Me Too

Kevin Cramer currently leads Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp by an average of nearly 9 points – a polling advantage that increased markedly over the past two weeks, as the congressman was pushing his “make attempted rape okay again” message.

Nevertheless, Heitkamp persisted in her opposition to Kavanaugh. Despite the perils of defying the president in a state he won by 36 points, the senator declined to vote for the judge’s confirmation – even after it was clear that her vote would make no practical difference either way (which is to say, even after Susan Collins gave a certain other red state Democrat his cue to join the winning team) In a statement explaining her decision, the senator expressed solidarity with sexual assault survivors. And when Heitkamp got win of Cramer’s latest reflections on #MeToo Sunday, she didn’t mince words. Here’s the Times again:

“The better part of my career in public life has been working with victims,” said Ms. Heitkamp, a former state attorney general. “Did you ask him how many victims during this process he actually sat down with, and survivors he sat down with, and visited with personally?”

Then Ms. Heitkamp’s voice grew thick with emotion.

“I think it’s wonderful that his wife has never had an experience, and good for her, and it’s wonderful his mom hasn’t,” she said. “My mom did. And I think it affected my mom her whole life. And it didn’t make her less strong.”

With tears welling in her eyes, Ms. Heitkamp stared intently at a reporter and continued:

“And I want you to put this in there, it did not make my mom less strong that she was a victim. She got stronger and she made us strong. And to suggest that this movement doesn’t make women strong and stronger is really unfortunate.”

Ms. Heitkamp’s mother, Doreen, died in April at 88 on what would have been her 66th wedding anniversary. The senator said her mother was sexually assaulted as a teenager.

Alas, in North Dakota, indignation on behalf of sexual assault survivors doesn’t play as well as unflinching loyalty to Donald J. Trump. The Roughrider State is much whiter, and a bit less college-educated, than America as a whole – and 59 percent of white voters without college diplomas found Kavanaugh more credible than Ford, according to a Quinnipiac poll released last week.

But, for her part, Heidi Heitkamp would rather lose a referendum on #MeToo, then remain strategically neutral on the question of whether the women who make up that movement are “tough.”

I’d seen him around quite a bit at uni. He was good-looking and smart. People talked about him like he was a celebrity. I’d had a fling with one of his friends six months earlier, but we’d never spoken properly. He seemed to shimmer whenever I saw him, and was always surrounded by a group of male friends who all had the effortless cool of people who knew they had the world at their feet.

Later, I woke up lying in the grass. The bass from the party thudded faintly through the ground. I was reassured that I hadn’t gone too far. It was cold, the ground was damp with dew. There was someone on top of me, he was trying to force himself inside me, but my body had frozen. I realised that it was not a dream. I saw who it was. The shock hit me – how could it be him? I knew him, everyone knew him. People you know don’t do this, do they? Had I somehow made him think this was OK?

"I’m going to count you as a notch on my bedpost no matter what,” he said in a low, gruff voice. When I’d heard him speak before, his voice was soft. Now he sounded angry and frustrated.

I knew what I was supposed to do – tell people, call the police – but I was scared that I would be judged for getting too drunk, wearing an almost see-through dress, or taking illegal drugs. They would ask how I ended up lying on the ground with him, on my own with him, and I wouldn’t be able to answer because I didn’t remember. They would ask if he had spiked my drink. I thought he had, but I wouldn’t be able to say for sure either way.

I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I worried that nobody would believe me. I didn’t want to be questioned. I wasn’t ready. If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would report it, but I didn't. Like so many others, I stayed silent - 85% of those who experience sexual violence in England and Wales today don't report it.

go with: “That’s O.K. I’m not interested in dating anyone who doesn’t understand consent.”

outdated

Image the roles reversed. If a woman told me at the end of dinner:

I almost always am the first person to initiate physical intimacy in a new relationship, starting with kissing. Probably that has to do with cultural expectations, and maybe with evolution...

There are cultures where both genders equally initiate. Mauritania is a case in point. I lived a year there and was routinely oggled, heckled and exposed to pretty explicit noises/body language by Mauritanian ladies, downtown, in full daylight with folks around...