In the New York Times, Alexis Grenell writes a familiar screed against women who supported the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, calling them “gender traitors” who have “made standing by the patriarchy a full-time job.”

She singles out “white women” as the chief offenders, since they were less likely than other women to have voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and she’s most contemptuous of Senator Collins, who she says “subjected us to a slow funeral dirge about due process and some other nonsense I couldn’t even hear through my rage headache as she announced on Friday she would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”


Her headache is about to get worse. It’s not just Senator Collins or a few conservative, white women who are concerned about “nonsense” such as the foundations of our judicial system and the fundamental principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Sixty percent of respondents to a Harvard survey said they wanted Kavanaugh confirmed if the FBI did not corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations. Moreover, Rasmussen asked people if they agree or disagree with President Trump’s statement, “It’s a scary time for young men in American when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of.” Overall, men were only slightly more favorable than women to the statement: Fifty-eight percent of men and 55 percent of women agreed, compared to 32 and 35 percent who disagreed.

But when broken down by race, black respondents were more likely than white ones to agree that it’s a hard time for young men. While 56 percent of whites agreed (37 percent disagreed), 71 percent of blacks agreed and just 21 percent disagreed. The poll didn’t break down by gender within each race, but it seems that a majority of black women are concerned about how men are being treated.


This shouldn’t be a surprise: We know too well what can happen when the presumption of innocence is abandoned — and when we place stock in the sexist notion of truth-telling, holding that women deserved to be believed over men absent any evidence or corroboration.

As IWF’s Patrice Onwuka wrote:

Just look at Gregory Counts and Van Dyke Perry, two black men recently exonerated after serving a combined 37 years in prison on false rape charges. DNA testing results showed that the men were not connected to the crime and the victim admitted she lied.

There are too many examples like these, and when men are falsely accused it isn’t just the men who pay a horrible price. So do their loved ones, including women. Grenell writes bitterly: “The people who scare me the most are the mothers, sisters and wives of those young men, because my stupid uterus still holds out some insane hope of solidarity.”

She should give up that hope. Not all women will join her in her attempts to divide people between the sexes, as if men and women are necessarily warring sides. Most women do have men in their lives who they care about and want to be treated fairly. Most women don’t evaluate political candidates based on their sex, but rather assess their political beliefs and their qualifications as individuals.

Isn’t this what equality and freedom from bias are about?