I’m scrolling through comments occupied by third-wave feminists on a lopsided blog post about Bret Kavanaugh and why he should be staked to a cross and I stumble on the black sheep. She isn’t pledging allegiance to the mob of women chanting their thirst for the blood of another ‘powerful’ man. Instead, she’s decrying the future fate of her male child, and rightly so.
I’m scrolling through Instagram, hashtag Bret Kavanaugh, in a bid to follow the trail of the headlined story and what recurrently comes up are images and videos of enraged women of all races wielding placards with venge-fortified words, unanimously chanting “I believe her”.
Twitter is awash with #MeToo stories that (unfortunately) follow the same pattern: “I was molested by a man and I couldn’t voice out my pain because I was scared. I believe her.”
While these emotions are valid and in light of the alleged atrocities perpetrated by RKelly, these men fit into categories deserving of animals, I couldn’t withhold myself from wondering: Should I believe her because she’s female? Should I believe her because I can relate to her story? Or should I believe her because she’s telling the truth?
Sexual accusations have always been dicey. In the Bible, the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife stands out. It’s the standard story of woman wants a man; man refuses; woman becomes vengeful and accuses the man of sexual assault – the height of character malignancy.
In a similar vein, I’ve watched enough slave era re-enactment movies to know it only took the wrongful sexual accusation of a bitter white woman to end the life of a helpless black man.
But, this serpentine deception isn’t the characteristic of tech-less eras. Last year, a white woman called the police on a 9-year-old black boy who she accused of sexual assault in a New York deli. She apologized after a surveillance video provided by the store showed that the young boy didn’t touch her.
Where and how do we draw the line between truth and lie?
The farce of the public court systems which says burn first and ask questions later turns obsolete the wisdom of the law that states one is ‘innocent until proven guilty’. An unwise route. We as women shouldn’t be silenced but even our voices aren’t above the law.
Not to fall into the trap of appearing sanctimonious, but, I say I’m stoic until it is proven to be true, then, I believe.