Both women are successful. One is a lawyer, a partner in a prosperous New York firm. The other is a show-business personality, famous but not street-stoppingly so. We met at an event in New York, and quickly the talk turned to Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. This was days before last week’s testimony from him and Christine Blasey Ford, so there were no questions about how he did or about his anger, his crying or his startling partisanship. Nonetheless, both women declared themselves willing to march on Washington there and then, and I was certain they could have gotten at least to Delaware, on anger alone. Gentlemen, a revolution is underway.
I’ve heard their sentiment echoed in conversations with other women across the nation over the past few weeks. I heard it in their anger, which is no longer an expression of mere disappointment, a low murmur of discontent, but a roar of sheer fury. “What can I do?” one of them asked, both angry and at a loss. She is a top executive, almost running a vast organization. But she reports to a man, as she has done most of her life. She thinks of herself and her female co-workers as the invisible structure upholding a male-dominated facade.
She is also at a loss as to what to do. She wants to do something huge, something that makes a difference, something that shakes society violently, whiplashing those who complacently believe that a bit more diversity, a bit more #MeToo, will alone make all the difference.
