White women will not save us from the patriarchy — and Brett Kavanaugh proves it

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So, we end up where we began.

Things have not changed for women as much as we had all hoped.

For weeks, President Donald Trump, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans and women like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway have repeatedly sought new and inventive ways to defend the indefensible, moving heaven and earth to protect white privilege and patriarchy.

This effort was sadly exemplified by the speech Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, gave on Friday afternoon. Collins’ decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh put a dispiriting exclamation point on something I’ve known for quite some time: The Republican party has turned its back on women.

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America was founded upon the principle that all men (people) are created equal. It was understood that citizens of the Republic would have the right to think and express themselves freely, be secure in their persons and be grounded in certain “unalienable rights.”

Of course, we know that those “rights,” penned so eloquently by Thomas Jefferson (arguably the original “Republican”), were only granted to white, Protestant men or white male landowners. Regardless of birth or station in life, white men in the early colonies owned the land, they owned the commerce, they owned the slaves, they held all the elected positions and they held all the wealth.

In short, white men — by birthright — were entitled to everything.

This is important context for the moment we now find ourselves in. Republicans — male and female alike — have finally achieved what they wanted: the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, no matter its bitter and divisive cost to the nation.

I am a middle-aged professional black woman — not exactly the GOP’s core constituency base. I am also a childhood sex abuse survivor, but I only recently came forward with my story after reading thousands of stirring #WhyIDidntReport posts on social media.