Smears to you

Why women stay silent

It’s been horrifying to watch the piranhas’ frenzy after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with her allegations about Judge Brett Kavanaugh. There are many reasons those who have been sexually assaulted or harassed don’t come forward, as the attacks perpetuated against Ford amply demonstrate.

I’m younger than Ford, but still in her generation, and I know well the usual reaction to such allegations. My mom, in her 70s, attests that it was much the same in her day (not that her day is over). I’m sure if my grandmothers were still alive, they’d say the same.

Women (and some men as well) don’t talk about assaults because, among other reasons, to do that they’d have to relive them. They would have to deal with the insinuation or outright accusation that they were to blame for the assault because of what they were wearing or drinking, who they associated with, or any other reason to blame anyone but the person actually responsible (because he’s a good boy). Most women don’t want to put themselves through that. That’s why it’s believed only about 40 percent— if that—of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. And filing a false report to get back at someone? It doesn’t happen nearly as often as some seem to think, and can lead to serious legal ramifications.

I’m not passing judgment on whether Dr. Ford’s allegations are true or false, but they deserve investigation. What they don’t deserve are death threats to her and her family, and the outrageous smears floating around that have been debunked (no, that’s not a semi-nude Ford passed out on a picnic table … or with George Soros … or holding a “Not my president” sign). I’ve seen a few similar smears against Kavanaugh (also debunked), and he doesn’t deserve that either.

But that’s what we’ve come to now: If you don’t agree with someone, just smear ’em. Facts don’t matter; scurrilous stories do. What’s worse is that the reaction to reports of sexual misconduct seems to depend on partisan affiliation. As a recent New York Times editorial noted, though, sexual assault is not partisan. Offenders and victims can come from either side of the aisle.

And as our own editorial staff wrote in a Tuesday editorial over there on the opposite page: “If there’s one thing this entire process has taught us, it should be the importance of listening. That doesn’t mean an automatic guilty verdict for people accused of such heinous acts. It just means listening to both the victim and accuser.”

That means listening without preconceived notions, a difficult ask nowadays when where you stand politically (or where people believe you stand) determines how much weight some listeners will give your allegations. But believe me, you can be as disgusted by Harvey Weinstein as you are by Tim Murphy, or by Dennis Hastert as much as you are by Anthony Weiner. Frankly, I’m disgusted by all of them.

Back when the Stormy Daniels story was blowing up, FiveThirtyEight did a comparison of polls regarding sex scandals, and the results were illuminating. In a 1998 CBS poll, the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton affair was deemed a private matter dealing with Clinton’s personal life by 77 percent of Democrats polled, while 64 percent of Republicans polled believed it was a public matter. Gallup asked the same year if it mattered to evaluations of presidential candidates if a candidate had an extramarital affair; 55 percent of Republicans said yes, while only 16 percent of Democrats did.

Twenty years later, a Huffington Post/YouGov survey found that 67 percent of Republicans (as opposed to 26 percent of Democrats) believed “an elected official who has committed an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.”

So obviously, whether an official is Republican or Democratic matters even when that official can’t keep his hands to himself.

This is why I have a bruise on my forehead and a dent in my desk.

There is no easy solution to the problem of sexual misconduct, and as long as we treat the accused and the victim not on the merits of their stories alone but on their partisan leanings, religious beliefs, occupation, or any other thing that has nothing to do with the event in question, we’ll keep running into the same issues. A creep is a creep, period.

Memory is a funny thing, and traumatic events—sexual assault, shootings, bombings, tornadoes, for example—can leave holes; here I speak from my own experience as well as that of others. For some every detail is burned into the psyche, while for others smells, sounds, sights and touch may linger while exact times and dates don’t. What we don’t forget, though, whether (in the case of sexual misconduct) it was just an attempt or a full-fledged assault, is how we felt, and sometimes still do: small, terrified, guilt-ridden, depressed, angry, ashamed.

Some of us aren’t brave enough to face the gantlet so many have recently run. All of us just want peace. And justice would be good too.