I Just Can’t Let It Go

I’m not about being political, in a national politics sort of way, but it’s difficult to start this week without commenting on the content of the Kavanaugh hearings and what they said about the role of women in powerful institutions – most notably for our purposes here, our own Church- and how this role and the women are endlessly subverted.

Contrasting the testimonies of Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh smacked us once again with examples of how women are seen and treated by those who want to discredit or undermine them. In the case of the hearings, this denigration came despite our present day fealty to “enlightened correctness”: in the case of the clerics of the Church, well, there is no present day, is there?

I start with certain partisan men in the hearings, determined to “appear” less aggressive and prosecutorial, “yielding” (as if!) their time to another woman to do their dirty work for them. Setting women against women: an old, nasty trick back with us again.

Then there was the testimony that sent me, generally a non-crier, to tears. (I purposely did not use the term “reduce” me to tears because that word is way too often used to denigrate women – or anyone genuinely sensitive.) When Dr. Ford was asked to relate her most indelible memory, she described the two men “laughing hysterically” as one was on top of her, pinning her down, and groping her. The other was just standing by watching – oh – and laughing.

That laughter in derision of her and of the situation was, indeed, most horrifying. It felt, to me, like the outer manifestation of what happens to us when we are thought of as less than – or not thought of at all. Her experience was the outer expression of their inner laughing us – or how we are seen or treated – off. It’s the reductive, dismissive negation that smacks us down over and over.

But it didn’t smack Dr. Ford down. She stood up for her principles, and we all watched certain types of men used to being totally in power respond with what some call the most “manly” signs of authority: bluster, outrage, accusation, derision, dismissal.

I think she is another role model for us to speak out and stand up, despite the “manly” tactics of the powerful trying to smack us down, for our own most principled goal: inclusion of women – of all genders – in all aspects of worship and leadership in the Catholic Church. Those in power cannot tire us out; they cannot laugh us off because we have such role models before us daily if we only look around – or perhaps – just look in the mirror.