In college, I was in a serious, loving relationship with a woman who had been drugged, bound and violently raped by a man with the help of his two roommates. The date rape operation they devised was so evil and so calculated that I knew this could not have been the first time. They were serial rapists, serial predators, serial criminals.
And they’re still on the loose.
She never spoke up. She never called the cops.
I never understood it then. I only kind of do now, to be honest.
But behavior that starts young and goes unpunished, uncorrected –– does it stop? Do we let it slide? Do we, as free and good people, enable this?
This is not about “rape culture” as though every man, somewhere deep inside, is a rapist. That’s bullshit. This is about failing to bring justice to bear against the that tiny fraction of men who predate with impunity, who are criminals, who belong in jail alongside all the murderers and the dudes serving 20 years for slinging dime bags of weed in the wrong part of town.
We deserve justices who are just.
Did Kavanaugh do it? I dunno for sure yet. But we should sure as hell find out. Because if the man did in fact attempt rape once and receive no punishment, the odds are it was not a sole instance.
No such man belongs on the Supreme Court of this great country––my country––The United States of America.
This post was a response to I Believe Her by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic.
