“Brett Kavanaugh on Monday said he will “not be intimidated into withdrawing” from his Supreme Court nomination after a second woman came forward with a sexual misconduct allegation against him.
Kavanaugh sent a letter on Monday to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively — saying the accusations against him are “smears, pure and simple.”
“They debase our public discourse. But they are also a threat to any man or woman who wishes to serve our country. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination—if allowed to succeed—will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from service,” Kavanaugh said in the letter to Grassley and Feinstein.
“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed,” Kavanaugh continued.”
ABOUT: Perhaps it was inevitable that equal time should have been granted to those who claim that modern popular culture is biased against men. Nathanson and Young (religious studies, McGill Univ.) use an extensive appendix of antimale bias in film, television, and even greeting cards to show that in the past ten years, the pendulum has swung too far.
During the last 2 decades journalists and ideologues exploited media events in ways that created a worldview based on gynocentrism and misandry. In that atmosphere, courts and legislatures established systemic discrimination against men. This not only institutionalized misandry, but also undermined the moral and democratic foundations of society.
In the first three volumes of this series, Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young challenge theories about patriarchy that ideological forms of feminism have promoted. In this volume, they argue that we must replace those misandric theories with one that takes seriously the needs and problems of boys and men no less than those of girls and women; at the same time, they add, we must maintain the reforms that egalitarian forms of feminism have promoted.
With both factors in mind, they trace the history of men – that is, culturally organized perceptions of the male body and its masculine functions – over the past ten thousand years. They show how these perceptions have evolved in connection with a series of technological and cultural revolutions: horticultural, agricultural, industrial, military, and now reproductive. This new approach sets the stage for understanding a profound and growing problem that our society must face: the increasing inability of boys and men to create or sustain a healthy collective identity.
The authors define this as an identity that is distinctive, necessary, and therefore publicly valued. Without a healthy and positive identity, two current trends will continue: giving up (dropping out of school, society, or even life itself) and attacking a society that has no room for men specifically as men, believing that even a negative identity, acted out in antisocial ways, is better than none at all.
The LOWE-Down!
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