This isn’t about Kavanaugh and Trump, it’s about our entire world

Male entitlement needs to be confronted, but too many are still in denial

I didn’t know about it until my wife told me what had happened, because my daughter was still in a combination of shock and agony. This worldly and intelligent young woman had been sexually assaulted, just metres from her front door.

She’s not naïve, not sheltered, and we never thought this could happen to her. That, of course, is what is always said. He hurt her, he frightened her, and it was only by chance and her own courage and determination that she wasn’t raped. And I, her father, wasn’t there to protect her.

But no, that’s not it. As natural and even laudable as those paternal feelings are, it’s not about me or my emotions or my anger, not about me wanting to track this man down and beat him. Our daughter was assaulted because that’s what so many men do, sometimes when alcohol removes the veneer of civility and restraint from their being, but often simply because they assume that they can.

The police do try their best, and people are helpful, but the doubting questions soon begin: why did you think he was a good guy, why did you allow yourself to be in a place where he could do this? In other words, it’s your fault and you need to be tougher. Or as one person said, “Man up.” Oh God, oh God, the screaming and gruesome irony of that phrase.

Then comes the usual pattern. Close female friends are spoken to, and one after another they recount similar experiences, some of them far worse. Because it happens so often, and so little is done to stop it. No, it’s not about saying that all men are rapists, but it is about saying that so many women are victims of sexual assault. And for some reason this truth intimidates the complacent and the conservative.

Which leads us to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. I’m not going to reiterate the details, but I do know that the reaction has been morbidly predictable. In this case, however, there is politics beyond the patriarchy, and so we’ve seen the responses in mainstream and social media.

Last Saturday, for example, I tweeted a defence of Ford, and within hours a concerted campaign by her detractors had labelled me a child rapist, and mock “Wanted” posters had been put online.

But it’s the greater response that should inform the discussion. She left it too late, she’s lying, she’s political, she’s trying to destroy someone, he’s the real victim, men are falsely accused all the time, more men than women are raped, it’s all a plot to gain attention or make money, and on and on.

This is not about condemning sexual encounters, even those that people may later regret. When genuine consent is involved, it’s simply none of our business. Nor does it concern some puritanical attempt to expunge sexuality from the human condition.

As for false allegations, of course they occur, but to think this is the key issue is like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. It’s actually about common decency and about gender equality, and the willingness to admit what should be entirely obvious by now.

Yet this poisonous refusal goes so far and so deep that there are even women who defend the abusers, and still refuse to listen to reason. They are joined by men who either try to pretend that it’s a fringe issue, or even dismiss most of it as innocuous and inevitable, just men and women doing what they do. To hell with your revisionism and your lies.

And each time I read another article or watch another scene on television, I think back to our child, our daughter, and her fear and confusion and sorrow. Of the trust she had that was trashed on that night.

Hers was the face of sexual assault, of the result of male entitlement, and of the sordid culture of denial and excuse that still obscures our judgment in a filthy cloud of unknowing, unthinking, and unfeeling. This is not about the Supreme Court, this is about the entire world. If you think otherwise, you’re part of the damned problem.

Our daughter was assaulted because that’s what so many men do, sometimes when alcohol removes the veneer of civility and restraint from their being, but often simply because they assume that they can.