you sir are a human cactus
Well it was a great weekend for Brett Kavanaugh and newspapers who don’t know what the fuck to write about sexual predators! Newspapers writing about sexual violence are like your old-school extended family the first time you bring your same-sex partner home for dinner: They use WAY too many words, work WAY too hard to appear savvy about an experience they’ve only seen on Will & Grace, and say some profoundly offensive shit.
You know that scene in season one of The Good Place where Janet has just been rebooted for the first time and Ted Danson keeps asking her for Eleanor’s file and she keeps handing him a cactus?
OK, yeah, so I feel like Ted Danson, and newspapers are Janet, and the stories they are printing about sexual violence are FUCKING CACTI, and by that I mean they’re NOT AT ALL WHAT I ASKED FOR, presented to me AS IF THEY ARE and YOU’RE WELCOME.
Me: Times?
NYT: (appears) Hi there!
Me: Hi, can I please have a story about how Brett Kavanaugh has been credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults, how the FBI failed to investigate these charges during his confirmation hearing, as well as the implications that such an accusation could have on a sitting SCOTUS justice who perjured himself, and the importance of believing survivors from the jump?
NYT: Here you go!
Me: That’s… not what I asked for.
NYT: Sure it is!
Me: No… no, see, okay. So I get the confusion here because yes, this story HAS sexual assault IN IT, but that’s a story about how Deborah Ramirez didn’t feel she fit in at Yale. That’s burying a sexual assault in the fourth graph. That’s pivoting to racism and classism at an Ivy League institution. WHICH IS A STORY THAT NEEDS TELLING, don’t get me wrong, but in this situation it also reads as a “Don’t blame Brett blame SOCIETY” maneuver. Oh, I will blame society, but since it wasn’t society smashing its ding-dong into women’s faces, I’m also going to need to talk to BRETT about this.
So I asked for a story about Brett Kav’s sexual assault and perjury, and the sound legal whuppin he should get for it, and you gave me…
NYT: This!
Me: Okay, between this fucking calamitous framing and the recycled white bro Opinion section lately, YA BENCHED, TIMES. Go back to your hole.
NYT: Okey dokey! (disappears)
(Cleansing breath)
Me: Independent?
Independent: (appears) Cheerio!
Me: Hi, yeah, I need a story about how Brett Kavanaugh has been credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults, the implications that such an accusation could have on a sitting SCOTUS justice who perjured himself, and the importance of taking survivors seriously when they come forward.
Independent: Here you go!
Me: Wut
Independent: You’re welcome!
Me: No. That’s not what I asked for.
Independent: Of course it is! It has many of the words you mentioned: Kavanaugh, accused, assault, FBI… also “unbelievable” and “false” and “such lies”!
Me: Noooooo… It’s a fucking cactus is what it is. It’s a story about President Trump’s stupid brain, is what it is. It’s a chance for a media outlet to platform one rapey dudebro’s Twitter defense of another rapey dudebro. Honestly, can you please… just… one time… NOT have the WORST possible take of a sexual assault? Seriously? One time?
Independent: I don’t understand.
Me: Go away.
Independent: Roger that! (disappears)
(cleansing Lizzo)
Me: CNBC?
CNBC: (appears) Howdy!
Me: Hi. Okay. So, I need--
CNBC: I heard everything before. Boy, that sounded frustrating. I mean, is it 2019 or what?
Me: Right?!?
CNBC: Those other ding-dongs just did not get it, huh?
Me: Ha, no. No, they didn’t. Do you think you could--
CNBC: Way ahead of you, babe. Here you go. One article about Brett Kavanaugh’s actions, the implications of those actions, and the broader implications of systemic power structures that devalue women’s experiences and voices and bully survivors into silence in order to maintain a stranglehold on the patriarchy.
Me:
CNBC: No way! It’s a well-researched, editorially sound, ethical piece of journalistic reporting on Brett Kavanaugh’s history of sexual violence and lying under oath.
Me: Wow. Thank you, like, so much. You have no idea how much I needed—
Me: Fuck off.
CNBC: Okay!
Me: Wait, actually before you go, I want to be CRYSTAL CLEAR about this. Fuck off directly off the viewing deck of the Empire State Building, into a flock of pigeons with post-Nathan’s-hot-dog diarrhea, and keep fucking off until you drown in pigeon shit or smash into the sidewalk below, whichever happens first.
CNBC:
(cleansing 40)
Yeah, gosh, why would a woman who’d been assaulted by a sitting SCOTUS justice decline to put her face, name, and life in the center of a political and cultural bullseye? After we all watched what happened to Dr. Ford (who had to move FOUR TIMES, hire private security, and as far as I could find online, still hasn’t been able to return to work) the answer seems clear: she didn’t want to be named and interviewed because bitches be lyin’ and there’s a WAR ON MEN!
Luckily, more than 24 hours after the first articles came out this weekend, a few outlets have gotten their swing back (such as it is) - and by that I mean they ARE covering the legal ramifications of perjury, they ARE discussing the facts of the investigation around Ramirez’s experience, and they ARE reporting on the FBI’s failure to pick up a goddamn phone and call one of the 25 people that Ramirez named to corroborate her report during Kavanaugh’s fucking confirmation hearing which would have been like SUPER FUCKING USEFUL INFORMATION TO HAVE LAST YEAR.
I mean, sure, they’re still referencing the book, “1,001 OTHER things to call rape in your headlines,” and yeah, no, they’re definitely still celebrating the athletic and academic achievements of rapists, and OH YEAH, they’re FOR SURE still phrasing sexual violence in the passive voice, like “She was raped,” rather than “He raped her,” but hey! In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, and in the land of the fundamentally fucked-up conversations about sexual violence, if you manage to string together a sentence that doesn’t mention the clothes she was wearing or his grades in Econ, you get to wear the crown!
Well, what’s done is done and that’s piss under a bridge at this point, but I will say this louder for the folks who are just joining us:
Rape and sexual violence are underreported crimes because survivors feel shame, fear of public humiliation or further traumatizing violence, and a justifiable total lack of faith in the justice system.
Media outlets reporting on sexual violence don’t need to find a FRESH ANGLE on it. Hi, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh has repeatedly forced himself on numerous women in front of numerous witnesses. That’s ENOUGH. Why not just… write that? When you reframe it, you might be swinging to broaden the discussion to encompass the power structures that enable abuse, which is a worthy intention, but it reads as diffusing the man’s personal responsibility.
It reads as though this specific woman’s experience at the hands (etc.) of this specific man aren’t important enough on their own. And if there’s a single concept that underpins the entire ideology behind minimizing, whatabouting, and sensationalizing sexual violence in media, it is that one woman’s pain “doesn’t really matter that much,” and any man can make “one terrible mistake.”
In short, if you write headlines or EVEN ARTICLES, you need to do it better and do it now, and if you can’t, then for fuck’s sake you can always quit and start that cactus farm - you’re already serving arid, spiky nonsense so just fucking own it.
Am I doing it? Hey, look, I think I’m doing it! I’m cactus farming! WHEEEEEEE
In the meantime, I propose we give Ronan Farrow 20 billion dollars to start a news organization that can have some fucking editorial responsibility and human ethics around reporting on sexual violence.