The shoehorning of Brett Kavanaugh onto the US supreme court has delivered some fascinating insights on both the American political landscape and the state of sexual politics in 2018.

Progressives like to think gender relations are always getting better. Perhaps it’s all happening achingly slowly, but nonetheless we like to believe progress is afoot. For those who shed proper racking sobs when Donald Trump was elected even after a tape of him bragging about grabbing women by the genitals surfaced, the last couple of years – and, more specifically the last couple of weeks – have truly tested our faith in progress.

Brett Kavanaugh takes the Constitutional Oath in the Justices' Conference Room of the Supreme Court Building. Credit:AP

For weeks, we watched a spectacle that painfully mirrored a process that played out in 1991, when attorney (now professor) Anita Hill accused US Supreme Court nominee, and her former supervisor, Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment. It mirrored the Hill scenario even down to the detail of three of the same faces who scrutinised Hill sitting in judgment of the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her 36 years ago, Dr Christine Blasey Ford.

Could it be possible that decades on, we’re still committed to not letting a woman interrupt a powerful man’s destiny? Kavanaugh strongly denied all sexual allegations made about him.