Today I'm thinking of how many students, over the course of my teaching career, have recoiled, outraged at the thought that a woman's testimony had historically and biblically been deemed unreliable unless corroborated by a man's.— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) September 27, 2018
Rebecca Solnit, "Did we learn anything from #Me Too? Kavanaugh and Ford will show us":
The last several years have been, for those who have cared to learn, a brutal education in how pervasive rape and violence against women is. We saw how the perpetrators are so often believed, the victims blamed and discredited, and how various powers – employers and institutions, universities, media, law enforcement – have protected perpetrators, especially high-status perpetrators and allowed their abuses to continue. Bringing this system to light has changed it – but not enough.
The hearings about whether Brett Kavanaugh is fit to be a US supreme court justice feel like the finale of this education: the test. Will what we have learned matter? Or will a Republican party that has, with minor exceptions, made itself one with rape culture, prevail?
Reminder that the dismissal and normalisation of sexual assault is a key facet of Evangelicalism. https://t.co/fzNnm32DtB— The Irish Atheist (@Irish_Atheist) September 26, 2018
Kate Manne, "Brett Kavanaugh and America's 'Himpathy' Reckoning":
What the Kavanaugh case has revealed this week is that himpathy can, at its most extreme, become full-blown gendered sociopathy: a pathological moral tendency to feel sorry exclusively for the alleged male perpetrator — it was too long ago; he was just a boy; it was a case of mistaken identity — while relentlessly casting suspicion upon the female accusers. It also reveals the far-ranging repercussions of this worldview: It's no coincidence that many of those who himpathize with Judge Kavanaugh to the exclusion of Dr. Blasey are also avid abortion opponents, a position that requires a refusal to empathize with girls and women facing an unwanted pregnancy.
The party that believes abortion should be illegal is the party that believes white men should be able to sexually terrorize women with impunity.
I'm sure this is just a coincidence. https://t.co/jqLaOuoXVR— Dr. Katie Grimes (@KatieMGrimes) September 27, 2018
Christina Cauterucci, "Toxic Bro Culture Finally Found a News Peg":
The fact that this examination of party culture is happening in tandem with Supreme Court confirmation hearings could help observers comprehend what these stories are actually about: the intersection of white, upper-class male impunity and contempt for young women that infects communities across the country. The "lineup"” that Lescaze and Swetnick have described are not gruesome aberrations specific to the tony suburbs of D.C. in the '80s; they’re the predictable end product of a stew of entitlement, misogyny, one-upmanship masculinity, glamorized alcoholism, and a fetishization of virginity that shames women for having sex, thus discouraging them from identifying and reporting sexual assault.
Jeet Heer and Kerry Howley talk back to Lindsey Graham, who has "a hard time believing" Kavanaugh's accusers:
"I have a hard time believing that so many Catholic priests could have molested so many children over so many years without it going reported or anyone being punished." https://t.co/WbDenzLEU0— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) September 26, 2018
I have a difficult time believing that hundreds of gymnasts could be molested by a single osteopathic physician over decades, and not report it https://t.co/DxgQoJ5DrR— Kerry Howley (@KerryHowley) September 26, 2018
Michael Sean Winters, "Conservatives must face John Paul II's legacy in sex abuse crisis":
Regarding right-wing Catholics who want to pretend that the gays (and Pope Francis) have created the abuse crisis in the Catholic church, Michael Sean Winters asks, "Do they even mention St. Pope John Paul II?":
He was the one who not only set the pattern for ignoring victims, but who led the Vatican in the '80s and '90s, when bishops were routinely told to reinstate priests, not to be too tough on "poor father." He was the one who promoted Theodore McCarrick not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times.
If memory serves me, St. John Paul the Great and his orthodoxy watchdog Cardinal Ratzinger were hell on the gays as all this was unfolding, too — so the hard homophobia of their papacies hardly resolved the abuse horror show, did it? Quite the opposite…. Well, I should qualify that they were hard on the open, honest, self-accepting and non-self-hating gay folks who refused to accept being tagged intrinsically disordered — not on the secretive, dishonest, self-hating ones inside the clerical club, whose secrets were kept and who were promoted to positions of power.
And then Winters asks right-wing Catholics wanting to pin the abuse horror show on Francis (and — my addition — the gays) the following:
In light of your concern to stop sexual predation, do you or do you not support a full FBI investigation into the allegations leveled against Judge Brett Kavanaugh?
And, of course, the answer to that question is, Of course not. The abuse horror show is, to those folks' minds, about homosexual sexual deviants, not about the fact that (see Rebecca Solnit above) how pervasive rape and violence against women is. Only the gays deserve attention as the enemy to be overcome if we want to place society back on the correct moral path — in which men are permitted to remain men and rule the roost. Rape and all.
Observation: some of the same Catholics who argued that +Viganò's unsubstantiated allegations against Pope Francis demanded immediate investigation are dismissing the Kavanaugh allegations as a smear campaign that, for some reason, don't seem to merit a broader inquiry.— Michael Bayer (@mbayer1248) September 26, 2018
Avitai Scher, "#MeToo Is Making Colleges Teach Toxic Masculinity 101":
"While the term 'toxic masculinity' is largely uncontroversial at liberal schools, it can still be quite polarizing, particularly in right-wing or religious communities who may see it as a threat to traditional gender roles." 1/— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) September 27, 2018
2) Will Georgetown Prep now be adding courses in toxic masculinity to its curriculum? Will Jesuit schools in general do that? Will Catholic universities do so?
How CAN Catholic institutions credbily critique toxic masculinity when the church is run entirely by ordained men? 2/— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) September 27, 2018
How can Catholic institutions credibly critique toxic masculinity when women are by definition excluded from ordination, when heterosexism (which privileges heterosexual male) is so much the norm that the Catholic church is a heterosexist boys' club? 3/— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) September 27, 2018
And when very powerful forces within the Catholic church are fighting right now to make the Catholic church MORE of an exclusive heterosexist boys' club than it ever has, and an overtly unwelcoming place for queer people? 4/— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) September 27, 2018
