And the guy above you have nothing to apologise for. You are both decent guys who conduct themselves appropriately here on DU, which is the only place I know you from. The gesture is appreciated but not necessary.

But the men who apologize for this kind of behavior are never the ones who perpetrate it. Be kind to yourself.

... to an acquaintance who had suffered abuse from her first husband, speaking "on behalf of all men." She actually got rather snippy with me. Granted, I was going and naive and spoke from an inexperienced sense of chivalry, but it certainly wasn't the reaction i expected.



===========

The reality is that the huge numbers of men are like you and would never harm someone less powerful simply because it's fun. And you have to remember that many women buy into the "she was asking for it" and "why would you want to ruin his life?" crap.

We need to change the way the whole culture deals with this sort of emotional and physical violence. I think we've made progress in that direction in the past two days. If Kavanaugh is denied "his" place on the bench, I'll know we've made progress.

In any case, this woman (and rape survivor) thanks you and all the men like you.

Unable to work. I spend all my time searching on DU for evidence that Kavanaugh won't get what his privilege has guaranteed him.

of American office workers' productivity this week.

dressed very scantily, and my mom said women who dress like that deserve to be raped. I said, no one deserves to be raped. Even at 16 (I'm 70 now), I knew that was distorted thinking.

As a 70YO man who was raised in the country to respect women to the letter (and taught that in church), I also am appalled at the extent of recent revelations. That clearly demonstrates how much of this emotional and physical violence has been kept hidden.

That said, even with my good raisin', I never realized how important it is to be conscious of the emotional impact of all my actions on others until I was deeply involved in a alcohol recovery program in my early 40s and looked back at many events in my life. That process shook me to my core. I never forced myself on any woman in any way, but I sure as hell left a few crying at my departure and that can leave deep emotional scars.

I seriously believe we are failing most of our youth by not teaching them simple elementary psychology beginning at an early age so they learn to carefully look at both the emotional and physical effects of their daily actions. That process requires humble reflection. Unfortunately, in our materialistic/capitalistic world today, too many parents are stone cold to the need for teaching this in the home.

It also wouldn't hurt to have a similar programs in workplaces. We tend to only look at financial and physical effects of improper actions and that needs to stop. Learning to be sensitive to other's emotions can temper even the worst of our primitive impulses.

.........

It’s called empathy, and I doubt people like Kavanagh will ever learn it.

......... .........

It’s weird that so many guys don’t get it. I could barely sleep the night before the hearing. I stared a thread asking for hugs.

Many of the posters who wanted an outlet to rant.
I’m sure conservatives would laugh at it, also sure I couldn’t give AF that they do.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211190037

I feel so terrible about what Kavanaugh, Trump and the old men who were pushing this have done.

I have been in a state of anxiety for 2 years, getting worse each day. I feel so sorry for the women who are assaulted, degraded and treated badly. I hope this breaks the dam for women.

There are too many men out there that feel the same way. We are lucky to have them.
Most are Democrats!

unfortunately I already knew I was damaged...and this is reviving all the pain

You are a brave surviver.

The so and so’ who did this are damaged beyond repair.

I'd be willing to wager that the mental health community would concur.

You cannot unring a bell, anymore than you can forget a soul-shattering event like sexual assault.

209%. This week has really been traumatic, especially bad for survivers but at this point it seems most women are thinking about indignities they have has to deal with over the years just because of hateful npmen who think they are superior.

I am getting phone calls from women who are so outraged at these vicious old men in the Senate who refuse to listen to anyone.

My phone was ringing when Jeff Flake made his announcement. If they still vote for Kav after his performance Thursday you can guarantee all hell will brak lose at the Voting booths.

I am getting my absentee ballot so I can go help serve refreshments from my Church at the Poll I worked at for several years.

I'm angry. Incredibly angry.

I resent having to be the one that relives the trauma while my attacker goes about life as if it's all in the past.

I've been lashing out. If anyone noticed or felt it - my bad?

I'm done apologizing. Been done with that a long time ago.

It wasn't traumatic for Kavanaugh, so why would he remember it?

They never have to carry the weight of what they've done.

They skip off into the sunset.

Some of us have been paying attention. You captured mine days ago with some of your posts.

