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UPDATE: This hearing so so fucking hard to watch. But it’s a disaster for the GOP. Ford is utterly convincing and so, so brave.
By David Futrelle
We’re just hours away from what promises to be one of the most surreal and infuriating Senate hearings ever. News keeps breaking. I’m yelling at my television.
So I’m opening up a thread for everyone who wants to talk about this, to vent, to share breaking news and personal stories. No trolls. (If anyone starts posting trolly or other otherwise problematic shit, email and I will ban them.)
Here are some relevant tweets I’ve run across today:
There are three women willing to testify under oath about credible allegations. The GOP continues to refuse to call for an FBI investigation. It is time for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to be immediately withdrawn. Enough is enough.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 26, 2018
.@LindseyGrahamSC latest defense of Brett Kavanaugh is that "he's not Bill Cosby." pic.twitter.com/pwhi6EEtq7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1044964634564988929
Poll: Support for Kavanaugh among GOP women drops by 11 points https://t.co/HgsrVg3uxV pic.twitter.com/SH9bmq49wd
— The Hill (@thehill) September 27, 2018
"Gaslighting" is, I concede, overdeployed but it's hard to come up with a better word for this: the weaving back and worth between petulance and fake magniminity, the exhausting self-contradictions, the totally fabricated alternate reality presented with violent certainty.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/AdamWeinstein/status/1045091328063934469
https://twitter.com/eschor/status/1045096168370393090
https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1045101040427659265
US Rep. Kevin Cramer on Kavanaugh allegations: “Even if it’s all true … does it disqualify him from the Supreme Court?” https://t.co/R8HjCctZ5N
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 25, 2018
Brock Turners grow up to be Brett Kavanaughs who make the rules for Brock Turners.
— feminist next door (@emrazz) September 27, 2018
WATCH: While discussing the Kavanaugh allegations, a woman in Montana argues that an 18-year-old male groping a woman "is not a big deal." pic.twitter.com/rKTiRmTC93
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 27, 2018
“Kavanaugh is the perfect Trumpian candidate. Trumpism is about taking the cool kids, the rich white kids who have always got what they wanted, and making sure that they get even more.” @MollyJongFast got this very right https://t.co/diNdUOaWSc
— Francesca Fiorentini (@franifio) September 27, 2018
On the possibility that men fear women now: https://t.co/LOfLE5cC9G
— . (@swordsjew) September 26, 2018
I will probably be updating this post with new stuff as events develop.
The last two years have been like all the wounds suddenly sprouting open and leaking my strength out. Yeah, #metoo, #whyIdidntreport.
Everything about this fucking blows. I’m barely staying in one piece, and this crap is everywhere. It is not just USA, it is in Europe as well, as well as Finland, all the fucking douchebros are crawling out of woodworks to crow and echo the same crap, again and again and again.
I read on Yahoo News earlier today that one of the Dem senators is trying a judicial ‘Hail Mary’ pass to stop the hearing in federal court. Argument being that Trump’s refusal to release all the background check papers on Kavanaugh is seriously hampering their ability to investigate for themselves if he’s fit to be a SCOTUS, and thus keeping the senators from doing their job properly. .
Unfortunately I’m on my phone now, and can’t refind the article to link here. 🙁
He’s a total scumbag, which is why Drumpf picked him.
I’m unsurprised one rapist picked another. I’m also not surprised the line behind Brett is long with women he tried to break, even in passing, the way a cat shoves glasses off the table.
I just can’t.
Spent the last day detailing how rape apologia and disbelief hurts rape survivors on FB because a friend called for help explaining to her mother why it’s a huge fucking issue and jfc it’s been triggering.
Not to mention how sad it makes me every time something like this comes up and I get reminded how many of my high school and college friends are survivors, too. We didn’t fucking deserve this, and it’s appalling how often we have to dredge that shit back up to make a point.
I’m starting to hope that the nomination is tanked. I’m in this weird mood where I’m enraged and sad at the news these last two weeks and how it’s reminded basically every survivor of their own experiences. At the same, I feel better now because it isn’t a foregone conclusion that Kavanaugh will be on SCOTUS.
Of course, they might have time to get through a different pick during the lame duck session if the Democrats flip the Senate. Then even if the Dems are the majority, we’ll have to convince them to hold the seat open for another two years. Even though fighting back hard is working for the Democrats so much better than their previous roll over and the GOP walk all over them strategy, I still don’t remotely trust them to just be out of fucks about seeming civil.
