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Author - Age 44*

Please read all four posts in this series as they become available, and take the time to consider what each story means to the person who wrote it. Please also take time to care for yourself as you read these stories, as they can be triggering at times, especially for those who have endured similar experiences.

I watched Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony because I felt it was important for me to bear witness, as a woman—particularly a woman also in academia—and as an assault survivor. To demonstrate, even though she will never know it, that I feel how hard this is for her to do, and that her doing this is meaningful enough for me to stop working, suppress my own discomfort, and pay attention.

While I watched this powerful, professionally accomplished woman give her testimony, I couldn’t help but imagine her 15 year old self enduring the attack she described. A wise friend once suggested to me that as we age, we don’t leave our younger selves behind, shedding them like a snake’s skin. Instead, we build a new layer around them, like an oyster creating a pearl, or like a Russian matryoshka doll—our younger selves stay with us all our lives; even when we’re thinking, feeling and acting as our most grown-up selves, we can still access what it felt like to experience the world as a child.

As I listened, I imagined Dr. Blasey Ford’s 15 year old self talking to mine. I’m only a few years younger. I was 15 in 1989. I remember that year. I remember pretending not to like the earnest youthfulness of New Kids on the Block (though I secretly did), instead publicly proclaiming my devotion to the Ramones, the Clash, the Violent Femmes, the Pixies—the bands the kids I thought were cool preferred. I remember eating waffles in my pajamas with my best friend while we watched Saved by the Bell. I remember shedding the sweater I was wearing on the school bus, to reveal the spaghetti straps I thought were too racy to leave the house in. And I remember putting the sweater back on during first period, because I couldn’t be this daring girl for more than an hour. I remember trying to join a girls’ service club and being scared off by hazing rituals that included speaking to a stranger at the mall. Yes, that’s all—speaking to a stranger was too much for the shy fawn I was then. I’m pretty sure that was the year I both first kissed a boy, and still slept with a stuffed animal.

The biggest thing I remember from my 15th year, though, was Dead Poets Society. My friends and I saw it in the theater 5 times. We bought old poetry books in an antique store and read them aloud to each other with flashlights in the dark. We were in love with pretty much every one of the characters. Do you remember that movie? How it idolized the privileged, white, male literary experience? How the only named female character, Chris, the cheerleader, served only as territory in a dispute between two men? The only other young women I remember from it were the ones Charlie brought to the meeting once—we were supposed to assume by their lipstick and lack of prep school background that they were stupid, cheap sluts. That’s the movie I loved: the movie that assures white men that it’s their destiny to carpe diem. That poetry and the arts were invented primarily to seduce women.

Watching Blasey Ford’s testimony, it dawned on me—she lived in that movie. She lived in a culture that had not changed from the time that movie was set (1950s) to the 1980s when the film was released. My 15 year old self listening to her was suddenly incensed and ashamed. I am so sorry, my younger self cried, that I ever liked that movie. I should have hated it. It was not okay for Knox to try to kiss and fondle Chris while she was asleep at that party—he deserved not only that punch in the nose, but also a visit from the police. And it was beyond not okay for young Christine to be held down, her mouth covered to stifle her screams, while a privileged, white, asshole of a kid tried to rape her. If Dr. Blasey Ford and I were both 15 right now, I would probably agree with her that reporting the attack would get her into more trouble than it was worth. Nothing bad happens to boys like that. They’re golden. Protected.

When I did a little Googling to check my memory of 1989, I found something I’d forgotten. That was the year actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by an obsessed fan. He was 19. So, yeah, Kavanaugh supporters, what boys do as teenagers matters. Forever. It matters that our society so objectifies young women that a fan’s deadly obsession is shocking in the moment, but on the whole, not so surprising. It matters that Dr. Blasey Ford was pushed into publicly sharing a story she considered private, and that (I’m convinced) it won’t change her attacker’s golden future. It matters that since I started teaching 20 years ago, I have helped at least one student in my classes process a recent sexual assault every semester. Let me repeat that—every semester for 20 years. That’s 40 young women who have asked for my help. And countless others, I’m certain, who didn’t.

I tried to watch Kavanaugh’s testimony, but couldn’t bear it. My rage was overwhelming. Rage for a 15 year old permanently wounded. The rage for all the other 15 year olds who saw pretty stories onscreen that positioned them as nothing more than props to be handled by golden boys. Rage for 40 women whose memories of their college years now exist around a dark fulcrum: before the rape and after. I don’t know what to do with my rage. Like my racy spaghetti straps, I seem to only be able to wear it for short periods of time before I cover up—retreat into numbness. Like many women, I’ve felt a quickening of hope during the #MeToo movement; but ultimately, I don’t believe anything will significantly change for us on my lifetime. 44 Year-Old me, if I met 51 year-old Dr Blasey Ford, would probably share a quiet nod, a shrug, a sad smile, and a whispered, “I know.”

Tags: Kavanaugh, patriarchy

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