Slut Shaming and Gaslighting

Renate Schroeder (now Renate Dolphin) clearly considered SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh a friend.

She knew him when he was in high school, and she signed a letter vouching for his moral turpitude in an attempt to counteract the accusations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape Dr Christine Blasey Ford (now a professor at Palo Alto University) when they were teens. What Renate Schroeder Dolphin didn’t know was that she had been slut shamed by Kavanaugh and several of his friends all those years ago.

Kavanaugh and some of his buddies jokingly referred to themselves as “Renate Alumni” in their yearbook, safe in the knowledge that Renate Schroeder wouldn’t see their comments and contradict the implication they had all been involved sexually with her. Although four “of the men who were pictured with Judge Kavanaugh in a photo captioned “Renate Alumni” said it was simply a reference to their dating or going to dances with Ms. Dolphin,” anyone who went to high school in the 80s can tell you what it meant to say a girl ‘got around’ or dated ‘too many’ boys. She could cross the fine line between ‘popular’ to the moniker of ‘easy’ in a flash.

That seems to have happened to Ms Schroeder.  Michael Walsh, Another friend of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep, Michael Walsh,  “also listed himself on his personal yearbook page as a “Renate Alumnus.” Alongside some song lyrics, he included a short poem: “You need a date / and it’s getting late / so don’t hesitate / to call Renate.” The idea that a girl is easy to get a date with often morphs into the idea that a girl is ‘easy’ to have sex with, and from then on any boy claiming to date her was claiming to have had sex with her.

Mrs Renate Schroeder Dolphin must know what saying that she was easy to date implied, because she was consequently horrified when she found out about the Renate Alumni. Ms. Dolphin gave a statement to The New York Times, saying “I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means. I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.” She is hurt and humiliated because she knows that calling themselves the Renate Alumni was a way for the boys to slut shame her.

Apparently the lack of sexual contact between Schroeder Dolphin and Kavanaugh made her think she was safe from slut shaming. Silly Mrs Dolphin! Any woman can be slut shamed, regardless of sexual experience, on the whim of patriarchal asshats. She may have been ‘too’ pretty, or ‘too’ well-endowed, or simply ‘too’ outgoing and thus a good target for teen male braggadocio. 

The men involved, including Kavanaugh, are of course claiming that they certainly weren’t doing something so disrespectful as slut shaming Renate Schroeder Dolphin. Kavanaugh’s lawyer declared that “The language from Judge Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook refers to the fact that he and Ms. Dolphin attended that one high school event together and nothing else.” This is an excellent example of gaslighting – an abusive technique where victims have their perception of reality called into question. Gaslighting is what makes slut shaming so insidious. The slut shamers never have to use the word slut. They can just imply their brains out. And if you know the context, if you can understand the nuances of the social implications, you know that slut shaming is occurring – but you cannot seem to prove it.

However, any woman who survived an American high school – especially in the 1980s or in a religious environment that put a premium on female sexual restraint – can tell you that Renate Schroeder was being slut shamed. Moreover, the boys knew what they were doing. Sean Hagan, a fellow student at Kavanaugh’s school, said that the so-called Renate Alumni were “very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate.”  Mr. Hagan and another classmate, “who requested anonymity because he fears retribution,” told the New York Times that they knew “Judge Kavanaugh and his friends were seeking to memorialize their supposed conquests with the “Renate” yearbook references.”

Ms Dolphin has a right to be hurt, and a right to be offended, but she is also an object lesson that playing by the ‘rules’ won’t keep a woman safe in a patriarchy. When she defended Kavanaugh, she believed him to be a friend and believed herself safe from slut shaming because she wasn’t a ‘slut’. But a woman is never safe. A woman can never follow the rules well enough to be secure of her place. And the difference between any woman and the ‘slut’ being shamed by her peers is mostly luck.