It is beyond unfair that people have been damaged and those responsible are permitted to walk freely among us, unteathered from accountability. What makes it worse for some is that those people who were supposed to protect them failed miserably to do the one most important job of every parent. And they denied it/lied about it, even when the evidence was right in front of their faces the whole time.

That kind of betrayal never sleeps.

For your compassion and understanding.

It never sleeps. That is so very true.

We could both use one.

Just like the 2 women in the elevator and all the Protesters. Do not shut up for one minute. Shame them.

Now we can begin to cut those (unconscious) cords that have bound us for all these years.
Never in my lifetime (now 67) did I ever think the Berlin Wall would fall. But we woke up one day and it was being torn down by the very people it had tried to contain. I'm aware that I'm probably the biggest Pollyanna on this site -- so be it -- but "where there's life there's hope."

Catholic upbringing, you know? But sometimes you just get so damn tired.

what was McCain's saying? : March or die. (No, not a great McCain fan. But his words struck me.)

in my chest.

I keep going back to the devastation of learning that men who I thought were friends had engaged in one of those disgusting "trains" on an unconscious woman in my Jesuit college. Too close, too close. And at this remove, forty years later, I still feel like throwing up when I think about this incident. But I was only someone who knew it happened. I was only someone who could think, "There but for the grace of God go I." And like you, I was only someone who went through the "run of the mill" traumas that are just part of growing up female in America. The rape threats, the need by random men to debase me, to make themselves feel worthy by making me feel frightened or demeaned or insignificant.

I CANNOT imagine what those women who were direct victims of the kind of behavior Kavanaugh perpetrated - this kind of rampant behavior - are feeling this week. I wish they could know how much I want to bolster them, support them, let them know what amazing people they are to have survived such a thing.

I also just HATE these entitled pasty evil assholes who are trying to take our dignity and who are trying to ruin our country. I will NEVER forgive this. I will NEVER forget this.

Thank you for sharing and I'm so sorry you understand.

I have nothing to add because you have described how I feel with crystal clarity. I'm glad I'm alone in the office today...I'm so sick and sad. I'm also burning mad.

I'm sorry for the terrible experiences you've had. I've been down some very similar roads. I too am doing my best to hold my head high, raise a happy healthy son and do my part to resist. Thank you for your OP.

Please keep resisting.

The things that happened to you happened, as they did to so many of us. But so did all those wonderful things you’ve done and the wonderful people you’ve known and even made!

All the things you’re hearing about the ways memories are stored and retrieved, and the emotional weight that they carry, are smart. That’s what you’re in the middle of. First, the need to be untouchable and then the fear of the collapse of that protection. It’s how you handled memories. And it’s changing. That change is a miserable thing to go through, but it has the potential to help you grow rather than freeze you in an untouchable, but perhaps less potent, state.

This sounds far more easy and Pollyanna than it is. The medium is hard. But I appreciate and support what you’re going through.

But in a good way this time.

on social media. By the end of the day, I was exhausted but unable to get to sleep until well after midnight. Still today, ugly memories keep churning.

Sorry that I don’t have any advice on how to navigate these times. For me, I’ve tried to stay busy with mundane everyday chores that, while boring, keep my mind occupied.

I have been re-living the experience I had in junior high school where 4 big boys cornered me and groped me under my skirt. And laughed at me when I tried to break free. When, in high school, the boys would stand under the stairwell and hoot and holler looking up your dress. (and we were not allowed to wear pants). The way they would brush up against you in the hallway during class change. The way they would stare at your chest. It's just all coming back and I hate it with a passion.

I told my husband, out of all the heinously damaging things Trump has done to this country, this one really affects me the most so far. A rapist on the Supreme Court, ruling on what women can do with their bodies. It's like a cruel joke and we women are all at their mercy.

It helps to know there are many of us out there and that we vote. Hugs all around ....

And, yes, a rapist on the Supreme Court. It feels like such a deliberate slap in the face.

I am so sick of these old sour faced white men ruling our lives!

Thank you for your compassion and sharing.....

And I spent the rest of the day struggling to contain my absolute rage.

I do not believe I can speak to one of Kavanaugh's excusers. I cannot. It will immediately escalate and end badly for both of us.

We need good men like you more than you can know.

