What Susan Collins Could Have Said

Susan Collins on her vote to confirm Kavanaugh

Those who believe in social justice and equality, equal treatment under law, are very upset about the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.  It is a step backward socially and politically for this country.

Why say that? Socially, sure. But politically?

The Supreme Court is the very court that defined sexual harassment at a propitious point in our political history. The rape of employees — sex against their will— involuntary sexual relations, became a type of sex discrimination, one of the three types of sexual harassment. Sexual discrimination in employment had been illegal as far back as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But harassing on the basis of sex in the workplace became a criminal act following the High Court's hearing of Vinson v Meritor Bank in 1986.

Mechelle Vinson put up with demands for sex, pawing, public humiliation, and rape, from her boss fearing dismissal otherwise—until she could no longer take it anymore, quit, and sued Meritor Bank. This became the first "hostile environment" case to come before the Supreme Court. The judges found it despicable and ruled that the hostile environment based upon sex to be a type of sex discrimination.

The Supreme Court has heard many other cases since then, many quid pro quo, many about gender harassment (a second type of hostile environment), others about unwanted sexual attention. Women have been protected to the extent that their resources, evidence, and energy hold up during litigation.

Now what will happen?  Will employment decisions, definitions, roll back to the States? How did a man accused of attempted rape become an appointee to the Supreme Court, anyway?

Let's answer just that question because it is easy.  He's brilliant and accomplished, and has a majority — only because a woman (who shouldn't have) Susan Collins, voted for him, as did a male Democrat (who shouldn't have) Joe Manchin III (struggling to keep his democratic seat in West Virginia — a red state).  Manchin could have, should have, voted like his fellow Democrats, but decided to stick with his own best interests. This is the answer to the question, self-interest.

Politics is a selfish business. Stay in office, forget your own personal scruples.

So Manchin, we understand, almost. But Susan Collins truly failed us. A Republican, but a woman, too, a traitor, so to speak, who deciding the evidence too weak against Kavanaugh, who wondered perhaps, if Christine Blasey Ford was assaulted by someone else.

This conclusion leads some of us to be believe Collins surely is not one of the one in five who have suffered a rape, nor is she a one in four who beat off an attempted rape.  Because the face of the person who holds you down is not a face that you ever forget.

She had the opportunity to change history, to change a process, and she blew it. She could have said something that would truly change history. She could have, in the process, depoliticized the Supreme Court:

Judge Kavanaugh may be innocent, he may be guilty; his guilt is unclear. But that there is even a suspicion of doubt about his character as a High Court Justice of these United States, I am compelled to say NO to his appointment.

This country needs men and women with no history as a possible perpetrator of exploitation or abuse. For this position, especially, the country needs independent, fair-minded men and women who do not, have never, succumbed to group think, who do not do what the other boys do, will not merely vote a certain way because it is expected, by a group, to do so. This is the Supreme Court. The judges need to be that, supreme, the cream of the crop, individuated and fair, inscrutable.

So NO, Mr. Chairman. I vote no.

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in the highest echelons of American power and politics tells us that the majority of the powerful have not learned anything about the essence and perversion of power, and closed their eyes to the prevalence, the classlessness of exploitation. It is confirmation that women are still a minority. Tell your daughters, friends, that they MUST run for positions of power to turn that around, and tell your sons-- be individuated, fair, and always, kind.

At some point, people like Susan Collins will age out.

Linda Freedman, PhD