I think Maggie Haberman of the New York Times simply has it wrong here, as do others who’ve made the same point:

Regardless of whether Ford is right about what took place or Kavanaugh is, if any woman who felt wrongly accused fought for her life by crying, yelling and being obstinate with senators asking q’s central to the issue, she would be eviscerated as crazy, hysterical, weak and so on — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 28, 2018

I can buy that people respond to emotional displays from women and men differently. But partisanship also molds our reaction to such displays, and that’s a far bigger driver of what’s happening here, on all sides.


If a conservative woman nominated to the Supreme Court had been accused of horrifying sex crimes on exceedingly thin evidence, and had put forth Kavanaugh’s furious and emotional rebuttal, she’d have received the same reaction from the Right that Kavanaugh did. And the Left would be accusing conservatives of celebrating behavior from a woman they wouldn’t allow from a man, and arguing that her anger made her a poor fit for the Court.