As a matter of a fact, one genius decided yesterday to be as boneheaded as possible to upset everybody by email because, you know, accusers DO LIE now and then. Which, since we know the gender balance of these things here, means that any and every woman who has experienced sexual assault and aggression should be treated like she is a witness in a capital trial.  

Even though there is no trial. And all women are asking is to be believed when they say men, even men we like, who agree with politically, who have families and even turn out not to be terrible fathers,  do awful things.  

And all this did was cause hurt.  And more work for me as students turn to the professors who don’t have rocks in their heads, who are aware of how gender structures our lives,  because they need to.

And they are entitled to. At least in my book they are. 

And he was unpleasant to our women and allies and student group.

You see, it was important for men to discuss how it’s not all men.  Men, you see, have important needs. They need to be treated fairly.  It’s a policy school, and we must focus on the men, but only in certain ways, by focusing on how women fail to be perfect, and how when somebody points out that deep, deep insight, he’s entitled to his opinion about how women are not, as a universal class, above bad behavior. 

Because we discussed these deep, deep things, we did not discuss the many other policy-relevant questions: 

1. We did not discuss how yesterday two of the same old men who sat in judgment of Anita Hill all those years ago also sat in judgement of Dr. Ford, and is it really a good idea to have the same people holding on to incredibly important committee positions for that long? 

2. We did not discuss why Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach, but a man of terrible character feels entitled to hold extremely powerful positions just because his friends tell him it’s his turn after he did his service to them chickenhawking Dems. 

3.  We did not discuss his jurisprudence at all. 

4.  We did not discuss how Republicans whined (and Kavannaugh himself whined and Lindsey Graham whined) that this was all just political hackery, conveniently forgetting that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed with what seems to me  decidedly little partisan haggling, largely because Gorsuch’s record was one of an honorable, conservative jurist whose natural law leanings make me crazy, but certainly speak to a more principled life in the law than Kavannaugh). 

5. We did not discuss why Republicans are so invested in this specific toxic candidate, or why they are so willing to stand by a man whose conduct towards women is appalling, instead of just withdrawing the nomination in favor of the many, many  qualified conservative jurists who are better men and oh by the way WOMEN who happen to be conservative jurists, all of whom are way more Gorsuch-like than Kavannaughlike. 

6. We did not discuss that lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court is probably a very bad idea institutionally, particularly when one party decides to pack the court. 

But we didn’t get to have any of these discussions.  Nobody got any smarter as a result of the discussion we DID have, but it was important to not have any of these other discussions because men need. 

And so the fellas will go on, having a nice work day today, while the women in the department continue to try to hold Price together for the students, so that at the end of the year, we can be told that we aren’t as research productive as all the dudes,  why aren’t we getting more done?  How are we using our time? 

Today your newsfeed will be full of crusty old men and that useless Jeff Flake.  Here’s a picture of two cute things, Dr. Tani and Izzy, instead. 

 

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