Okay, herés the thing. Some 40 years ago I was sexually assaulted while I was on duty at the University of Connecticut’s Poison Information Center, in 1978 (when it was still called that…). I remember without a single shred of doubt who the man was, a dental student with whom I had been friendly when I attended the medical school at UConn. That DI – his initials- would recall this too, I believe is the case, because I believed him when he said he thought my “No!” meant that I really wanted sex with him. And we talked about his aggression against me afterwards.
But I also know that the security guard who heard my crying out and my struggles behind the closed locked door of the PIC and knocked to ask if I was all right’ definitely did not believe me when I opened the door and told him I was okay…yes, DI had stopped his assault when the guard knocked on the door, and he did not recommence anything after I Assured the guard that all was well. He got the point, that I was not interested in the sex he had tried to force on me…
But I was also not okay, certainly not with DI’s behavior. I told the guard all was well because I felt to blame, I felt guilty for being female and “bringing DIs attack on myself.” Not guilty for anything I did, but because of my body, because my body was a woman’s body and so that in and of itself made me “seductive”…I felt I deserved what i got.
This sexual assault happened, and I know it and who the perpetrator was without a shadow of any doubt and I have always remembered it. But could I prove it to anyone? I did mention it, later but not immediately. I had no female friends close enough to trust with my shame…but I did speak of it to several people over the years, whether or not they remember my doing so. I played down the attack as “date rape” rather than a “real attack” because I had been taught that attempted rape by a friend was somehow “less serious” than rape or attempted rape by a stranger…Let that sink in, please.
i do not know precisely what became of DI nor what sort of person he became after the event I describe, but I have always assumed and hoped that it was, as they say, a one-off Incident and Was not repeated. I assumed and hoped that DI learned from my reaction that No means No. and that he became a better person for knowing this. I gave him credit for apologizing or at least explaining why he attacked me…and I gave him credit for the ability to change and never do such a thing again.
So I KNOW that a woman like Christine Blasey ford would remember such an attack in detail and that her attacker esp if stumbling falling down drunk would have every motivation not to…
BUT I must say I did NOT believe Ford’s tearful voice or her tears. I found them utterly fake and rehearsed and it irked me no end. How disgusting that after nearly 40 years she felt it necessary to pretend to be afraid and to fake tears in her voice, high thin and fake fake fake…why would she believe this? Is a woman’s recounting of an assault only credible if accompanied by tears? How disgusting if so. But while I believe her story, i do not believe the tears were real and I found that just as disgraceful, the demands by Democrats that she put on such a fake tearful voice just to convince them of her credibility? Shameful that she could not trust her own words to be comvincing and all those senators and newscasters that fawned and cooed over her tearful voice are the ones who are guilty, forcing her to pretend to be overcome with emotions just in order to be believed that what happened did in fact happen.
WAGblog: Dum Spiro Spero 
Yes, I felt the same way.
By the way, I am sure you meant to say “Dear Linda,” not ” Dead Linda”, as I am not dead yet, lol! 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Linda,
While I am still irked at it, I also think it could be both, real fear and a bit of faked emotion, to please the senators. But I caution readers to remember that I do NOT think this was Blasey Ford’s choice on her own, i believe she was coached by lawyers and senators to “seem believable” and so put on that, as linda put it, little girl voice yadda yadda yadda…i feel bad for her and mad at her, Ford, for not saying no, to these senators and for never having been able to say No in the first place.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Phoebe — you were right and I was wrong. I say this, after watching, finally, for more than an hour, a video of Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s sworn statements. Dr. Ford’s tiny little girl voice, her cowering body language, her tears… Oh my goodness, yes, those tears did, indeed, seem forced and phony. I should never have contradicted your opinion, when I had not even seen and heard her testimony for myself!
LikeLike
Hi commenters! Thank you so much for saying all you have said.
Linda, i do know what it is like to be called a liar and to be threatened, if not with death then with something that was both a form of soul murder and bodily torture…That said, while I am a bit miffed at Blasey-Ford for what I saw as dramatized tears, — about which I could be wrong, of course, — my real anger is at the democratic senators and whoever coached her to put on such an act, (as I perceived it.) Of course, the fact is that I myself reacted first with abject resignation, when repeatedly told I was lying about what I knew to be the truth, and said nothing did not even object to th characterization (since it would have done no good) just stood up silently and left the room…but later I became both angry and indignant, esp at bein reduced to absolutely speechless impotence. As for the sexual assault, I too have cried over this incident and yes in the recent past, but mostly my feelings are of anger and outrage that we women were so taught to hate ourselves (and still are taught this) that we could not even speak up for ourselves after a sexual assault or as in my case being called a liar…and why?!
The patriarchy hates us because, I truly believe, it fears us and our power. But as long as we kowtow to it, even in order to obtain what we want, we help sustain and create more women-hating in society.
LikeLiked by 1 person
a few things come to mind . . . first, the operative thing is that was a battle she isn’t going to win, if she didn’t cry, then she’s not feeling it, no winning. The cry was the right emotion, maybe better to embellish the right one than to underplay it or show the wrong one instead . . .
second, she had reasons to cry right then and there, she’s getting the “base”‘s death threats, she is probably terrified TODAY.
damn, I had a complex, nuanced third point, but I forget ATM. More later . . .
LikeLiked by 1 person
I cried right along with her, remembering my own rape at age 15 that I have never talked about until last week when my husband asked me; I am 76 years old.
