Why Ford’s testimony rings true
It is the detail of the hand she says he put over her mouth
She wasn’t actually raped. Nothing really happened to her. These are the sorts of excuses being offered by many men, including Republican politicians, to discount what Christine Blasey Ford alleges Brett Kavanaugh did to her.
Meanwhile every woman I know brings up the exact same point: That hand she says he put over her mouth.
That hand is the horrifying detail that makes Ford’s account ring viscerally true for us. And it’s what we can easily imagine being most haunted by afterward: The suppression of our objections, our cries for help, our voice, our selfhood. Many of us have similar memories of that kind of forced powerlessness — that negation of our rights, our wishes, our speech.
The concept that rape is about power, not sex, has been an accepted fact for decades. Most women understand this truth. But as the responses to Ford’s story have shown, many men still can’t grasp this idea. And that’s a huge problem.
Because it’s not just that these crimes are motivated by the desire to have power over someone. It’s that this exercising of power is precisely what traumatizes victims most.
As horrible as it is to have sexual acts forced upon you, what sears itself into your psyche is the hand over the mouth, the locked door, the pinned body unable to move, the verbal threats. That’s why it does not require bodily penetration to experience the trauma of sexual assault. Just the attempt is a violation. Just the sudden removal of control over your own body is enough. Just the threat of extreme harm is damaging.
If you can’t imagine being the victim of a sexual assault, then try this: If a mugger held a gun to your head and said he’d kill you if you didn’t give him your wallet, would it be any less traumatic if he got scared off before actually getting the wallet? Wouldn’t the trauma come from the gun, the threat, the feeling that your life was in someone else’s hands?
Now imagine not being believed unless you could produce a witness to your mugging, being asked if, in fact, you wanted your wallet stolen, or being told you are the one who is victimizing the mugger by reporting what he did. Unlike any other crime, if you suffer sexual assault, you must fight to be believed. Even the power of speaking about your experience will be taken from you, often with verbal violence.
And it’s precisely that feeling of powerlessness that harms, that seeps into other aspects of your life. Afterward, you can never escape the fearful knowledge that at any moment, your autonomy and freedom could be taken away by another human being.
The recent documentary “RBG” about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg includes a quote from the abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimke: “I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.”
To which I’ll add: “And their hands off our mouths.” Let us speak, let us say no, let us scream if we need to. And when we try to tell you what happened to us, let our voices be heard.