It’s four o’clock in the morning. Sleep eludes me. I can’t stop thinking about her, the intelligent middle-aged woman who sat where 27 years ago Dr. Anita Hill sat facing some of the same men – white, powerful, aging men. One of them, Orrin Hatch, stands out in my memory, in the ways he belittled Dr. Hill’s story of sexual assault as “too contrived,” and accused her of enjoying the publicity.”  Now 84 years old, he told reporters yesterday that he found Dr. Ford “attractive, a good witness,” clarifying that by “attractive,” he meant “she’s pleasing.”

Pleasing.  

He just doesn’t get it. What he gets is reducing a woman to her physical appearance. What he gets – and what his colleagues get – is the power of optics. So they put their heads together and came up with a plan to hide behind Rachel Mitchell, a female sex crimes prosecutor from Maricopa County, and let her ask  questions that, in the end, I’m guessing won’t matter. Make no mistake –  her presence was their way of glossing over a truth that I feel in my bones, because these men are just as nonchalant about allegations of sexual misconduct as they were in 1991. 

Yesterday and later today, I know these GOP senators will likely defend Kavanaugh. They will circle their tired old wagons around the misogyny and patriarchy that led to the tremble in Dr. Ford’s voice, a tremble I’ve heard in my own voice and in the voices of the women who have filled my world over these past five decades – my mother, my daughter, my cousins, my friends and colleagues, strangers who’ve shared confidences with me on buses and trains, in beauty salons and hospital waiting rooms.  Every single one of us, at one time or another, recollecting trauma, summoning bravery, knowing our place, trying to please, fending for ourselves.

And what of Dr. Ford, whose circumspection and grace will stay with me for a long time, in stark contrast to the histrionics of an angry, defiant nominee and his most vociferous defender, Lindsey Graham? She is the embodiment of a lesson in civics, coming forward because she cared that the Supreme Court of these United States, the highest court in the land, is poised to include in its number two accused sexual predators.

I’ve heard that tremble before, and even though a strange man in a social media rant accused me of lying about my own #MeToo story and being disrespectful to Kavanaugh because I  “lumped him in” with Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, I remain convinced that what Margaret Atwood says is true:

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

While we wait, resigned to the likelihood of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, I’m beginning to believe that some of these men hate women.  Six of them in particular. And, here’s why. In 1994, three years after Dr. Anita Hill sat in the same seat occupied by Dr. Christine Ford yesterday, Joe Biden and the late Louise Slaughter drafted the “Violence Against Women Act.”  It was signed into law by Bill Clinton, and was reauthorized in 2000 and 2005. In 2013, these six men voted against it,  the same men who defended Kavanaugh yesterday.

For longer than my daughter has been alive – and she will be voting in November – they have shown us who they are and who they care about – themselves and the ideals of their tired old party.

It’s not too late for them to do the right thing. Over to you, boys.

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