Remember, just weeks before this testimony she was interviewing lawyers in a car outside Walmart because she had not yet told her PARENTS, whom whom she was staying. This was not old, resolved news to her, and her life is in shambles because she came forward.
Such courage!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post Phoebe. Will respond with a blog entry.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You know, I am beginning to think you may be right about her tears being fake. Although I still have not watched any videos of the hearings, some of the commentary that I have read, and some of the close-up pictures of her face during her testimony, has given me second thoughts.
LikeLike
Hi Linda, yes i saw Kavanaghs tears. And I have been told that his anger and tears etc were just as faked a performance as Blasey Fords tears. You make very good points, of course, and you may be correct. It was just this huge sense of irritation on my part, and it arose from a sense that her testimony, her words were genuine, but not her expressed emotion. I could be wrong, lord knows, and I hope I am…but there’s a huge doubt in my mind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oops -i hit ‘Comment’ accidentally and ended my comment (below ) prematurely. Yes -to finish: I’d wanted to say thst Im trying to mot take my friend’s comment TOO personally. It affects me for sure and Ive backed away from relying on him for some parts of human support in beiua female. But ive neen pondering – hes always supported me a a person. Always styck up for me and come to help emotionally and practically. I’m oft in his thoughts and he’s always checked in on me over the years. It is I who have begun to hold a grudge over his attitude to the female and Im questioning my total distance from him. Just felt yucky.
Also hes a result of the collective psyche, and so many women disvalue the feminine. I think its important to open our eyes and not think its all about us getting stuff/respect fir ourselves. But to see under and note that nature/matter , being, non-intellectual thought, chaos and the dark and unpredictability -these are the feminine aspects of creation. And EV-eryone at present, with an equal man/woman representation, is aftaid of chaos and the uncontrollable parts of life-ie, the feminine. And if we fear the dark and the uncontrollable parts of being alive,if we fear this feminine mysterious part of life, we also end up fearing and trying to degrade it and control it.
Thus the despising of women is an inevitable OUTcome of this, because, as Carl Jung pointed out, women are the great symbol of the feminine.
So we can turn and look inside -and see where we all ourselves devalue the feminine. We try to control/fix the world, and the behaviour of life nature and other people. Thats control. Thsts patriarchy. And its not a man’s preserve.
Its the dominant paradigm. And some of the worst patriarchs wear frocks.
Thiscis a responsibility we could take. We dont like it. We want to stop others. To loom at our own patriarchy- to root out our own evil -now THERE is some real change.
Going on about men doing stuff to women wont bring in TEGral change. You know what it will bring? -it will do what all externally imposed things do -it will force some folks to behave differently on the surface, and it will push the motivating hatred underground-the most dangerous and powerful place it could be.
It doesn’t mean Im happy and sweet woth my feminine-hating friend. Its made me feel yucky and undervalued. But its also git me thinki g about my own undervaluing if the feminine too. Im a patriarch half the time. I become -(as George Orwell promised me i would)- the very thing i attack if i place my emphasis out and dont do personal inventory to see how the same impulse to power lies within me. If we aren’t doin that, we will not get past patriarchy. Instead it will be all about us. Its failed before. Can fail again.
Ps isnt thst sad that woman had to fake tears ti be heard. Ive done the bloody ssme thing! And then you look false! Classic. How insightful of you to see how that could be true. Theres plenty of feminiine intuition in that vision. Sad stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Its tough the despising/ belittling of the feminine in our present world. I have a male friend who does care for me. Thetes no doubt about that. But still his seeing the female so badly is in him . And it stings.
He saud to me one day-his father had been raped as a child, and that’s what he had just found out and was sharing with me – that , quote, its worse for a boy to get raped than a girl. Jesus.
Hope we overcome this hatred of the feminine part of creation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh my goodness… after I left my earlier comment, I read a news article that said, in so many words, that Kavanaugh cried far worse than Dr. Ford did. Did you watch that part of it, or only her testimony?
Like I said, I did not watch any of it. You are a lot stronger than me, Phoebe, in this regard.
Here is a link to the news article about Kavanaugh’s performance:
https://www.mail.com/int/news/world/8762838-kavanaugh-ford-hearing-dramatic-lesson-gender-role.html#.1258-stage-set2-6
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmm. Interesting take on this.
First I want to say, I am so sorry that happened to you. I especially feel sad, and mad, that you felt ashamed and responsible when you absolutely weren’t responsible. This is how society taught us to feel. I know, because the same kind of thing happened to me, in the 1960s.
I did not watch the hearing today because I could not bring myself to. I knew I would be triggered, big time.
As for the tears, I can understand why you believe they were faked. After all, you can talk about your long ago assault without crying. Likewise, I can talk about my long ago rapes without breaking down. This is true, even though I am the kind of person who cries ridiculously easy, even over a Hallmark commercial.
But I wonder if Dr. Ford’s tears today were not just about reliving the trauma of her painful old memory, but about everything that is going on in her life today? Being on the spotlight, literally in front of the entire world. Knowing that large groups of haters are calling her a liar, and worse. Terrifying death threats being made against her and her family. Her home address published on Twitter so that haters can “go get her,” forcing her and her husband to leave their home and go into hiding.
Knowing that she can never, ever put this cat back in the bag. Knowing that this is going to follow her for the rest of her life, until she takes her last breath. Her lovely, peaceful upper middle class life is over.
When I think about these things, plus knowing what it is like to swear an oath and sit on a witness stand, testifying in a room full of people who, for the most part, do not believe you and hate your guts — I believe I would be crying, too. And my tears would not be faked.
LikeLiked by 1 person