A Certain Kind of Feminist

Last week in Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Larry Nassar was convicted of having sexually abused seven young women. Around 140 additional young women told the court he’d molested them over the years. I have no doubt that Dr. Nassar is a monster, and deserves to spend the rest of his days imprisoned. But I further believe that, in showboating outrageously when she sentenced him — in telling him how she considered it a privilege to condemn him to die behind bars, and “wouldn’t send [her] dogs” to him for medical care, and how she wished she were able to condemn him to cruel and unusual punishment — Judge Annemarie Aquilina stepped over some very important lines. 

Was I alone in seeing her as as a cross between Judge Judy and Jeanine Pirro, the former judge whose truculent admiration of the unspeakable Donald J. Trump might represent Fox News as its worst, which I think we can agree is saying something, given that Fox is also Sean Hannity’s conduit? Aquilina clearly wished to be seen as the personification of outrage at male sexual predation. I wouldn’t bet against her savouring the idea of a TV career of her own. 

I found her performance deeply sickening, and upsetting. As the personification of the law, a judge must be dispassionate. I wasn’t alone in thinking this. Writing on vox.com, Rachel Marshall, an Oakland public defender, observed, “By aligning herself so closely with the victims and so clearly rooting against Nassar, Aquilina…reinforced the dangerous idea that judges can and should be in sync with public sentiment. In some ways, this is an easy case for such an alignment, given the horror of Nassar’s acts. But easy cases get us in trouble; they lead us down a slippery slope. What happens the next time, when the evidence is less clear? What happens when there is doubt as to guilt but a judge allows empathy for victims to drive decisions?” 

In Time, Anne E. Gowen, presumably Ms. Marshall's fellow misogynist (sarcasm!), wrote, “…{A]ll of us who depend on the criminal justice system’s being fair — and in the end, that really is all of us — need to be able to rely on the judiciary’s administering justice consistently and predictably, based on laws, rather than on judges’ emotional reactions to particular sets of facts. What if the girls and women here had not been the archetype of the innocent, admirable victim, but instead, say, drug addicts or prostitutes?”

One day I may learn my lesson, but I haven’t learned it yet. When I expressed my revulsion for Aquilina’s grandstanding on the social media, can you guess what A Certain Kind of Feminist — the kind who believes all men are inherently brutish, and whose favourite recreation is detecting traces of misogyny absolutely everywhere — accused me of? That’s right: siding with Dr. Nassar. For ACKOF, it is impossible both to regard sexual abuse of women in general and Larry Nassar in particular as utterly ghastly, and to believe that judges need to keep their personal feelings to themselves. I was reminded, of course, of the many electronic shouting matches in which I became embroiled after Charlottesville — with people who didn’t think it possible to simultaneously loathe white supremacists but also beiieve that, in a civil society, no one should fear physical violence for having expressed an opinion, however odious those on the side of the angels may find that opinion. 

For ACKOF, there is exactly one permissible point of view in every disagreement — theirs. Fail to embrace it and get labelled, as I was, by Ms. Stacia Schmidt, “a misogynist bully”. Try to elucidate why you continue to fail to embrace the One Permissible Point of View, and you are accused of “mansplaining”. (I do not, by the way, believe that feminists have a monopoly on this brand of low-grade fascism. As a Jew, for instance, I recognise the Jewish variety favoured by the Israel, Right or Wrong! type.)

I’ve now had multiple ACKOFs inform me that I find Acquilina’s grandstanding objectionable because I secretly think Larry Nassar pretty terrific, and that if a male judge had behaved as Aquilina did, I’d be shouting, “Right on, bro!” between big manly gulps of Bud. A Ms. London Schertzer, for instance, demands, “Do you want her to be nice and have all the girls smile for him?” 

I see clearly that I have as much chance of changing these women’s minds as the mind of those who say things like, “I support Mr. Trump because he’s a wise, honourable, decent Christian man, and on the side of us common working people.” 

Intractable stupidity's ugly wherever it rears its head.