I believe Dr Christine Blasey Ford. I found her testimony of a violent sexual assault by supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh powerful and convincing, as did many, many others who watched her give evidence before the Senate committee last week. Even Donald Trump said at the time: “I thought her testimony was very compelling and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman.”

It is of course foolish to expect any kind of consistency from that man. He had already questioned on Twitter why the 15-year-old Ford had not reported the assault to police. And on Tuesday night, at a campaign rally in Mississippi, he mocked her and her testimony in front of a baying and cheering audience. We already know that Trump considers himself to be quite the impressionist, and so here we see him imitating her inability to remember certain details from the events of that night 40 years ago.

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“How did you get home?” Trump said, echoing a question Ford was asked by the committee. “I don’t remember.”

“How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know.’ What neighbourhood was it? ‘I don’t know.’ Where’s the house? ‘I don’t know.’” He then went on to allege that she was part of a conspiracy of “evil people”.

The president of the United States has called a woman claiming to be a victim of a violent sexual assault “evil”, and I’m not even surprised. Since the election of Trump, against whom more than 20 women have made claims of sexual misconduct, and whose own ex-wife claimed he raped her (she later recanted), there has not been a display of public misogyny that surprises me. The Republicans could start rounding women up in the manner of Gilead and I would be frightened and furious, but I would not be surprised. After all, if Kavanaugh succeeds in his endeavours, Roe v Wade is in the firing line.

In her testimony Ford, who is a psychologist, gave a detailed understanding of the psychology of memory. Trauma brands itself on your brain. The neurotransmitter epinephrine, Ford explained at the hearing, “codes memories into the hippocampus, and so the trauma-related experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift,” she said. Hence why she says she can remember Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing, but not the exact address of the party. Not that any of this matters to those who mock her. Trump’s election showed that a woman displaying infinitely more intelligence and composure than the man she is up against means little. The man can rant and rage and wail, and he will still be more believable to some. The societal message remains: women lie.

Play Video 1:03 'Just plain wrong’: three Republicans condemn Trump’s mockery of Ford – video

In the past year, the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have done much to draw attention to the reality that many women have known their entire lives: that there are men who view us as less, and that part of that process involves refusing to recognise our bodily autonomy as human beings. But Trump’s mocking performance shows how much work remains to be done, not to mention acting as a perfect illustration for why so many women do not report rape and sexual assault in the first place – for fear of such mockery and humiliation. Ford is undergoing the same treatment as thousands of survivor/victims before her: women who come forward have a hidden agenda, they are not to be trusted, their confused little brains are unreliable. The script these men are reading from is centuries old and deeply ingrained in our cultural schema. It is especially resonant to the religious right, who accept men’s supposed superiority over women because their kind of Christianity is steeped in it, though hypocrisy is rife: abortion is a sin, unless it’s needed for my mistress.

The script dictates that a woman has an agenda. The agenda of these men in upholding a system in which men are dominant and are able to violently exert that dominance with impunity is rarely questioned. Their agenda is the default – objective and unassailable. Any fool should be able to see that men such as Trump and Kavanaugh have horses in this race.

The #MeToo movement gave women their own script, a script that reads “I believe her”, but it is not enough. Tearing up the old script is much more difficult, especially in a country as religiously conservative as the United States. It will take time and effort. Sadly, we’ll see countless women mocked and belittled before we get there.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist