With the United States Senate confirming Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment as the next Supreme Court Justice on October 6th, once again the ugly logic of boys will be boys has reared its head. This time to protect conservative interests in the Senate from the allegations detailed in a letter written by research psychologist and Professor Christine Ford, which she sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Anna Eshoo regarding the character of Brett Kavanaugh.In the letter, Dr. Ford alleges that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when he was 17. The letter alleges that Kavanaugh, “stumbling drunk” at a high school party, forced the 15-year-old Dr Ford into a bedroom and pinned her down to a bed while his friend watched. It goes on to detail how Kavanaugh groped her, grinded against her and tried to forcibly remove her clothes.

That he also put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams. So violent where Kavanaugh’s actions that she feared “he may might inadvertently kill me.”What Ford details in her letter has been corroborated by her husband; the notes of a 2013 therapy session which detail a “rape attempt” she suffered as a teenager; and by a polygraph test that Ford took on the advice of her lawyer, because of course, taking a polygraph should simply be par for the course for victims in Donald Trump’s America. As the President will tell you himself, “you have to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women.

If you admit to anything and any culpability then you’re dead.”What Ford’s letter details is by no means a case of boys will be boys, it’s a case of entitlement; it’s white privilege manifest; it’s women losing their autonomy over their bodies. What shocked me at this point – or more worryingly – what didn’t shock me, was how Americans were able to gloss over the allegations. Anyway, this is just normal teenage behaviour says former congressional candidate Gina Sosa, asking us to tell her “what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” After all, “we are talking about 17-year old boys with testosterone running high.”