One way to look at this - the ‘Overton Window’ for sexual behavior back then was very different. Just look at the movies of the time, which celebrated panty raids, ripping clothes off women in public, spying on them in the shower, etc. And it worked both ways - in "Risky Business’ Rebecca DeMornay was a prostitute who intentionally seduced young high school boys in order for her filthy pimp to steal their families blind. And what was the message of the story? Basically, that because she was hot it was all good. The young high school kid and his underage friends got laid by beautiful women, and the goods were returned, so no harm, no foul.
I never did anything like what was alleged Brett Kavanaugh did - I was too shy back then to even ask girls out, let alone try to get them in a bedroom at a party. But it DID happen all the time. Girls would get drunk, guys would get drunk, there would be handsyness and kissing, and suddently the two would go off to someone’s bedroom. If a guy tried to go too far it wasn’t seen as sexual assault if he stopped when she protested - it was considered to be ‘fresh’. This was an era when feminism didn’t say women were fragile flowers who must be treated with kid gloves, but that women were as tough and horny as men and could look after themselves. If a guy grabbed a woman’s ass or snuck up and hugged her from behind, he might merit a slap, but the cops would not be involved. If a movie showed a bunch of creeps sneaking into the locker rooms to ogle naked girls, the result wasn’t arrest - it was usually something like the women figuring out a way to get revenge.
If you didn’t live through that era as a teenager, or if you lived a very sheltered childhood, you probably don’t understand.
Those aren’t the rules today, and that’s a good thing. Looking back at the time, at the culture, it’s pretty obvious that it was screwed up. Hell, I remember drinking at JUNIOR high school dances, and I remember one time when a friend showed up with a couple of joints. We asked him where he got them, and he said, “My parent’s stash”. The teacher at the door to the dance found them, and he just confiscated them - didn’t kick us out, didn’t call our parents. End of story. Except he and the other teachers probably smoked them later. My high school had smoking rooms, and one of my junior high school yearbooks has a picture of our principal wearing a T-shirt that had a green monster giving the finger, and it said, “Eat Shit and Die.” In the picture he is surrounded by laughing 12-15 year old kids. It was a very different time.
The late 70’s and early 80’s were like that. And as a result, I don’t think such activities carried the same kind of trauma they would carry today in an era were such behavior is very unusual.
As an example, consider someone who grew up in a place where there was constant fighting. This person has been in a dozen scraps before. One day he’s walking down the hall, and he gets sucker punched. So he gets up and goes after the person who did it, and they have a good scrap, and it’s over. Now consider someone who comes from a gentle family and a good school where violence is rare, and gets the same sucker punch. Who do you think is going to be more traumatized by it?
Note that I’m talking about sucker punching in school and groping at a party that goes nowhere - not assault with a deadly weapon or attempted rape.
The point being that when you consider the character of someone based on what happened 35 years ago, you have to do so by considering the norms and context of the time. And you also have to consider that he was 17, and people change mightily between 17 and 25, as their brains finish developing.
The fact that Kavanaugh does not have a chain of accusers going the more recent past, or even people admitting that he was kind of skeevy when they clerked for him, means that whatever he did at 17 is not representative of who he is today.
That’s assuming he did it. I find Dr. Ford completely unconvincing. She claimed she needed a delay because she was afraid to fly. Then she admitted to flying all the time. She, a Ph.D in psychology, claims to have only a vague notion of what a polygraph machine is. She claims she had no idea who paid for the test. Her memory is selectively vague - she is 100% certain that the Kavanaugh assault happened and that he was the person, but she can’t remember the year it happened, how it ended, who drove her home, what street the house was on, whose house it was, or pretty much any other details that might be used to corroborate her story. The few details she did give have been contradicted by other witnesses. She said her lifelong friend was with her at the party - her friend legally testified that she remembers no such thing. She said that Kavanaugh’s friend was there. He legally testified that he was not. No one else questioned can remember this party, or that anything like that happened at any party they could remember. And you have to know that the Democrats tried really, really hard to find someone.
The charitable explanation is that the Democrats went fishing for anyone they could find who would say something bad about Kavanaugh. The fact that they had to go all the way back to his high school days before they could find anyone at all says that this was a pretty difficult task. Kavanaugh on the other hand produced reams of testimonials from women who have known him or worked with him, all saying he’s a perfect gentleman. His ex-girlfriends still speak up for him and say he was a perfect gentleman - something you usually don’t see in someone with a pattern of assaulting women.
So the charitable conclusion is that Dr. Ford had a memory of an unpleasant event at a party, and someone planted the notion in her head that it must have been Kavanaugh. There’s a long history of ‘recovered memories’ being used this way, only to discover that were false. Then she was immediately surrounded by Democrat-provided lawyers who most likely proceeded to work with her to say as much as she could without triggering a perjury charge. Hence the inability to remember any details which could be falsified. I suspect the same thing happened with Ms. Ramirez, who only ‘remembered’ what happened after six days of coaching from a lawyer provided for her, and who has been very careful to say that it might not have been Kavanaugh, but someone who looked like him. All very carefully parsed to not say anything that could land her in court on charges.
Then we have the little problem that Diane Feinstein sat on this allegation until the hearings were over. Why? You don’t suppose she was worried that the story wouldn’t hold up through a full two month examination? If the important thing is to have an FBI investigation, why didn’t she turn the evidence over to the FBI two months ago, while there was still plenty of time to corroborate it?
To me, I think what happened is that this was a hail-mary - a last ditch weapon she held, hoping to never have to use it, but then it looked like Kavanaugh was going to go through, so she pulled the last rabbit out of a hat. If Dr. Ford is telling the truth that she did NOT want to go public and was promised anonymity, then isn’t Feinstein kind of the worst person in this entire affair?
In any event, if this torpedoes Kavanaugh, this will set a new standard for Supreme Court appointees from here on in. Expect every confirmation of judges on either right or left to devolve into a shit-show of specious allegations and revenge seeking by old spurned lovers and all the rest. And also, if Democrats Torpedo Kavanaugh, you better hope to hell they take the Senate in the midterms, or you’re likely to get a nominee you REALLY don’t like - and won’t be able to do a single thing to stop.
