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Editor's Note: Jill Filipovic is a Washington-based journalist and author of the book "The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness." Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. The article has been updated considering the latest news.
(CNN) - The statistics are shocking, and it is not: a study published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that for one in 16 American women “the first time” was an unwanted sexual intercourse coerced or physically forced " As one of the co-authors of the study points out, "it is correct" to call him by his name: rape. Among women who did not experience a first sexual intercourse but a first rape, the average age was fifteen and a half years. Their aggressors were on average six years older; Adult men who abuse girls.
The stories of rape, aggression, abuse and coercion of women, at least, are increasingly told aloud. And it is difficult to read this new study and not draw parallels with other recent events: in particular, with the resurgence of accusations of sexual misconduct and aggression against Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh (who vehemently rejects them) and questions What should we do about it?
Kavanaugh is back in the news thanks to "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh," a book by New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who explores and corroborates accusations that have so far been little disseminated, made by his classmate in Yale Deborah Ramirez who said that, as a student, Kavanaugh put his penis in front of his face as a joke. According to press reports, the FBI never fully investigated the accusations, nor interviewed the people who approached to corroborate them. According to sources consulted by CNN, thanks to the restrictions imposed by the White House, the FBI never interviewed Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Commission, or Kavanaugh himself. The "investigation" was a farce, and the Trump administration made sure it was.
When this story returns to the news and threatens to delegitimize Kavanaugh's place in court (and, certainly, to continue staining his legacy), conservatives have launched the offensive. In this, the controversial handling that the Times made of another accusation and the president's bombastic tweets for the Department of Justice to "rescue" Kavanaugh (who has denied Ramírez's accusations) have given them arguments. Critics call Ramirez and discredited Liars Times reporters and even suggest that putting a penis in front of you is no big deal. And at least on that last point they are right. In a way, sexualized acts of abuse, disrespect, disdain and domination are constant for most women. They are our normality. And I suspect that almost all women in the country have been at some point on the receiving side of male domination exercised through sexual degradation. Maybe it was the shock of the whistles when you walked in your new summer shorts. Maybe it was a boy who put your penis in front of your face at a university party, because his friends thought it was funny to humiliate and intimidate you.
It is that constant murmur of normality that prepares the ground for the type of generalized coercion, control and violence that in turn give rise to the shocking finding that millions of American women were raped the first time they had sex and many millions were raped from there on. These violations, the study in JAMA points out, have serious consequences for women who experience them. Women who are raped the first time they have sex are more likely to have unplanned first pregnancies and abortions; are more likely to experience several gynecological problems such as pelvic inflammatory disease and endometriosis; and are more likely to drag psychological scars that manifest physically and report more illegal drug use, problems completing tasks and poor or regular health.
It is worrisome to read about these disturbing acts in life, about being raped as a sexual initiation; It is heartbreaking, if not quite surprising, how common this is. But supposedly smaller acts of coercion and degradation matter too. It is from these acts that girls learn that their bodies are not just theirs, that it is male prerogative to decide which girls are sexually desirable and valuable, and which girls will be sexually humiliated: a calculation that can change in an instant, and that is also made by men.
We teach young women and women the same lesson in our politics, a dynamic captured perfectly by Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation hearings: here is a man accused of perpetrating these sexual humiliations that women so well know, which is so good protected by other men that the supposed "investigation" do nothing to register the voices of so many women or their corroborators, which amounts to one of the positions with greater power in the country. That a woman's right to decide whether to reproduce and when to do so is debatable in this country is simply the continuation of the same arc of misogynistic domination and humiliation, which means that one in every 16 young Americans experience rape before sex with pleasure and pleasure .
All these lines merge in the history of Kavanaugh. And so does a difficult conclusion: he has his place in the Supreme Court with a lifetime designation and virtually zero chance of being removed. Yes, women are talking, and yes, that is powerful. And yet, sometimes, all we have left is the stories.
Translation of Mariana Campos
Brett Kavanaugh