Everyone from Dianne Feinstein to Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua has insisted on some imaginary distinction between Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s anti-choice “political views” and how he actually, “personally” treats women. In the wake of the sexual assault allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford, that distinction may have seemed to evaporate. In fact, it was never there.

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Most often, Kavanaugh's potential impact has been framed in terms of whether he was “nice.” He coached girls’ basketball, they told us; he hired women at his office; he was so nice for women to be around, so many women liked him, that there was no way Brett Kavanaugh could possibly harm women, no way he could possibly want to hurt us.

Ford’s allegations are shockingly violent. She says that, when they were both in high school, Kavanaugh “pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it.” When she tried to scream, she says he put his hand over her mouth. Another boy, who was also in the room, allegedly turned up the music to drown her out. (In a statement, Kavanaugh says that “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation.”) It’s the kind of thing that makes it hard to care about neighborhood barbecues.

But, again: The question was never whether Kavanaugh would hurt women. People, mostly women, inevitably die and suffer when abortion is made illegal or inaccessible, and we have always known that Kavanaugh was being nominated on the basis of his opposition to abortion. The question has only ever been how much harm he’ll do.

Throughout Kavanaugh's hearings, women have been silenced over and over again, dragged screaming from courtrooms as they try to tell the world that Brett Kavanaugh is a threat. He didn’t personally put his hand over their mouths. He didn’t turn up the music so we couldn’t hear them. He doesn’t have to do that anymore: He’s a Supreme Court nominee, and he has professional security guards standing at the ready to drown out any female voices that disrupt his rise to power.

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In the face of scandal, the GOP have fallen back on the “nice guy” line — producing a letter (apparently prepared in advance) in which 65 women who knew Brett Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged attack claim that “[for] the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.” The cynicism of this has been taken apart nimbly by the Internet — for one thing, preparing a group statement just in case your guy is accused of sexual assault sure seems like something you’d do if you knew that guy had sexual assault allegations – but it’s notable in that it suggests there’s some acceptable ratio of non-victims to victims. Exactly many women does a guy have to attack before you conclude that he’s got problems with women? Every woman he knows? Every woman you know? Every woman in America?

Because, if he’s confirmed, it will be every woman in America. That’s the point. One victim is enough, but it was never going to be just one. The man who now stands to strip reproductive autonomy from every woman and AFAB trans person in America is accused of sexual assault. Say what you will, but it doesn’t exactly seem out of character.

"If the past year of unrelenting sexual assault scandals has taught us anything, it’s that personal violence and political violence are inevitably intertwined."

If the past year of unrelenting sexual assault scandals has taught us anything, it’s that personal violence and political violence are inevitably intertwined; the tragedy of our sexual politics is not just that so many men prey on women, or that those men so routinely escape consequences for their actions, but that we live in a society where men who view women as fundamentally disposable and worthless are allowed to set our priorities and control our institutions. If the President of CBS sexually assaults women on a regular basis, feminist show runners are not going to get picked up by CBS. If Matt Lauer has a history of preying on his female colleagues, then NBC News is going to be quietly dissuaded from reporting stories that shine a light on sexual assault. If the most powerful men in media are sexual predators, an accused sexual predator can run for President and be given more generous treatment than his female opponent. If that accused sexual predator becomes President, he can appoint Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

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Violence against women doesn’t just take place one-on-one, through individual rapes and assaults. It’s structural — it’s built into our assumptions and our institutions, inflicted from the top down. Sexual assaults or incidents of misogynist violence are not just tragic accidents, or outliers. They are the intended outcome within a culture that is built to empower men at women’s expense. The same rape culture that teaches boys to terrorize girls at parties now stands to enshrine Brett Kavanaugh into a lifetime position of authority, in which women’s civil rights and bodily autonomy will be in his hands and at his mercy. These are not two different stories; they are two different illustrations of the same fundamental disregard for women’s sovereignty over their own bodies and lives.

Both rape and forced birth are examples of a woman's sovereignty being taken away. If we see these two forms of violence as separate — if we’re shocked by the rape allegations, yet view the anti-choice stance as a mere “ideological difference” — we are missing the big picture. Maybe, all those years ago, it was Christine Blasey Ford. Tomorrow, it could be you, and every woman you know.