As Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has been disrupted by the #Me Two Movement’s chant “Believe the Women,” it is worth recalling the origins of this slogan -- and the huge damage it wreaked in its first incarnation. It is also worth considering what light the earlier Believe the Women movement can throw on the current allegations. I described its origin in 2001 in The Women’s Quarterly.  I noted it could be traced to a single moment in history, April 17, 1971, when the New York Radical Feminists, a group that at its height boasted no more than 400 members, held a groundbreaking conference on rape, a subject long considered taboo.  The event produced an unlikely star, Florence Rush, a middle-aged social worker who had never been raped.   It was the conclusion to her speech that electrified the audience. “The family itself is an instrument of sexual and other forms of child abuse… permitted because it is...(Read Full Article)