Thoughts on Kavanaugh, Ourselves

Like many women in America, I find myself disturbed by the Kavanaugh hearings. I’ve been in a state of unrest this week, watching but not really watching, reading online reactions and commentary, listening to the voices of women telling stories of assault and suppression. Of course, I, too, have a story. In fact there are more than one. Every woman I know has more than one and usually, they vary in degree. The friend of your father’s who squeezed your waist too long, the creepy man who flashed you in college, the night you were angrily accosted when you wouldn’t dance with someone in a bar.

I suppose if these things can be measured (they shouldn’t be), then a very memorable story happened when I was 19 or 20, following a friend’s wedding, at the reception held at her parents’ house. It was a set-up, a friend of her groom’s whom she thought I might like. I didn’t, actually, but he pursued me throughout the festivities and so, after a long day and evening and with the encouragement of alcohol and whatever else propelled me into these situations as a young adult, I left with him. Things were sort of rough from the start and pretty quickly, I changed my mind. He became angry, rougher. And at some point I made the decision (I made the decision, I’ve always thought) that it would be easier to just finish the sexual encounter than to try to get out of it. And so I did. The feelings of that night stayed with me for a long time, and then they faded. The feelings weren’t things like outrage or powerlessness; they were things like shame, embarrassment and…