A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

tl,dr; Yesterday was a lot. An angry, spittle-flecked, partisan hack cried, screamed, pouted, spouted conspiracy theories, and most importantly lied under oath, looking every bit like the aggressive mean drunk that his victims told us he was. And Republican men apologized to him—to him!—without saying a single word to the woman he attacked, even as she earnestly, painfully relived one of the worst moments of her life. My write-up: After a harrowing hearing on Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee look set to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. The vote could come less than 24 hours after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified under oath that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers. Even though two more women—Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick—have accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault on the record and have called for an FBI investigation into their allegations, only Dr. Blasey Ford was allowed to testify. Afraid of...

—September 26, 2018 —   Reliving my own stories of disempowerment and hearing those of so many other women, I wanted to relay a story about one time with a happier ending. When I was a freshman in college, I lived in a dorm with a handful of girls I’m still friends with today. At some point early in the year, the boys who lived on the first floor right by the entrance put up a soft-core porn poster on the outside of their door depicting a college-age girl in a demeaning pose. Every girl who entered the dorm had to walk by that poster just to get to her own bedroom. It was degrading, threatening, disgusting. It communicated: we can do whatever we want and you just have to put up with it. I don’t remember who had the idea but I remember that I was the one who found the replacement poster: a male stripper in a provocative pose completely naked but for a well-placed cowboy hat covering his genitalia. Early one morning, my partner in crime and I crept down to the first floo...

Julie Swetnick A third woman, Julie Swetnick, has come forward alleging sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh and his best friend in high school, Mark Judge. ( Link to the affidavit . Allegations are disturbing so warning in advance.) Mark Judge—now a conservative writer with a long history of making misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic statements—is also a witness and accomplice to the attempted rape alleged by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Swetnick has stated her allegations in an affidavit under oath and is calling for an FBI investigation. Her  allegations align with  those made by Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and  Mark Judge's high school girlfriend . Two quick asides: 1- Swetnick is represented by Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels lawyer, and Republicans are trying to make him the story , instead of responding to what Swetnick has said under oath. 2- After  Ramirez came forward in the New Yorker , the New York Times ran an absolute shit hit piece on Ramirez...

Kavanaugh categorically denies the allegations. His conservative backers think he probably did it anyway. They just don't care. Or care that he could be lying about it now. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that California psychology professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had credibly accused Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault and attempted rape when they were both in high school. As reported in the Post, significant circumstantial evidence supports Dr. Blasey Ford, who described the attack to therapists in 2012 and 2013, long before Kavanaugh’s nomination, and who passed a lie detector test in August. The Senate Judiciary Committee had been scheduled to vote on the nomination today, with a vote in the full Senate planned for next week. At first, Republicans attempted to muscle their way through. When that became untenable, they hastily announced a hearing for this coming Monday, September 24, allowing little time to investigate...

This week we’re on red alert in response to reports that Republican leadership is gearing up for a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and gut Medicaid the week of September 25 , with a sham hearing possible before then. Now is the time to call, write, and rally to urge the Senate to reject this new threat and support a bipartisan package instead. The bill, known as Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson for its sponsors Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), is being sold as a “compromise” and “non-partisan” solution—even though no Democrats support it. But not only is Graham-Cassidy not a compromise, it is the most radical proposal yet. And like the proposals that preceded it, the bill goes far beyond Republicans’ campaign pledge to repeal the ACA; it also attacks long-standing traditional Medicaid. Republicans only have two weeks to ram through repeal with just 50 senators and Vice President Mike Pence because on Sept...

The theft of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities’ personal photos has prompted a now-predictable online discussion about victim-blaming, with self-appointed moralists condemning Lawrence for taking nude or sexually-explicit pictures in the first place and her defenders objecting to any discussion of taking reasonable precautions against becoming a victim. It’s a repeat of the societal conversations we have around rape, and while I get it, it wears me down. The Huffington Post posted a tweet from Farhad Manjoo , “I’ve never heard anyone respond to financial hacking by saying, Just don’t use online banking. That’s what you get for using credit cards.” But the truth is that we blame victims—of crime, of misfortune—all the time, blaming them for risky behavior, for bad one-off decisions, even as we ignore how many risks we take ourselves, or how many of our own stupid decisions turn out well when they might just as easily have been deadly. And here’s a test case: If you hear that s...