I am absolutely furious. I am a fully engaged feminist. I have been dealing with my emotions about sexual assault and the lack of consequences for rapists and the fucked up patriarchy for a long while. I’ve been told, on this very board, no less, that there was no such thing as rape culture. That rape statistics were exaggerated. That women shouldn’t be out at night if they didn’t want to be raped. That women shouldn’t get drunk. There was even touted a school of thought in evolutionary psychology claiming rape as adaptive behavior.

There have been many, many battles, both on-line and off it.

BUT I also want to speak up for my husband, who also suffered childhood sexual abuse, and is also now suffering. He looked at Kavanaugh and said, “I can’t tell you how I know, but I KNOW he did it, I KNOW—-there is no doubt in his mind. He didn’t sleep last night. He hurts. He is also furious. He also feels impotent in his anger.

To all the victims. We hear, and we believe.

Yes, we hear and believe and we want justice.

I keep running the gamut of emotions.
Bad memories keep coming up.
I can’t sleep - I’m so restless I just stay awake until I’m exhausted.
Then I have to get up and take care of my 4-year-old daughter, and I just weep for her.
My goddamn SKIN hurts.

Give your little girl some hugs from me and take heart - maybe, just maybe, this moment is like lancing a boil. We shall see.

Yes, perfect metaphor.
Get rid of all the gross stuff, heal up, and keep a scar to warn us in the future.

I have been in touch with my rage for a while, but the spectacle of white male privilege and upper-class power that we saw yesterday was truly disturbing.

The Republicans, during Kavanaugh's testimony, even went as far as "shutting up" Ms. Mitchell when Kavanaugh began to lose his cool under her questioning. This amounted to them putting their figurative hand over her mouth because she did not "perform" as they expected for the boys. They felt entitled to use Ms. Mitchell and discard her when they no longer felt a need for her. This bears a very disturbing parallel to what young Kavanaugh tried to do with 15 year-old Christine Blasey while Mark Judge looked on.

Dr. Blasey Ford, although she spoke in a soft voice, must have been feeling some of the same rage that you, I and others feel.

"The Republicans, during Kavanaugh's testimony, even went as far as "shutting up" Ms. Mitchell when Kavanaugh began to lose his cool under her questioning. This amounted to them putting their figurative hand over her mouth because she did not "perform" as they expected for the boys."

They will act this way to women on their own side, too. Republican women need to wise up.

And I was pretty lucky growing up. There were a couple friends who were being abused, looking back, but there was still that culture of sexualization of young girls that meant you always had to be ready to fight, to work twice as hard as the boys in your cadre if you wanted to be more than a product that would eventually be bought by some "nice young man" who was going to take care of you in return for being his living doll, maid, and the nanny for any kids you both might have.

Just the obvious implication that no matter how smart, successful, or important a woman might be, she's still a disposable object to men in positions of authority. That there's an expectation that an over-priviledged dick like Kavanagh "deserves" respect and a position just for having male genitalia and belonging to the right country clubs.

Yes, it's upsetting and it stings.

Haele

Someone on this board recently said not all misogyny is hatred of women, because they just don't think highly enough of us to hate us. We're just part of the scenery, like furniture.

I never told anyone. I haven't told anyone even as of today. So I can relate to you and Ford. Reporting these things wasn't something you did. I would have been blamed...and I would have agreed! That's how bad it was.

I feel like being female isn't valued at all. Nothing will stop an assaulter from rising to the highest levels, because we just don't matter.

We just don't matter. That's what I keep thinking.

What must it be like, to have people believe everything you say, like almost any male is believed? I can't imagine. What must it be like to be paid decently? I was underpaid for most of my work life. I can't imagine. It's so unfair. It's wrong.

I just don't know. I'm so depressed over it all.

I've never told anyone, either, and it never seemed to matter because I wasn't raped, you know? And, anyway, it all felt like my fault somehow.

I'm sorry you're depressed; please take care of yourself.

shouldn't have been drunk. My fault. I WAS raped. No one there knew it, except for the guy. "My fault."

But you know what? I didn't take it as hard as Dr. Ford took her experience. Maybe because I was a few years older. She was only 15, after all.

It happened 50 or more years ago, but it's impossible to forget. I think I'm lucky because I never felt any severe emotional damage, but I did take some satisfaction when I googled the name of the attacker and found out he was dead. This morning it occurred to me that the brain must have a "shitty memory file" and this week sure triggered it to open up for millions of people.

about you taking satisfaction in him being dead?

