But it was soon clear that Dr Ford’s testimony had not shaken the foundations of stubborn male power like it had shaken so many of us. On Saturday 6 October, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. The Trump nominee will now be part of a Republican majority that will pull America to the right; a retraction of gun control, a contraction of birth control rights and flooding politics with endless amounts of money are expected to follow. This is an American story and yet Dr Ford and Brett Kavanaugh have consumed so many of us here in the UK. It’s dominated our conversations and clogged our phones with news alerts. We’ve swapped podcasts and shared links as if, in them, we might be able to find an answer to what this all means. We’ve shared stories that we’d forgotten or tried to forget. We’ve been fully emotionally invested in this, because, whilst on one hand, this is the story of American Supreme Court, on the other, it is a universal story of what it means to be a woman. Read more: The Time's Now: Gemma Arterton On A Year Of Empowering Change So, what now? “Look at me!” demanded 23-year-old Maria Gallagher as she cornered Senator Flake in a lift. And that's exactly what we must do: we must see and hear survivors of sexual assault. Now more than ever. In this country, services for survivors have been cut and drastically underfunded. Let’s put pressure on government to give money where it is needed and let’s donate to those organisations that will always be there to see and hear. Yet in the same breath, we must not expect survivors to do the hard emotional labour of using their trauma as political arsenal. Women do the work because the consequences are critical, but we mustn’t allow the performance of trauma to be the only way to persuade men of their crimes. If the rape crisis centre in your area is being defunded, write to your MP, start a petition, organise a fundraiser. We must share this workload.<doc-sep>It’s perfectly acceptable to not believe Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. You’d be wrong — demonstrating a profound level of myopia in believing only the self-serving testimony of a guy repeatedly caught lying under oath — but at least it’s a stance one can take without revealing yourself a monster. Unfortunately, many conservatives have ratcheted themselves down to a new low: most would support Kavanaugh’s confirmation if the allegations were true. What kind of person would jump past “not believing her” and into the nether realm of excusing sexual assault? For that, we look no further than Penn Law School’s Amy Wax, who continues her crusade to embarrass and undermine her employer by taking to the media to beat the drum that even if Ford was assaulted it shouldn’t matter. Indeed, not only shouldn’t it matter, Ford should be castigated as a bad person for merely suggesting that her assault could matter. It’s a bravura performance from America’s saddest law professor. Sponsored An Inside Track to Litigation Success It's never been easier to leverage Legal Analytics. Learn how with this live webcast on May 27th Without further ado: That is some pure, uncut batshit right there! If you can’t watch the video, let’s break down the transcript of this exchange: I think it’s a stale allegation, I think it violates principles of basic fair play for her to be bringing this up, I think she should have held her tongue, if I were her I would have, I think basic dignity and fairness dictates that, you know, it’s too late, Ms. Ford, even if there would have been consequences to bitching about it at the time, so there’s that. It’s funny, because I’d have thought basic dignity would preclude describing sexual assault victims as “bitching about it,” but that’s just me. Wax has explicitly said that using coarse language in public is the sign of moral bankruptcy and in this specific instance, she seems to have a point. By the way, note that she’s not talking about a “stale allegation” as a bar to believability. That fading memories and the degradation of physical evidence should bar criminal allegations — even though this is absolutely not a criminal case — is a defensible position. It’s hard to imagine that Dr. Ford would mistake her assailant given that he was personally known to her — no matter what Zillow might say — but if someone points to an incident from three decades past and argues that this fact introduces some unreliability, that’s a contention we can weigh out. However, Wax is going to a whole other level and arguing that its being “stale” means an old sexual assault should matter even if totally true. This is pretty far afield of the balanced criminal defense attorney tack. When people accuse Wax of extolling a deeply misogynist, ultimately white supremacist worldview, this is exactly what they’re talking about. In the op-ed that made her infamous, written with USD Law’s Larry Alexander, she railed — with scarcely a nod toward any evidence — that America owes its decline to a society that excuses criminality. To solve the “crisis” in America, it must return to a world where people face real consequences for their actions. She had strong words for substance abuse and “inner city” violence. But when called upon to hold an affluent white male to account… well, that’s just not the kind of crime that Wax has mind. But even if he did it, 17 years old, we now are saying that a man is going to pay for the rest of his life for a momentary act of, you know, recklessness, which didn’t leave any permanent, you know, didn’t create any permanent harm, except through this manufactured idea that this is such a horrible, traumatic thing — it’s not a good thing, but honestly, you know? The woman is not going to recover from that? And his whole life now is ruined. “The woman is not going to recover from that?” One struggles to find the brightline in Wax’s formulation. How much “recovery” does it take to excuse liability? Should physically battered people just “rub some dirt on it”? After all, they’ll “recover” eventually. For a woman who makes a career out of spouting intellectually bankrupt nonsense, this is a uniquely dubious argument. At least until the very next sentence. If he is denied a Supreme Court seat, he returns to a lifetime appointment to one of the most coveted jobs in the legal profession. To borrow from another: it’s not a good thing, but honestly, you know? The man is not going to recover from that? Professor Wax’s central argument for the last few years is that we must stop a culture that lets