Assault survivors deserve belief, not politics

Assault+survivors+deserve+belief%2C+not+politics

‘Dershowitz: Dems ‘Shooting Themselves in the Foot’ by floating Kavanaugh Investigation, Impeachment.” “Laura Ingraham: After their catastrophic Kavanaugh loss, Democrats are hitting the anarchy accelerator.” “How the Democrats got outplayed on Kavanaugh.”
These are some headlines from news sources during the hearing for now-Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Let’s get this out of the way, regardless if you believe Kavanaugh sexually assaulted or not, his glorified tantrum in front of Congress shows he is not fit to be on the bench.
I completely understand the pressure of testifying in front of Congress about sexual assault claims.
I understand how that could make a regular person act oddly. The problem is, Kavanaugh is not a regular citizen. He is a federal judge and he is expected to keep his cool. He is expected to act, not as a child but as a well-spoken and kept together person.
Kavanaugh did the exact opposite.
He made a mockery of himself on the largest and most national stage he possibly could.
Kavanaugh made a fool of himself and yet, still got approved and put onto the country’s highest bench. To me, this says something.
This says that this country is indifferent towards the actions and personalities of its most powerful people- which really isn’t surprising. Just look at the president.
What else it says, is that the American people not only don’t care about women but they don’t care about survivors of assault.
Journalistic integrity calls for me to call Dr. Christine Ford’s accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, as much, as accusations.
Although, a deeper dive into rape and sexual assault statistics paint a much different story.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, between two and ten percent of sexual assault allegations are considered to be false reports.
The staggeringly low statistic compounded with the polygraph results stating that Ford’s possibility of lying was from 0.002 percent to 0.2 percent, makes the country look particularly bad.
The immediate push back on this is that there has been a letter received by Congress from a supposed ex-boyfriend of Ford’s who claims she has previously coached someone else about a polygraph.
My issue is this person would not name himself and had not been with Dr. Ford since the ‘80s. Also, considering that the polygraphs all but say Dr. Ford was not lying, the apparent ex-boyfriend is a pointless argument to me.
The larger, more heinous reality that the country, specifically the country’s women are facing is that women clearly are not cared about. The amount of backlash Dr. Ford has received is utterly saddening, yet believable.
Men and women across the country have fired back at her, creating the narrative that men are being attacked and that they’re at risk from women.
There’s a twofold issue in that, one: the stats do not back this up.
Men are not being accused left and right. Yes, some high profile men have been accused like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein but in the case of Cosby, these were not untrue.
Two: men also get assaulted by both men and women. The level of cognitive dissonance necessary to avoid that conversation for the sake of political expediency is absurd.
According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), one in six women have been assaulted.
Furthermore, 82% of juvenile assault victims are female and 90% of adult victims are women.
These paint the gruesome and true picture that men have been historically dangerous towards women, not that men are being attacked.
America consistently has an issue dealing with its dirty past. From race relations to misogyny to sexual assault, America does not like to wash its hands from its past sins.
The treatment of Dr. Ford and #MeToo movement and all assault survivors show just how far we must go as a nation. The survivors of these heinous acts deserve it.