{"id":378861,"date":"2018-09-27T22:53:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T21:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ford-has-spoken-her-truth-now-the-senate-must-stand-against-sexual-violence\/"},"modified":"2018-09-27T22:53:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T21:53:16","slug":"ford-has-spoken-her-truth-now-the-senate-must-stand-against-sexual-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ford-has-spoken-her-truth-now-the-senate-must-stand-against-sexual-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford Has Spoken Her Truth. Now the Senate Must Stand Against Sexual Violence."},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Today, as Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the allegations of sexual assault that she has made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a central duplicity hung over the proceeding: It is not necessarily true that most senators do not believe the stories of women like Blasey Ford and Anita Hill. It is that many think these allegations do not matter.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know a single adult man in his fifties or over who has not heard of or known someone who participated in some form of sexual harassment or worse. A courageous few have spoken out and confronted other men on their bad behavior. Many more remain silent as a condition for inclusion as \u201cone of the guys.\u201d Gang rapes at parties \u2014 like the ones that Julie Swetnick has described Kavanaugh as having committed or been privy to \u2014 are at the far end of a familiar spectrum packed with other violations. If one in every six women is a victim of assault, then a whole lot of men are complicit. But the senators feign outrage and ignorance of the prevalence of such behavior, especially by men of high socioeconomic and educational status like Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n<p>Any number of unpardonable excuses are likely to dance in the heads of the Republican defenders of Kavanaugh in the Senate in response to Blasey Ford\u2019s testimony:<em> It was long ago. Boys will be boys. Women were drunk and got what they deserved.<\/em> Additionally, it is likely that many of these Republican defenders view unwanted \u201cgroping and grinding\u201d as harmless and in a category altogether different than what is legally defined as rape: non-consensual penetration. In many cases groping and grinding and physical constraint are in fact attempted rape. Whether there is intent to rape or not, other forms of sexual assault can terrorize and traumatize a survivor for her entire life.<\/p>\n<p>There is never an excuse for sexual assault. If a woman is intoxicated, she cannot give consent, period. And violence against women \u2014 which includes&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/blasey-ford-has-spoken-her-truth-now-the-senate-must-stand-against-rape\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, as Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the allegations of sexual assault that she has made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a central duplicity hung over the proceeding: It is not necessarily true that most senators do not believe the stories of women like Blasey Ford and Anita Hill. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-378861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}