On how she was “sure” it was Judge Kavanaugh, and not another person, who attacked her on that night all those years ago, she replied that it was “the way that I’m sure that I’m talking to you right now — it’s just basic memory functions,” including “the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine” that “codes memories into the hippocampus” so that “trauma-related experience is locked there.”
She was operating, as some pointed out, as both expert and witness — confirming her own perspective, each step of the way, before there was the chance for anyone to ask her to do it.
“Rather than the vague pop-psychology language of trauma that has surrounded this story, Ford could offer a more technical, and better-defended, account,” wrote Ben Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker.
And yet she also lamented how she’d like to have been more “collaborative” with the committee and would have happily hosted the chairman and his Republican colleagues in her California home (the home she has now had to vacate because of death threats).
When asked what time she would like to take a break, she replied: “Does that work for you?” (“I’m used to being collegial,” she said, when Senator Grassley replied that it was up to her.)
“I’m heartbroken watching Dr. Ford make jokes, giggle, and say she’ll read quickly, because she shouldn’t have to make a bunch of white men feel comfortable when recounting her sexual assault,” the writer Lily Herman tweeted.
And yet, what choice did she have?
“It’s like the Anita Hill hearing didn’t just teach us about sexual harassment, it also taught us that credible victimhood had to align with conventional gender expectations,” said Rachel Simmons, the director of the Phoebe Reese Lewis Leadership Program at Smith College. “Be smart, but not too smart. Tell us what happened, but don’t yell. Smile and be nice above all.”