children run rampant without proper discipline. But, for this 17-year-old, that standard doesn’t seem to matter. It’s “momentary recklessness” even though until this very instant, “momentary recklessness” was exactly the sort of excuse-making that she decried as eroding our “bourgeois values” in a torrent of “permissiveness.” On paper, it’s a stunning breakdown of intellectual consistency for someone supposedly all about accountability. That misunderstands the record. Consistency requires a moral core, a bedrock principle that guides everything else. Some people, to their folly, thought “accountability” shaped Wax’s worldview. But when you figure out what’s really sitting at Wax’s moral core, she’s entirely consistent. Earlier: Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff Penn Law School Prof Amy Wax Stumbles Into A Truth… Before Delving Back Into Vile Conspiracy Theories Amy Wax Relieved Of Her 1L Teaching Duties After Bald-Faced Lying About Black Students Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class Dog Whistling ‘Bourgeois Values’ Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors Law Students Seek To Ban Professor From Teaching 1Ls Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<doc-sep>(CNN) — A Republican county chairman in North Carolina reportedly shared a photo that social media trolls have falsely claimed was of Christine Blasey Ford, commenting, “This is the alleged sexual assault victim. Wow.” Cabarrus County Republican Chair Lanny Lancaster shared the photo, which portrays a young blond woman with a flowy 80’s haircut, glasses and braces on Monday night, the Raleigh News and Observer reported. Lancaster appears to have since deleted his post. The photo has been used in memes and online jokes since at least 2012 and has recently been circulating in conjunction with actual yearbook photos of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The individual post shared by Lancaster has been shared nearly 13,000 times. “I didn’t say anything. I just said this is her picture. Basically, the media is distorting the facts on this lady. Everything she’s said is made up. She has no evidence whatsoever. I support that theory,” Lancaster told the Raleigh News and Observer. “The media wants you to think she was a beautiful young lady who was on her way home from the tennis courts,” Lancaster added to the News and Observer. “I just wanted you to see the real person. I wanted people to see that this is really her.” Lancaster and the Carrabus County GOP did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNN Friday morning. Ford has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when the two were in high school, which he denies.<doc-sep>PALO ALTO — She feared it would end this way. Christine Blasey Ford even told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that she wondered whether she would “just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway, and that I would just be personally annihilated.” This private, unassuming college professor, this wife and mother of two teenage boys, has returned to the Bay Area, one of her friends said Saturday, although he wouldn’t say where. Like the “Peninsula Moms” who promised to “form a human chain” around her house, her friends are fiercely protective of her. Despite her ordeal on the national stage — the death threats and ridicule she suffered after accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers — her friends hope she will return stronger for it, that the chance she took will somehow be worth it in the end. “I have to be optimistic that good comes from taking a risk to tell the truth, even if the power aligns against you,” said Jay Backstrand, a baseball coach to one of Blasey Ford’s sons. “If you stop believing that, I’m not sure what the whole experiment is anymore.” Blasey Ford’s lawyers told CNN she has no regrets. All she wanted to do was tell her story. She has no interest in seeing Kavanaugh impeached, her lawyers said, and is ready to move on with her life. Of all the places to come home to, Blasey Ford probably couldn’t dream up a more welcoming one than this bastion of highly educated liberals. A week before she testified, a plane flew over downtown Palo Alto pulling a banner saying, “Christine: We Have Your Back.” Backstrand said he and a few other close friends flew to Washington, D.C., to provide her emotional support — “a friendly face, safety, encouragement, stability.” The TV cameras captured him during Blasey Ford’s testimony, sitting just a couple of rows behind her. Blasey Ford kept herself isolated during the days surrounding the tumultuous Senate hearings, where Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegations. But Backstrand said she was aware of the rallies at Palo Alto City Hall, and the letters of support from her professional colleagues as well as her friends and neighbors who promised to bring over dinner and help with the kids. “She deeply appreciated it and knew it was happening for sure,” he said. When Blasey Ford settles in, Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss plans to present her a proclamation, extolling her courage and bravery. “She’s one of us and we will support her no question,” said Kniss, who was so inspired by Blasey Ford that she — while standing in front of Blasey Ford’s house after a rally two weeks ago — decided to tell her own story of being sexually assaulted as a young woman. It was a secret she had kept for more than 50 years. Kniss said she was overwhelmed by letters and words of support — and expects Blasey Ford will be as well. But the mayor, too, had no answer for a question everyone is asking: “Where does she go from here, and more than that, where do all the women in the U.S. who have been sexually assaulted go from here?” Months before Blasey Ford burst onto the national stage with her explosive allegations, she had confided in friends on the beach in Capitola and worried that coming forward, risking her reputation, her family’s safety and all of their futures to go public wouldn’t make a difference in the end. “It is a life-altering experience and nothing’s going to be the same,” said Jim Gensheimer, one of those friends she told about Kavanaugh at the beach. “That’s the sad thing in a lot of ways.” That July day on the beach, she had told Gensheimer she “wanted to remain confidential and was weighing the calculus, but then her cover was blown, so all the fears she had are coming true.” Blasey Ford might have held the loneliest seat in the country when she faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, painstakingly laying out her claim that she was “100 percent” positive that it was Kavanaugh who pinned her down, groped her and covered her mouth during a high school party decades ago. During her testimony, Blasey Ford showed a vulnerable side. Her chin quivered at times as she discussed the lasting impacts of her attack. She has told friends that her fear of being trapped made her insist that her husband install a second front door when they remodeled their Palo Alto home. She has a fear of flying. But her friends are not worried that she lacks the strength to endure what may come. “She’s tough as nails,” Backstrand said. “She’s proved that. I’m not worried about that.” Other people made famous by national controversies are still facing challenges from an unforgiving public. Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with President Clinton, has become an anti-bullying advocate after trying for years to restore her dignity. Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has become the face of Nike, but is still without a team after he led the movement to kneel during the National Anthem to protest police brutality against people of color. Blasey Ford’s next move is far from clear. Will she go underground and stay out of the public eye, as Anita Hill did after accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment? Could she become the new feminist face of the #MeToo movement? “I don’t think Christine has any idea,” Backstrand said. “My guess is that it will take a long time, as it would for anybody, to figure out maybe what all just happened, what she thinks about it, and where she may or may not play a role in the future.” “She deserves a giant hug for her bravery,” said Bethany Kay, 44, who knows Blasey Ford through their children’s sports, “and being in the national spotlight talking about difficult issues, not knowing what the outcome would be and knowing she will be torn apart in all different ways, even by the president.”<doc-sep>
A former classmate of Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were both in high school in suburban Maryland, said it’s “just not possible” that her friend is mistaken on his identity. “I find that very, well, frankly it makes me angry,” Samantha Guerry said on ABC News’ “The Briefing Room.” “It's really a way of dismissing her and suggesting that her memory isn't clear," Guerry said. "I think that when you have someone's hand over your mouth and you think that you might die by accident you know who you're dealing with." Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told CNN on Monday he believed Ford, a research psychologist based in California, must be "mistaken" and that Kavanaugh told the senator he wasn't at the party. “Senator Hatch spoke to Judge Kavanaugh earlier, and Judge Kavanaugh continued to categorically deny Dr. Ford’s allegations. He told Senator Hatch he was not at a party like the one she describes, and that Dr. Ford, who acknowledged to the Washington Post that she 'did not remember some key details of the incident' may be mistaking him for someone else,” Hatch's spokesman Matt Whitlock said in a statement to ABC News on Monday. Guerry has not recently spoken with Ford but has been in touch with people close to the professor. She sought on Wednesday to offer a different picture of the woman who was a girlhood friend, saying that she is "strong" and "is holding up as well as can be expected given the circumstances." She described Ford as cheerful and easy to like, but also smart and hardworking — “qualities that she kept as she went forward in her adult life,” she said. Guerry said that the increased scrutiny on Ford since the sexual assault allegation became public has felt "personal." “I think what everyone needs to remember is that what she asked for is confidentiality. She didn't ask to be a political football in this,” Guerry said of Ford, who she has known since they attended the small, all-girls Holton-Arms School together beginning in seventh grade. Ford initially reached out confidentially to her congresswoman in California, Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, but now that the allegation and her name have been made public, Guerry said her friend now has to face a difficult conversation "in such a tremendous public forum and at such a tremendously important time for our country." “I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and take a step back and just really think this through before we just go charging ahead with our agenda, whatever that agenda is on either side,” Guerry said. This week Guerry joined more than 900 alumnae of the Holton-Arms School — a private school for girls in Bethesda, Maryland — in signing an open letter, voicing their support for Ford. The letter, which was also signed by Hollywood actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus who graduated from the school in 1979, was signed by women who graduated between 1962 and 2018. "We believe Dr. Blasey Ford and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story," the letter reads. "It demands a thorough and independent investigation before the Senate can reasonably vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to a lifetime seat on the nation's highest court. Dr. Blasey Ford's experience is all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton. Many of us are survivors ourselves." Ford is open to testifying to lawmakers, but not before the FBI investigates the matter, one of her lawyers, Lisa Banks, said Tuesday night. Democrats have echoed calls for the FBI to investigate the matter before any hearing takes place. Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied the allegation. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee invited Ford and Kavanaugh to a hearing on Monday and said on Wednesday that they offered her the option to testify privately or publicly. President Donald Trump has said while he wants to hear from Ford, it's hard for him to "imagine that anything happened," referring to the sexual assault allegation brought by Ford. As teenagers, Ford's friend Guerry recalled that Holton-Arms and Georgetown Preparatory School, which Kavanaugh attended, regularly had a lot of “cross socialization.” Guerry dated one of Kavanaugh's close friends, she said, and remembered helping the all-boys' school out with a production of "Oklahoma!" She described the guys in Kavanaugh's high school circle as a "tight-knit group."