What Does It Mean to Ruin a Life?
The dispute over the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh confirms what I already knew: women’s suffering doesn’t matter.
Several years after I was raped, I attended an event featuring Anita Hill. I was grateful for the opportunity to hear her speak, but I couldn’t bring myself to focus on her words — I was too busy thinking about what it would be like to see my own assailant nominated to the Supreme Court.
I had been so preoccupied with the past that to look forward hadn’t occurred to me, and there I was, being confronted with the fact that our abusers have futures, too. Still, I took solace in the unlikelihood that something like this would happen.
And then, on September 16, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused the nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Several more women (five accusers in total) have since come forward with additional allegations of misconduct.
Responses have been mixed — to put it mildly — and, with Republicans scrambling to push their nominee through, many have risen to his defense.
There are, of course, those who say the assaults never happened (including the nominee). There are those who have implied that the accusers are simply “mixed up.” But everyone seems to agree that the allegations are, at least, plausible — that such things can and do happen, with regularity even.
That a man would pin a woman down and cover her mouth to muffle her screams or shove his penis in her face at a party or push her up against a wall after a night of heavy drinking is not the point at issue.
The underlying question is instead: if the allegations are true, how much weight do we give them?
Right now, it is unclear whether Kavanaugh will be confirmed. But what is clear is that there are people, perhaps many of them, who simply do not care about what he is alleged to have done. If anything, their voices are growing stronger as more allegations surface.
After Dr. Ford came forward, New York Times columnist Bari Weiss asked, “What about the deeper, moral, cultural, like, the ethical question here? Let’s say he did this exactly as she said. Should the fact that a 17-year-old, presumably very drunk kid, did this, should this be disqualifying?”
Ari Fleischer echoed her comments, asking whether committing sexual assault in high school should “deny us chances later in life?”
A lawyer close to the White House put an even finer point on it, saying to Politico, “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.”
Such reactions promote the idea that the sexual violence is a routine and simple fact of life — sexual assault is just something men do, something women endure.
And, from a cynical perspective, they’re right.
After all, sexual assault occurs with frequency and impunity. For every 1000 rapes, only six perpetrators see jail time, and the number of women who have experienced sexual assault is often estimated to be 1 in 5. Further, 9 times out of 10, the victims of sexual assault are women.
This means that women, particularly young women, are assaulted in large numbers while their perpetrators walk free.
But just because gendered violence is commonplace does not mean it should be excused.
Because to excuse this behavior is to trivialize it, which in turn perpetuates a culture of silence and shame, one in which reporting feels like an overreaction or perhaps a lost cause.
In the aftermath of my own rape, I had the persistent feeling that I should have been over it sooner — so many other people are raped, and in more violent and traumatizing ways — but the pain lingered.
I felt increasingly isolated and alienated from the people around me, and my mental and physical health began to deteriorate. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go a day, an hour even, without thinking about the assault.
I wondered if I would ever feel whole again, all the while knowing that he probably felt nothing about it at all.
I mourned the potential I felt that life offered me before the assault, the limitlessness of the belief that I could and would do something great with my life.
I’ve had other traumas since, some more serious than others, but it always comes back to that one night. What happened changed me irrevocably; the very fibers of my being rearranged into something stiffer, something less permeable and more opaque.
Even now, I still think about the person I could have been without the trauma, the person my assailant got to be because he did not have to face the consequences of his actions.
We were eighteen — for him, a youthful indiscretion; for me, a lifetime of pain.
Last week, before the additional allegations had surfaced, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked, “What do you expect me to do? What am I supposed to do? Go ahead and ruin this guy’s life?”
This rhetoric invariably comes up when powerful men are accused of abusing women, but what does it mean to ruin a life? And whose lives are we worried about here?
Not being named to the Supreme Court but retaining one’s coveted federal judgeship certainly seems to fall short of having one’s life ruined. So does being kicked out of Stanford, or having to leave Hollywood, or taking a break from stand-up comedy.
On the other hand, dealing with the lifelong consequences of trauma — the depression, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the flashbacks, the eating disorders, the increased risk of suicidality — can feel like one’s life has been ruined, or at the least changed for the worse.
In his testimony on Thursday, Kavanaugh gave a nod to this ruined-life rhetoric by stating that his life has been “totally and permanently altered.”
Let’s say we could properly describe his life as ruined if he is denied the seat — would it be so unreasonable to think that perhaps it is not us who would ruin his life, but Kavanaugh himself through his own actions?
And, honestly, why shouldn’t we ruin his life?
After all, he expressed so little care about the lives of others when — if the allegations are true, which I believe they are — he held a woman down and tried to drown out her screams while he assaulted her, or when he committed any other number of acts that are just now surfacing.
Actions have consequences, and the consequences for this behavior should not fall solely on the victims, who have to live with the lifelong trauma that so often flows from such violence. Kavanaugh must bear the full weight of his actions, even now, 36 years later.
Because what he did still matters, at least to his victims and to other victims like me.
I believe that Kavanaugh will be confirmed. If these past two years have taught me anything, it’s that Republicans’ moral bankruptcy is boundless.
This confirmation will be yet another blight on our nation’s record, and it will demonstrate just how little women matter in our society.
It’s disappointing (though unsurprising) that this is coming on the tail of the #MeToo movement. I’ve watched the movement warily — I wanted it to be the watershed moment so many made it out to be, but skepticism made me doubtful. And now I fear that my deepest suspicions have been confirmed.
It seems that the movement, far from ushering in the change that so many of us who participated desperately desire, will merely underscore how little our society cares about the anguish that it brought to light.
Collectively, we preference certain kinds of suffering over others — and the dispute over the Kavanaugh allegations demonstrates how we stratify such things, which experiences we privilege and which we consider incidental.
Still, Dr. Ford’s powerful testimony cannot be forgotten. As she herself reported, “thousands and thousands” of survivors have reached out to thank her and to share their stories.
This gives me hope that her bravery will inspire more women to come forward. The onus for enacting change should not rest on our shoulders, but unfortunately it does.
If we want our pain to matter, we must continue to demand that our truths be heard, even in the face of indifference.
