Tara Reade, Christine Blassey Ford, and the bleak limitations of pettiness feminism
For what it’s worth, I found the accusations made by Tara Reade and Christine Blassey Ford both imminently plausible. I’ve never met Joe Biden or Brett Kavanaugh, but I’ve spent more than enough time around entitled white collar pricks to realize that things like non-consensual workplace groping and wacky frat house sex pranks are a part of their worlds. There was nothing about either story that struck me as obviously false or otherwise disqualifying. Both very well may have happened.
But I also believe that there’s a wide chasm between plausibility and proof–especially in criminal matters, and extra especially in regards to the sort of accusations that could result in yearslong jail sentences. Sexual assault cases are notoriously hard to prosecute in their immediacy. If we’re talking about something that happened years or decades earlier, there’s no reasonable way to prove the accusations in a manner that would warrant a formal, judicial response.
By 2020, this belief of mine was considered hopelessly out of date, borderline sacrilegious. The Trump era ushered in a new diligence in regards to how the public was supposed to understand and react to accusations of sexual misconduct: women should be believed, full stop. Accused men should be punished, full stop. The crisis of the moment meant that all the old notions regarding due process and the fixed standards of what is or is not a crime had to be thrown out.
Remember that “Shitty Media Men” list from 2017? God, seems like forever ago. The list was a wholly anonymous Google Docs spreadsheet containing the names of several dozen men in media and a brief description of their alleged crimes. It was written about in glowing terms by publications big and small, heralded as a bold and exciting new chapter of social justice, and the list’s creator–Moria Donegan–was eventually granted status as a star commentator.
Did you read the list? I did. About one in every 15 or so entries contained a very severe accusation–something along the lines of “he raped me in the dumpster behind Arby’s” or “he keeps tricking me into getting stuck in a dryer.” But the vast, vast majority of entries alleged nothing more than minor interpersonal conflict: “he doesn’t respect my work,” “he raised his voice at me one time in 2012,” and other stuff along those lines. One entry really stuck out: the accuser admitted that she had never met the man. “But,” she said, “he must be a creep… just look at the stuff he writes!”
No doubt, at least some of these men were/are grade-A jerks. But the bulk of them appear to have just been disliked by a colleague or acquaintance who felt the need to take advantage of a social justice movement to exact revenge. This is how human interaction works. No one is beloved by everybody; everyone will experience some instances in which they treat others with less courtesy than they probably should; and, well, sometimes two people who are otherwise completely decent despise one another for reasons that are inscrutable to everyone but God.
The malignancy of the Shitty Media Men list is that it caused readers to conceptually associate minor interpersonal conflicts–some of which admittedly did not happen, most others of the sort that would cause no reasonable person to find one party entirely at fault, let alone worthy of expulsion from polite society–with major violations such as rape and assault. This was the new era: every accusation is proof of guilt, and all guilt is of the same severity. It’s too hard to definitively prove that a rape happened, ergo we needed to dismiss the usual evidentiary standards of criminal proceedings in regards to rape. And, also, mildly upsetting a female colleague is now the same thing as rape.
Wonderful stuff. Fantastic stuff.
A year passed. The Notorious RBG ascended to the great rap battle in the sky, and it was up to the dastard President Drumpf to appoint her successor. He settled upon a youth-pastor-cum-jurist who resembled a crude caricature from a late 1800’s anti-Irish political comic. The man had a rap sheet a mile long: lackey to Ken Starr (himself quite the defender of rape), Yalie, anti-abortion, corporate puppet, helped rig the Florida vote in 2000, Federalist Society member, blah blah blah all the horrible shit you expect from a GOP nominee to the Supreme Court.
None of these facts mattered much within the liberal imaginary, however, as they weren’t that far afield from the activities of the sort of justices liberals find inoffensive. No, the #Resistance had an ace up their sleeve: a lady said he had sexually assaulted her 30 years prior, and she was willing to say so in front of congress.
He must have been toast after that, right? Because everyone had spent the last few years hashtagging #BelieveWomen, right? They’re not gonna say they believe women and not believe them, right? It can’t be that this precedent we just set up would only be used to ruin the lives of low-level middle manager type guys who did inconsequential stuff, right? Right?
No. Of course not. Republicans never even pretended to care about that shit.
In the non-conservative press, Blassey Ford was treated as a hero. Her effort was brave, and her failure served to validate the premise upon which it was founded: women are not believed enough, and men can get away with anything.
Another few years passed. Due to a confluence of events of that ranged between skullduggery and outright rigging, the Democratic presidential primary narrowed down to a less-corrupt-than-average politician who was called a “socialist” because he was to the left of Grover Norquist, and a credit card lobbyist who was once accidentally appointed vice president.
The credit card lobbyist should have been considered especially ignominious, considering the degree to which the #BelieveWomen mantra was prevalent on the left. Decades earlier, in a situation quite similar to that faced by Blassey Ford, he led the charge in aggressively dismissing the accusations of a woman who had accused a SCOTUS nominee of sexual misconduct. Surely that was the sort of thing MeToo would not abide, right? Right?
Again, no. The semi-socialist was repeatedly smeared as a racist and sexist for reasons that no one could ever quite articulate. Social media figures openly solicited false allegations of sexual misconduct against him. In spite of being a leftist Jewish man, in spite studies showing that his supporters were actually far less aggressive and hateful than those of Hillary Clinton, he was still the most toxic and evil presence to ever enter into Democrat politics. #BelieveWomen and #MeToo precedents were very effectively invoked: there doesn’t need to be proof, and there doesn’t need even be an accusation. He’s evil because we say he’s evil. His name is on the spreadsheet.
But the guy who got Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court? That was regrettable, sure. But it was a youthful transgression! He’s apologized! It doesn’t matter.
Then we got a late-primary curveball: a woman who verifiably worked with Biden claimed he had jammed his hand down her pants. The allegation was decades old and therefore unprovable in a legal sense, and suddenly that was an issue where it hadn’t been just a few months before. The MeToo movement’s purveyors worked to clarify that she was a lying, mentally unstable, and possibly Russian slut.
A year earlier, we were told that due process was a misogynist construct, and that expressing skepticism toward politically opportune allegations was an expression of patriarchy and privilege. Now, faced with allegations that would force them to choose between a semi-leftist or Donald Trump, the progressive vanguard suddenly decided that these old principles of Enlightened Liberalism weren’t so evil after all.
Blassey Ford is about to embark on a book tour, receiving near-unanimous praise (and ample financial compensation) for her bravery. She might not be a household name, but among those who do remember her, she is revered as a hero.
Reade, meanwhile, is a permanent disgrace who had to defect to Russia.
In a sad way, the disparity between how these two women were treated demonstrates the conditions that spawned MeToo: a woman who makes an accusation against an unpopular or hated man will be, at least, believed. She will not suffer negative consequences. She may even be rewarded, even if the man himself isn’t punished. But a woman who goes against a man who is too important, too well-connected? She won’t even get a chance to testify. She’s actually even worse than the abusers. Every aspect of her account and character will be placed under a microscope, and anything she cannot prove with 100% fidelity will be held up as proof of how horrible she is. She’s also on the spreadsheet.
And in an even sadder way, this disparity demonstrates why the MeToo and BelieveWomen stuff was horribly misguided from the start. Removing the structures that allow society to function will not magically result in a more just society manifesting from the wreckage of the old. You might–might–remove some of the most malignant shitheads. But in the process you will ruin the lives of many who are either innocent or marginally guilty, and you will entrench the utter empowerment of those who are, only in some small ways, the lesser evils. There’s no path forward, here. There is no hope here.