First of all, I haven’t been overly involved in politics and I’m definitely not American (Canadian and proud), but this situation is hard to ignore. So I wanted to put down some of my thoughts in writing. And hey, guess what, I happen to have a blog. So I guess you are coming along for the ride. I appreciate it more than you know, since I’m well aware that I’m leaving behind the ‘book blog’ idea for this post.

Second, this letter does include discussions about sexual assault. Please be aware of that going forward, even though my post will not discuss specifics in any case.

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To the 65 Women who Wrote a Letter of Support for Brett Kavanaugh:

While your support of someone who you call a good friend is admirable, I wonder if it is misplaced in this case. In your letter, you write “he had behaved honorably and treated women with respect” and “he has always been a good person.” The question that I feel I need to ask you then is: what do you think a sexual assaulter looks and acts like around people beside their victims?

Do you think that Bill Crosby acts like a sexual assaulter when he isn’t actually in the act of doing so? How about your President, Donald J. Trump? Brock Turner? Harvey Weinstein? Christina Garcia? Kevin Spacey? Someone you personally know? Did you think any of those people’s close friends thought they were assaulting people before it all came out? Probably not. 

And do you know why? Because anyone can commit sexual assault. Your friendly next door neighbor that you chat with every single day could be assaulting someone. Your doctor could be taking advantage of patients. Your best friend might have raped someone in high school and you might never know.

The ability to commit a horribly invasive crime, like sexual assault, against someone is not tied to how that person acts around the other people in their life. I will say it again. You can be a good person in every other aspect of your life and still sexually assault someone. These two things are not mutually exclusive. The requirement for other people to see you as a good person is not tied to whether or not you committed a terrible crime behind closed doors, or even not-so-closed doors.

I have to wonder if any of you have ever been sexually assaulted. I hope you haven’t. I have been lucky enough to not have gone through that myself, but I know a lot of people who have. I have heard the stories from people I am close to and those who needed a place to vent. Almost every single one of them would have said their assaulter was a good person up until they were attacked. Most of the other people who know the attacker would still say they are a good person.

A man can treat his wife and the other women in his life with all the respect in the world. However, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t attack a woman at a party one time. It doesn’t mean that he is somehow incapable of such a violent and intrusive act. Just because he has always been respectful of the 65 of you (64 now, I imagine, considering the reveal of one of his yearbooks) does not mean that he treats every woman in his life the same way.

The fact that he might be a good person does not mean that he can’t do a terrible thing. I wish you would have considered that before you signed that letter. If anything felt like a political ploy in this situation, it was your letter.

I can only hope that your country is able to come back from all of this some day in the future, but for now, I can only shake my head in dismay.

~A Fed-Up Blogger

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An article that is important to my open letter as it inspired it:

Kavanaugh and Ford might both be telling the truth. And that says something profoundly troubling about our world. by Rachel Reilich of Good Magazine

~I Believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez & Julie Swetnick