Processing the Kavanaugh Hearing By Talking to a Troll
An Unusual Catharsis In a Time of Pain
Like a lot of people, the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh triggered some big emotions in me, and to be honest, I was blindsided by them. I had expected anger, sadness, frustration at how much further we have to go in the fight for true equality. But what I encountered was a well of rage and despair that was significantly deeper than I expected and it really took me out for a good week or more. What finally got me through it was processing those feelings while talking online to a troll.
Like most women I know, I’ve had multiple experiences with sexual violence on a wide variety of levels. Having seen the kind of backlash the #MeToo movement has engendered, I was prepared for more of the same. I expected to be angry about that, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the visceral, gut-wrench of seeing Dr. Ford testify with so much dignity and openness, only to be lambasted later, not just as a liar, but as though this were all some kind of calculated, vindictive machination on her part to ruin a good man’s name. That night I felt literally gut-punched.
The fact that millions of other women and men were feeling the same thing was both a blessing and a curse. I particularly valued the men who came forward and spoke passionately about believing accusers in the same way that we initially believe anyone else who is reporting a crime. But that still wasn’t enough to erase the black cloud of horror and despair that had descended upon me the Friday night before the inevitable confirmation.
Our president had led a jeering crowd in publicly mocking Dr. Ford. I was sick to my stomach and a couple of my friends had essentially taken to their beds. We were being re-traumatized, not just around our respective assaults, but around everything else that had gone along with those — the disbelief, or the disbelief that it couldn’t have actually been so bad, the vilification and shaming, the mocking and accusations of lying. This was a whole new level of poking the wounds. It was powerful to realize there was so much rage, but it was also debilitating to feel so powerless in spite of it.
I was just coming out of the very worst of it but still in a very raw place when I met “the troll.” It started out as a typical internet difference of opinion. I made a comment on a piece that was trying to look at the hearings removed from political context, which of course, is difficult to do since it was infused through and through with political agenda. But, none-the-less, the author was making an attempt, and I weighed in with my 2 cents. It wasn’t long before I was pounced on by some guy who wanted to harangue me with how I was a typical ultra-left wing feminist nut-job.
It’s not as though I actually imagined that I could reason him into a different position, but I was on the debate team in high school, and do actually enjoy the intellectual exercise of a good spar from time to time. And every once in a while I feel as though I’ve at least exposed someone to something that they can appreciate even if they don’t fully embrace it.
Maybe I should get a different hobby, but I feel as if I’ve built some occasional bridges, and usually, if a conversation starts to get really entrenched, I bow out. Not so with this one. He’d say clearly absurd and inflammatory things like that 70% of domestic abuse was perpetrated by women, and instead of recognizing that this guy was probably just pushing my buttons in classic troll fashion, I kept engaging with him. Once or twice I even said that I was done and not coming back, and then I’d find myself getting sucked back into the conversation. I knew he wasn’t going to listen to me, but I just felt like I couldn’t let blatantly counter-factual information sit out there unchallenged, and so I’d dive in again, with new data sources and tighter logic.
Even though I know full well that what might otherwise constitute evidence means nothing to someone who is deeply emotionally entrenched in their point of view or who is just trying to rile you, I felt like I had to keep trying. It was as though if I shook him by the lapels long enough with a good enough barrage of data, he might just have to pay attention, at least a little bit. Something compelled me to at least try, although I couldn’t say at the time what it was. And then somewhere along the way we did hit a point of detente and moved into a much more amicable conversation. That was where I really got hooked. We were making headway. He was beginning to see me as a person and not an opponent. There was hope!
Then it all came crashing down when I brought up that the WHO and the CDC both view violence against women as an epidemic and a public health emergency. He transformed from a rational guy with a slightly different perspective on the world to one who was kicking, spitting, and lashing out. He essentially told me that liberal women were making all of this shit up for political purposes and that I was a blatant liar who believed all men were rapists. Given the fact that I’d just opened up a little bit about some of my own unpleasant personal experiences, and had said repeatedly that a comparatively small percentage of men commit these crimes, this felt again like a gut-punch. It actually brought tears to my eyes. He not only didn’t care about my trauma; he was going to sit there and call me a liar and he was going to turn the lens back to himself as the truly wronged party exactly like we’d all just seen on the larger stage.
When I told him that he’d made me cry, he mocked me as a manipulator and I got offline feeling sad and disheartened. In the morning, he was at it again, putting words in my mouth and accusing me of attacking him. But something had shifted overnight. I’d gone to bed with the certain understanding that I could not make this man see or hear what he did not want to, no matter how logical I was, no matter how vulnerable and open I was. He was all of the angry, sneering men who came out of the woodwork for the Kavanaugh hearing, embodied in one person whom I could actually engage with. I had been overwhelmed by the feelings of being unseen and unheard, my pain uncared about by a society that still largely values the ambitions and lives of powerful or promising men over the lives of victims, most of whom are female. But having had a specific focal point with which to grapple, I had come out the other side.
I don’t need to be seen or understood by the likes of him. My pain and the trauma of anyone else who has experienced something similar does not need to be valued by such men. We are hurt, but we are survivors and more than that, we are angry and that anger is carrying us into action in new ways, as yet unseen before. Employees of Google just staged a worldwide walkout to protest a culture that fosters sexual harassment. So many men joined the protest that work was essentially shut down in many locations for the duration of the walkout.
It took me a little bit of mulling to understand what had been going on for me, but once I did, I felt like it had all been worth it. The anger, frustration, and tears had been directed at society, but I couldn’t effectively work with or process those feelings towards something so large and disembodied. Once I had a single man to focus on, I was able to go from trying to shake him by the lapels and make him see reason to not having any attachment at all to what he thinks or does. My healing and my next steps are not predicated on anything that I get from him or others like him. I’m free in a new way that I wasn’t before the hearing when I was still lugging around 40 years of sexual violence baggage. It was truly a cathartic experience! I can only hope that some other survivors are finding their way forward in ways that heal and empower them also.
