A Second Front Door

My third son was supposed to be a daughter. So was my second one, come to think of it, but by the time we decided to have a third kid, we had transitioned from "oh, wouldn't it be lovely..." to a weirdly compulsive socio-genetic imperative. I was married to a driven, forceful Type-A woman making her way and her name in an industry dominated by men, including several recruited from places oversees where women regularly get lit on fire. It seemed incredibly important that our family included a representative of the XX set, for crafting into a feminist super soldier in the mold of her mother, but without the limiting baggage of having had to come of age in the virulent sexism of the 1990s.

I'm obligated (and happy to) say here that I couldn't imagine my life without the three boy-monsters I've been voluntarily saddled with, but neither am I going to say "I'm glad I never had a daughter" because that's not strictly true. I spoiled (and still spoil a bit... go on, lean in, you can smell it a little) to throw what punches I could in the fights she'd fight to carve out a space for herself in what I imagined would be an increasingly egalitarian future.

But see how I even manage to make my pretend daughter's struggle about me. Despite the screeching voice internet trolls and sports talk radio have tried to give it, patriarchy is subtle, pernicious, persistent. It's an infection endemic to all westerners, man and woman, one we all carry silently like HPV, that nobody really notices until it occasional flares up into, if you're a guy, the mild embarrassment of genital warts or, if you're a lady-person, often-fatal cervical cancer. What I'm getting at is I'm glad I never even have the option to be tempted with starting a sentence with "As a father of daughters..."

The tenor and timbre of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation struggle can't help but call back the yucky leitmotif of the Clarence Thomas debacle from more than a quarter century ago. A lot of what we thought we'd have by 2018 as markers of a futuristic society have yet to come to pass. This week I can't help but think of how gender equality is jetpacks. A perpetual un-promise trapped in the minds of fantasists, madmen, liars and salesmen.

I couldn't watch all of it, partly because I was at work and partly because I didn't want to. I didn't see any of the direct testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. I skimmed over the transcript of her prepared remarks and some summaries of her testimony and knew I'd best not risk breaking anything company-owned as she was subjected to questioning funneled through the gender-swapped avatar of the GOP Senate Judicial Committee brigade out there bravely defending the rights of people just like them: Christian, white, old as fuck and almost all 100% straight.*

I did watch a little of the nominee's remarks and I have to say, it's been a while since I've seen an adult launch into a full-fledged temper tantrum in public. I can tell you with absolute certainty that every single time I have seen that phenomenon occur, it's been a white man pulling it off. That was the face, voice, posture and whine of a person who has never been denied a single thing in his entire, wonderful, safe life. For Brett Kavanaugh, there is no such thing as cost. Cost is what everyone else pays once you leave the room. Once you're done with them and you never have to be inconvenienced with the sight of them again.

The sad thing is, I have almost no doubt that an obvious liar like Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, maybe before you even read this. And in the celebratory group photo with the other sitting justices that ensues, I hope they position him right next to Clarence Thomas so we can really see how little space there is between them.

Maybe I'm old and cynical and so very wrong, but nah, I doubt it. Very rarely rarely do historical forces align to produce a single moment where we can see so clearly how far we haven't come.

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*I'd never use the suggestion of homosexuality as a slur. Lindsey Graham can be closeted if he wants to be. And maybe he isn't, I don't know. Maybe all his bullshit righteous indignation today was an involuntary self-defense response when he recognized a fellow poon-hound. But I'm going to bet he's a hypocrite in more than just the ways he's public about. I call it the Newt Gingrich Theory of Congressional Behavior.