in addition to supporting and listening and engaging politically, there is another thing my fellow dudes and I can do: look around our respective worlds and double-check for assault survivors whose stories we may have shrugged off
what the GOP is doing is historically ugly in one sense, but in another sense it's life as usual: dudes shrugging and not involving themselves in women's pain. "I know him. I don't know her." "who knows what happened." "not my business"
this is hardly the first time a woman has come forward against a powerful assaulter, only to see him avoid consequences thanks to the silence of men around him. this happens in every industry. there are several recent examples in mine
I believe Christine Blasey Ford's account of what Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge did to her
I believe Suzie Hardy's account of what Ryan Seacrest did to her 
I believe Chloe Dykstra's account of what Chris Hardwick did to her
and I believe Dana and Julia's account of what Dave Becky did to them
while the scales are smaller, each of these scenarios has gone the way we fear the Ford/Kavanaugh scenario will. the guilty man denies. the guys who know him largely stay quiet. investigations into the woman's claims are half-assed at best. he keeps his job. she gets no justice
Seacrest used his power to slough off Hardy's accusations... E!'s investigation was such a joke they didn't even talk to witnesses she put forward. but that guy lives and dies with celebrity access. a couple famous actors speaking out against him would've mattered. it still would
Hardwick denied assaulting Dykstra per se but otherwise failed to refute any of her lucid detailed claims... his defenses ("as a future father") were as laughable as Kavanaugh's. most guys around Hardwick (tellingly!) did not speak up in his defense... even fewer spoke up in hers
Dave Becky kneecapped the careers of multiple women to protect the guy who'd jerked off in front of them. his apology ("I only knew of this one isolated incident") was a joke. 3 Arts suspended him for zero days. last I heard John Mulaney was the only one male client who left him
it wasn't inevitable that these men would avoid legitimate investigations. if more guys around them had taken their accusers' accounts seriously things would've gone differently. but most guys didn't take them seriously. "I know him, I don't know her." "it's none of my business"
the obscenity we're watching in Washington isn't sui generis... it's a macro version of a dynamic we all live and work and love in. you can hate Republicans all you want but if you're ignoring the Fords in your orbit you belong on the same spectrum as them
I try to avoid speaking this broadly... Lord knows the last thing the world needs is a performative wokeboi. but part of what makes GOP Senators the monsters they are is their disinterest in the inconvenient claims of women. it's a trap all men can fall into. avoid it. work at it
