the kavanaugh hearings

Kavanaugh’s Alleged Accomplice Once Praised ‘Uncontrollable Male Passion’

Brett Kavanaugh.
Brett Kavanaugh. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

According to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when she was 15 and he was 17, Kavanaugh wasn’t the only man in the room when he allegedly held her down and “fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication.” Ford says conservative writer Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate from Georgetown Preparatory School, who now writes for websites like the Daily Caller and once authored a book about his personal struggle with alcoholism as a teenager, was also present.

According to Ford, Judge stood across the room and turned up the music to drown out her yelling, while he and Kavanaugh, both of whom were drunk, “laughed maniacally.” Judge then allegedly proceeded to jump on Ford and Kavanaugh twice, which toppled over the latter and helped Ford free herself. (Kavanaugh “categorically and unequivocally” denies the allegations.)

Judge said the accusations are “absolutely nuts” in an interview with the Weekly Standard, insisting that he “never saw Brett act that way.” But the writer’s public musings on sexual assault and masculinity bring into question the merit of his views on sexual assault.

He trotted out the myth that revealing clothes could lead to assault.

In a piece from 2017, Judge wrote that “what women wear and their body language also send signals about their sexuality.” While he also explicitly wrote several times in one paragraph that women shouldn’t be raped, he followed each statement with a hard “but.”

“… Women who dress like prostitutes are also sending out signals,” he wrote. “The signal is not that they should be raped. But if a posture while drinking coffee is indicative of the soul and personality within, than so is marching down the street in your underwear.”

He celebrated the beauty of “uncontrollable male passion.”

In a favorable review of the publisher Hard Case Crime, which Judge praises for “[reinvigorating] the idea that male passion is good and beautiful,” he bemoaned social justice warriors who conflate sexual assault and what he believes to be “beautiful” displays of male sexual energy.

“There’s also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her,” he wrote. “And if that man is any kind of man, he’ll allow himself the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.”

He was nostalgic for the days when George W. Bush “knew who was boss.”

In an article “Barack Obama: The First Female President” on the Daily Caller, Judge wax poetic for the days when the First Lady wasn’t “more man than her husband.

“Oh for the days when president George W. Bush gave his wife Laura a loving but firm pat on the backside in public,” he wrote. “The man knew who was boss.”

While Judge may have deleted his social-media accounts in the wake of Ford’s allegations, his published musings on male passion and victim-blaming are, for better or worse, online forever.

Kavanaugh Alleged Accomplice Praised ‘Uncontrollable’ Men