Mistakes

Should past mistakes prevent future opportunities?

This is the question currently in the spotlight nationally, as I write this Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is testifying that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when he was 17, it is also an incredibly misleading question and not actually the right one.

Kavanaugh's proponents argue that he didn't do it, and if he did do it it wasn't assault, and even if it was he was under 18 and should get a pass. Who among us hasn't committed sexual assault as a minor after all? Would you want your shoplifting charge at 16 being brought up by a prospective employer as a reason for you to not get a job?

On the face of it, there is an argument to be made that there are good reasons juvenile criminal records are sealed specifically to address some of these concerns, and for most of the population that is probably a good thing.

But those arguing for Kavanaugh are intentionally ignoring that fact that this isn't most of the population, and it isn't for just any job. The real question is "Should past acts of sexual assault prevent somebody from becoming someone with the power to define and make rulings on those same acts?"
The answer to that is no, it's the highest court in the land, and probably one of the dozen most powerful positions in the country, it is not unfair to demand the highest standards from a candidate for that position.

Let's talk about the use of "mistake" in this conversation, we usually define mistake as being something we did on accident, or an unintended consequence of an act we performed. I am going to tell you right now, as a straight, white, make, the demographic that by a wide margin commits most acts of sexual violence, those are never accidents.

You don't "accidentally" grope someone and attempt to pull their top down, or put drugs in their drinks, or even "mistakenly" rape a blackout drunk woman(My internal bias was showing, I originally wrote that previous sentence as "have sex with" rather than rape). These are acts one makes with intent. We talk so much about sex being an animalistic urge, or unstoppable force, but that is one hundred percent a lie, men(and women, but we are talking about men here at the moment) have a lot more control over themselves than you might think if you were only listening to senators, judges, and religious figures talk about sex. The reality is that seeing a naked woman demands no reaction other than perhaps an erection. Anything else is entirely, one hundred percent, under your own control.
 
This includes consent being withdrawn during the act. I don't give a shit if you are mid-orgasm, you have the ability to pull the fuck out if she tells you to. You might not want to, I don't blame you for that, but you still have that control. Men are taught two big lies about sex, the first is as I described above, that we have no control, are animals, when it comes to it, the other is that our pleasure is paramount, not just that, but the maximization of our pleasure is paramount. And if that means we have to commit rape, than so be it, the law has been on our side so far.

And if Kavanaugh is confirmed, that state of affairs will not change anytime soon.

Realistically speaking I do expect him to be confirmed, he shouldn't be, just as Gorsuch shouldn't have been, but even so that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight about it, this testimony is important and Dr. Ford is making it with the full knowledge that her life might become hell for a while. You can change the law, but you can also change how society looks at the act, and that is what her act will probably impact the most.

You'll notice that through all this I paid no attention to the possibility of Kavanaugh being innocent. While there is technically that option, I don't see it as realistic, for one, men are pretty crap and Kavanaugh is unlikely to be an exception, for another I do not see any reason for a successful woman to put everything, her job, health, and safety, on the line to make these accusations public unless she truly experienced it. Plus, there are enough people playing devil's advocate with the man, fuck them and fuck him.