Is there anybody who doesn’t have a #MeToo story of some greater or lesser degree of severity/significance? The Kavanaugh circus – the latest drama in what’s been dubbed the #MeToo moment – has got me thinking about it for a number of reasons.

First, I’m just the guy’s (Kavanaugh’s) vintage and I can relate to life as a late teen/young man in the early/mid 80s. There’s been a lot of talk about that, as though Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds, and Sixteen Candles were the lived experience of every high school or college aged guy alive at the time.

Second, while my high school experience bears no relationship whatsoever to any of those movies or any of the lurid stories about Kavanaugh, my college experience does. I joined a fraternity at the University of Minnesota as a freshman in 1982 and I’ve said many times since then that that experience has lead me to understand how Alexander the Great could have gotten a bunch of juiced up, horned up young men to go out and conquer Asia. We were truly out of control and in need of some adult supervision. In hindsight, it would be surprising if there weren’t far too many #MeToo stories from the parties we used to throw regularly. Had I been heterosexual, there’s an excellent chance I’d have been a perpetrator. I certainly drank enough; as much as Kavanaugh’s accused of and more than he admits to.

So I’m inclined to think that among late teens and young men and women in the early 80s, binge drinking was common and at least some clumsy, handsy, drunken version of what’s now considered sexual assault was too. Many people my age know this from their own experience. It’s what gives at least the Ford and Ramirez accusations against Kavanaugh their plausibility (and distinguishes them from the Swetnick accusation). He may not have done it, but it’s not like it wasn’t done. It was. A lot.

But I have a question, and it’s a question I’d never dare to pose anywhere else on the internet other than Ricochet. The question is: what’s the big deal?

You see I’m not only a mid-50s former fratboy who would, but for his sexual orientation, almost certainly have “committed a Kavanaugh” in his youth, I’m also a former (can you be a former?) “victim” of a #MeToo event. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I was fresh out of high school, decidedly a virgin, she was someone I worked with at a summer job, twice my age. She got me very, very drunk (I was just discovering alcohol; high school athletics had kept my crowd away from it before that), and she took advantage. Sobered and hung over the next day, I was pretty freaked out. It was, coincidentally, the summer of 1982.

But today, 36 years later, I can talk about it without any fear or anxiety. Nothing about the layout of my home has been affected by the experience. If she were nominated to the Supreme Court and I was asked about it, honestly, I think my answer would be that it was no big deal. Not that it wasn’t at the time. To me it was. I felt violated. I was worried about STDs. I think it caused me months of stress and anxiety. What she did to me was wrong. But some days life’s a crap sandwich. That wasn’t the first bad experience I ever had nor was it (or will it be) the last. Me? I pick myself up and move on. It’s not like I lost a limb. I got over it.

So the first question is, is this a guy thing? Is this just less of a big deal to men than to women?

In many ways (the details of which I’ll spare you) the experience I had was quite a bit more “serious” than what Professor Ford describes. But I was an 18-year-old boy, incapacitated by alcohol yes, but otherwise at least her physical equal. I’m sure 15-year-old Professor Ford couldn’t have said that of 17-year-old Judge Kavanaugh. Does that shape how we experience these events and how we remember them and how (and whether) they scar us?

Or is it our wiring? Are women, as the sex that produces one egg a month and takes primary care for child rearing, just wired to be more selective about their sexual encounters and as a result more violated by an unwanted one?

Am I just weird? Me, personally? Do most men who’ve had experiences like mine suffer lifelong trouble like Professor Ford claims to have? Maybe I’m a sociopath. Or suffering false consciousness. Could therapy help me get in touch with the wounded, victimized child within?

On the other hand, how many women who’ve had to fight off a drunken lout manage to get over it? Is Professor Ford’s lifelong disability the norm? Or is she a fragile flower suffering over an event that most women would be resilient enough to move past?  Is her claim of trauma even all that plausible?  Or is it just too politically incorrect to doubt it?

If anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a #MeToo experience has any thoughts on these questions I’d be interested. And if your name and/or avatar doesn’t make it clear, it would be helpful if you included your sex in your answer.