HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028443.jpg

especially those whose voices might disturb the peace â€" has always been that things
will go better for them if they keep their mouths shut. In my forthcoming book about
the political consequences of women’s rage, I write about a 16th-century torture
device called the brank, which was used to muzzle a defiant or cranky woman by keeping
her head and jaw clamped in a metal cage. Some of the iron bridles included tongue
depressors; some of those had spikes on the bottom to pierce the flesh. When I visited
the Tower of London last year, during the week that followed the publication of stories
about Harvey Weinstein’s serial sexual predation â€" told at long last by women whose
tongues had been loosed â€" I saw an internally spiked metal neck collar on display. It
was labeled a “collar for torture†and described as something to be “put around
the necks of scolding or wayward wives.â€","type":"text"},{"identifier":"anf-body-
9","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":1363,"start":0},"textStyle":"_anf-ts-
street. During the 2016 primaries,
after a set of primary victories,
commenting on Nancy Pelosi’s grim
11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text": "The censure of women who open
their mouths in dissent or dissatisfaction or anything less than grinning compliance
with the power structures that subjugate them is so common as to be the stuff of
everyday catcalling. And we don’t just hear the reminders â€" “Come on, baby, smile
â€" you look so pretty when you smile†â€" on the
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough chided Hillary Clinton,
“Smile. You just had a big night.†And in 2018,
visage during Trump’s first State of the Union, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on CNN,
“I think she should smile a lot more often.†When women like Pelosi and Clinton do
open their mouths, they’re quickly cast as shrill and monstrous harpies. Do a Google
image search of any powerful women in politics or public life, and you’ll see that
their ideological opponents love to show pictures of them with their mouths open, mid-
yell, the very act of making a loud noise a sign of their unnatural tendencies; it’s
no accident that when he was asking to have her removed from Kavanaugh’s confirmation
hearings two weeks ago, Orrin Hatch referred to a protester yelling about health care
as a “loudmouth.†The best way to discredit threatening women is to capture them
giving loud voice to something that we might imagine is uncomfortable to
hear.","type":"text"}, {"additions":[{"URL":"https://apple.news/AsphunM9BQTqQJAJuthZQug"
,"range":{"length":4,"start":757},"type":"link"}],"identifier":" anf-body-
10","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":868,"start":0},"textStyle":"anf-ts-
11"}],"layout": "bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text": "And the best way to silence
them â€" besides literally covering their mouths, as Kavanaugh is alleged to have done
to Ford, as he was trying to rip her clothes off â€" is to ensure that their voices are
considered illegitimate. There are a number of mechanisms with which to accomplish
that. Bruenig writes of Wyatt’s economic precariousness, especially compared to the
wealth and social stature of the young men who assaulted her. Wyatt, and Ramirez,
considered themselves to be outsiders, who had to work to fit into comparatively more
privileged circles. To be “the popular girl,†and “one of the cool kids,†Wyatt
told Bruenig, she often drank and took drugs. Ramirez described feeling like a social
outsider at the party of the wealthy, elite frat guys at Yale; she participated in a
game in which she was directed to drink to the point of incapacitating
drunkenness.","type":"text"},{"identifier":"_anf-body-
11","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":480,"start":0},"textStyle":"_anf-ts-
11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout","role":"body","text": "There are other qualities
women are told to cultivate if they want to be liked and accepted: pliability,
friendliness, flirtatiousness, sexual availability, forgiveness. Is it not devilishly
grotesque that each and every one of these traits can be used to discredit their claims
of having been preyed upon? Don’t believe her â€" she was drunk, she was flirting
with me, she slept with so many people, here’s a photo of her smiling with me a year
later, and now she says I raped
her?", "type":"text"},{"additions":[{"URL":"https://apple.news/A6DlgoKjzQ3WXnIPhpDBFXg",
"range":{"length":14,"start":308},"type":"link"}],"identifier":" anf-body-
12","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":665,"start":0},"textStyle":"
anf-ts-
11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout","role":"body","text":"We cannot even begin to assess
how many stories women don’t tell because they were drunk, or young, or had been
playing along right up until the moment of assault, or had acquiesced to an assault
because they felt they had no choice. This last dynamic was key to the horrifying tale,
also told this week, by Laura Knoblach, the daughter of a Minnesota legislator who she
said molested her from childhood. Once, she told reporters, when she was 15, her father
asked if she liked the way he touched her, and she’d been too afraid to say anything
but yes. Knoblach, like Wyatt, had told her story repeatedly throughout the years, but
no one â€" until now â€" had listened.","type":"text"},{"identifier":" anf-body-
13","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":691,"start":0},"textStyle":"_anf-ts-
11"},{"range":{"length":14,"start":676},"textStyle":"_anf-ts-
10"}],"layout": "bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text":"The number of these stories

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028443