it is, i’m afraid. hi-profile skum reinstatement
it’s an extravagance to say that sexual violence has become the dominant method of political discourse over the last few years, but most survivors and women I know felt something like that during the Christine Blasey Ford testimony and its ghastly aftermath
ironic, then, that the distinction is defended by Brett Kavanaugh, the rapist who has profited most from the reduction of politics to intent
and then of course, the criminal situation in which this matters most—in which the intentions of *all* parties are weighed—is rape. every rape defense amounts to “I believed she consented”—maybe in some cases true—but that question is in a sense tangential to the damages incurred by an act of rape.
it’s like one effect of the Trump years has been the reduction of politics to questions of intention, where Trump can never be culpable because we can’t prove his intentions—“collusion,” “locker room talk,” “pursuing all available legal remedies” etc etc
thinking about this distinction in the Kavanaugh concurrence. it’s one that is so essential to constitutional government of any kind, and yet seems almost impossible to reconstruct from the perspective of the present
Robertson dead and Alabama sent packing: pricks of light in the apocalyptic gloam.
i hope it’s obvious that low-T Gwendolyn Christie is intended to convey praise both for the gentle giantess and her mean, fragile doppelgänger
