...I think back to my high-school years (which were several years before Kavanaugh's), and my observations of the male/female dynamic existing at the time.
Yes, times were very different, in ways which no doubt seem strange, if not outright oppressive and sexist today. For varying reasons (which would take way too long to explain fully here), there were certain ritualistic roles that were expected of boys and girls in those days. In particular, it was expected that guys would be "testing the limits," of pressing for greater degrees of physical intimacy, while it was the girl's role to set those limits.
Now, this may all seem quite Neanderthal today, but there were two other expectations of those ritual roles: 1) When a girl set limits, they were respected. "No" meant "no," at least for the immediate future…and, if a guy showed signs of not respecting his girlfriend's "no," that was grounds for ending the relationship. 2) These rituals took place in the contexts of relationships, of committed, exclusive "couple" status that was entered into over time.
What I'm getting at here is that, while there were gender roles and rituals in place back then that people nowadays might find upsetting, NONE of them can serve as an excuse for what Kavanaugh is accused to have done — then every bit as much as now. Back then, two guys grabbing a girl (who seems to have been, at most, an uninvolved acquaintance of theirs), and physically pinning her down and gagging her while removing her clothes would have been seen as attempted rape every bit as much as it would now, and every bit as deserving of criminal charges (in many cases, after getting the crap kicked out of them by their peers first). And the consequences of those charges would have followed them the rest of their lives
So, however medieval the old standards may seem to people today, please don’t use them to rationalize away the behavior of someone like Kavanaugh. It wouldn’t have been O.K. back then, just as it isn’t now.
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