Why #IBelieveHer

Yes, #IBelieveHer.  Here are some of my reasons:

I

Almost thirty years ago, I dated a young woman who was a dance instructor.  She had a student whom I had met once or twice.  She was shy, had dark hair, and had bright, vivacious eyes.  She was a promising student and was developing an expressive style.  Without giving details, my girlfriend told me she had experienced a tremendous amount of adversity in her short life and I guessed (correctly, it turns out) that she was anorexic.  For her, dancing had become a way of dealing with the darkness in her life, which made what happened to her one night after class all the more crushing.  Going out to the car, a young man trapped her at her car, groped her, and would have raped her if another car had not shined its lights on him.  The young man got away and was never identified.  My girlfriend's student went home and buried herself in her room for three days before trying to slit her wrists.  

My girlfriend, of course, was absolutely broken up about it and went to see her student the night she was admitted to the hospital.  The next night, my girlfriend asked me to come with her to the hospital.  At first, she said she could not tell me what had happened but asked me to drive her and I waited for her in the hospital lobby (I had plenty of homework to keep me busy).  When she came down a few hours later she was in tears.  The next night, we did the same thing and when my girlfriend came back

down she said her student had given her permission to tell me about what had happened but asked that I not tell our mutual friends.  My girlfriend was not even sure her student's mother even knew what had happened.  Her student, like many victims of sexual assault, did not speak because she feared not being believed and feared revictimization.  She also disbelieved that justice could or would not be served.

II

Last year, when the #MeToo movement started, I saw posts from perhaps a couple dozen friends, through social media, told their survival stories and how family members and persons in authority who could have done something about it doubted them and did nothing, told them nothing could be done, told them it would be useless to try to do anything about it, told them to "forgive" their attackers, as well as other dismissive reactions.  Several had experiences like this multiple times.  All felt silenced by those who could have and should have done something for them.  Many of these women have gone on to lives of accomplishment in business, education, and law, but these experiences hang on them like weights.  I admire them for fighting through this adversity.

III

As a high school student, I was not very cool so I did not get invited to the cool parties.  However, on the bus to and from wrestling and track meets, I heard the cool guys talking about the parties.  As I look back on some of the stories I heard, I now recognize that some of my classmates committed sexual assault and possibly rape.  I did not go to a fancy private school, but my school's boundaries included a section of extremely wealthy families, some with sons that sound a lot like the ones who attended Georgetown Prep. and Yale.

IV

I had a co-worker at a mid-size Midwestern university who was aggressively sexually harassed by a student security officer during the night shift which she worked.  When she lodged a complaint with the school's head of security, he refuted her by telling her that the student officer was ex-military and knew about "honor"--unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag regarding the pervasiveness of sexual assault and harassment in the military, so that was not much of a defense.  My co-worker bravely pressed the issue and got our supervisor involved.  At that point, the student's supervisor had to act and the security officer's assignment was adjusted so that he would not come into contact with my co-worker.  However, after a month, the student violated the agreement and showed up outside of our building right as my co-worker got off her shift.  The encounter left her so shaken, that she asked me to walk with her to her car when she got off her shift, which I did for the next two or three weeks until she took another job.  That first night, this officer met us in the quad.  My coworker's reaction was immediate and relentlessly visceral.  She tensed up and began to hyperventilate.  She filed another complaint the next day.  Again, the head of security defended his student, reiterating that he knew to be honorable.  I wrote an account of what we had seen and submitted it to our supervisor, who (again) pressed the issue with the head of security as well as the administration.  The head of security tried to dig in, but the administration pulled rank and the student was re-assigned to a day shift.

Why the hell did it take two men going to bat for this woman for her safety to be taken seriously?  Why the hell was that student defended on multiple occasions by his supervisor?  I saw for myself how the patriarchy tries to defend itself.  Additionally, having seen my co-worker's deep, visceral response makes Dr. Ford's account of what she has experienced very believable.  It is, of course, also very consistent with research on the effect of sexual assault and rape on victims (both women and men).

