification of my female flesh, and I am trapped in visceral sense-memories of rank sweat and alcohol and a flood of stress-borne cortisol.
I am living in two spaces at once: in the world of accumulated trauma, and the contemporary news cycle that evokes it. And I’m not alone. Over the past week, sexual assault survivors of every gender have poured out their experiences on hashtags like #WhyIDidntReport and #BelieveSurvivors. On Monday, social media was flooded by photos from a national walkout by black-clad, solemn-faced survivors and allies, a rebuttal to the casual dismissal offered in the Senate and on Fox News and ― perhaps worst of all ― from the president, who has casually and cruelly rebutted many credible assault allegations against himself.
Liiving in bifurcated time means reeling from Trump’s casual dismissal of Deborah Ramirez’s claim, reported in The New Yorker, that a college-aged Kavanaugh took out his penis and put it in her face against her will. “She admits that she was drunk,” the president of the United States said. And inside me, an inner Rolodex of humiliations unfurls, and I feel cramped with shame and rage, feel marked, inside, with red blazons of indignity.
For all of last week and this one, I have lived between these two worlds: the perpetually moving present moment and the one that doesn’t move, the harsh-toned film clips of past assaults, that click into place and play under my drooping eyelids. Sleep has come reluctantly; it has memories to fight.
All the while, the vote to confirm Kavanaugh is proceeding apace, though it has descended into a kind of brittle, hideous black comedy, like a John Hughes movie with its ugly underbelly exposed.
At issue is not only the judge’s errant penis, or his alleged attempted rape of Christine Blasey Ford, but also his virginity: He told Fox News host Martha MacCallum that he remained a virgin throughout high school and “for many years after.” An immaculately conceived defense: the Virgin Brett. A man who was a fellow student at Yale alleges that Kavanaugh had contradicted this statement back in their freshman year.
Renate Schroeder Dolphin, a woman who had signed a letter of support for Kavanaugh, discovered, to her chagrin, that she had been the subject of a seemingly sexualized proto-meme in the Georgetown Prep yearbook. Kavanaugh and others, including eight other members of the football team, listed themselves as “Renate Alumni,” which some former classmates said meant the boys had in some sense “graduated” her.
“I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things,” she told The New York Times, “but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way.”
Kavanaugh was asked on Fox News about allegedly participating in a gang rape, pursuant to questions raised by the publicity-inclined lawyer Michael Avenatti. Needless to say, most of us have not faced a gang-rape questionnaire in any job interview. Most of us have not had to.
And yet even this has not sufficed to derail his nomination ― or slow the stream of defenders rushing to declare any woman coming forward about Kavanaugh’s past as participants in a “smear job.” Christine Blasey Ford will testify on Thursday with no corroborating witness; the one man she named as a direct witness to the events she described, Mark Judge, has not been subpoenaed by the Senate. Nothing has deterred the assemblage of distinguished lawmakers prepared to elevate this man to the nation’s highest court, with its absolute control over the legislative fate of women’s bodies. In the president’s words, the women coming forward are part of “a con game.”
But it has begun to feel as if the real con game is the broad expectation that women will go along peaceably.
The real con game, the big lie, was women ever hoping to be considered equal.
In this con game, survivors work to square our poisoned memories, the frozen time of trauma, with the present, in which powerful men defend other powerful men against anything and through anything, heedless of their own descent into indignity.
In the real con game, we are asked not to take it personally when people in the highest levels of our government attack survivors of sexual assault.
Over the past two weeks, a mewling chorus of fear has swelled on the right. The idea, as put by Trumpist social media provocateurs Diamond and Silk, that “today it’s Kavanaugh, tomorrow it could be your brother, your father your husband or your son.”
The assumption, of course, is that having committed or committing sexual assault is not what men should fear; rather, they ought to fear the retribution of victims. Another implication is that allegations of sexual abuse are random-function, un-anchored in truth. That they are a catching plague dispersed on an ill wind, which, if uncontained, will infect the innocent.
As Slate columnist Lili Loofbourow put it: “Is it any surprise that men would panic at the realization that the system that they could depend on to look the other way is fast eroding?”
I Googled my rapist this week. I looked through his Instagram photos. There he is, sharing a margarita with a woman I don’t know. There he is, sharing photos of a cat, making jokes about bagels. I never reported him, and he’s served no time. By all appearances, he’s doing fine.
I do not want him to be doing fine. I would like him to be afraid.
If I must live with my pain, I would like him to live with the fear, just under the surface, that what my body remembers so vividly can come disrupt his life, as it disrupts mine daily. I would like him to live with a little of the fear I’ve lived with my entire life, the same fear every woman I know lives with: the quiet safety protocols that I put in place for each date and each walk alone and each time I get drunk in public. Perhaps if he fears me, he cannot ignore me; perhaps if he fears me, I will be his equal at last.
I would like to think ― I do think ― that the pain we are pouring out to each other and to the world cannot be put back. That the women who walked out will become the women who take to the streets for Saturday’s March For Survivors. That the women arrayed in anti-Kavanaugh protests at the Capitol represent a small proportion of those of us who are willing to be galvanized by our pain. That, tired of being led by rape apologists and alleged rapists, we will become an army, with one hand covering our wounds and one hand pulling the lever for change. That our pain means something, and our pain means we are awake to what cannot be borne.
We, who are tired of living in the nightmares of the past and the Kabuki theater of the present, are ready to demand our answers, now. We have heard your fear, and we like it.
Note from Kathie MM: Thanks to Common Dreams for their essential journalistic work on behalf of peace and social justice and for making their articles publicly available.