I always felt I was lucky, too, which is why these new feelings are so strange to me, you know?

some of those old GOP prune-faced white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee would drop dead of a heart attack. And I seriously wish that Mitch McConnell would too.

I've been crying off and on for two days. I had no idea I would react so viscerally to her honesty and to his entitled bluster. Opened every tiny little wound and exposed it to the air.

It's been so strange for me, too, to respond like this.

It started for me the week of the Access Hollywood tapes before the 2016 "election," and has been building ever since. This past week, I feel like it is all rising and pouring out of me.

Thank you for sharing your story. You are NOT alone. There are millions of us.

...what it would be like to watch my abuser testifying under oath in front of millions of people that what he did to me never happened.

Get out the vote.

Get in their faces.

Don't let these horrid daily scandals (ESPECIALLY this one) lull us into a stupor, by the sheer enormity of it.

Our REPUBLIC is at stake.

where we are just servants, not citizens. We are to be used and abused at the will of men. I guess this is a version of reality we don't always see. We believe our fathers, husbands and sons love us, but then we get a taste of reality. to look at the bright side, my son says that the Y chromosome will be gone in 10 thousand years or so.

This event has deeply affected more people, especially women, than any I can recall. I'm not sure what the outcome will be, but I hope some good comes of it, for you as well as all of us.

listened to her. It brought back some memories that I thought I had dealt with and moved on from. But I guess not so much. Dr. Ford is obviously such a good person and I admire her so much and that actually makes me feel more at peace with my experience from many many years ago. And now I am sitting here having a hard time hitting the "post my reply" button. But I am going to because that doesn't really take much courage on my part, does it? I cannot even imagine how difficult it was and how much courage it took for Dr. Ford to do what she has done.

She was so obviously terrified; I felt so protective of her, you know?

I'm glad you posted your reply. Sometimes it's the small acts we find the courage to do that give us the courage to do larger things that we need to do, if that makes sense.

about posting. Your encouraging words mean a lot to me, Tempest.

Or watch anything Kav. related, although I've read everything here on DU. You may think I have no horse in this race, being in Australia but from where I sit, there is an existential battle happening over a great part of the globe to hold back the marching forces of authoritarianism and male patriarchy.

Anyone who thinks Women's Lib ended in the 60s or 70s and is not relevant today is blind and misinformed. Men like Kavanaugh always have and always will, worm their ways into positions of power and women are the first to suffer. The US is led by a tin-pot, demented dictator who encourages this behaviour because it's part of his makeup too. I really suffer for what the US and the world is going through right now.

And I want to apologize on behalf of America for unleashing this idiot upon the world, even though I don't know how to stop the madness.

But thank you anyway. There's plenty of blame to be laid but none of it at the feet of those who voted Hillary.

I watched all of Dr. Fords' testimony yesterday and was so inspired by her honesty, intelligence and bravery. Then he came on and was a screaming idiot, lying with just about every breath, filibustering the Dems so they couldn't ask their questions, and showing he's totally temperamentally unfit. Then repugs took that performance, because it was a total con, and cheered him for showing he has a horrible temperament, cheered his bullying lying scheming - all in the quest for permanent dominance of the USA. I've been so depressed that males are going to grow up thinking it's perfectly ok to assault women, especially if you are white and rich. Conversely I've been so grieving for all the extra women who will be raped or assaulted, because the Senate showed they didn't matter one bit. I've been grieving for our country because the russian repug rapist want him in on a case that I have heard will allow drumpf to pardon himself (hope I got that part wrong) and others who he couldn't now pardon. Abortion is the side show, protecting drumpf is the reason he's being installed. All day today I have been lethargic and totally depressed by this horrible disaster. Haven't watched the news at all, I just couldn't. One time I tried, but Lindsey Treason Graham was holding court about dastardly dems and I turned it right off feeling sick at my stomach. I just hope enough women will finally realize the utter hatred and contempt the Russian Repug Rapists have for them and vote Dem down the line.

They're giving themselves a get out of jail free card, and they're doing it by climbing over the bodies of their victims.

As a survivor of such abuse and as someone who loves them.

