Thigh-High Politics is an op-ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.

The new American pastime of live-streaming Senate hearings saw a landmark event on Tuesday, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared before the Intelligence Committee. His testimony was intended to aid in the ongoing Russia investigation but instead served as an extended attempt to cast himself as a victim, with an apparent inability to recall little other than his own name.

“I recused myself from any investigation into the campaign for president,” Sessions declared in his prewritten opening statement, “but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false allegations.”

If we’re batting around meaningless recusals, I would like to recuse everyone from the phenomena of powerful men exploiting a persecution complex in order to accrue sympathy and evade accountability. This is not limited to the halls of the senate. Bill O’Reilly displayed a similar tactic in response to sexual assault allegations made against him, and Donald Trump’s signature achievement is perhaps his ability to maintain victimhood despite holding the most influential office in the world. For Sessions in this case, it meant framing himself as the target of what he sees as a politically motivated Democratic campaign instead of providing the information that might put it to rest.

Sessions’s defensive testimony often invoked a Department of Justice policy of not disclosing presidential conversations, which, as Senator Kamala Harris skillfully exposed, is not even written down. When Sessions responded to Harris’s question about the policy with a meandering non-answer explaining the general principle behind it, she pushed for clarity. “When you knew that you would be asked these questions and you would rely on that policy,” she began, “did you not ask your staff to show you the policy that would be the basis for your refusing to answer the majority of questions we are asking you?”

At that point, Sessions had already interrupted Harris to say he felt “rushed” and “nervous,” and then Senator John McCain cut in to declare that “the witness should be allowed to answer the question.” That Sessions proceeded to run out the clock before doing anything of the sort was only slightly more infuriating than the smirk spread across his face throughout the exchange. (It should be noted that this was both the second time Harris was the only minority woman in the room and the second time she was to be so prominently interrupted.)

Most senators are really bad at asking questions, but Harris is a brilliant exception. It’s infuriating to watch our representatives eat up time in these hearings, swerving around the point like broken sailboats in a storm. From this narrative fog, Harris has emerged with the fast-paced clarity her prosecutorial career history affords. And yet, instead of this forcefulness earning her reverence, it has resulted in condescending dismissals, including but not limited to a former Trump campaign adviser labeling her behavior “hysterical.” Sessions epitomized this mind-set with his patronizing antics. As the persecution complex would have it, her professional aggression was silly, emotional, unserious, and he? Somehow still the victim.

The dialogue was disrupted accordingly, as the public forum split up to champion and chastise Harris as if she were the one on trial. It’s almost impressive. Men like Sessions have so effectively flipped the script on persecution that they maintain the ability to use their inherent patriarchal authority to squash the efforts of those who attempt to hold them accountable.