So, if it is a big deal, why are you splitting hairs about it?
If you knew someone who behaved like this, would you be ok with it? If you were held down and threatened at a party, would you be ok with it?
That’s the thing here. This is a big deal regardless of whether or not this meets someone’s definition of rape, as you yourself have stated.
Otherwise, what you are essentially saying here is “Someone who behaves this way doesn’t deserve scrutiny or for this sort of behaviour to be used to judge their character, because the behaviour was not abhorrent enough to be unacceptable to me”.
one possibility for why feinstein sat on the letter so long, actually more of a high probability in my opinion, is that feinstein shares that elite fallacy that private behavior is unrelated to public actions. the kind of thing that protected weinstein for so long.
While I agree that she’s being extra careful with a fellow high-level public official I don’t think she was sitting on the letter. I can see it taking a month between her office receiving it, separating it out from the obvious cranks, bringing it to Feinstein’s direct attention as a credible accusation, doing some informal follow-up to confirm that this person is who she says she is, contacting the person to explain the implications of the next steps and giving her a chance to think about it, and then referring it to the FBI.
I hope she can take a nice tropical vacation for a few months. Shit’s gonna be awful for her.
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.
“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”
Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford’s request to keep her allegation confidential, but “regrettably others did not.”
“Victims must have the right to decide whether to come forward, especially in a political environment that is as ruthless as this one,” Katz said. “She will now face vicious attacks by those who support this nominee.”
Apparently her therapist has notes dating back decades which confirm Professor Ford described the incident as an “attempted rape.” So that busts a pretty big hole in the “she’s just making this up now to ruin the nomination process” claim.
To be clear, what I’m angry about is that she was unable to keep her anonymity, and now must face the shitstorm that entails, and it’s not even going to do any good. The Republicans simply won’t take the chance that they might lose their majority after midterms and thus their stranglehold on the supreme court. They’ll confirm him even if they have to change the rules again to do it.