I’ve been referring to Kavanaugh and Judge on my blog and elsewhere as rape pimps. BTW, Kavanaugh’s a human-rights-abuse facilitator, too…he helped provide legal rationale for Dubya’s warrantless wiretaps and torture flights — oh sorry, “extraordinary renditions”. So that, already, SHOULD disqualify him for the job, but in Donnieland, it’s bound to be an asset on a résumé.
GRRRRRRRRRR.
CW: I’m gonna talk about child abuse after the first bit about sexism.
There was an op-ed by a man who was abused by a priest as a child and never reported until the recent sex abuse scandal was in the news, something like “I was called a hero for reporting that a priest abused me 30 years ago, why isn’t Christine Blasey Ford?”
People were supportive, people were totally understanding of why he didn’t report it, no one questioned his motives or the truth of his story. If it wasn’t written so flippantly like “How could this be, that I, a man, am afforded so much more credibility in reporting my own sexual assault, than a woman??” it would have been a better article.
I was like, YEAH I FUCKING WONDER WHY.
Relatedly, Germany exposed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church dating back to the ’40s, and I did the disgusting math based on the number of cases… It averaged out to more than one per week. Somewhere in Germany, every Sunday since 1946, a child was being sexually abused.
I’m sure anti-Catholic evangelicals and anti-Catholic organizations (like the KKK) are reveling in the latest scandal – which the so-called “Good Pope” has been very sluggish to address (there’s this whole “why o why are young Catholics so disillusioned and leaving the church?” thing he’s doing and I’m like YEAH I FUCKING WONDER WHY) – but the only reason this is a Catholic thing is because they are a monolith, so it’s comparatively “easy” to lay these charges at their feet (whether or not it does any good). I guarantee exactly as much abuse is being done by evangelical bible camp counselors and youth pastors and so on.
I hope something comes of it. I really hope people care, and remember, and something changes, because I am so sick of this shit.
So, apparently Christine Ford’s parents are members of the same country club as Kavanaugh’s parents and her father is more concerned about losing his golf membership than what happened to his daughter. https://twitter.com/DogginTrump/status/1045106249472176128
So, the Republicans decided to announce now, late at night that two unnamed men have stepped forward to say they think they’re really the ones who assaulted Ford.
The fuck?
What is it about Kavanaugh that the right are so desperate to confirm. I mean, rich white conservative judges are pretty a dime a dozen. What’s so special about this guy that they’re finding guys who inexplicably are admitting to a crime in order to protect him?
This whole thing is just so weird. Are the Kochs or Putin/Russian oligarchs paying a ridiculous amount of money for this SCOTUS seat or something? Given the financial weirdness with Kavanaugh and Anthony Kennedy’s son, I’d have to think so. Something has felt so off about this whole thing from the start. What rulings has Kavanaugh promised to make to get this kind of special treatment? Is it just about his pro-presidential power stance?
Not sure what’s worse.
A rapist having limitless power to subjugate rape victims.
Or the fact that after the entire nation rose as one in outrage in a (failed) attempt to bring one, single white cishet man to justice for rape, no-fucking-thing whatsoever changed, and that male rapist’s name, BROCK TURNER, has practically been erased from public discourse.
Do we know who paid off BK’s debts yet? Who owns him?
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
He’s apparently said he wouldn’t convict Trump if Trump’s crimes ended up before the Supreme Court.
@Jane Done
He’s the textbook definition of a rapist, which will keep his infamy alive for spme while
Open thread, so here’s a must-read article in the Guardian: This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team. It lays bare just how dysfunctional Team Trump was, and is. Since it makes Chris Christie seem like a sympathetic character, perhaps it should be taken with a pinch of salt. But it’s written by Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, so it’s entertaining in a “holy shit we’re doomed” way.
@Skiriki
It’s not just Europe and Finland, this shit has spread to Latin America as well. Talks of “cultural marxism” and Alex Jones are becoming popular here, even as #MeToo spreads to try to combat misogyny and racism. But of fucking course for every feminist activist out there, there seems to be a legion of angry douchebros yelling “feminazi!” and trying to delegitimize victims in every single post and comments section.
