Congratulations on your escape as an adolescent from your parents’ socially prescribed notions of appropriateness. Reading your essay I recalled (for the first time in years) a young man who had so fallen through the lint trap of the crucible of prep school education that he was a falling down drunk as a junior in high school now attending (horror of horrors) a “public school”!

I did not escape and actually thrived in an environment where I was the total anomaly — Black, smart, female. You survive by becoming a sharp observer of everything. It allows you to exist as a fly on the walls of power because, you know, you are not supposed to be there, really.

I saw the cracks in Kavanaugh’s mask a few weeks ago during his questioning by Sen. Kamala Harris. The thought bubble I saw over his head read “Why is this woman even here and why does she think she can talk to me? Question me even? Uppity [expletive inferred].”

Dr. Ford’s greatest contribution, by choosing to come forward, was to reveal Kavanaugh’s utter lack of “judicial temperment”. His conduct clearly indicated why one of her conditions was that she not be in the same room with Kavanaugh. He revealed himself in a way that has now, with any luck, made his presence on SCOTUS unpalatable to the current sitting justices. I can only imagine the law school deans who would actively dissuade a student from seeking a clerkship with Kavanaugh. The swiftness with which the ABA and the dean of the Yale Law School have withdrawn their support from Kavanaugh is further evidence of his being abandoned by the very forces of patriarchy he has lived to support.

The final proof that the man lacks the social and moral wherewithal to be a judge is underscored by this fact, to date he has taken none of the opportunities to gather himself and withdraw his nomination, even though multiple opportunities to do so have been generously provided to him.