NYT - important read "Trump's New Taunt, Kavanaugh's Defense and How Misogyny Rules"
The battle over the Supreme Court nomination is not about truth. It is about who controls meaning.
By Bonnie Mann
Ms. Mann is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-misogyny-epistemic-worlds.html
The Supreme Court nomination hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the ensuing storm over the sexual assault allegations made against him have exposed many things, but perhaps most of all, they have exposed the depth, belligerence and intransigence of misogyny in our time. What we have been witnessing is the form misogyny takes when the most powerful, wealthy and entitled of white men find themselves confronted by women unwilling or unable to keep silent any longer. Donald Trump provided a typical example on Tuesday when he used his platform as president to openly mock Christine Blasey Ford and her testimony during a rally in Mississippi.
The uproar over the Kavanaugh hearings — even more powerful than the one that followed the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape during the presidential campaign, on which Donald Trump boasted about committing sexual assault — has plunged the nation into a sort of civil war. As a philosopher, I am inclined to see this as a war between two epistemic worlds. By “epistemic world” I mean a broadly shared framework for knowing in which emotions, moral sensibilities and reason are all informed by certain values, either consciously or unconsciously held. These values are at stake in moments like this one, and so are the material power arrangements that support and give rise to them. When our epistemic world is threatened, we feel ourselves being undone.
In the first world, privileged white men get to do with impunity what other men at least have to think twice about, and for women who dare to speak of them, the punishment is swift and devastating. Aggressive sexual behavior toward women, far from disqualifying a candidate for the highest offices in the land, demonstrates the kind of manhood that is felt to be a qualification for such positions (though no one with public power can say this out loud anymore — only “the base” can speak clearly).
In the second epistemic world, the default position is to believe women who make sexual assault allegations, the good ol’ boys’ network seems ugly and out of date (#timesup), and too often moral outrage substitutes for real thinking, and more important, for real power.
snip - sorry about the paywall - this is an important read.
last paragraph
In her opening statement for the reopened Kavanaugh hearing, Dr. Blasey described herself as “terrified.” All of this reinforces what their years of silence indicate, that the “law enforcement” branch of patriarchy is alive and well. Aided and abetted by misogyny, presidents are elected, Supreme Court justices are seated. If this nomination succeeds, women’s human rights will be set back for decades. Whatever happens, we owe a debt of gratitude to the women who have stepped up as a matter of civic duty to challenge the epistemic world where such men deserve power, women who are now confronting its well-oiled machinery of misogynist annihilation.
= new reply since forum marked as read
