The sudden attention has been unwelcome
Ooooookay, most of you have already seen this, some of you told me about it, but anyway – Ronan Farrow once again:
Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation.
Nononononono – let’s go faster faster faster faster until we’re going so fast that nobody can see or hear anything at all, so that we can get Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court before any more women say he shoved his dick in their faces. After all it would be kind of poetic to have him be the guy who makes sure women are still slaves to their own reproductive systems, including when guys like Kavanaugh get them pregnant against their wills.
The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.
Kavanaugh denies it.
The White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec said the Administration stood by Kavanaugh. “This 35-year-old, uncorroborated claim is the latest in a coordinated smear campaign by the Democrats designed to tear down a good man. This claim is denied by all who were said to be present and is wholly inconsistent with what many women and men who knew Judge Kavanaugh at the time in college say. The White House stands firmly behind Judge Kavanaugh.”
The White House doesn’t know the claim is false. The White House shouldn’t be throwing women to the wolves this way. It’s disgusting.
By his freshman year, Kavanaugh was eighteen, and legally an adult. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh swore under oath that as a legal adult he had never “committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature.”
The New Yorker has not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party. The magazine contacted several dozen classmates of Ramirez and Kavanaugh regarding the incident. Many did not respond to interview requests; others declined to comment, or said they did not attend or remember the party. A classmate of Ramirez’s, who declined to be identified because of the partisan battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, said that another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party or in the next day or two. The classmate said that he is “one-hundred-per-cent sure” that he was told at the time that Kavanaugh was the student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He independently recalled many of the same details offered by Ramirez, including that a male student had encouraged Kavanaugh as he exposed himself. The classmate, like Ramirez, recalled that the party took place in a common room on the first floor in Entryway B of Lawrance Hall, during their freshman year. “I’ve known this all along,” he said. “It’s been on my mind all these years when his name came up. It was a big deal.” The story stayed with him, he said, because it was disturbing and seemed outside the bounds of typically acceptable behavior, even during heavy drinking at parties on campus. The classmate said that he had been shocked, but not necessarily surprised, because the social group to which Kavanaugh belonged often drank to excess. He recalled Kavanaugh as “relatively shy” until he drank, at which point he said that Kavanaugh could become “aggressive and even belligerent.”
…
Mark Krasberg, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico who was also a member of Kavanaugh and Ramirez’s class at Yale, said Kavanaugh’s college behavior had become a topic of discussion among former Yale students soon after Kavanaugh’s nomination. In one e-mail that Krasberg received in September, the classmate who recalled hearing about the incident with Ramirez alluded to it and wrote that it “would qualify as a sexual assault,” he speculated, “if it’s true.”
Bumpy times ahead.
Somewhere, Ed Whelan is furiously googling Yale dormitory floor plans and alumni records.
Avenatti is claiming to have witnesses who will corroborate accusations that Kavanaugh and Judge were part of a group who got women drunk/drugged at parties and gang raped them. I’m stunned that it’s gone to this level — but so far Avenatti has been careful not to overpromise, so it’s hard to believe he doesn’t have something here.
My advice to Kavanaugh is to get into the used car business.
It has got a better image. It will give him a chance to move forward, and up in the world.
I think we are witnessing the beginning of a grand, unprecedented phenomenon: the raise of matriarchal societies.
Two current trends almost guarantee that this will happen in the US within the next few, say 20 years.
The first is that for a woman who is sexually harassed, it is becoming easier to come out and report the assault on her.
As this trend continues, it gets even more easy with time.
The second trend is the easing of the proof of burden imposed on a sexual assault victim when she reports it.
Could anybody have predicted 3 years ago that a woman is taken
seriously when she accuses a supreme court nominee of sexually assaulting her some time, decades ago in some house in Maryland?
But now everybody agrees that she deserves to be heard with respect and seriousness. No exceptions, including Trump!
When these trends are put together and we consider how endemic sexual harassment is, it inevitably follows that more and more women will replace men in powerful positions including white house.
US is leading this change, but same can be expected in other parts of the world due to similar reasons.
Kalyani;
That’s how things should be, I agree, but….
…is rather at odds with respectful and serious intentions.
Yes, that claim that “now everybody agrees that she deserves to be heard with respect and seriousness. No exceptions, including Trump!” is just wildly inaccurate.
To reinforce what AoS and Ophelia said, several Republicans have indicated that they plan to “listen respectfully” and then vote to confirm Kavanaugh no matter what she says. That is not listening respectfully. That is not agreeing that she needs to be heard. That is letting the world know that they have no intention of listening to her; they may not be planning to cat call or whistle or stomp their feet while she speaks, but they do not intend to listen.
And now they possibly have four seperate accusers to not listen to – respectfully or otherwise.
The fact that they are not sincere and only faking it matters, if they can sustain it for quite a while.
My bet is that they can’t do it for long because there are powerful forces against it.
For example, Grassley has to acquiesce to the terms of Dr. Ford’s lawyers and accommodate them
in the schedule. Otherwise, it will be too obvious and it affects them in mid term elections.
The reason why Trump has shown some “restraint” is the same too. He does not want to annoy female voters
because that may lead to a Democratic majority in senate which in turn may lead to his impeachment.
I don’t think they can go on faking it and pretty soon they will be compelled to make it.
Kalyani, I wish I could share your optimism, but I’ve heard this sort of thing too often. “They won’t be able to ignore this”. “People will penalize them in the midterms”. “There is momentum.”
During the decades that mark the middle of the 20th century, there were a lot of gains. Women. Minorities. Environment. The Baby Boomers that were politically active believed things would work better as soon as our generation took over. By the time the Baby Boomers gained power, Reagan and friends had already taken a wrecking ball to a lot of it, and then the Baby Boomers that took over were not the ones that wanted a fairer, more just society. They were the young Republicans. The John Birchers. The racist, sexist, anti-environmental underbelly of the country, and they were rich, and kept getting richer. And they were assisted by a large number of older Republicans who have continued to hold onto their positions in spite of being older than God. And the wrecking ball continues.
I have very little faith (yeah, I know) that this moment will lead to any substantial changes. It isn’t the liars and the fakes that have trouble sustaining, it is the activists and the protestors. All they have to do is wait us out, and then go back to business as usual. And the millennials will fall in the same way the Boomers did – they’ll get married, have kids, join the establishment, and become one of the faceless mass that just go about their day without much political activity or interest.
No, I don’t think this will be a moment. I hope I’m wrong.