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When she stood, hand raised, the pose seemed sacrificial: one woman baring her wounds in the stead of many. To us, Blasey Ford’s words were stirring. Consumed with anxiety, we listened to Blasey Ford as she recounted the details: the boy standing by the door watching, drunk on beer, Kavanaugh’s heavy body atop hers, the one-piece swimsuit she wore under her clothes, the lucky escape she made through the front door. The arrangement of the hearing-the story of one woman, the aggressive interrogations of men who sought to discredit that story-was a public reenactment of our struggle to assert the right to freedom from sexual violence. This was a different sort of test, we told each other, our voices hushed even though there was no one else in the apartment.

Over the last year we had been energized by the #MeToo movement’s successes in removing abusive men from positions of power. She spoke carefully, slowly-her voice tremulous-of being pinned down, suffocated, and groped at the age of fifteen by Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh. It was September 27, 2018, and the woman was Dr. But neither she nor I would get up-our eyes were glued to the woman speaking on the television. To turn it back on, one of us would have had to press a switch in another room. The air conditioner in the poorly maintained apartment building had a habit of shutting down unexpectedly.

The room was hot, and we shifted uncomfortably on the couch.