Despite a credible allegation of sexual assault and a far-from-extensive F.B.I. investigation, Brett Kavanaugh is expected to be confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday. All but one Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, have announced their support of his nomination, including Susan Collins, who announced her decision in a lengthy televised speech on Friday afternoon. After weeks of debate about Kavanaugh’s past, gripes about the politicization of the process, and accusations of partisanship on all sides, the message sent by the mostly-male group of G.O.P. senators is simple: American women don’t matter nearly as much as their hold on power.

Last week, Christine Blasey Ford did an extraordinarily brave thing: she testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and said that Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were both teenagers. Her testimony was painfully honest and heartfelt; in response, Kavanaugh was intemperate, angry, and rude. While many observers saw clear parallels to Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her, it was also clear that the cultural ground has shifted since then. Republican leaders typically avoided saying Ford was a liar, instead suggesting it was perhaps a case of mistaken identity. (The president didn’t bother with such superficial niceties, choosing instead to taunt and mock Dr. Ford at a rally.) With the notable exception of Murkowski, Senate Republicans—and one Democrat, Joe Manchin—united to confirm Kavanaugh. Collins and Jeff Flake, both considered potential swing votes, confirmed on Friday they would vote yes.

This fraught process—including the truncated F.B.I. investigation, in which a great many relevant parties were never contacted, and Kavanaugh’s alleged repeated lies under oath—have served as an awakening for many American women who now realize that the entire system is set up to benefit a select few mostly-white men who believe their monopoly on power is deserved, earned, and implicit. It’s not “he said, she said.” It’s a presumption that the halls of power are male spaces, and lifetime seats on the highest court in the land are men’s for the taking.

Challenging that presumption of male entitlement elicits great histrionics from the men who not only benefit from this system, but believe in the fiction that it is fair and neutral. That men who look like them and believe like them and have histories similar to theirs are the primary people who succeed in this system is not evidence that the system itself is radically skewed to enable the success of this privileged few. It is, rather, confirmation that they and those like them are rightly marked as special and inherently deserving. There is a deep and abiding commitment to maintaining this tilted scheme, to continue reaping all of its unearned benefits while enjoying the presumption of worthiness.

When women break into these spaces—the Senate, the Supreme Court—it is a groundbreaking moment, but it takes even more to bring actual systemic change. Many women are simply happy to be inside the boys’ club, happy to bask in that light of privilege and the validation that they, too, are worth something, and happy to pull the ladder up behind them. In a more feminist country, it is now unbecoming for male senators alone to push through the confirmation of a man accused of attempted rape—a step forward from the all-male panel who grilled Anita Hill. And so the women who benefit from proximity to white male power step forward, knowing their gender offers some cover to the misogyny they’re enabling. That was certainly Susan Collins’s role today, as she gave a long speech, flanked by two other female Republican senators—there are just six of them, all white women—justifying her decision to vote yes on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Her decision, contrary to her own claims, was not about a sacred process or constitutional safeguards. It was about power, and the ways in which she will personally benefit from playing her role keeping these fundamentally imbalanced systems in place. Thanks to her vote, she will have her party’s support when she’s up for re-election in 2020, maintaining her own position of authority at the cost of her own integrity, women’s rights broadly, and the legitimacy of the court.