Like millions of other Americans, I watched the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing last month. I had that day off from work, and my mom and I sat in front of the television completely absorbed for hours. Christine Blasey Ford’s account of the night she was assaulted, Kavanaugh’s blundering and defensive rant, the bizarre lines of questioning, the privileged white men behind dais, the bending over backwards to express how bad they felt for the privileged white man across from them—it was all extremely difficult to watch. Excruciating, even. And it all felt way too familiar.
Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are constant. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, an American is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds. Every eight minutes, the victim is a child. One out of every six women in the United States has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Twenty-one percent of transgender, genderqueer or gender nonconforming college students have been sexually assaulted. Ninety-four percent of women who are raped experience post traumatic stress disorder stemming from the attack.
It just keeps happening. It happened before the Kavanaugh hearing, and it will happen again. It happens in every state, in every city, whether it’s reported or not (and it might not be—victims have their reasons for keeping an attack to themselves, and sharing information about an assault is only up to them). It happens between the powerful and the powerless at all levels—teacher to student, senator to intern, television host to employee. As long as men feel entitled to women, as long as societal norms generate sympathy for the accused, it will keep happening.
Place someone’s suffering over politics. Believe victims when they share an incidence of assault.
The discourse surrounding sexual assault always inevitably pivots back to the accused, and not in the way it should. “What about his future?” “What will this wealthy white man possibly make of himself if he doesn’t reach the Supreme Court?” People will go to extreme lengths to defend someone because they agree with their politics, even if that means trivializing or ignoring a victim’s suffering. The excuses are always the same—“It’s just boys being boys,” “She’s hysterical and making it up,” “She has the wrong person,” “She deserved it,” “She led him on.”
Straight, white, cisgender males say things like, “I’m afraid to talk to women now.” Chele Farley, a Republican senate candidate from New York, said last month during a debate with opponent Kirsten Gillibrand that she would have voted to confirm Kavanaugh. “I have teenage sons,” she lamented. “I worry about them living in this life.” The worry, I assume, is that her sons will be accused of sexual assault by some devious harlot out to get her boys, or that a sweet gesture will be misinterpreted as harassment.
The same logic also ends up being applied to other gross behavior. When someone uncovers a person’s history of saying racist, homophobic, sexist, or generally horrible things, the conversation ultimately circles back to some variation of “He was young and didn’t know any better” or “She didn’t mean it” or “I was joking when I said the n-word, so it doesn’t count.” But none of that is viable because we all know better. We’re taught from youth what it means to use slurs.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, passive attitudes about sexual assault, victim blaming—they’re all rampant. And when they’re perpetuated by figures in power or who aim to be in power (like a potential Supreme Court justice), it becomes so much more visible. As a result, so does the accompanying conversation, and so does what constitutes news about someone’s background.
The thing is, though, none of this is hard to avoid. At all. There isn’t some unseen power forcing people to say or do terrible things. They’re making a conscious choice. Using a slur or not asking for consent are choices, regardless of intentions, even if you think you’re joking around.
People have the right to act how they want and say what they want under the First Amendment, sure, but they’re not protected from any consequences they might face. Though, if history is any indication, those consequences will probably not be legal, especially when it comes to all forms of sexual assault: according to RAINN, just six out of every 1,000 perpetrators will go to prison.
The solution to this feels simple: listen to stories of trauma. Really hear them out. Believe what they say. Obviously, though, it’s not that simple. Massive societal changes will have to happen for this to become commonplace, and those changes will have to start from the bottom up. Don’t be defensive when something you say offends someone. Place someone’s suffering over politics. Believe victims when they share an incidence of assault.
Society is not too sensitive. “PC culture” is not out to get you. If you can’t live with that, the problem is with you.
She Said, She Said is Samantha Sciarrotta’s monthly column for the Hamilton Post.,
