OPINION: Kavanaugh-Blasey Ford showdown really about whether a woman can control her story, her body, her destiny | Will Bunch
The lawyer puts the ex-nurse, Kaitlin, on the witness stand to reveal how a powerful doctor and his allies pressured her to alter a hospital admission form to cover up a near-fatal case of malpractice. As she relives the experience, the woman's long-repressed anger comes flowing out.
Who were these men? It's a question that a lot of folks -- especially (but not exclusively) American women -- are asking themselves in anger this week as they watch a stunning spectacle in
The immediate stakes of the drama that has played out over this weekend -- whether
This is a cultural and psychological battle that's taking place -- about what kind of society America wants to be in the 21st century and beyond. Sure, Republican senators like Majority Leader
Except there's good reason to believe that this time the creaky old gears of the patriarchy machine are finally breaking down, that
(A quick footnote: There's been a lot of confusion on how to refer to Dr.
The more we learn about
It's the other side, the Kavanaugh side, that has played prevent defense, in a full-blown cover-up mode from
What was the real reason for this confirmation process on steroids? Why such an effort to spin Kavanaugh from
What exactly did they think was coming down the pike for a judge who joined both a fraternity and a private club at Yale known for their heavy boozing and skirt-chasing, continued bragging about his wild, partying law school days well into adulthood, and was said by the well-known Yale law professor to prefer female law clerks who had "a certain look," like a model?
And we now know this: In growing panic mode as it looked more likely that
If that wasn't bad enough,
Equally bad, key senators also suggested that -- to frame it in their mindset and terms -- they might humor this gal by letting her speak, but in the end the men who run what's jokingly called "the world's greatest deliberative body" would not be influenced by anything she had to say. "In the very near future,
If you think McConnell's awful words are a chilling echo of
And women are feeling it. They are feeling a escalating sense of rage as they watch the lengths to which men like McConnell, Grassley, and Whelan will go to belittle, diminish and try to deny a woman's lived experience. They are infuriated by a process in which a president who is accused of -- and has admitted to on tape -- serial sexual abuse and misconduct gets to pick a lifetime
That's because while they see the importance of the issue at hand -- keeping an unfit judge like Kavanaugh off the nation's highest court -- they are also seeing the broad manifestations of a diseased American society. In Grassley's demands, women see the ways their own stories have been ignored or contested. In the story of a youthful sexual assault, they see a powerful metaphor for a Republican movement that wants to control their bodies, including their reproductive rights. And in
What
To try and reinvent a cliché written by one of my fellow men, hell will have no fury like these women when they go to the polls -- and trust me, they won't miss this for anything -- on
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