It’s like, for the first time in their life, these fucking people felt their privileges were being threatened, and they’ve come out in full force to turn back the clock on women’s rights by about a fucking century. These fuckers aren’t just trying to question the right of women suffrage, no they are openly debating whether women should be property again.
And with each passing day I feel like all this animosity is going to break out in unspeakable violence.
@WWTH,
IF these two men exist, I’d wonder what the GOP has on them to make them take the blame for that crime. Like, what were they being blackmailed with to make getting publicly tarred as rapists seem like the lesser evil. Or alternatively, how much money / how good of a job / what bills just got paid off to hire them as the true villians of this story. Be interesting to know, at least to me.
Just spitballin’ here
but I suspect that if they set a precedent of “never raped anyone” ?
the Republicans know too well that they’d never get one of their nominees approved again.
Wild accusations from me here, obviously. Completely spurious.
(All of these motherfuckers are Yale and Harvard and Princeton fratty alums, they know exactly what they all fucking did there, they know the rejection of Kavanaugh means that each and every one of them is fucking vulnerable)
cough – ahem
Oh, yeah, I’m just being ridiculous here. Don’t mind me.
Following the live-blog over at Wonkette and the commenters are really letting out all the anger and frustration with this shitshow.
There was a great tweet I saw in the comments:
And just to bank off what Diego said, there’s a lot more Brock Turners out there than polite society would like to admit. Fraternities alone are like little incubators for toxic masculinity and frankly it still flabbergasts me that they’re permitted to continue. But every little anonymous Pepe troll, every little anime-Nazi shitposting on Twitter, they all share that same mindset. And because they might put on a suit and tie in the daylight, away from their keyboards, we mistake them for decent people when they’re anything but.
Folks on Wonkette have already said this is worse than Anita Hill, and I’d agree. Whenever somebody disputes the concept of “rape culture,” this will be Exhibit A.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee:
In addition to the above comments, by this point there’s the whole macho ‘never show weakness’ attitude. It wouldn’t matter what he did, it wouldn’t matter if the next guy they suggest would be even better, by now it’s not even about winning so much as it’s about refusing to back down. They would rather charge headlong into a meat grinder than look for a way around it.
Because their base has been marinating in that attitude for years, has no concept of diplomacy, and have finally got what they think they want; and that base will mercilessly tear apart anybody who tries to stop and look for an actually better solution.
I remember the Anita Hill hearings. Right now I’m struck by how news consumption has changed – back then, most people couldn’t follow the hearings during the day, and they were limited to either watching the live feed going on when they were done with work, or watching the clips in the evening news. These days, lots of people are watching when they can, and passing around clips. It’s a very different environment.
@Scildfreja
Bingo!
And to continue with what Katamount said, these senators grew up in the single most privileged environment ever, and one that encouraged and even rewarded misogyny, racism, homophobia (you name it).
If they allow these allegations to go through what’s to stop their own victims to come forward? I generally find that men, who seem irrationally defensive about sexual assault and/or rape allegations, are prone to have skeletons in that particular closet. I remember a particular Latino youtuber who kept on haranguing about “due process” and “lynch mobs” until it was discovered that he sent dick pics to a 12 year old girl as a “joke”.
And then there’s frats. Let’s face it, no other country in the world seems to have them and, as a non-US citizen, my impression is that they started (and are maintained) precisely to preserve White, male privilege. There have been plenty of articles over the recent years about former frat members and donors demanding that no POC be admitted into their former frats, lest the frat lose their donations.
Likewise, an often cited study from 2007 found that women are more likely to be raped in a frat than a poor and violent neighborhood.
Frats are the equivalent of gangs for wealthy White men. I am absolutely certain that these senators all have something to hide in those regards.
As a person who was lucky enough to personally never endure this I have the luxury to only experience disgust and rage at this nonsense rather then what many other people are feeling.
I almost lost it at the Airplane questioning though. That is some Chewbacca Defense level nonsense. That is equivalent to saying that just because Trump claims to be a germaphobe it means it is impossible for him to have fathered his children as he claims he did.
I am so sorry to people who have to watch this woman battle monsters with their own monsters still behind them.
@Moggie:
Thanks for posting the link to that Guardian article! It was fascinating, and I probably wouldn’t have read it otherwise.
Off topic but good news my sister is getting married this weekend!