Why making fun of Brett Kavanaugh’s tears was never going to block the confirmation
Bashing Kavanaugh for being emotional in his testimony did two things. Neither of them helped the resistance.
First, it reinforced the erroneous idea that emotion has no place in politics, that people who show emotion are unreliable and unstable, and that they should be banished from the public sphere. These arguments have long been used to discredit women and keep them out of decision-making positions. Reinforcing the idea that emotion doesn’t belong in politics will not push men like Kavanaugh out of the highest positions of authority, it will keep them in. Emotion is everywhere in politics. Politicians use emotions to justify policy decisions, to create a community of supporters, to go to war. To imagine that they don’t does not help us to weed out unfit candidates, it blinds us to the tactics and strategies that shape public support.
Second, emasculating Kavanaugh reinforces the kind of gender policing that contributes to sexual assault culture in the first place. Ideas about manhood — that men should be unfeeling, aggressive, go-getters — are these not the kinds of traits on display in the young men described by Dr. Ford? Isn’t pinning down a woman to access her body and her power while laughing about it an exact embodiment of being unfeeling, aggressive, and go-getting? Aren’t these perversions of masculinity the exact interpretations that normalize and encourage violence by men against everyone else?
The normalization of sexual violence, also known as rape culture, discredits victim testimony and excuses sexual violence as an unfortunate but inevitable part of social life. It’s not. Decades ago Peggy Reeves Sanday discovered that rape culture does not exist everywhere, but where it does exist, rape is much more likely. Men are more likely to believe rape myths than women, and the men who do believe them are more likely to actually commit rape. The majority of those will do it repeatedly.
I can’t believe I’m saying this in print, but Donald Trump was not entirely wrong when he said that young men were victims of the current political moment. Although I cannot be convinced that fear of being held accountable for sexual assault in this “very scary time” is worse than the fear of actually being assaulted, young men do suffer. Some, depending on their race, class, sexuality, and other traits, suffer disproportionately more than others. But the solution to their suffering is not to silence women and victims of sexual assault and gender discrimination. The solution is to make them louder.
The best thing for young men is to expose and challenge the danger and oppression that certain readings of masculinity are built on. This means debunking those myths that men shouldn’t cry, that women are “asking for it,” that sexual conquest is equivalent to a man’s worth. This means exposing and healing the wounds caused by gender inequality, not using gender-based insults against privileged white men just because the moment allows. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Kavanaugh and all victimizers need to understand what they did and why they did it if they are ever going to transform themselves and the future. This means accountability and rehabilitation. Not reinforcing ideas about masculinity that taught them to harm others in the first place.
Despite the pressure of masculinity, men still benefit from patriarchy. This affords them forgiveness. It allows men like Kavanaugh to be seen for his legal credentials despite his dubious moral character. It allows him to cry and yell in public and still be confirmed to public office. It treats him like a flawed human and accepts him for those flaws. And it withholds such acceptance from everyone else. That’s how patriarchy works. That’s how the confirmation worked.
When men start to feel like they don’t get to be whole people, when they start to imagine the precarity of being forgotten or ignored, when they start to feel like they have to “walk on eggshells,” that’s when they bring in the human equivalent of a steamroller: Donald Trump. Teasing Kavanaugh for showing emotion will only lead to a doubling down on male entitlement. Instead we need to use this moment to challenge oppressive gender roles and the violence they both beget and justify.
Resisting the Kavanaughs of tomorrow and preventing sexual violence requires everyone to be treated as a whole person and to be accountable for their actions. Patriarchy and gender hierarchies actively prevent this. Fighting against these structures will not be everyone’s cup of tea. Some people may be lost causes. But for those of us who want to see an end to violence and injustice, we’ve got to stop telling Kavanaugh to man up and start dismantling the ideas that taught him what it meant to be a “man” in the first place.
