Wow, the Senate hearing for Brett Kavanaugh and his resulting confirmation to the Supreme Court laid bare a simmering divide between women and men (albeit a political divide in this case). On one side, you have predominantly men (with some white women) convinced that Christine Blasey Ford is lying about him sexually assaulting her. If not lying, they may say that she cannot possibly remember something that happened to her so long ago. After all, some have argued, she didn’t call the police at the time.
On the other side, I would venture to guess that the majority of women in this country believe Ford. We do because we can relate to her. Women have themselves been victimized this way and if not, they surely know someone to whom this has happened. Women believe Ford when she says she remembers it well. We know that this is something that gets ingrained in our memories.
I’m a woman, mother of daughters, and a criminologist at Cleveland State University. My area of research/teaching is women and crime. Estimates are that one in four women in the general population have been sexually abused. These, of course, are the assaults that women report. REPORT!
There are many reasons women do not report. One, we second-guess ourselves, blame ourselves, and therefore do not want to be called liars. We talk to ourselves, “did this really happen,” “did I fight back strongly enough,” “maybe I’m just overthinking things,” “maybe I was drunk and don’t remember it well,” “was I flirting,” “did I want to kiss him and he didn’t understand that I didn’t want it.”
We understand that we will receive judgment, blame and harassment for coming forward. Many times this judgment comes from the police we are supposed to report it to. In Ford’s case, she has received death threats and had to move her residence. Under these circumstances, why would women bother to tell?
Another reason we don’t report is that harassment by men is part of our regular lives. Whether it’s on the bus, on a dance floor, walking by a group of guys, being stared at, looked up and down, we are constantly reminded that what we have can be taken from us in an instant. We rehearse in our minds all the ways men can victimize us and how to stay safe. Women live in a world where we need to protect ourselves from men. We know that most men are good and would never do this but we know that there are predators out there and it’s hard to tell who are the good ones sometimes.
As a professor, I ask my students every semester: What are they most afraid of and what precautions do they take?
I first ask the men. The men generally have a hard time thinking about this; they have never thought about this before. After a bit of thought, they report that it is different when you live in the city than the suburbs. Cities can be dangerous. Those who live in the inner city report that they fear being assaulted or murdered. The men in the suburbs often fear that that the people they love will be attacked.
When I ask them what precautions they take, the answers again differ by where they live. For those in the inner city: carry a weapon and be aware of your surroundings. For the men in the suburbs: lock doors. The men often have a hard time thinking of other precautions.
When I ask the women in the class about their most feared event, it is almost always rape. I then ask them to report what precautions they take to stay safe.
These are some of the answers the women in the class typically give: carry mace; don’t walk alone; don’t walk at night; if you have to walk alone, call someone while you do so that they know where you are; carry keys in your fingers with key facing out; park under a street light; lock your car doors as soon as you get in the car; and the list goes on and on.
This exercise is illuminating, not to me or to the women students, but to the men in my class. They most certainly never realized all the fear and all the precautions women take. I get the sense that they think the women are being paranoid.
Men and women live in very different social worlds. Their experiences are drastically different when it comes to crime, victimization and safety. The Kavanaugh hearing is a perfect example of this. Women know deeply that this attempted rape happened to Christine Ford. We know it because it has happened to us. If it hasn’t happened to us, we know someone who it has happened to. We know that the typical rape is not a stranger jumping out of the bushes but someone we meet at a party.
The Kavanaugh confirmation and the MeToo movement have shed light on the experiences of women. Men should know how women move through this world; carefully and strategically. Men, for the most part, do not live in a world where they are in danger of getting raped. Women need to explain this to men. Men need to take an interest and realize the different worlds. While I understand the risks that women take by telling someone about our victimization, maybe the time has come to yell it from the rooftops!
