Texas echo opinion about a Brett Kavanaugh flash back

This is another woman's point of view published in The Dallas Morning News.  A certain level of sympathy was extended to the Judge and now Justice Kavanaugh, in the defense of his unproven innocence, in the face of sexual misconduct. Yet, the compelling testimony given by Dr.Christine Blasey Ford had a heart breaking impact on many women who experienced similar or worse assaults.

Peggy Wehmeyer is the author of this opinion. She is an American journalist

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/10/02/gut-wrenching-flip-flop-brett-kavanaugh

Opinion by Peggy Wehmeyer 

I had made up my mind before the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that Christine Blasey Ford was most likely set up and manipulated by shrewd partisans hoping to derail Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Maybe something did happen at a high school party where Kavanaugh and his buddies drank too much. 

But certainly, I thought, his inappropriate high school behavior shouldn't disqualify him from the Supreme Court more than three decades later. After all, he didn't rape her, and bad boys grow up.

I've changed my mind. Maybe because I turned on the hearings while I was rocking my 1-year-old granddaughter, Anita, to sleep in the same oak rocking chair I had rocked my daughter in and my mother had once rocked me. I've never identified with activist feminists, but the symbolism of that rocking chair, which has held three generations of women in my family, stirred something warrior-like in me.

I approached the hearing like a journalist — detached and skeptical. Earlier in the week, I told my grown daughters that I was prepared to judge whether Blasey's testimony was made up or exaggerated by how emotional she became.

"If she cries," I said, "and presents herself as a traumatized victim of something minor that happened decades ago, I won't believe her."

But as soon as Blasey began to describe her high school encounter with Brett Kavanaugh, clearly vulnerable and voice trembling, I knew she was sincere. I knew it because I've been to those parties. I know those stories. The details were credible and she delivered them with raw emotional force. Finding Blasey persuasive doesn't make Kavanaugh a liar to me. It brings up other questions in my mind, such as, how much he would remember if he experienced a night of excessive drinking.

With my granddaughter in my arms, I also couldn't help wondering, "Why have so many of us minimized our stories of sexual assault and predation?"

When I enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin as a freshman in 1973, my chauvinistic father told me to join a sorority, find a rich husband and major in home economics so I could become a good wife. When I pledged, a couple of popular senior girls prepped me on dating in college, winking and joking about sex.

I came to the university from a small town near Houston. I was a virgin, and I didn't drink. When glamorous and experienced sorority sisters described specific sexual acts I should prepare for, I was shocked.

But nothing prepared me that freshman year for the party at the house of a senior boy, whose parents were out of town. He was my date and a member of the elite Cowboys organization at the university. They were usually the best-looking, most privileged men on campus. They graduated to become U.S. senators, ambassadors and, yes, federal judges.

The Cowboys still swagger onto the field during football games in their leather chaps, cowboy boots and hats, and fire their Civil War replica cannon after touchdowns. It was a quite a coup for a freshman girl to be set up with a senior Cowboy.

On this night, our first date, students crowded into his parents' empty Austin home and he played the role of bartender from the kitchen. I knew little about alcohol so I let him choose my drink. He mixed a Harvey Wallbanger, which tasted more to me like a delicious orange juice concoction than a potent vodka cocktail. I drank one after another, until I was dizzy and slurring my words. Before I knew it, I was the only one left at the party with my date, and I found myself coaxed into a room, with him on top of me on the bed.

He hadn't dragged me into that room unexpectedly, or covered my mouth until I feared suffocation. To be sure, a random assault, like the one described by Blasey, makes her an innocent victim. But hearing her story, I couldn't help thinking that many thousands more of us also are victims, just ignorant ones.

I was frightened when my date wrestled me on the bed. I knew I was in trouble and at risk of being raped. While the Cowboy pressed for sex, I pleaded with him to drive me home. Once in the car, he tried to persuade me to check into a nearby hotel with him. I protested. Exasperated, he pulled up to my sorority house, leaned over to open my passenger door, and watched me tumble out. I crawled on my hands and knees over the curb to the front door and staggered up the winding staircase to my sorority sisters' rooms. I didn't feel like a victim. Just a college co-ed who needed to get smarter about protecting herself.

It would take a while. And maybe I was just lucky. I wasn't attacked or gang-raped like some of the girls we whispered about on campus days after a wild drinking party. Greek life on college campuses often revolved around alcohol and sex. At another party with a boy I actually liked, I ended up in his room, again resisting the pressure to unclothe, only to have him annoyed because his fraternity brothers, two of whom were crouched outside the window and another in the closet, had made bets on how far my date could get me to go. I escaped that room and felt more like a champion than a victim because I had triumphed in their gamesmanship.

And that's what it was. A game. We knew the rules. For the boys, winning had to do with sexual conquest. For the girls, it was getting the right boyfriend. But just because many girls danced flirtatiously and wore sexy clothes didn't mean they wanted to take them off. What we didn't fully grasp at that age was that alcohol and limits don't mix well. People get hurt, usually women.

The game changer for me came my sophomore year, when I had a spiritual conversion. It led me to care more about the state of my soul and character than Friday night fraternity parties and catching a potential husband.

On the night the SAEs serenaded us from the garden below our balcony, swinging girls' panties in the air and singing, inebriated, about their sexual prowess, I did the unthinkable. I led an entourage of freshman girls in protest off the balcony — a direct affront to the most powerful men's fraternity on campus. Officers of my sorority stormed into my room after the walkout, accusing me of destroying our chances at becoming SAE "sweethearts."

My guess is that both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh are telling their truths about that night as best they remember. Until last week's hearings, I was rooting for Kavanaugh. There was a lot I liked about him. But Blasey's testimony has cast new light on my experiences as a young woman. And if it's determined her story is true, I'll wonder whether Brett Kavanaugh is the kind of justice I can count on to make the world a little safer for girls like my granddaughter.

Peggy Wehmeyer is a writer in Dallas and a former news correspondent for WFAA-TV (Channel 8) and ABC News. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.