Donald Trump won’t even say her name. To him, Christine Blasey Ford, who says his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her, is “that woman.” That’s not surprising.
What is mildly surprising is just how many media outlets are still similarly depersonalizing Dr. Blasey Ford. That’s depersonalize in a literal sense, stripping her of identity in relation to Brett Kavanaugh.
ABC News manages to get Dr. Blasey Ford’s full name in headlines. So has the Los Angeles Times.
Not so the Washington Post. Don’t tell me it’s a length issue: It’d have been more efficient to use her name. Instead, they used the unwieldy “Woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault wants FBI to investigate incident before she testifies to Senate.”
The New York Times is just as infuriating. Covering the Grassley-Blasey Ford exchange, they’ve used the phrase “failed to respond” with respect to Blasey Ford at least twice. That implies a failure, a shortcoming, on her part and legitimizes a total deviation from precedent and process.
USA Today used her name in the headline and framed the same information entirely differently.
Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, has until Friday morning to decide whether or not she will testify before senators about her allegations.
That’s language that acknowledges that Blasey Ford does not have to respond; it’s up to her to exercise agency.
It’s not hard to avoid depersonalizing, blaming, and disempowering. If the genders were reversed, would they write it the same way?