I'm also 48 years old and listened to almost all of the testimony yesterday. I didn't realize how much Dr. Ford had affected me until I was making dinner and recapping the testimony to my husband, who hadn't been able to catch any of it. When I told him about her answer to the "What do you remember most?" question -- "The laughter. The uproarious laughter of two good friends having fun at my expense." -- I got choked up and couldn't go on. Something that happened to me when I was 8 years old came roaring back. It was a relatively benign incident among a bunch of third graders, and one I had thought about and dismissed many times over the years. But I hadn't remembered the laughter, and suddenly I did...and suddenly I couldn't breathe.

I tossed and turned all night. When I got up this morning I decided to go for a run, and while my body was working my mind was just spinning and churning up everything I felt when that thing happened, and every way it's affected me since then. Suddenly I could see with awful clarity the seed that was sown that day and the weed that took root and grew. My reactions to other incidents that happened to me as a pre-teen and a teenager and a young adult made so much more sense, and while I am glad for the epiphany I am also devastated by it. This thing reaches into every part of my life, right up to my adult relationships and my relationship with my husband of 21 years and the way I parented our only child, and how it even affected her.

It's a terrible feeling. I keep reliving that incident over and over. I've been crying on and off all day and when I try to explain why, I just can't.

Anyway, thanks for saying everything you said, and thank you to all the other commenters. I empathize 100%. And yes, I will be seeking counseling after the weekend.
LW

The sudden feeling that you can't breathe, the seed that was planted that explains later events, the inability to express WHY you're crying...THANK YOU for sharing that. We've been knocked off-balance, haven't we?

I am so glad my daughter is at university in Europe and living there with her boyfriend, who is a wonderful young man. I know she's had some traumatic experiences in her young life as well, and I'm grateful she isn't here to experience this firsthand.

I think Dr. Ford's riveting testimony and Judge Kavanaugh's theatrics affected the majority of women if not in the same specifics, certainly in the sense that:

We've All Been There . . .

in some sense, either experiencing or witnessing the humiliation, the abuse and the sense that we as women are not entitled to agency over our own bodies, our well-being and/or our lives. And you're so right, the experience yesterday dredged up personal memories. I recalled an incident in college that I had long ago buried, an incident of being roughed up and then subsequently humiliated every time this young man saw me on the street. Because I refused his drunken, crass attack in the backseat of a car.

Yeah, I had put that incident away and it bubbled right up yesterday.

We've all been there in some way. You are so-o-o not alone.

So if they could stop calling us liars, that'd be nice wouldn't it?

My sister was not believed when she accused our next door neighbor of fondling her as a child. In fact, our parents were scandalized by the later accusations, said she was crazy.

But that was then. This is now. Women really are pushing back en masse. And that's a very good thing because it's the only way things will truly change.

Take care of yourself and remember: you're not alone. You have millions of Sisters out there. And we're pissed!

At first I didn't want to watch the hearing because at age 80, I have to watch my high blood pressure. Then I turned on the TV and became mesmerized by Dr. Ford's painful testimony and found myself remembering all the times that I had to deal with sexual harassment of one kind or another.

But what really set me off was Kavanaugh's bullying so typical of a misogynist flaunting his power. No, I didn't sleep much last night either. Now I am beyond angry. Eight of my 10 grandchildren are eligible to vote and they had all better vote straight Democrat in November or when I die I'll come back to haunt them.

And please do watch your blood pressure! We want you alive and kicking.

Millions of us were triggered by Trump's behavior during the presidential campaign, and then he got elected.

There should be no doubt in your mind, Teapot, that you are among sisters (and brothers) here, and we understand exactly what you mean.

That's why I felt safe to post here.

motorcycle accident the day after the assault. I repressed the memory, relieved that he could never come back and hurt me again. It "came" to me a year ago when my beautiful granddaughter was going off to college as a freshman. I called my daughter and she assured me that Sarah had had extensive rape avoidance training. She goes with a group of friends when she goes out, drinks alcohol, etc.

Isn't it sad that we have to do this?

that we should have to.

I'm so sorry that memories of your assault got dredged back up. Sometimes it feels like we can never escape our pasts.

of his own assault at age 10 by several older boys. He has since also told his two grown daughters of the attack and they were very supportive of him.

I cannot tell my grown children about this. My husband, always supportive, was of course horrified that I had endured this and wrapped his arms around me and held me as I cried.

These memories are what I have been living with.

