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ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE KAVENAUGH PHENOMENON So I have friends and aquaintances in the field of Sociology in Canada and the US. .......These 2 opinions are casual and posted on social media. They are both family men in their 40s......The first opinion is by a Canadian ...a research chair at Queens and the second one is American and is a professor ......I have never met him in person, but our relationship started about 10 years ago when he interviewed me by phone for many hours and we have kept in touch ever since. I thought it might be interesting for some people here. 1...You know the reason why Republican men are angry about the allegations about Brett Kavanaugh, is not that they think they aren't true, it's that they think what he did (and he definitely did BTW) is completely normal. Because they did it too. And their friends and brothers and fathers and uncles did. This is white, male, upper class fraternity culture. It's sports teams, and private schools and elite university drinking societies. It's their society. I know because it was also mine. I'm not American but the British elite education system is only a more hypocritical and 'restrained' version of exactly the same kind of thing. I was brought up inside a training system for colonial, financial and political rulers. This is a culture that teaches you that humility and caring is weakness, that unfeeling and arrogance are strength. It teaches you not just to feel superior but to be superior. Many react against this, we go the other way, we reject all of this. I always hated this system and I still hate it so much... not least because it's still inside me like a persistent virus. It's easy to underestimate how much psychological and emotional energy I have spent in my life trying to get over the damage that was done to me. But it's still inside all of us who went through this, and even the good ones, the nice ones, the ones who reject everything about this, can still find ourselves slipping back into it at the worst times. This man, and men like him who simply accept that this culture is normal and right, are the worst people to be in power, the worst people to be in government, the worst people to be judges, they are everything this world does not need. Burn it all to the ground. 2...Response........This is the conversation that needs to be had, but it seems most only want to identify and exile the monsters. To me, this is a dangerous avoidance of the extent of the problem, minimizing its ubiquity, while determining a singular category for victimizers, and demanding for them complete stigmatization. It just seems troubling in every level. Among feminists, we know that sexual violence it bad, we know what it looks like, we know it's effects, etc, but very many are unclear about how to deal with its ubiquity without falling back on retributive and carceral responses. People socialized as men need to know we're not saints, that we have this "persistent virus" within us, but also know that there are things we can do beyond pretending we aren't infected or be quarantined among the Kavanaughs of the world, where power is consolidated and misogyny is not only tolerated but celebrated. |
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10/6/2018 1:08 am |
Interesting, very interesting. A lot to think about!
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10/6/2018 1:07 pm |
I've read more on the subject and it definitely is the 'old boys club' view of women. The problem is that the women who are related to that same 'old boys club support it as well...and it grows from there. Money and privilege are a pass to 'take' what you want. It's time for all women, and men who support them, to get out the vote to end the so-called entitlement to the privileged class.
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