Must battle of the sexes become war?
Watching the demoralizing confrontation between Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s and Brett Kavanaugh’s supporters I recall Rodney King’s plaintive 1992: “Can we all just get along?” Well, have you met us? We don’t seem to want to.
Sexual assault is among the most heinous crimes of which humans are capable, which is saying a lot. But can we find no decent way to deal with the dilemma that, precisely because it is so grave, we cannot casually convict someone of it, in court or the public arena? Are we even trying?
Just as the world seems to be divided into people who can’t see anything bad about Donald Trump and those who can’t see anything good, few people who find Ford credible seem interested in the need for proof, while few who insist that proof matters seem concerned that her account might be true even if unprovable, or about his character.
It’s like a Punch and Judy show except even more grotesque and sinister. Kavanaugh’s family have received death threats. So has Ford. Jimmy Kimmel suggested Kavanaugh be publicly castrated, and kept his ABC television host job. Where’s the decency?
Apparently I am in a small minority in being unsure what happened 36 years ago. I’m convinced Ford was assaulted. But not that Kavanaugh did it. I don’t take the Justin Trudeau view that sometimes men and women experience things differently. Either he attacked her or he didn’t. But which?
Kavanaugh’s denial was exactly what you’d expect of an innocent man suddenly facing public ruin. But also therefore exactly what a clever guilty man would produce. And while he seems to have been a bratty, boozy teen, mighty few of us would want to be judged solely on our adolescence.
In any case I’m not going to rehash the details here, or the politics. I’m concerned about something far more fundamental, polarizing and poisonous.
Watching the proceedings and reading the commentary I fear that the obvious conclusion is that nobody should trust the opposite sex, ever. If you’re a woman, men will rape you and laugh, or smirk and minimize your complaints. If you’re a man, one unsubstantiated accusation can ruin your life.
To be sure, nobody outside the feminist fringe calls almost all men rapists. And nobody claims all women invent harassment or assault claims. But the #MeToo movement certainly suggests a vast number of men attack women or support their attackers, and is scarily dismissive of evidence, while a lot of men don’t seem to believe how many women have been raped, molested or stalked, or how traumatic it can be.
It’s an ugly mess. For women, the message might become that it’s not enough just to be careful around men. It’s better to have nothing to do with them, because there’s too much risk you might suffer a traumatizing attack.
For men, the message increasingly isn’t just to be careful around women. It’s to have nothing to do with them, because unless you can prove you weren’t there, one accusation can ruin you for life. Back in 1985 Alan Dershowitz quoted a colleague that “Some people regard rape as so heinous an offense that they would not even regard innocence as a defense.” And we seem to have reached that point, with peculiar vindictiveness. Which makes me worry a great deal about where we go next.
Hawaii Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono just said “guess who is perpetrating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country. I just want to say to the men in this country, just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change.” Not “some men,” “the men.” Doing “all” of it. And do the right thing “for a change.” Such venom is now mainstream. But empathy is not, surely, in such short supply that gender equality is a zero-sum game in which compassion for women excludes compassion for men or vice versa.
It will not do to ignore women’s complaints and concerns. But nor will it do to justify excesses in the other direction by saying for years women were ignored. It’s not even true; many men including police, prosecutors, judges and juries long regarded rape with particular abhorrence, while the feminist movement has had many committed male allies from the start. But if it were true, how is the solution to one injustice to commit another with smug malice?
Rodney King ended his famous press conference on painful racial divisions with a hopeful “Please, we can get along here.” Let’s not go out of our way to prove him wrong on gender.
CONCLUSION IS THAT NOBODY SHOULD TRUST THE OPPOSITE SEX, EVER.