We’ve all known that guy

The latest accuser speaking up about Kavanaugh has a horrific tale to tell, but the most horrific thing about it is that it seems entirely plausible.

Swetnick, in the affidavit posted on Twitter by Avenatti, claims that she saw Kavanaugh, as a high school student in Maryland in the early 1980s, and others spike the drinks of girls at house parties with grain alcohol and/or drugs to “cause girls to lose inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No.’ ”

Swetnick said these efforts by Kavanaugh and his buddy Mark Judge were done so the girls “could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”

“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh,” Swetnick said.

She also said in her affidavit sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee that in approximately 1982 “I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”

I’ve mentioned that I was ‘rushed’ by a fraternity once upon a time. It was a whole house packed full of these guys, so I can believe it.

Traps are so manly

I love this video — it speaks the truth.

Although, I have to confess, the bit at the end is a manly punch to the gut, because it’s too true — I never told my father I loved him, and he never said it to me, not because we didn’t, but because Real Men don’t talk about it. I’m not a particularly macho kind of guy, but this poison has affected even me.

I blame the voice of Pappy Jack, and I’m gonna beat him up if I ever meet him.

Being a white man really is a superpower

Wow. We can get away with just about anything.

An Anchorage man who strangled a woman unconscious on the side of a road, all while threatening to kill her, and then masturbated on her, walked out of court on Wednesday with no future jail time under his belt.

How? How can he escape punishment? Well, the judge decided that losing his job was penalty enough, and since he was a “member of the community”, he had faith that he’d never be naughty again.

Let’s just ignore that he said this:

After Schneider’s victim woke up, he reportedly told her “that he wasn’t really going to kill her, that he needed her to believe she was going to die so that he could be sexually fulfilled.”

And this:

“I would just like to emphasize how grateful I am for this process,” Schneider said. “It has given me a year to really work on myself and become a better person, and a better husband, and a better father, and I’m very eager to continue that journey.”

He’s going to do it again. You know he’s going to do whatever he can get away with.

By the way, does anyone still think Kavanaugh won’t be on the Supreme Court soon enough?

The Queen of Evil’s crown is secure

Our REAL problem is that many men have no choice but to rape because they have no opportunities to date attractive women.

An interesting “defense”. So if I can’t land a date with Scarlett Johansson, I can justifiably rape someone? If someone finds Ann Coulter attractive and asks her out, she’d better put out, because turning him down means he’ll go on a rape rampage?

It’s also a curious binary. If you don’t get a date, your only alternative is rape?

Be not surprised, for I bring you tidings that were goddamned predictable

It takes great courage to step out and expose powerful, awful people, and as she knew ahead of time, Christine Blasey Ford is also facing the consequences of her bravery.

Christine Blasey Ford was hesitant to come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because she feared facing public attacks. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said in an interview with the Washington Post.

Her fears were not unfounded. Within hours of revealing her identity, personal attacks were launched against Ford. Some senators expressed their doubts about the truthfulness of Ford’s statements. Senator Orrin Hatch asserted that Ford was “mixed up.”

Now, the New York Times is reporting that Ford is being sent death threats. An unnamed source told the Times that following the threats, Ford and her two teenaged children moved out of their home. Ford also hired private security. One of the messages reportedly said that Ford had “6 months to live, you disgusting slime.”

I hope those two kids are fully aware of the sacrifice their mother made for the truth, and they’re proud of her for it.

When humanists go bad

This guy, Angelos Sofocleous, was elected to head the humanist group at Durham University. He has resigned. He has to blame someone.

In light of recent events, I have taken the difficult decision to resign from the position of President-Elect of Humanist Students.

These events involved a retweet of mine saying ‘RT if women don’t have penises’, and certain other criticisms of the transgender movement, as well as suggestions to improve the movement’s actions. Sadly, these views were taken to be ‘transphobic’ by individuals who cannot tolerate any criticism, either of their movement or their ideas, and are unable to engage in a civilized conversation on issues they disagree on.

Would you believe he’s a philosophy and psychology student? I’m kind of curious about those “certain other criticisms” and about how he defines “woman”, because he seems to treat it as a simple distinction based on the presence or absence of a penis. It seems rather superficial and narrowly phenomenological for someone in either of those disciplines, but on the other hand, I also don’t want to play into his hands and debate the subject with him, because he also says this, along with hiding behind “freedom of speech!”:

Even if one makes statements which are wrong beyond doubt (e.g. ‘Homosexuals shouldn’t have the right to marry’, ‘Nazis did nothing bad’, ‘Slavery is moral’, ‘Women are inferior to men’), one needs to have a conversation with that individual and explain why they are (obviously) wrong. Engaging in a debate does not mean that you give equal status to your opponent.

This is where the fetishizing of free speech and debate goes bad. I get to deny your basic humanity and your right to exist, and you now need to convince me otherwise. I get to freely make assertions that don’t challenge my privileged status but do potentially do great harm to you, and I have no responsibility or obligation to others — others who may even consider those statements “wrong beyond doubt” — to make defensible statements, and the onus is entirely on you to address them, and if you don’t, you are an intolerant tribalist. Why do you get so angry when I merely want to deny your civil rights, or enslave you, or kill you? That’s not very logical.

Don’t you realize that Sofocleous is the victim here?

I hope we belonged in an environment in which we were able to speak up without the fear of being fiercely attacked and silenced.

I think there are a lot of people who would like to be able to simply exist without the fear of being fiercely attacked and silenced. Can we give them priority before your right to define them away?

Make it matter

The woman who was assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh has revealed her identity — she’s a psychology professor named Christine Blasey Ford — and spoken up about the details of ol’ Party Boy Brett’s callous disregard for women. I won’t repeat the story here, but want to mention that she revealed herself reluctantly, and for good reason.

By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.

That’s the looming threat in this story, and you know it’s happening even now. Kavanaugh has no worries, he’s got a mob at his back, but you know that Professor Blasey is looking up at an avalanche of shit coming her way. It’s not fair, but it’s what always happens — we remember Anita Hill, right?

There’s only one thing to do. Make sure that coming forward does matter. Stop that nomination cold.

…too much education fogs the mind up too much…

Three Australian women in 1961 ponder the question, “Is education a waste of time for married women?”

I like how even the woman arguing for the utility of education explains how modern women can get all their household chores done in the morning, leaving them free for the afternoon, until the children get home. She still has a few shackles to break, I think.

You, thou, they, who?

I’ve got to thank my students, who helped me out with this pronoun stuff. It’s a habit, but it’s not too hard to break.

Yes, practice—I am trying my best to master this new way of using they despite the fact that, make no mistake, it’s hard. In contrast to the deliberateness of writing, speaking casually is a largely subconscious, not to mention very rapid, act. In addition, pronouns, like conjunctions and suffixes, are a very deeply seated feature of language, generated from way down deep in our minds, linked to something as fundamental to human conception as selfhood in relation to the other and others. I’ve been using they in one way since the late 1960s, and was hardly expecting to have to learn a new way of using it decades later. I thought I had English pretty much under my belt.

We’ve been trained for years to address people one way, and he doesn’t even mention one aspect to it: not acknowledging the gender of the person you’re talking about has been considered offensive.

But as McWhorter explains, “they” is fine as a plural pronoun, has been for centuries, and has only been shunned by those weird grammarians who try to impose the structure of old dead languages on English. I’ve been finding it easier and easier to adapt to reasonable pronoun usage.