Readers are
writing in to me this week to comment on the eerie similarities between the
plot of my last Huntress novel, Hunger
Moon, and the sexual assault accusations against Supreme Court nominee
Brett Kavanagh.
That book focused on the
rape culture in fraternities that teaches privileged white boys that they can
sexually assault girls and young women with impunity, and speculated that the
accused sexual predator in the White House might well try to appoint a frat boy
sexual predator to the Supreme Court.
And here we are.
Here’s a scene from the
book, in which Special Agents Roarke and Epps question a Santa Barbara attorney
they suspect of organizing a nationwide rash of vandalism against
fraternities.
It’s looking pretty
relevant, if I do say so myself.
Please don’t forget to
register to vote. And may actual justice prevail.
- Alex
Andrea Janovy wore fingerless athletic gloves and navigated her
hand-powered wheelchair expertly, taut shoulder muscles straining under her tank top. Her
auburn hair was cropped close to her head, just a fuzz.
The agents followed
her up a ramp to a sleek, wide-open living space. She had gone to
considerable expense to make the house wheelchair accessible. There were ramps
everywhere, an elevator up to the second floor. Of course the open floor plan was to give
her as much room as possible to negotiate in the chair.
“I did go through all of this with your Agent
Singh a few weeks ago,” she
said over her shoulder, then spun the chair around to face a sofa, gestured for
Roarke and Epps to sit. “As I told her, I don’t know who was using my ID to get
into a Bay Area prison.”
“What we’re really interested in is your
expertise,” Roarke said.
“Expertise in regard to?”
“Fraternities.”
Her gaze narrowed.
Epps expanded on the
question. “In many of the instances of vandalism last night, fraternities were
specifically targeted for threats. We’d like any insight you can give us about
why that would be.”
“In general, you mean.”
“In general, of course.”
She shrugged. “You asked for it.” She leaned forward in her chair.
“If your goal is to dismantle the patriarchy, fraternities are a good place to
start. That’s where all our best misogynists get trained. And of course,
they’re bastions of white male privilege as well.” She looked straight at Epps
as she said it. “Fraternities represent an almost cult-like
white-cis-hetero-patriarchy – a closed chute that exists to isolate the
sons of the privileged among their wealthy peers and keep them moving straight
into the highest echelons of society. Fraternities are
where the one percent systematically consolidate their wealth and learn how to
keep the rest of society enslaved.”
“Sororities are a chute into the upper echelons of society,
too. The difference is sorority girls aren’t being groomed as power brokers. The Greek system propagates and normalizes female inferiority. Sexual assault is a routine part of Greek life and Greek
culture. Bluntly,
the Greek system is a hunting ground. We are breeding
entitled racist misogynists in a petri dish of rape culture. These thugs go on
to make laws and enforce laws that perpetuate rape culture.”
She looked Roarke in the eye, and then Epps. “It’s not accidental,
lads. This is a finely-honed system of oppression. It’s taken thousands of
years to build it. And it’s not going away without all of us using our
skill sets to bring it down.”
Roarke took that in. “So your goal is to dismantle the
patriarchy.”
She smiled grimly. “You bet your ass my goal is to dismantle the
patriarchy. But obviously–” she gestured to her legs. “I’m not going
around scaling university clock towers to do that. I wanted to pick the biggest
offender I could go after with my skill set. And that’s fraternities. I’m a fraternal plaintiff’s attorney.”
“Which means – you
sue the frats? The universities?”
She grimaced.
“That’s an uphill road. College administrators
are incredibly reluctant to discipline Greek houses or to publicize the crimes of individual
members. They’re much more likely to close ranks around them, block any outside
investigation, because universities depend on rich Greek alumni. Also there are very powerful political lobbying groups aimed at protecting
fraternities’ interests.” She paused. “So I go after the parents.”
Nothing she had said
so far had surprised Roarke. That last did.
“I’ve recovered
millions and millions of dollars from homeowners’ policies. That’s how many of
the claims against boys who violate the strict policies are paid: from their
parents’ homeowners’ insurance.”
