Kavanaugh-Blasey Ford Hearing: A Dramatic Lesson On Gender Roles

In this photo combination, Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018 in Washington. (Pool Image via AP)
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NEW YORK (AP) — He let his anger flare repeatedly, interrupted his questioners and cried several times during his opening statement. She strived to remain calm and polite, despite her nervousness, and mostly held back her tears.

Throughout their riveting, nationally televised testimony on Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh served as Exhibits A and B for a tutorial on gender roles and stereotypes. Amid the deluge of reaction on social media, one prominent observation: Ford, as a woman, would have been judged as a far weaker witness had she behaved as Kavanaugh did.

“Imagine a woman openly weeping like this on a national stage and still getting elected to the Supreme Court. Or any office,” tweeted Joanna Robinson, a senior writer with Vanity Fair.

Kavanaugh, nominated to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, mixed tears with fury in his statement forcefully denying Ford’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her in 1982 when they were both in high school. He choked up at several points when referring to how his family has been affected by the tempest surrounding allegations by Ford and other women.

Opponents of Kavanaugh’s nomination said his behavior demonstrated a lack of judicial temperament. Some supporters said they were moved to tears when he broke down.

Later, during questioning by some of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic members, Kavanaugh aggressively interrupted his interrogators and even asked sharp questions of his own.

“Have you ever drank so much you didn’t remember what happened?” asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat.

“Have you?” countered Kavanaugh. He later apologized.

Ford, in contrast, sought to present herself as cooperative and respectful, expressing her wish that “we could collaborate in a way that could get at more information.”

“I’m used to being collegial,” she said at one point.

At another, she said when asked about her emotional state: “I think that’s a great question.”

Zoe Chance, a marketing professor at Yale School of Management, said that in terms of winning over public opinion, Ford and Kavanaugh “are both doing the right thing.” She cited research indicating that men could seem more influential and competent through shows of anger, and women less so.

“When women express strong emotions, we judge them to be emotional — or, in the extreme, ‘hysterical,'” Chance said in an email. “When men express strong emotions, we infer that they must be facing extreme situations.”

However, Chance was unsure that Kavanaugh’s anger was effective in this case.

“In this particular situation, the emotional display casts doubt on his ability to be dispassionate and objective as a judge,” Chance suggested. “If we value the ability to separate emotion from facts, then Ford has behaved more judge-like than Kavanaugh has. ”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said some of Kavanaugh’s statements “were more consistent with one’s expectations of a partisan than a judge or prospective associate justice of the Supreme Court.”

“It is unusual to see a middle aged professional —male or female_experience the range of emotions in public in a formal setting expressed by Judge Kavanaugh,” Jamieson said in an email. “We expect judges to sound and seem dispassionate.”

Michael Cunningham, a psychology professor at the University of Louisville, said he found Ford’s body language and tone of voice to be persuasive.

“Her generally calm and soft-spoken, yet firm, voice seemed consistent with the feminine sex-role,” he said. “At the end, I believe she retained her credibility.”

As for Kavanaugh, Cunningham said the nominee “was successful in conveying the emotions of a man who has convinced himself that he has done nothing wrong.” But the professor had doubts about the impact of Kavanaugh’s show of emotions.

“Judge Kavanaugh tearing up when mentioning his daughter conveyed a man who was feeling sorry for himself,” Cunningham said. “Society wants men to be sympathetic, and even tearful at times, but not for themselves.”

Glenn Sacks, a commentator who writes often about men’s issues, expressed dismay at social-media derision being directed at Kavanaugh due to his emotional displays.

“The mocking of his demeanor is indicative of the restraints still upon men — no weakness allowed, suck it up or get laughed at,” Sacks said in an email. “Men are taught this at an early age — when women cry, we sympathize. When a man cries, it’s so unseemly we can barely stand to look at it.”

Jo Langford, a Seattle-based therapist who works with men and boys who have committed sexual offenses, said he was struck by the contrast between Kavanaugh’s anger and Ford’s “stable and straightforward cadence.” He concluded that Ford may have fared better in the court of public opinion.

Among those closely following the hearing was Danielle Campoamor, a New York-based writer and editor who says she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker five years ago.

Ford “was calm in a way every sexual assault victim is asked to be, lest they be written off as ‘unhinged’ and ’emotional’ and, as a result, no longer credible,” Campoamor said.

“Kavanaugh, by contrast, was unapologetically angry. … He embodied the anger so many sexual assault victims fear; the anger that keeps so many of us from coming forward.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Is it maybe more on target to say that the fitting binary here isn’t female/male but accuser/accused?

  2. Too me his anger just seem more like a sign of being mad about getting caught then being falsely accused. Like I mentioned in another post I feel like a lot of past 20 men that were wild as hell in their teens and 20s, turn 180 when they get married and have kids. They suddenly quit all their bad habits and get very conserative and religious. I have several friends from college that did just this thing. They probably didn’t push themselves too far with women, but they liked to drink, party and get laid with a lot of different women. And I really feel like that is the case with Kavanaugh. As far as his claim about being a virgin, I can sort of believe that too. I also liked to drink and party and date a lot of women in college, but was pretty bashful so didn’t actually get laid until almost a year out of college with a woman that fit my ideal looks wise, I enjoyed her personality, and she basically threw herself at me. Probably too much info, but just why I can kind of believe that even if he assaulted women he might not have gone all the away with them.

    The real issue is his provable lies during these questioning, and he’s loss of control yesterday. They are just not Judge material in my mind, regardless of which side of the aisle he leans. He seems like an intelligent guy but too much like Trump control wise.

  3. To the extent that the accuser is almost always female and the accused is male, I think the genders can stand. In keeping them we also are reminded of the double standards that are pervasive in our society and most alarmingly as represented by our elected officials (and judiciary) who continue to be predominantly men who’ll tell women how it’s going to be.

    FYI: 23 women in the senate, 84 women in the House, 19.3 %, and in a country which is about 50-50 women and men.

  4. Avatar for quin quin says:

    On Kavanaugh’s behavior, think Brock Turner and Brock Turner’s father: self pity and misogyny on full display. It wasn’t funny in 1982 to write about a woman in your yearbook as a slut; it’s not funny today either.

    But this article could have been a lot better if the photos of Ford were not just those of her looking anguished and scared. I watched the whole thing. Most of the time she looked calm and composed. By contrast Kavanaugh rarely looked anything but angry and contemptuous. Why not choose photos that showed her in a more realistic light?

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