Male Pain Is Male Power
Men hold the world hostage to their fragility and vulnerability — making female pain the inevitable cost of their comfort
“I was very emotional last Thursday,” Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the Wall Street Journal a few days before his confirmation, “more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times.”
“Emotional” was one way to put it. Anyone who read those sentences knew what he was referring to: the wailing, screeching, raging monologue Kavanaugh put the nation through in response to being credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women. The one in which he veered, several times per minute, between red-faced toddler rage and weeping Hallmark sentimentality. At one point, his daughter was invoked to say she “prayed for” his alleged victim (referred to as “the woman”). At another, Kavanaugh wept openly when referring to his father Edward’s love of calendars. This caused some confusion later on when news outlets revealed that Edward Kavanaugh was not dead.
“Emotional.” The word applied, comfortably, to a lot of women that day. It applied to Christine Blasey Ford, on the witness stand, whose voice trembled and cracked as she described Kavanaugh’s “uproarious laughter” while assaulting her. It applied to many of the women watching…