V

Kavanaugh's defense has some weaknesses that cannot be overlooked:

• Kavanaugh's 1982 calendar may not be as solid an alibi as his supporters want it to be. A Slate column by Matthew Zeitlin points out that the July 1 entry "shows that he went 'to Timmy's for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.'"  Zeitlin writes that this entry contradicts several of the judge's key claims. 1) It names several of the other young men Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford identified in her complaint as being part of the attack (Judge) or present the night she was attacked (P.J.).  2) It contradicts Kavanaugh's claim that such a gathering could not have taken place on a week night because "everyone worked and had jobs."  This defense falls apart when considered in light of Mark Judge's memoir in which he writes about being a bag boy at a local grocery store to "raise money for a football camp," admitting that by then he was already drinking heavily and frequently worked hungover.  Zeitlin observes that this implies that he was drinking on weeknights.  July 1, 1982 was a Thursday night; thus, Kavanaugh's claim falls apart.  Incidentally, Dr. Ford's complaint corroborates Judge's employment when she says she saw him working in a grocery store shortly after the incident.
• Matt Ferner and Jessica Schulberg, in a Huffington Post column, write about the atmosphere of Yale around the time that Kavanaugh was a student there.  In 1983, women had only been allowed to study at Yale for 15 years and the atmosphere was still decidedly sexist; one woman who graduated around the same time as the SCOTUS nominee recalled an older male alum at a reunion openly declaring that the university's accepting women "had marked the downfall of the institution."  Even at that time, there were very few women's bathrooms on campus and many were on the top floors of buildings, causing many male students to joke that Yale had a tradition of "women on top."  More problematic, however, was the fraternity that Kavanaugh joined, Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE), a frat known for poorly treating women.  A 1985 female graduate (thus a student at the same time Kavanaugh was) reports that frats were not part of the "mainstream" culture at the university at the time and that frat boys from DKE were "pigs. Horrible men."  And that was who Kavanaugh chose to align himself with.  Further more, the year he joined a student marched through campus with a flag made of women's underwear and female students at the time said that DKE students took underwear from their rooms.  A friend of Deborah Ramierez, who has come forward, claiming that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at Yale, said he found her claim quite plausible because "guys like Kavanaugh" felt entitled to act that way and that they seemed to suffer no consequences.  More recently, the frat was banned for five years from campus when video surfaced of DKE students standing outside of the University Women's Center chanting, "No means yes, yes means anal" (see also this New York Times article).  This is the company he chose to keep.  
• Multiple news outlets, including Fox News, are reporting that Yale students and Yale Law School students have condemned Kavanaugh.  A New York Times piece points out that when his nomination was announced, the law school boasted that if he were confirmed he would be the fourth sitting SCOTUS justice to have graduated from it.  However, the school has reversed course after outraged students claimed that the nomination has "exposed our entire school's culture of legal elitism and proximity to power.'"  While this does not exclusively speak to Kavanaugh, it strongly supports the above point, that Kavanaugh benefited from an elitist system that seems to have protected self-important and misogynistic men.  Current Yale students see that and have emphatically rejected it. 
• Kavanaugh and his supporters have tried to claim that a statement by Dr. Ford's friend, Leland Keyser, supports his claim.  Keyser said that she cannot corroborate Dr. Ford's claim.  A Huffington Post piece by Sara Boboltz from just yesterday quotes a letter form Keyser's lawyer who said that his client's statement "does not refute Dr. Ford's claim, and she has already told the press she believes Dr. Ford's account."  Keyser's position simply says she cannot confirm it...not that it did not happen.

VI

Believing that Kavanaugh was the kind of self-important, entitled frat-boy-type who could sexually assault and harass women, believing he could do so with impunity, is not difficult for me at all.  When I was a grad student at Oklahoma State University, I dealt with frat boys.  More importantly, I had female colleagues who dealt with frat boys who tried to intimidate and demean them.  These experiences came rushing back to me as I read about and watched video clips of Kavanaugh's childish performance this past Thursday in the Senate hearing.

VII

One of my colleagues at Oklahoma State had a student come to her and tell her about being gang raped at a party by several athletes.  When she went to the athletic office about the incident, they effectively stonewalled her.  When she contacted the NCAA to file a complaint, she was told they would defer to the university's position.  This experience, in conjunction with point IV above, have shown me the lengths that men will go to protect each other in sexual assault and harassment.

Of course, none of these points prove that Kavanaugh is guilty and I don't think they should.  What these points do suggest is that Dr. Ford's allegation is completely plausible and should be investigated.  Personally, #IBelieveHer