I'm glad your husband is supportive.

with their sons and daughters about "how to behave among whites". Women make up 51% of the population while AAs are just 10%. But all can be victimized in the blink of an eye. And sadly, all too many never get justice.

Where, oh where, is the humanity?????

Last edited Wed Oct 3, 2018, 10:10 AM - Edit history (1)

I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other and which was considered a safe place for children to play freely outside.

When I was five, my mom took me to visit a relative nearby. While they were talking and distracted, I wandered off to the yard next door.

The only person home at the time was the 18 year old son. He took me into the house and sexually assaulted me. It all happened very quickly, and had it not been for my mother's calling my name, things would have been much worse. The only reason he let me go is because he would have been found out. I ran out and told my mom what happened, but I never found out how she and my dad handled it. Actually, I'm not sure she ever told my dad -- God knows what he would have done.

While growing up I would see this grotesque creature now and then, and he terrified me. I would look away, or cross the street to avoid him. When I turned 18, I found out he was in some kind of fight, and died from internal injuries. I immediately felt a huge burden lifted from me, an immense relief, even happiness. I was also stunned I could be glad for someone dying, but I understood it was the only way I would be free of the fear he could somehow hurt me again.

I am a grown woman with adult children now, older and wiser. I wish the bastard was still alive, because if he was, I would like to confront him for what he did to me and for the ugliness he brought into a my life. I am filled with anger about it, and I carry that anger as a shield for myself and for any other person victimized by people like him. They say not to hang on to anger, but I think it's healthy to move from feeling like a victim and facing the accuser. I am so proud of Dr. Ford.

I'm also going through what you're going through. This shit has a way of haunting you throughout your life.

over the phone. She'd been telling me she was feeling skin-crawly, sick to her stomach today; we'd watched the proceedings together yesterday. I'd seen my brother in Kavanaugh, b/c he's always been an entitled bully- abusive, dishonest and spiteful. And a true misogynist. Yelling, throwing shit & having red-faced temper tantrums when he didn't get his way. And all the other, later incarnations of that behavior in the working world. I feel for everyone here on this thread. Thanks again.

can’t relate to the shaking inner rage we have about the multitudes of abuses small and large that just being a female in a male entitled society have brought upon us over our lives.

Yes, we KNOW Kavanaugh.

I, like millions, have my own list of traumatic memories that I still keep well hidden. Different “triggers” bring them slamming back to me. Never truly forgotten.

So, if there is anything positive about our collective survivals, it is the immense strength we can share. Because we are a helluva lot stronger than we give ourselves credit for and the world is now, continually realizing that power.

You are strong.

if we can find our will to right the wrongs being done!

PTSD! Please get some professional help! You have nothing to be sorry for! I just hope you get better! Hang in there!

I'll be ok, though. When I get my balance back, I'll get angry again and try to figure out how to fight what's happening to our country. For me, action's the best medicine.

I have also had to stop watching political TV for a while, although I still read DU and a few other online sources. Sure am glad I got my puppy. My doggos help me take my mind off all the negative stuff. Rescuing that pup was great timing.

And my cats. Lucky you with a puppy!

I don't have Parkinson's.

I didn’t realize how badly my two incidents damaged me, either. This week has been brutal.

Any other ladies also feeling guilt? I keep reading a lot of others’ stories and I’m amazed how many women have been through just violent and brutal rapes sometimes by loved ones. And they are building such strong beautiful lives. Mine was assault by a doctor but I don’t equate it with a violent rape and I almost feel guilty being triggered. Does that make any sense?

I'll leave it to people who know more about such things than I do, but women do always seem to feel guilty for something, don't we?

I threw up what little was in my stomach (really just white wine). I think the nausea and vomiting is a result of my recovered memory of the attack. This has happened before and I don't want to involve my general practitioner in this. I take Bonine and try to cope.

Thanks for sharing TeapotInATempest.

for sharing this; it must be so difficult to do so. Your words and testimony are so powerful, and I stand in solidarity with you.

and I'm figuring out why. I've never been raped or subjected to the sort of gross abuse that Kavanaugh's accusers described, but I'm finally realizing that you don't have to even be touched to have been violated as a woman. I've had guys expose themselves on a couple of occasions - once while I was waiting for a bus, another time when I was just walking through downtown on my way to work one morning. I caught a guy looking up my skirt through the shelves at a public library. A man I worked with tried to talk me into taking off my top while we were together in his office. The father of the kids I was babysitting for when I was about 15 started hitting on me one night when the couple came home, giving me some creepy line about how "pretty" I was and offering to walk me home (we lived across the street). None of these men laid a hand on me, but these experiences were so creepy and disturbing that I remember them vividly, decades later. They were much more repellent than the occasional drunken pass at a college party.

