Hi Sara! I don't know you, and I don't hold this tweet against you. But I'm going t o use it as an example because think it gives us a chance to have an important conversation about something a lot of folks miss when we talk about sexual violence.
In many ways, the person who raped me was (and I imagine probably is) a good man. He was undeniably sharp, an incredibly talented musician, and he absolutely doted on his mom in a truly admirable way.
There are people in his life who don’t believe he hurt me, and it’s complicated to say, but I absolutely understand. I didn’t believe he was capable of what he ended up doing, or I never would have allowed him close to me.
I’m no longer mad that people testified on behalf of his character, the girlfriends and exes who vouched for his kindness and carefulness.
I’ve spent years coming to this place: the one where I can accept that the women who told the investigators what a gentleman he was were telling the truth.
But here is what they misunderstood and what eventually all of the investigators and everyone else seemed to misunderstand. They were telling the truth. And, I was telling the truth, too.
Because people are so complicated, and each of us holds a lot of truths at once. The person who hurt me could be a “good man” and an abuser. Most of them are.
It’s okay for you to know and love Brett. It’s okay to hold the good experiences you have had with him dear. Those things are true for you and can’t be made untrue.
But by the same token, those things also don’t have the power to make the story of the woman he hurt untrue. They don’t take away the reality that he could and did cause someone else harm.
Your truths don’t preclude Dr. Blasey Ford’s. People can be (and usually are) good and bad and in between all at once.
It’s almost painful to reckon with these nuances. We would be safer if we could sort the world into either/or. Realizing we can’t is messy. It means wrecking our heroes and humanizing our most hated.
But we have to get to a place where we understand this because it’s the only way we truly can grapple with sexual violence. Because ending sexual violence necessarily means accepting that people we love can be (and ARE, all the time) complicit in violence.
If we spend our time searching for monsters, we won’t stop rape. Because a lot of rape is not perpetrated by monsters. It’s perpetrated by (mostly) men. Men we know and value and who are at once kind and harmful.
Our power is in our ability to see them in all of their complexity and demand better.
So the person who hurt me was a fantastic musician. And he also raped a woman.
Brett Kavanaugh is a good jurist, and he held a woman down and covered her mouth to stop her screams.
Brett Kavanaugh is a good jurist, and he held a woman down and covered her mouth to stop her screams.
“We contain multitudes.” And we owe it to one another to grapple with them all.
