The U.S. Believes in Everything but Women
The bizarre theories about Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh show our country still doesn’t understand sexual assault
Since Christine Blasey Ford first came forward with sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, she’s been subjected to a torrent of conspiracy theories, ranging from merely vile to fantastically ridiculous. The spectacle is a demonstration of something feminists have been saying for years: In America, anything is more credible than a woman who reports her own sexual assault.
The more mundane theories—that Blasey is a high-powered Democratic donor or that she routinely makes false allegations—are gross, but they pale in comparison to the rejected sci-fi screenplays currently airing on cable news. On Fox News, Jeaninne Pirro suggested that Blasey had been hypnotized and made into some kind of Manchurian candidate by her therapist—in 2012, years before anyone could have known that Brett Kavanaugh would be nominated. In the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker suggested that Kavanaugh had a rapist doppelgänger who was going around attacking girls in his name. That doppelgänger theory has since been propounded by conservative activist Ed Whelan, who used Zillow screenshots and yearbook photos to claim that a specific…