And I think the reason I was, and am, so disturbed was that each of these men looked at me not as a human being at all but as just a sex toy for their fantasies. Just a c***, if you'll excuse that word - but I think that's the only word that sufficiently expresses how degrading that sort of behavior is. WTF is wrong with a man who thinks it's OK to treat other people as if they were nothing but meat? And when these things happen, women, especially young ones, almost always feel like it's their fault for being just a c***. The men did the dirty thing but you're the one who ends up feeling dirty. They just walk away, happy to have their sexual arousal taken care of.

I hate to think how terrible it must have been for Dr. Ford at that party, and for years afterwards, and then to be treated like non-human meat again by representatives of her government.

Yes, I'm pissed off, beyond words. For all of us.

And we are violated so very often, especially when young.

Reading your post just filled me with a rage I needed to feel right now. Thank you for posting it.

is that this farce only proves that the scummy guys are still in charge. I have voted against these guys all my life. But they keep winning because they get the scummy man vote and the vote of men who don't get it. Then they get women votes. Lots of them. It is very frustrating. I cannot see how any one of those old men can expect to be reelected - but they do expect to get reelected and they do get reelected.

Let's see on November 6 if women will vote for themselves instead of the scummy men.

They're like cockroaches and would probably survive a nuclear war.

is stop feeding them. It's the slobs who keep leaving their votes on the counter.

Those adverbs may be redundant, but I don't care. I cannot emphasize enough how much the last few weeks have impacted me. I too was in a conference from 8:00 - 6:00 yesterday and didn't get to see it live. It's brought so much to the surface, I'm sickened.

I am nervous and anxious and if he is confirmed, I don't know what emotions are going to come up.

There are millions of us and we help each other. I was raped when I was six years old and have had the same crap happen to me that you describe.

Talk about it. I wrote in a journal that was never meant to be read later, even by me, and I destroyed them when I finished each one. When you do that it’s not difficult to be brutally honest about how you feel.

But do deal with it. Crying over it once is not enough. You’ll also be quite shocked at how angry you get. Write it all down and talk about it.

One day at a time we resist and advance!

... sexual and otherwise, in many of us.

I salute those brave enough to bring them to light.

second-class citizen as a female in this country. Even more so than when Trump became President. I felt it on some level back then, but I took some solace in the fact that he could be voted out in a few years coupled with the women's march after his inauguration that gave me a real sense of hope and strength.

But recently, when I see this sexual predator getting ready to be appointed to the highest court in the land for a LIFETIME appointment, and the dismissive and completely demeaning way Republicans in Congress have handled it, and the horrible comments I read on social media, and the various things the talking heads or their guests are saying on the television, it's just really hitting me hard. It's on such blatant display right now. They're all but saying the exact words that what happens to us doesn't matter. I don't even think it's that they don't believe Dr. Ford or the others, I think it's that they literally just don't care either way. It's just something in their way.

November 9, 2016. I've been relatively fortunate in my life to have not been physically sexually assaulted aside from some relatively minor unwanted groping, but I have been harassed, had vile things said to and about me, and other things I don't need to get into here. I, too, thought the memories were successfully tucked away and dealt with, but watching that nauseating spectacle yesterday brought all the shame and humiliation bubbling up to the surface and I feel like shit. I can't imagine what women who weren't as fortunate as me are handling this. I just feel icky.

I feel like I'm on a fast train to hell and the brakes just gave way.

pianos falling on certain people, and things like that.

Just the sickening spectacle of all of those old white boys defending their "brother", who went to the "right schools" and was in the "right" frat.

Reminds me of the time my perp was at my brother's wedding. My brother didn't invite him, I think his wife did. She doesn't know. They're all still friends with this rapist. Another proud product of Catholic schooling, like Kavanaugh.



I thought I could handle it, but it just seemed clear to me that Kavanaugh was lying. He was so full of himself. I recognize the emotions: "bitch, how could you do this to ME???"