Here’s another question: What level of certainty about the nominee’s guilt should drive a senator to vote against that nominee? The standard to convict a defendant in criminal court is often understood as requiring anywhere from 95 to 100 percent certainty of the defendant’s guilt. In civil court, the “preponderance of the evidence” standard requires 51 percent certainty. As the economist Justin Wolfers asked on Twitter, “Would you appoint someone to the Supreme Court if you think there were a 25 percent chance they’ve done bad things? A 10 percent chance? A 5 percent chance? A 1 percent chance?”

And what about the nature of those bad things? What about whether an adult man, against whom no further charges of sexual harassment or assault are known to have been raised, should be denied a seat on the highest court in the land because he did something objectionable—even horrifying—as a boy on the cusp of adulthood? The conservative columnist Dennis Prager argues he shouldn’t: “If our good actions outweigh our bad actions, we are morally in the black; if our bad actions greatly outweigh our good actions, we are morally in the red. By all accounts—literally all—Brett Kavanaugh’s moral bank account is way in the black.”

Brett Kavanaugh and the revealing logic of “boys will be boys”

These questions are very hard and the stakes are very serious. Answers are opaque at best. But forcing a moral struggle of such depth and pain into a calculation—a percentage chance, an adding and subtracting of immoral and moral acts—simplifies the matter to the point of absurdity. Consider Prager’s math. Judge Kavanaugh has, by many accounts, put a great deal of effort into hiring female clerks and making himself available as a mentor to young women in the law. This is a good thing. So how many young women must a person mentor before he blots out the stain of an attempted sexual assault? It’s an awful calculation—to suggest that some number of good deeds toward some women can cancel out horrific behavior toward one—but it seems to be one that people are prepared to make.

Kavanaugh was mentored by Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and Kavanaugh’s unconvincing answers when asked before the Senate about allegations against Kozinski of sexual harassment and abuse of his clerks have been a sticking point for Kavanaugh’s opponents. Heidi Bond, one of the former clerks who came forward with allegations of harassment by Kozinski, tweeted on Tuesday: “You know what a true ally to women would say if falsely accused of rape? ‘I did not do this, but stop minimizing the behavior described. What she describes is attempted rape. I ask my supporters to not belittle that in their attempts to clear my name.’”

Bond’s suggestion gets at the weight of the situation and the inadequacy of a simple denial. The question of “Did he do it?” is obviously crucial. But focusing on that question alone is shortsighted. The question of Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence exists within a broader universe of difficult questions, just as what Ford says she experienced must be seen within a universe of attacks on other teenage girls by other drunk and clumsy boys—a universe that seems to never stop expanding. The story of Ford’s trauma is intensely familiar. Assaults like the one she described, and the fear of such assaults, are woven into the everyday texture of women’s worlds.