Essays in Idleness

I once kissed a girl. This was at a dance, back in high school. I could say, “she was asking for it,” but this would leave the wrong impression. There were several witnesses — I can remember only the name of the girl, that she was very sweet, and that she was not my girlfriend. Indeed, one of the witnesses was her boyfriend, then known to me. He did not object. It was on the cheek I kissed her, but I think that might count as “groping” today. I don’t know what came over me. She smiled upon my behaviour at the time, even though, as a toxic male, I may have stepped on her foot while we were dancing. Bad news if she is a feminist today, and I get appointed to the Supreme Court. My only hope is that Mr Trompe will overlook me, after his advisers explain that I am a foreign national and have no law degree.

Now, I’m aware that some males, even in high school, do worse than kissing females on the cheek, but I have grown almost tired of hearing it. The fact is like the warnings on cigarette packs: I tire of reading those, too. Perhaps the point has been made, already. Perhaps it never needed to be made.

A friend forwards a news item from a Connecticut university (Yale). It seems law students, all dressed in black, have staged a sit-in there and refused to take classes. This is because they are protesting the existence of their alum, a certain Brett Kavanaugh, as nominee to the American Supreme Court. There is a photo of them, in their considerable numbers, lining a very long corridor. The thought occurs: this is the (Maoist) future of law in those Natted States. (It’s worse up here.)

The kids (including quite a few professors) “know” Kavanaugh is guilty, of groping some girl in high school, thirty-six years ago. But of course the real charges are that he is white, male, Republican, and a practising Christian.

Judge Kavanaugh went to a Jesuit all-boys high school, and can apparently show that he did not attend the party where the event was first alleged to have occurred; though as in all coached, “recovered memory” cases, venue and particulars tend to change. All named witnesses have denied that a sexual assault, or anything like it, actually happened. An extraordinary number of old friends and colleagues — including more than a hundred women, and many who have known him since childhood — have come forward on their own initiative to attest that Kavanaugh has been an exemplary gentleman, of unusual consistency — one whom they cannot imagine ever having abused a lady. The unsubstantiated (and unsubstantiable) charges are, moreover, an obvious political stunt, to delay Kavanaugh’s appointment until after the mid-term elections when the Democrats hope to control Congress. It was not their first theatrical stunt to spread chaos through the Senate hearings, and may not be their last. (I doubt it will be the last “symbolic” theatrical event at Yale, either.)

Well, gentle reader will know all this and more from the news, if he reads it from more than one ideological perspective. (One must read both sides to get basic information: the “mainstream” media habitually suppress vital details that contradict their “narratives.”)

It is true I am not a feminist, or even a latter-day Marxist, so may be accused of “bias” against ideological phantasies which I hold to be insane. Yet what disturbs me most, at the moment, is not the politics, per se. Rather it is the account they give of the contemporary American woman. It is widely suggested that the Republicans are in a trap: for whether the Kavanaugh appointment is confirmed, or not, there will be a “backlash” against them from female voters who assume all smears against the judge are true, and that his accuser is a selfless, disinterested, patriot and martyr.

The idea that women, just because they are women, cannot grasp the most elementary principles of evidence and jurisprudence — innocent till proven guilty, &c — is alarming. It is to put American women on a level with Yale students: a very grave charge. It is open misogyny.