The patriarchy testing the limits
A grotesque display of patriarchal resentment, Doreen St. Félix calls it.
At the time of this writing, composed in the eighth hour of the grotesque historic activity happening in the Capitol Hill chamber, it should be as plain as day that what we witnessed was the patriarchy testing how far its politics of resentment can go. And there is no limit.
For real. A woman testifies about what it was like to be pinned down and nearly suffocated by the nominee to the Supreme Court – and who flies into a rage? The male nominee who did the pinning down and near-suffocation, and a male Senator on his team. She was anxious and stressed but also serious and disciplined; the two hes were in spitting rages. Dominance sure does give people a lot of anger-privileges.
“Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” Ford had told the Washington Post when she first went public with her allegations. With the word “annihilation” she conjured the spectre of Anita Hill, who, in her testimony against Clarence Thomas, in 1991, was basically berated over an exhausting two-day period, and diagnosed, by the senators interrogating her, with “erotomania” and a case of man-eating professionalism.
I remember it all too vividly. I particularly remember the “testimony” of John Doggett, and having to go out for a long walk to burn off the simmering rage he inspired.
Ford, in any case, was phenomenal, a “witness and expert” in one, and it seemed, for a moment following her testimony, that the nation might be unable to deny her credibility.
Then Kavanaugh came in, like an eclipse. He made a show of being unprepared. Echoing Clarence Thomas, he claimed that he did not watch his accuser’s hearing. (Earlier, it was reported that he did.) “I wrote this last night,” he said, of his opening statement. “No one has seen this draft.” Alternating between weeping and yelling, he exemplified the conservative’s embrace of bluster and petulance as rhetorical tools. Going on about his harmless love of beer, spinning unbelievably chaste interpretations of what was, by all other accounts, his youthful habit of blatant debauchery, he was as Trumpian as Trump himself, louder than the loudest on Fox News. He evaded questions; he said that the allegations brought against him were “revenge” on behalf of the Clintons; he said, menacingly, that “what goes around comes around.” When Senator Amy Klobuchar calmly asked if he had ever gotten blackout drunk, he retorted, “Have you?” (He later apologized to her.)
He behaved like an absolute pig – he behaved like a threat. He acted like any other guy who tears off the mask of mature civil normality to reveal a red-eyed furious asshole underneath. He completely, in my view (and that of many), nuked his own suitability for the Supreme Court…but it’s looking as if he will be put there anyway. A violent furious ragey rapey entitled privileged shithead who despises what he calls “the left” and sees plots to avenge “the Clintons” where there are none – on the Supreme Court.
There was, in this performance, not even a hint of the sagacity one expects from a potential Supreme Court Justice. More than presenting a convincing rebuttal to Ford’s extremely credible account, Kavanaugh—and Hatch, and Lindsey Graham—seemed to be exterminating, live, for an American audience, the faint notion that a massively successful white man could have his birthright questioned or his character held to the most basic type of scrutiny…Republican senators apologized to the judge, incessantly, for what he had suffered. There was talk of his reputation being torpedoed and his life being destroyed. This is the nature of the conspiracy against white male power—the forces threatening it will always somehow be thwarted at the last minute.
There was also much talk of his family. But who torpedoed his reputation? Who destroyed his life? Who brought all this on his family? Maybe it was not the Democrats or the plotters-for-theClintons or Christine Blasey Ford, maybe it was Kavanaugh himself. It’s pretty rich watching entitled drunk rapey guy blaming other people for his drunken rapey entitled ways.
Bad times; bad bad times.
I found his testimony yesterday to be staggering. Not because I haven’t seen that face on men before, angry, snarling and contemptuous of the woman who dared stand in the way of what he sees as his right – far too many of us have seen that before. But I was surprised he would let that face show on national television. Obviously, he bargained that the angry white men that make up a substantial portion of the Trump base would love it. Anyone who thinks Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are heroes clearly thinks that kind of behavior is the essence of manliness. But quite apart from the innumerable question marks over this man’s suitability to be on the SCOTUS, this performance was utterly disqualifying by itself. If Dr Ford had comported herself this way, the talking heads would be nodding sadly and proclaiming their hopes that she get help for her serious mental health issues.
There’s a photograph of him, mid-rant, and all the women behind him, including his wife, look appalled or disgusted. It’s a great pic – captures the whole atmosphere perfectly. But did anyone else wonder if he’d had one or two of the beers he proclaimed to love so much in his lunch hour or maybe a quick nip from a hip flask during one of the short breaks? There was something… off about his whole demeanor to me. Not so much the rage, but the weird choking up when talking about things that don’t seem to have emotional weight, such as his father’s habit of making and keeping calendars.
Oh I’m seeing plenty of people saying he was drunk.
And as for “something… off about his whole demeanor” – he was a raging dumpster fire! His demeanor was completely repellent and unhinged and utterly inappropriate for a Supreme Justice. He gave me the fucking creeps. I’ve known way too many men like that, who love to fly into rages whenever a woman annoys them a little – WAY too many. He’s one of them. He shouldn’t have any responsible public job at all.
I need to move. Far, far away. I’m trying to decide if New Zealand is far enough…or Antarctica.
