Thread by @DCampoamor

Men like Kavanaugh believe causing women pain is just a rite of passage; a fun & entertaining exercise of their birthright on their way to positions of power. And we all watched how men like Kavanaugh respond when that birthright is questioned.

My abusive father laughed after he choked me unconscious. After hitting me he would stand over me & sneer. The abuse was an exercise of his power — a power he believed endoweded by god, because he was a devout Christian — and that exercise, for him, was fun. It was reassuring.

The man who raped me laughed when I begged him to stop. He taunted me when I tried to kick my way from underneath him. The rape was an exercise of his power — a power he believed he intrinsically held over women (he had assaulted his ex-girlfriend, too) — and it was, to him, fun.

To these men, abuse isn’t “harmless fun.” To these men abuse is 100% harmful and that IS the fun. The fun is the painful exercise of their power. The fun is the pain felt & expresses by those they consider less than.

Their fun is our loss of agency & safety & autonomy.

Kavanaugh is guaranteed a position of power for the rest of his life. He can & will try to cause the women of this country pain by denying them their constitutional right to abortion & autonomy. The pain is the fun. The fun he has been working toward & reveling in his whole life.

Seeing Kavanaugh’s name again & reading about his abusive behavior again is traumatizing. And ppl will think that’s “funny.” They’ll laugh at those of us who’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of “fun.” They’ll think last night’s nightmares & today’s anxiety are hilarious

Just like they laughed when we rallied in DC & lobbied elected officials & confronted Senators in an attempt to keep a serial abuser off the bench. Our anxiety, pain, fear, & the dread that permeates when we think about the end of our ability to control our bodies is “fun.”

The cruelty is the point. The harm is the point. Taking something away from someone “for the fun of it” & then watching them respond in pain & fear is the point. Reveling in our uncertainty to fortify their certainty in themselves is the point.

A man who believes sexual assault is a rite of passage he was intrinsically endowed to experience is a Supreme Court justice.

Unless he is impeached and removed from his position of power, the consequences of his appointment will continue to be devastating.

I’m at a loss as to how to continue to respond when serial abusers are rewarded. As a 5 yr old in pigtails, laying in a puddle of my own piss on our back porch, my cheek singeing with red-hot pain & already bruising after my father beat me, I truly believed it would get better.

As a rape survivor staring at the ceiling of an emergency room while my rape kit was administered, answering questions about how much I had to drink & how many sexual partners I’ve had, I truly thought this would all get better.

I refuse to believe that 5 yr old & that survivor were wrong. I don’t how to respond, but I don’t know how to stay silent, either.

Anyway I wrote about what Kavanaugh’s confirmation did to survivors (cnn.com/2018/09/27/opi…) & the sham FBI investigation (nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…)

If you’re struggling today, from past trauma that feels so present, from the Kavanaugh report, from the NYT’s horrid headline that only reinforced a culture that dismisses sexual violence as a “game,” please know that I see you, I hear you, I believe you.

You are not alone.