Roarke and Epps
stared at her, unnerved. “You
don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about penalizing the parents?” Roarke asked.
Janovy turned
cynical eyes on him. “Did
you happen to read the letter the Stanford Rapist’s father wrote to the judge,
pleading for leniency for his rapist son? Arguing that his precious boy
shouldn’t be penalized for ‘twenty minutes of action?’”
Her loathing was
palpable in the room.
“Yes, Agent Roarke.
I go after the parents. It’s proved pointless to ask them to instill basic
decency in their sons. They won’t lift a manicured finger to stop rapist attitudes, rape
culture. So I go after them the only place it seems to hurt them. Their bank
accounts. Enough high-profile lawsuits and they might just start getting the
message.”
Roarke had to admit
it made sense. But he was after something more specific.
“Have you had, or
heard about, any complaints about the Kappa Alpha Tau house in particular?”
She went still for a
fraction of a second, but Roarke caught it. Then she spoke. “Specifically K-Tau? Not that I know
of. Why? Do you know of something?”
Roarke felt a warning stab at her interest. “Just asking.”
She regarded him, unsmiling.
Roarke veered quickly to his last question. “Just one more
question, if we may.
I’m
wondering about the timing of all this. This huge, coordinated action. Why now?
It doesn’t seem to be a reaction to anything in particular.”
She tilted her head. “You don’t
see anything significant about the timing?”
Roarke glanced at Epps. “What
timing is that?”
“We’ve been sitting here for
fifteen minutes talking about fraternities. The demonstrations targeted
fraternities specifically, if not exclusively. So the Taylor Morton rape trial?
It’s going to verdict any day now. Down in San Diego.”
Taylor Morton? Roarke scrambled
to identify the name. She gave him a cold smile. “Can’t quite place it? Maybe
because there are so many of these cases out there. Here’s your brief. The
accused is a star runner. White, upper middle class, frat boy. The judge is a
white middle-aged man, Princeton law school graduate. Oh, and by the way – a Kappa
Alpha Tau alum.”
“Kappa Alpha Tau,” Roarke repeated. He and Epps stared at each
other. Coincidence? Or something more?
“Put all that together – and do
we realistically think Morton is going to get jail time?” Her voice shook.
“Brock Turner. Austin Wilkerson. These guys are convicted rapists and we
can’t get judges to sentence them. At a certain point, you have to start asking
yourself how to actually solve the problem. Because a two percent conviction
rate doesn’t even begin to count. How long until we have an equal number of
female judges? How long before we make even the slightest dent in rape cases?
Given the political nightmare we’re now living in, what hope in hell do we have of
that happening now?”
She paused for breath.
“So yeah. I’d kind of expect something to happen around that
verdict and sentencing.”
Roarke turned that over in his head for a moment. “So all of this
vandalism was, what – anticipatory outrage? Or are you saying that someone has
gone to great lengths to set up some dominos to make them easy to knock over
when the verdict comes in?”
Janovy leaned forward. “You keep
asking me what I think. What I think is that something’s going to blow. There’s
just nothing left to lose anymore. The U.S. government has declared open war on
women. Officially, these fuckers are going to try to take away every right
we’ve ever fought for. Women are more angry than you can possibly imagine. All
we need is one last straw. It could happen any second. And then there’s going
to be rioting in the streets. There’s going to be bloodshed.”
She sat back. “And that trial? People are
watching it. You know why? That misogynistic joke of a judge is on the
predator-in-chief’s short list for the
Supreme Court.”
Hunger
Moon is the latest in
the series, but The Huntress series is written to be read in order! Book 6, Shadow Moon, will be out in January.
---- SPOILERS ----
In Hunger Moon, Roarke and his FBI
team are forced to confront the new political reality when they are pressured
to investigate a series of mysterious threats vowing death to college
rapists... while deep in the Arizona wilderness, mass killer Cara Lindstrom is
fighting a life-and-death battle of her own.
For thousands of years, women have
been prey.
No more.
