Judge Kavanaugh is About to Unleash a New Side of #MeToo

September 24, 2018

The real question Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during Thursday’s Supreme Court nomination hearing will raise is not “Did it happen?” but “Who cares?” Dr. Ford alleges that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teen, some 35 years ago. 

But so what? As one female GOP voter asked in a CNN interview last week, “Tell me what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” In other words, boys will be boys. Boys will grope and try to force themselves on girls. Get over it.

No so fast. If Dr. Ford’s testimony is as searing as it’s expected to be, it will unleash an outpouring of “This happened to me in high school, too” stories from women across this country. And that will demand that we wrestle with the question of what kind of behavior really is acceptable from boys and young men.

#MeToo will finally have gotten to the core of it all: The license we give to boys to behave disrespectfully, even downright violently, toward girls, which becomes boys’ green light to do the same as adults. Girls get the message early on that they should excuse bad behavior from boys. No wonder women sometimes struggle with what to do when they are faced with bad behavior from men.

And so while something that happened 35 years ago at a high school party may seem totally insignificant now, the opposite is true. Our tolerance for violating behavior by boys is at the very heart of the conversation we’re having as a country in this #MeToo moment.   

What is extraordinary about the #MeToo movement for someone of my generation, who learned to “just deal with it,” is the unflinching demand that men must change their behavior, period. So far, it’s had some traction. We seem to have agreed, for example, that it’s not ok for a movie mogul to sexually harass and assault young actresses.  But are we ready to condemn drunken sexual violence by teenagers? We’re about to see.