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In the '80s, boys' prep schools like Kavanaugh's could be bastions of misogyny
"Could be," not "were inevitably."
Outlook Perspective
In the ’80s, boys’ prep schools like Kavanaugh’s could be bastions of misogyny
I went to an elite high school down the road from his. Here’s what I saw.
By Greg Jaffe
Greg Jaffe is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, where he has been since March 2009. Previously, he covered the White House and the military for The Post.
September 20 at 12:45 PM
This past week, I came home from work to find on my kitchen counter a 50th-birthday card from Landon School, the boys’ prep school I attended — which is just down the road, and not all that different, from Georgetown Prep, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alma mater. On the front was a picture of a much younger me in a coat and tie, the dress code. Inside, six of my former instructors, all terrific teachers who have dedicated many decades to the school for mediocre pay, had written short greetings. It was a charming reminder of all that I liked about the place.
But the greeting landed one day after Christine Blasey Ford said in The Washington Post that Kavanaugh had drunkenly pinned her on her back and groped her when he was a high school junior. Ford had attended Holton-Arms, Landon’s sister school. I have no special knowledge about that night many decades ago — I never knew Ford or Kavanaugh, a man three years my senior who vehemently denies the allegation — but I do remember plenty about the culture of these same-sex programs, not all of it good. I began reaching out to old friends from Landon and Prep to see if they recalled the same misogynistic culture that I did.
All of the teachers who signed my 50th-birthday card were men. The few women who signed it all worked as administrators. This fact was no doubt a product of Landon’s culture in the 1980s: In my memory, we tested and terrorized the female teachers with petty acts of harassment, such as collectively staring at an eighth-grade earth science teacher’s breasts or dropping our pencils in unison at a specific time in the middle of her class (a feat we did not repeat for any male instructors). After several days of this behavior, the young science teacher broke down in tears. The reason I can recall only the names of my male teachers from that period is because the women usually didn’t stay long. (Today, Landon says that about one-third of its upper-school teachers are women, a big and welcome increase from my time at the school.)
....
What happens next is a matter for the Senate and the nation. But one thing should not be in doubt: Ideas that we consider anachronistic today — about women, male entitlement, even what we now call rape culture — were not just common views of that era. They thrived at places like Georgetown Prep, which Kavanaugh, in his confirmation hearing, called “very formative.” ... Three years ago, Kavanaugh jokingly said in a speech that “what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep. That’s been a good thing for all of us.” Today a better accounting of what went on at places like Georgetown Prep might help us all see our flaws more clearly.
Greg Jaffe is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, where he has been since March 2009. Previously, he covered the White House and the military for The Post. Follow https://twitter.com/GregJaffe
In the ’80s, boys’ prep schools like Kavanaugh’s could be bastions of misogyny
I went to an elite high school down the road from his. Here’s what I saw.
By Greg Jaffe
Greg Jaffe is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, where he has been since March 2009. Previously, he covered the White House and the military for The Post.
September 20 at 12:45 PM
This past week, I came home from work to find on my kitchen counter a 50th-birthday card from Landon School, the boys’ prep school I attended — which is just down the road, and not all that different, from Georgetown Prep, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alma mater. On the front was a picture of a much younger me in a coat and tie, the dress code. Inside, six of my former instructors, all terrific teachers who have dedicated many decades to the school for mediocre pay, had written short greetings. It was a charming reminder of all that I liked about the place.
But the greeting landed one day after Christine Blasey Ford said in The Washington Post that Kavanaugh had drunkenly pinned her on her back and groped her when he was a high school junior. Ford had attended Holton-Arms, Landon’s sister school. I have no special knowledge about that night many decades ago — I never knew Ford or Kavanaugh, a man three years my senior who vehemently denies the allegation — but I do remember plenty about the culture of these same-sex programs, not all of it good. I began reaching out to old friends from Landon and Prep to see if they recalled the same misogynistic culture that I did.
All of the teachers who signed my 50th-birthday card were men. The few women who signed it all worked as administrators. This fact was no doubt a product of Landon’s culture in the 1980s: In my memory, we tested and terrorized the female teachers with petty acts of harassment, such as collectively staring at an eighth-grade earth science teacher’s breasts or dropping our pencils in unison at a specific time in the middle of her class (a feat we did not repeat for any male instructors). After several days of this behavior, the young science teacher broke down in tears. The reason I can recall only the names of my male teachers from that period is because the women usually didn’t stay long. (Today, Landon says that about one-third of its upper-school teachers are women, a big and welcome increase from my time at the school.)
....
What happens next is a matter for the Senate and the nation. But one thing should not be in doubt: Ideas that we consider anachronistic today — about women, male entitlement, even what we now call rape culture — were not just common views of that era. They thrived at places like Georgetown Prep, which Kavanaugh, in his confirmation hearing, called “very formative.” ... Three years ago, Kavanaugh jokingly said in a speech that “what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep. That’s been a good thing for all of us.” Today a better accounting of what went on at places like Georgetown Prep might help us all see our flaws more clearly.
Greg Jaffe is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, where he has been since March 2009. Previously, he covered the White House and the military for The Post. Follow https://twitter.com/GregJaffe
Sure enough, the article received this comment:
Trumpy Bear 2 hours ago (Edited)
Here's my theory: Many women have a fantasy about being "manhandled" sexually (Bernie Sanders even wrote about this years ago), and perhaps Christine Ford also had the same fantasy starting back when she was a teenager. She may have seen a teenage Kavanaugh back in the early 1980s, and fantasized an encounter with him at a party where alcohol was served. After more than 30 years of thinking about it, the fantasy became a reality in her mind. In the absence of other evidence, this is the only possible explanation.
