View from the Left: Republican men remind us how repugnant their treatment of women really is
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I'm not a big fan of name calling and generally try to avoid leaning on it even when writing about things that are clearly outrageous. It feels intellectually lazy and there's usually more clever and even respectable ways to roast someone if you have the timView from the Left: Republican men remind us how repugnant their treatment of women really is
I'm not a big fan of name calling and generally try to avoid leaning on it even when writing about things that are clearly outrageous. It feels intellectually lazy and there's usually more clever and even respectable ways to roast someone if you have the time and energy to devote to it. But just two days into watching the male-dominated GOP harass a woman who was clearly traumatized by an event she's been trying to forget for 30 years, I found myself writing lines like, «That’s just plain bullshit» as they tried to ram a hearing down the throat of the accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh without even so much as consulting her. From the very moment Dr. Christine Blasey Ford attached her name to the sexual assault accusation swirling around Kavanaugh from when the two were in high school, the Republican response has been nothing short of repugnant. At first, their instinct was to try to brush past the revelation without even giving it a hearing, as if confirming a potential sexual abuser to sit on the highest court in the land without lifting a finger to investigate the claim was perfectly acceptable. But objections to that head-in-the-sand approach from just two of fully 51 GOP Senators—namely, Sens. Jeff Flake and Susan Collins—forced Republican leadership to at least make a show of trying to get more information on the incident that allegedly occurred in the 80s when Kavanaugh was 17 and Dr. Blasey Ford was 15. Naturally, Republicans set up the sham hearing like an ambush right from the start. On Monday evening, they announced the hearing would occur the following Monday without ever consulting Dr. Blasey Ford. They declined to hear from any other third-party witnesses even though Dr. Blasey Ford had placed a third person in the room, a friend of Kavanaugh's named Mark Judge. Republicans also declined to enlist the FBI to do what it does for all presidential nominees, an investigative background check, given the new information. In other words, they set up Dr. Blasey Ford to testify against Kavanaugh in a setting where he, as a political creature of Washington, would be at an incomprehensible advantage based on his familiarity with the setting, the players, the spotlight and the millennia of misogyny and sexism that would follow both witnesses into the room. Dr. Blasey Ford, who, again, hadn't been so much as been consulted on the timing, let alone the circumstances of the hearing, balked. Anyone with a brain, not to mention a 30-year-old history of trauma, would have. And any lawyer working in their client's best interests never in a million years would have let their client walk into that ambush. And when Dr. Blasey Ford blinked at the GOP's attempt to railroad her into an unfair, unsafe, and uninformed hearing, Republican men immediately felt emboldened and took the opportunity to skewer her integrity. And this is the point in the week in which I wanted to start name calling based on the inner rage I felt about the treatment of this sexual assault survivor, who originally wanted her story to remain confidential, got dragged into the spotlight, finally stepped bravely forward to attach her name to the allegation, then received death threats that forced her and her family to relocate from their home and contract with a private security firm for protection. Read more