To no surprise, Donald Trump has picked an alleged attempted rapist to replace Anthony Kennedy as the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The candidate, Brett Kavanaugh, has recently been accused by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of attempting to rape her at a high school party in the 80s.

Ford claims that Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, had forced her into a room so Kavanaugh could pin her to a bed and attempt to rape her. Ford was only able to get away from them because of how intoxicated the guys were.

White male politicians and their supporters have accused Ford of being politically motivated and lying about this incident. Her approach to going public was not eager or divisive. In fact, Ford hadn’t told the story to anyone until a couple’s therapy session in 2012. “I’m not ever telling anyone this,” she said. “This is nothing, it didn’t happen and he didn’t rape me.”

It wasn’t until July of this year that she contacted The Post through a tip line and also sent a letter to congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo. Ford expected the letter to be kept confidential and decided not to publicly come forward. Despite this, the story was leaked.

As soon as media outlets started figuring out who she was, rumors spread and the death threats came rolling in. Conservatives instantly attempted to deconstruct Ford as a victim by calling her a liar and part of a political scheme.

“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she told the The Washington Post. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”

Too many have rushed to defend Kavanaugh’s character, especially his friend, Judge.

Judge told the New York Times that “It is not who he is,” and that Georgetown Preparatory School gave them values that would’ve urged against such behavior.

These “values” must include misogyny, which is a key characteristic Kavanaugh and Judge share. Kavanaugh has shown his misogyny in his stance against women’s reproductive rights.

Let’s not forget Judge was the one who aided Kavanaugh in the attempted rape of Ford, a man who has been even more outwardly misogynistic than Kavanaugh. He shows this in pieces like “Feminism and Body Language: A Double Standard” by saying a man needs to “prove himself” to a woman if she doesn’t give a definite yes or no to sexual advances.

The assault and discrimination against Ford’s claims are a result of a country ran by elitist males. To men like Kavanaugh and Judge, there is a blurred area where sexual assault is acceptable. Boys will be boys, and what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.

It is 2018 and women are still expected to assume roles and act according to the desires of men. To the leaders of our country, women are deceivers and the causes of their own trauma. The aggressors are blameless, and we should be ashamed for thinking otherwise.

This corruption in our government finds its roots in the voters who got them there. Women live in fear of being assaulted and are damned by those like Kavanaugh’s supporters. These kind of people are the ones who need to be “drained from the swamp.”

Men and women need to stop criticizing survivors of sexual assault, and instead support them and shift the damnation to those who assaulted them.