Sex and Justice Blog Post- Vivi

Prompt 1:

A high tech lynching refers to Thomas' demoralization through the proceedings brought forth by Hill. However, I do not think a lynching is an appropriate way to characterize the way that the charges damaged his reputation. Although he faced a lot of backlash, I do not think the word lynching is appropriate because it has such a horrific and memorable image associated with the word. As a woman, it is evident that I am biased in regards of cases that deal with sexual assault, seeing as that I have experienced it myself and think it is very real and needs to be addressed more seriously. In more of a legal standpoint, I do understand the skeptical nature that was seen amongst members of the Supreme Court when they realized Hill's case had many overlaps with previous sexual assault cases. However, I don't think that automatically gives prosecutors the ability to immediately denunciate her credibility.   I personally thought that it was very obvious that Hill was telling the truth due to the specific details she was able to recount and that she had nothing to gain by bringing these charges forth and being judged immensely by members of Congress as well as society. Thomas seemed very confident and almost rude to me in the case by claiming that she was essentially just trying to ruin his life and that she was only doing such a thing for attention. The congressional committees handling of events seemed pretty unbiased to me considering they equally interrogated the two of them. It seemed like the Democrats generally supported Hill while Republicans sided with Thomas. I don't think that this affected the outcome of the committee's findings because it seemed like people were just picking political party preferences and then voting the way that their party was, which was Democrats thinking Thomas was guilty and Republican's believing that Thomas was innocent.
Prompt 2: The two hearings dealt with completely separate issues- however, there are several parallels that can be drawn. McCarthy's accusations included the speculation of many government officials of being communists, and damaged the reputations of many, as did Hill's accusations against Thomas. What McCarthy did was an example of slander and I believe he did this for his own personal gain/reasons, whereas I believe Hill was only trying to put her assailant in prison, or at least something close to it. In both cases no one was found guilty- Thomas went on to get the Supreme Court nomination as well as McCarthy remaining in office, although he had a significant decrease in his approval rating. The only other connection between the two cases was that it took a notable amount of time for these trials to happen which ended up making both sides of the case even more unsure about the previous comments and claims they had made.