Courts

On Behalf Of Men Who Could Still Be On The Supreme Court If Kavanaugh Cannot

The argument that disqualifying Kavanaugh for his alleged behavior would disqualify "nearly all men" needs to end.

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I cannot empathize with Christine Blasey Ford or Deborah Ramirez. I obviously sympathize with them, but I’m not a survivor, and I can’t know what it’s like to come forward with these types of allegations against the patriarchy.

I cannot empathize with Brett Kavanaugh, and I can’t really sympathize with him because I’ve never tried to rape anybody, nor have I been accused of it, nor can I imagine my chief character witness seemingly being 48 hours away from being accused of gang rape by a client of Michael Avenatti. I suppose I could try to sympathize with being falsely accused of something that might cost me a job: alt-right fools on Twitter accuse me of being a “racist” nearly every damn day. I don’t know if that has cost me an opportunity here or there, but I do know that all I can do is stay black and die so I don’t really have time to feel the burden of false witnesses.

I can and do empathize with former Georgetown Prep high schooler Sean Hagan, who gave a comment to the New York Times about the references to “Renate Alumni” in Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook. He perfectly summed up how a lot of men — a lot of privileged, prep-school men like myself — are feeling about many of these Kavanaugh allegations:

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” said Sean Hagan, a Georgetown Prep student at the time, referring to Judge Kavanaugh and his teammates. “I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.”

If you listen to Donald Trump and the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, they seem to be telling you that almost no man could get through an entire youth without sexually assaulting somebody. They’re acting like setting the bar at “must never be credibly accused of trying to rape somebody” is so high that it would all but disqualify “men” from the position of Supreme Court justice.

First of all, disqualifying all men from sitting on the Supreme Court might not be bad thing. If you told me that no men could be on the Court for 30 years to give us time to handle our s**t and raise a new crop of better, non-rapey men, rational thought would almost require me to agree. If we really think that excluding men who wave their junk around at drunk women who didn’t ask for it would exclude most men from high office, then most men don’t belong in high office. There are lots of jobs men can do that hold no power over defining what women can do with their bodies. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg once suggested, there will be enough women on the Supreme Court when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.

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I’m amenable to the “all women” Court solution, because like Sean Hagan, I’ve been disgusted by men like Kavanaugh, now AND then. But I know that my disgust means little. Those guys have so completely defined “masculinity” that even as I fight against their definitions I subject myself to them, and have pretty much my whole life.

Like most men, it started with my father. It was very important to him that I be “not gay,” and once he was satisfied on that front it was important that I be “not a pussy.” Thanks to my mother, I was able to learn to, basically, ignore him. But, my inability or unwillingness to “hit that” that was a constant source of disappointment for him, I think almost until the day he died.

Of course, you don’t just learn how to “be a man” from your Dad. Other boys can undo what even the best parents set up. By the time I got to college and law school, I was being ribbed for my “inability to close.” By the time I was married, I was “whupped.” In 2015 some alt-right Nazi pissant half my size called me a “cuck,” to my face, and then said he “gained respect” for me because I rose up and threatened to put his head through my beer — which somehow infuriated me even more.

Despite what some Kavanaugh defenders would have you believe, “toxic masculinity” is no excuse for attempted rape. Trust me, I’ve been in that sewer. You can be made fun of and embarrassed and emasculated even, AND STILL NOT WHIP IT OUT AT A GODDAMN PARTY.

I could respect other people’s bodily autonomy, perhaps because I recognized women as “people” people, and not satisfaction units. I’ve always been good about keeping my hands to myself. Which is not to say I’ve lived my life beyond reproach. My mouth, no, that used to run on its own. If I couldn’t act “like a man,” I could certainly learn to talk like one. I could be in “the locker room.” And I’ve put that talk in people’s faces, as a stand in for a version of masculinity I didn’t agree with but still didn’t want to be totally excluded from. That is my shame. That is my bullsh*t.

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But there are men out here acting like “consent” is some state of mystical enlightenment, available only to those who would live in glass houses. And that’s just not true. In reality, consent is a low bar. It is not difficult to acquire. It is not confusing. “Do U want to do me, yes/no?” will suffice for most purposes. I swear the Venn diagram of men who think mutual consent is a sign of weakness, and men who need a GPS system to find the clitoris, IS A PERFECT OVERLAP.

If men who do what two women (so far) accuse Brett Kavanaugh of doing cannot be on the Supreme Court, it would be a social advancement. Not just for women and girls, but for men and boys too. There are a lot of men — like me, like Sean Hagan — who hate these guys, who have fought these guys, who have failed to sufficiently stand up to these guys, and who are sick of these guys.

Stopping a guy like Kavanaugh is not too much to ask men to help do. In fact, it might be the very LEAST men can do. This isn’t high school anymore. Men do not have to be afraid of standing up to this guy.

Kavanaugh’s Yearbook Page Is ‘Horrible, Hurtful’ to a Woman It Named [New York Times]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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