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While the hearing was held today at the Judiciary Committee of the Senate with the testimony of Ms. Christine Blasey Ford that she is "one hundred percent" certain that the Court's candidate Supreme Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her sexually in high school, many women responded the professor and the research psychologist were frustrated, angry or even suffered trauma. Despite the 27 years since Anita Hill's hearings and the more recent successes of the #MeToo movement, many believe that nothing has changed – that every woman who reports a sexual assault will be fired, attacked and degraded.
And it's not just men who do the firing. A group of Republican women who have recently shied away from Ford's claims also confirmed this claim – alternately claiming it was unreliable, jealous, and even though the violent assault she spoke about was proving to be a daily behavior normal in young men. "Tell me what boy did not do that in high school," said one. "Please, I would like to know."
In the midst of this swirling storm of misogyny, both internalized and regular, another voice emerged to downplay Ford's heartrending testimony: Rachel Butera, General Leia's voice actress in the upcoming animated television series Star Wars: Resistance. In a tweet now deleted, Butera has posted a video where she repeatedly makes fun of Ford's voice during the professor's testimony.
"That's how I sound," Butera mimics in a high tone. "I know that even though I speak this way, I am a doctor and an adult woman. I sound as if I were still at the high school party. I can not help it. I just have that kind of voice, like a baby, even though I'm a doctor and I'm on the political stage of the media circus and I have children myself. I do not know why I'm talking with french fries. But you can listen to my testimony and hear that an adult woman looks this way.
It's incredibly insensitive: attacking a woman who testifies to an alleged sexual assault while her voice is breaking emotionally by describing traumatic events that she says have "dramatically changed my life" and "were burned in my memory". have surely exasperated Leia's original actress, Carrie Fisher, a fervent feminist who spoke loudly of the importance of valuing women's ideas on more superficial qualities.
It is also a familiar path of sexist criticism. Just ask almost all the women who worked on the radio or podcast how much they are systematically criticized, not for the substance of their work, but for the tone of their voices. Time and again, they are told that vocal qualities and tics such as higher tone, high voice and vocal frying – which are generally associated with women – deserve to be condescending and invalidating the speaker. Which is to say what Butera says in his video: the more you are stereotyped, the less you are credible and respectable.
There have been many bizarre attempts to invalidate Ford, including issues implying that it could be unreliable and untrustworthy because it had to overcome a fear of the plane for to Washington, DC. Mocking and infantilizing Ford simply because his voice was sharp and shaky in describing an alleged sexual assault is further evidence of the depth of sexism in our culture, particularly with respect to women believers.
While this type of criticism is most often directed at younger women by older men, Butera's video (which has since locked her Twitter account) proves exactly what this group of Republican women has proven by referring Ford: When it comes to reinforcing sexism, women are also capable of it.
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