This Is How Men Forget Women
Judge Kavanaugh was fighting for his reputation. Dr. Ford was fighting to be remembered.
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He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer the question.
“There’s never been a case where you drank so much you didn’t remember what happened the night before, or part of what happened?”
“You’re asking about a blackout. I don’t know. Have you?” he shot back.
This is a common enough back and forth. A woman asks her boyfriend, or husband, or friend, whether he can recall the things he did while drunk. As a result, he becomes defensive. Does he remember the things he said? The things he did? Does he regret them? Is he remorseful?
It’s not just that men don’t believe women. We forget them, too.
It’s also a response I recognize. A defensive dodge. The creeping horror that what she is saying may be true. And then, a survival instinct kicking in. But the truth has a way of showing up when it’s not supposed to, like a weed poking through asphalt.
He doesn’t know. He forgot.
Senator Amy Klobuchar asked Judge Brett Kavanaugh that question during yesterday’s instantly-historic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about allegations of sexual assault. She asked if he remembered not remembering.
Kavanaugh was fighting for his reputation. His accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, was fighting to be remembered. It’s not just that men don’t believe women. We forget them, too.
Even as I write this, I am forgetting Dr. Ford. I’m writing about Judge Kavanaugh, one of the most powerful people in the world. A man on the cusp of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. A man who will make decisions about whether, for instance, a woman’s body—all bodies, really—are government property.
I am writing about him. Not her. Not her torment and sorrow. This is Kavanaugh’s past. But it is her present, her now.
He doesn’t know. He forgot.
I watched Dr. Ford calmly, and bravely, reveal her pain. She pierced the darkness of time, and privilege, and told her story. It is a story of heartbreak, and horror, and the cold laughter of…
