Sexual Politics and Irony

October 11, 2018 (201 words)

I seem to recall being on the receiving end of some less-than-friendly banter during my late teens and early twenties, over what was interpreted at the time to be a certain reticence on my part toward the opposite sex. The muted derision was prompted by my appearing to hue a bit too closely to the sad-sack image of being a “good Catholic boy.”

This sarcastic moniker was applied to any product of what was derided as an overly uptight upbringing, the effects of which constrained the poor soul to sit out the free love with no strings attached movement which was then in full swing. This is the early 1970s we are talking about now.

By the early 1980s, when our newly-minted Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, exactly ten years my junior, reached the same stage in his development, apparently he and the posse of young men he ran with, first at Georgetown Prep and then at Yale, did not suffer from any such unhealthy inhibitions.

In one of those ironic twists of fate, turns out maybe that wasn’t such a good thing, after all.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
October 11, 2018