Why Now? — The Rising Face of Sexual Abuse

The most recent study of Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) in 40,000 adults revealed that 10.9% were sexually abused before age 18 (15. 2% females, 6.4% males). That CDC study also correlated ACE with negative health outcomes and suggested neurobiological pathways to permanent brain scarring. This means that people like Christine Blasey Ford are susceptible to alterations in brain structure and functioning that will impact their lives forever. These effects can be mediated by psychotherapy and even psychiatric medications. But the trauma residue can never be erased.Behind the kind of abuse Dr. Ford suffered is a developmental trajectory that has been best described in the studied scenario of bullying:There occur two waves of homophobic behavior in children. The first wave consists of bullying and homophobic teasing. As these verbally-limited behaviors generate a massing group behavior, a deadlier second wave of harassment emerges. And that sets the stage for violence and even sexual assault."It is suggested that as these [adolescents] engage in more interactions with opposite sex peers, they are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence." And this suggests that the split attitude that male adolescent groups develop toward females and perceived feminine (that is, gay) males follows them into high school, college, and —as the MeToo revelations reveal — into corporate systems as well.This generalized and group-supported demeaning attitude toward woman and LGBTQ individuals is further augmented by entitlements such as high achievements, social status, power positions, and celebrity status. Such males are elevated and venerated leaving women at the base of the pillar they have risen upon.Women remain categorically demeaned and diminished as adolescent boys move into manhood. Once contemptuously isolated from boy groups, girls become objects of displaced desire singularly sought out but never admitted into the legion of boys, the world of men. With maturation men can, and often do, achieve relationships of mutual tolerance and acceptance. But the category of women (like that of gender difference and LBGTQ) retains its clear, encapsulated otherness.High male achievers value women primarily as appropriate contributors to their esteem and wives are selected for their potential for social or career or personal self-enhancement (consider Trump with his train of trophy wives). Notice how Kavanaugh dons the rhetorical cloak of his wife and "all ten-years-old" daughter to adorn and protect his image:All this deeply embedded social polarization, this gender-based divisiveness has now leaped into politics.  Our democratic ideals of freedom, liberty, and equality are being dragged to the chopping block. As the old boy networks are being shaken and challenged by the MeToo spirit these men are fighting back, fighting with all the meanness and vituperation they can muster.Women may be rising up, but then they risk verbal dismemberment. Just remember the Suffragettes, women who one hundred years ago demanded the right to vote. Like all of today's accusing women, women demanding to be heard for justice, they, like their Suffragette forebears, are being treated as dangerous degenerates.When do we begin to commiserate and conciliate and consolidate? When will gender become unifying and empowering? When do the good times come?