Chuckle chuckle wink nudge
Oh really.
Brett Kavanaugh talking about his high school in 2015: “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.”
I can't imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice? pic.twitter.com/WhL8YeZQ78
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) September 18, 2018
It is literally decades since I have uttered those words. Mostly because I witnessed them being used routinely to draw a cone of silence over behaviour that would cause great hurt and harm to people I regarded as friends. It drove a significant wedge between me and a large number of my friends at the time. Their argument was that what their wives didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. My argument was that they shouldn’t be shagging around or gambling large amounts of family money. Or at least, if they were going to do that they shouldn’t do it in front of others or brag about it afterwards. Many of them could not understand that while they were my friends, I also regarded their wives and partners as my friends.
I apologise in advance for the lengthy comment to follow.
I know that you’ll all be aware of the murder of Celia Barquín Arozamena, the 22 year-old woman killed at Coldwater links, Ames in Iowa, and that a young man has been charged with her murder. In light of the current controversy over Brett Kavanaugh along with the #MeToo movement this part of the news coverage stood out like a beacon:
Charged with, but no mention of any actual convictions in the articles I’ve seen so far. Maybe he was tried and convicted or acquitted, but it’s odd that it isn’t mentioned.
Or, could his lawyers have possibly got the charges dropped, blaming ‘youthful indiscretion’ perhaps?
Even more chilling, though, is this quote from a Sky News article I saw:
Speaking as a man who has never felt the urge to assault, abuse, rape, kill, or in any way hurt women, and never been accused of any of the above, nor even found myself in a situation where I might have inadvertantly caused a woman to fear me; despite being the kind of man who, similar to what Rob was saying recently, will take action to avoid causing alarm by crossing the road or otherwise give women plenty of personal space rather than risk causing fear; despite all of that, I am seriously starting to wonder if any woman who hasn’t known me personally for years can ever be genuinely at ease in my company.
The young women who work in my local shop, for example. These are women who call me by my first name, who stand and chat about matters both trivial and serious and who laugh and joke with me; who always make time to nip outside with me to make a fuss of my dog as I leave; who have on many occasions quietly asked if I’d mind just hanging around when there’s no male staff on duty (there’s always two staff on, but only rarely is one of them a man – and never both at once) if there were people in the shop they didn’t like the look of.
Still, I wonder; do those women yet harbour suspicions that I might not be such a decent bloke in private? That my friendly, safe persona is for public consumption only?
Because I am becoming more convinced by the day that if I were a woman, I certainly would. Because there are too many Brett Kavanaughs, too many Bill Cosbys, and too fucking many Collin Richards’ for me not to.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/18/spanish-golf-champion-celia-barquin-killed-on-iowa-course
https://news.sky.com/story/body-of-golf-star-celia-barquin-arozamena-found-on-course-in-iowa-11501312
AoS, I read so many comments on news stories from men complaining non stop about how feminists and #MeToo and women in general ruin everything and how men are the real victims that I’ve given up trying to debate anything with the arseholes. It’s funny, I never meet people who talk like that to my face any more and I don’t know if it’s because I live in a bubble of decent people, or if many of the men spend all day hiding a seething rage against women and their male supporters, then go home and write nasty comments and terrorise their wives. Actually, it’s not funny, it’s a very disturbing thought. I’m also left very sad that many women can’t trust male strangers, who are perfectly decent. But I suspect that is the safer way.
PS: I wonder if Trump and the others who were braying about a Mexican man killing a white woman will say peep about a white man killing a Spanish woman? No. I didn’t think so either.
One thing I didn’t realize is that Georgetown Prep, the school that Kavanaugh attended, is a boys-only school. Christine Blasey Ford attended Holton-Arms, an all-girls school a few miles away. Over 400 alumnae of Holton-Arms, women who graduated from 1967-2018, have signed a letter supporting Ford.
I haven’t been able to find the whole letter online.
Here’s the letter, with 745 signatures now: https://www.standwithblaseyford.com/
And here’s one from the class of 1984: https://www.standwithblaseyford.com/class-of-1984.
What a Maroon – great letters. You do realize all those signers are women, though, don’t you? They can be easily and readily dismissed with a single adjective – hysterical.
Katha Pollitt once said:
It could easily read “How many women equal one man?” and still have the same answer (whatever that is – it is a large, large number).
iknklast,
I’m not sure that one man equals one bishop, but otherwise, yeah.
On the other hand, five right-wing Supreme Court justices equal one Pope.