Political Mind Games: The Kavanaugh File
By Roy Eidelson, PhD
When it comes to preserving their extraordinary wealth and power, the 1% count on manipulating the public’s understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible. My research shows that their favorite “mind games” often target our doubts and concerns in five domains: vulnerability (Are we safe?), injustice (Are we being treated fairly?), distrust (Who can we trust?), superiority (Are we good enough?), and helplessness (Can we control what happens to us?).
One-percenters are most accustomed to using deceitful yet psychologically persuasive appeals to control the narrative about big-picture issues ranging from domestic policy to national security. But in recent days, we’ve seen them turn to the same playbook in an effort to quell the controversy generated by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s credible allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee h Let’s consider several examples.
Source: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (public domain)
Vulnerability. The 1%’s “It’s a False Alarm” mind game is typically used to downplay the societal harms caused by their self-serving priorities. Regardless of the evidence, they insist that adverse events—such as the ravages of climate change—are greatly exaggerated. So too in the Kavanaugh context. For instance, GOP operative Gina Sosa dismissively argued, “Tell me, what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” Similarly, conservative evangelist Franklin Graham claimed, even if the allegations are true, “There wasn’t a crime that was committed.”
Injustice. With the “We’re the Victims” mind game, one-percenters assert that they’re targets of mistreatment rather than perpetrators of wrongdoing. This artful role-reversal is witnessed whenever economic inequality takes center stage. That’s when they complain about receiving unfair criticism for billionaire tax cuts and no appreciation for the hard work that supposedly made them so wealthy. GOP Senators have employed this turnabout tactic in their defense of Kavanaugh. Lindsey Graham referred to the allegations as “a drive-by shooting” and Bob Corker lamented, “I can’t imagine the horror of being accused of something like this.”
Distrust. Another recurring mind game of the 1% is “They’re Devious and Dishonest.” Here, they assert that those who oppose their agenda—low-wage workers, prison reformers, anti-war activists—are deceitful and unworthy of the public’s trust. Their efforts to discredit Kavanaugh’s accuser are no different. Senator Orrin Hatch claimed that Dr. Ford’s allegation “reeks of opportunism”and President Trump tweeted: “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.”
Superiority. In this domain, a favorite mind game of one-percenters is “Pursuing a Higher Purpose.” They insist that tainted actions—such as the torture of war-on-terror prisoners—must be evaluated within the context of the greater good and America’s enduring exceptionalism. In similar fashion, Kavanaugh’s defenders insist that his behavior from decades ago should be taken in stride. Conservative columnist Dennis Prager contended that the charges should be ignored because he’s “led a life of decency, integrity, commitment to family, and commitment to community that few Americans can match.” And Senator Hatch argued, “I think it would be hard for senators to not consider who the judge is today… Is this judge a really good man? …By any measure he is.”
Helplessness. Finally, with the “Resistance Is Futile” mind game, the 1% send a clear message to friend and foe alike: We’re in charge and that’s never going to change. Sometimes they drive this point home with threats; at other times, they turn to naked assertions of authority. Powerful defenders of the status quo regularly rely on this appeal when their policies—or their preferred candidates—are challenged. So it’s no surprise that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell offered this reassurance to a Values Voters Summit audience: “In the very near future Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court…Don’t get rattled by all of this. We’re going to plow right through it.”
Other manipulative mind games also tap into issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. But these five examples should be sufficient to demonstrate a key point. There are striking and disturbing parallels between the 1%’s broad, ongoing assault on our democracy and their targeted maneuvers aimed at overcoming serious, legitimate questions about Brett Kavanaugh’s suitability for the Supreme Court. In both the war and the battle, they know that psychologically compelling appeals to our core concerns can carry the day—even when they’re as flimsy as a conman’s promises. That is, unless we’re ready for them.
Roy Eidelson, P.h.D., has been a practicing clinical, research, and political psychologist for over thirty years. His new book is titled Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. Roy’s work focuses on “psychology for progressive purposes”—applying psychological knowledge to issues of social justice and social change. He is the former executive director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania and a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, an organization that works to address a range of pressing issues including poverty, racism, militarism, and climate change. He is also a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, where along with colleagues he has been an outspoken advocate in opposing torture and restoring psychology’s commitment to do-no-harm ethics.
Note from Kathie MM: Regarding the image for Dr. Eidelson’s post, I think it is all too sadly relevant that the person contemplating justice is a woman. What connections do you make in this regard? (I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)
Whoa! Take notice! It’s back again!
by Kathie MM
It’s 9-11.
A day that changed everything. A day that changed nothing.
A day when a terrifying new threat thrust itself into the consciousness of millions of people who, perhaps, had not been paying enough attention. Sort of like when the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first atomic bombs. Think about what that event triggered—the “Cold War,” bomb shelters, and lessons to school kids about hiding under desks if the United States was bombed by those dirty Commies.
Or consider the fallout from that ominous non-event, that unconscionable non-attack on the U.S. in the Gulf of Tonkin that led to the Vietnam war and the loss of thousands of American and millions of Indochinese lives–plus the gains of millions of dollars to the arms industry and other war profiteers.
The beat goes on. New enemies, old enemies, new losses, new profits.
Remember the lyrics, “When will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn”? Ask yourself, have you learned yet that violence only breeds violence (and profits for the rich and powerful)? Have you studied war no more, preferring to put your time and energy into studying politicians’ records and promises kept and forgotten? Have you educated yourself about the new threats–e.g., drones— to innocent lives being carried out on innocent men, women, and children elsewhere by the U.S. military and CIA ? Have you heard that those who live by the sword often die by the sword? Have you enlightened yourself concerning the resurgent threat of nuclear arms that rest in the shaky hands of unscrupulous power-holders in the United States and other rogue states? Have you looked ways to resist war–e.g., here at engaging peace and other sites? ?
Which side are you on, babe, which side are you on? Life?
Or death?
Find a way to act now.