I’ve seen this, too. I saw it constantly growing up, on the face of men who believed that the mere fact of their being men meant they got to decide what the women around them did. Men who were big and strong, and saw nothing wrong with slamming their fist into a wall, a door, a television screen – or slamming their big, heavy arm across the back of a young, pre-adolescent girl, leaving her gasping for breathe and wanting to die because it hurt so bad. It didn’t even require the girl to get in their way, merely be in the room when someone else got in their way. Then the others, those who could do something to stop it, shrugging their shoulders and saying, “What can we do? It’s just who he is.”
They are bullies. They pick on those who are weaker, and bluster and brag in the hopes that those who are stronger will look up to them and admire their strength. And meanwhile, the women and girls get hurt, and when they finally sit up and say something, being told to “just keep out of his way”. How can you keep out of the way of these men when they have spread their anger everywhere, and have invaded every space? There are no safe spaces, unless a woman just holes up in a house without men, or with only men who do not have anger issues, and never, ever, ever leaves. Which seems to be what some people are recommending we do.
Sorry for the dump. I’ve found myself gasping for breath again these past few days, whether in memory or in fear of the future, I do not know. Perhaps both.
@Ophelia I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said but that wasn’t quite what I meant. Yes, he was a raging dumpster fire but that’s hardly unusual around DC these days. Lindsay Graham had his own little moment too. But what stood out to me was the weird affect in response to things he was saying that didn’t seem to make sense. Who cries or chokes up talking about calendars? Who sits there and keeps going on and on about how much he likes beer, over and over, when there is a real question about whether he has a drink problem? Who thinks this is a reasonable way to behave in a situation like this? Someone with serious personality problems. Maybe he’s an alcoholic. But maybe that’s not all. After yesterday, I genuinely wonder if he’s cluster B.
But yes. I wouldn’t want this man to be my mailman let alone a federal judge.
Claire, oh, I see, sorry. I haven’t yet actually watched enough of his performance to get that.
But he’s toast now. The FBI will come back with a big steaming platter of lies. Lies under oath. Stick a fork in him, he’s done.
I watched the whole thing live. I can only recommend it as an emetic. But look at his wife’s face. That is not the face of a loving wife supporting her husband against unfair scurrilous accusations if you ask me.
Ok now I’m hoping she walks out on him. Tonight.
Iknkladt @3, you’re welcome to come visit on a scouting mission. Bring your husband. We can stand having two near perfect men in the house at once :-)
What fascinates me the most is how quickly the mask slipped. We all know the instantaneous change from ‘hey baby, you’re gorgeous, why don’t we’ to ‘fucking ugly fat bitch, I’ll fuck you up’–I mean, last week we’d have said that this guy’s politics were abhorrent, but he was a nice normal carpool and basketball coach guy. Now look at him, he’s a hot mess.
Many years ago, after the Christchurch earthquake, I thought I’d move to New Zealand to help with the recovery. I remember being on the phone with my potentially future boss, discussing how New Zealand was handling transport and urban design issues. No rail, no public transit, lots more new roads. ‘Well, you know, conservative government, what can you do?’ Poor guy heard a great deal from me about what he could/should do, and why, and I decided not to relocate.
Damn, our loss. Incidentally, Christchurch has ended up with a network of very expensive cycleways and a highly dysfunctional bus system, although the central exchange is wonderful. Our current government is trying to redirect spending away from motorways and subsidising farmers irrigation schemes to things like health, housing and education. Problem is there is a decades underfunding and anger to deal with. Also, for every person who is happy and accepting of a very capable young woman unwed mother as leader, there is a raving conservative misogynist who belittles everything she does. I can see the beginning of American style politics here. Not surprising since the National Party keep bringing Republican consultants over to advise them.
I was wondering if things would turn around in subsequent administrations, but as far as I can tell it seems too little too late. I’m sure NZ has some sustainability challenges with respect to the economy and population size and distribution but as I told the man I was discussing a potential job with, the climate change/resource depletion door is closing fast and you don’t really want to be on the other side when it finally shuts. Also I kind of got the impression that misogyny and sexism are relatively high there (I had a friend in Australia who told me, among other things, that she couldn’t take out a credit card in her own name–she needed her husband to cosign); while I’m sure it’s not orders of magnitude worse than elsewhere, I really needed some assurance that such a major disruption in my life would be worth it in the long run and I just didn’t get it.
I honestly don’t know if there’s anywhere to go that’s ‘safer’ than where I am now (UK)–I’d have loved to move to Sweden, but the last time I was there I had some unsettling conversations about immigration and taxes with academics who I’d have expected to know better, and the most recent election results indicate the rot’s set in there as well. Maybe Finland…but the Finns are a bit weird.
New Zealand has a stable economy, hampered by being as far from anywhere as it’s possible to be. We do have the advantage of having lots of water and being a net producer of food. Come the zombie apocalypse or whatever, you could do worse. We do generate 85% of our power from renewable sources, but your point has some validity. We’ve always been a nation on the cusp of second and first worlds in reality. I haven’t seen the sort of thing you describe with credit in decades. I know plenty of women who get credit cards and home loans in their own names on an equal basis to men with the same income. As they should of course. That said, underlying sexism is certainly a problem.
Rob, do my eyes deceive me or did guest commit the capital crime of conflating New Zealand and Australia to a Kiwi, and have it pass unremarked? I’m stunned, I tell you, stunned to have witnessed such a momentous occasion.
There is hope for the world after all. ;-))
AoS, we’re a forgiving society. I’m giving guest the benefit of the doubt that it was information passed to them about NZ by an Aussie. In which case it’s hardly surprising it’s inaccurate.