By Beau Grosscup
President Donald Trump says “it’s a scary time for young men in America,” meaning young (and by definition any) men should be very afraid of being falsely accused of sexual assault/rape.
Yet, according to many studies (Stanford University, BBC News among them) just two percent of rape and sexual assault charges are proven to be false. President Trump (and many others) would have us believe that false charges are the rule rather than the exception.
Fortunately, the #MeToo movement and many other sexual assault victims support organizations are here to correct the record. More than ever their brave victims are coming out of their darkness and into the light of public scrutiny. Men who rape and assault should be very afraid, especially men who have been accused multiple times by multiple victims and have an established pattern of denial, lies and even public braggadocio.
There is no time limit on the effects of rape and sexual assault. Whether it happened 30 years ago or yesterday, the trauma for victims (overwhelmingly women) is real and lifelong. The trauma for those engaging in rape and sexual assault (overwhelmingly men) should be real and lifelong as well. The time for their victims’ accusations be taken seriously and the perpetrators held to account is long past due.
Republican Senators Cornyn, Grassley and other GOP leaders accuse the Kavanaugh protestors of ‘mob rule.’
This is the latest case of fear mongering by the powerful to divide (and conquer) the less powerful by tainting them with the image of being on the attack, out of control with rage, lacking in civility towards their ‘betters’ and ignorant of the process and issues. But it was GOP ‘mobsters’ who were on the attack, bullying their way through the hearing and yelling at anyone, including fellow senators, who protested.
The so-called ‘protest mob’ was completely isolated from the process, their voices silenced or ignored, so that the only access to the ‘mobsters’ was to ‘counter-shout’ their objection from the back of the hearing room with the certainty they would be arrested, or to ‘counter-assault’ a ‘mobster’ at the elevator. In the end, the ‘mobsters’ assault prevailed, only for them to continue their offensive with their usual ‘blame the victim’ game.
Senator McConnell tells his constituents that GOP senators were “literally under assault” from protesters.
He is correct, but the protests were counter-assaults provoked by the GOP’s initial wholesale attack on the ‘advise and consent’ process from beginning to end, including withholding of 95% of Judge Bret Kavanaugh’s records/documents, the last minute release of thousands of documents, the rushed confirmation hearing schedule, the severely restricted/ White House FBI investigation, the FBI ‘report’ to be read under the strictest conditions, and who knows what other shenanigans went on behind the White House and Senate chamber closed doors.
The GOP ‘literally under assault’ claim is akin to the constant plutocratic accusation of ‘class warfare’ leveled on working class activism. It’s true, working class activism is class warfare, but like the Kavanaugh protests, it is a counter-attack to the plutocrats’ daily misogynous and class-based assaults on women and working class lives.
Beau Grosscup is Professor Emeritus, at CSU, Chico.
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