Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. Roy Moore. The list of men disgraced (finally) by their assumption of male privilege over the bodies of women grew for months. So much so that it was hardly news when another man harassed his way onto the list.

After Cosby, whom many of us had thought of as “America’s dad,” was convicted, on April 26, more than a few women said, “Finally, they listened to the women.” Then, on Oct. 6, the U.S. Senate showed that it had not “listened to the women.”

I won’t argue that (now) Justice Brett Kavanaugh should not have been confirmed. I believe the president could have found much better conservatives judges who don’t melt down emotionally when challenged and who don’t give false answers about the meaning of what they wrote in high school. But he chose Kavanaugh instead.

I do argue that the Senate Judiciary Committee hasn’t evolved much since 1991, when its 14 white men (and no women) ignored the testimony of Prof. Anita Hill in a process scarily similar to 2018. Nor has the Senate as a whole evolved much.

Sexual assault is assuredly among the most difficult charges to prove, as a legal charge or as an appeal to public opinion. One difference between the men named at the start of this column and Kavanaugh was the number of accusers. More than 100 women said Weinstein had used his power over them to try to get sex. More than 20 women testified against Cosby. Something like a dozen people said Moore was stalking girls as young as 14 in Alabama. A shopping mall there banned him because of the reports. The people of Alabama ruled that he was not fit to serve in the Senate when they elected Doug Jones.

Those men were accused repeatedly, Kavanaugh once. The Senate could have heard from at least two more women. As could the FBI when it investigated the accusation against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford. Neither body wanted to see if those two would add to the weight of accusation. Instead, they hung Ford out to dry.

They didn’t believe her. And, the trend of women coming forth to tell what had been done to them may have been stalled, maybe even reversed.

Beyond the result of the confirmation, here are four lessons we can take from what went on in the Senate. First, politics rules over everything else.

Second, few who don’t bear the title of archbishop denied the claims of hundreds of men that 35 or 40 years ago they had been molested by Catholic priests. They were accepted at face value. Men telling of abuse embroil the church 35 years later in a scandal from which it may not recover. A woman tells of abuse, and the Senate disbelieves her.

Prof. Hill testified that Judge Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor. But when Thomas flew into a rage and called the process a “high-tech lynch mob,” he thoroughly cowed the 14 good ol’ white boys on the committee. They, in essence, ignored her, and Thomas became Mr. Justice Thomas. It has been reported that a second witness was ready to come forth against Thomas and that her case was more damning than Hill’s, but the good ol’ boys didn’t call her after Thomas’s rage.

So, the third lesson is that we need to re-examine the old saw that women are more emotional than men. Both Thomas and Kavanaugh attacked their opponents angrily and personally during the late stages of their hearings. And so much for the reputation of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as a southern gentlemen. I can’t recall ever seeing a woman go off the way these three men went off in the Judiciary Committee.

Here’s a thought. More than 51 percent of law students are women. Most members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are lawyers. In time, perhaps more than 51 percent of the committee will be women. Then it may evolve.

Fourth, there are tons of social situations in which we men continue to be more “free” than women. One aspect of that is the old practice of “blaming the victim.” When I was growing up, girls were strongly encouraged to make themselves attractive to boys. My late wife’s father suggested to her that she not appear “too smart,” because boys want to be smarter. I don’t know if he figured out that his daughter was smarter than her husband.

In making themselves attractive to boys, though, girls ran the risk of making themselves too attractive. So, if a girl got attacked by a boy, it was her fault. Her skirt was too short, her cleavage went too low, her flirting was too ardent. You name it, if she became a victim, she was to blame. Boys will be boys, girls will pay the price.

Merriam-Webster calls a double standard “a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another, especially a code of morals that applies more severe standards of sexual behavior to women than to men.” I call the Senate for applying a double standard to Kavanaugh.

Yogi Berra was correct. It is deja vu all over again. The Senate Judiciary Committee hasn’t come far since 1991. Perhaps the rest of society has, but the events of autumn 2018 in Washington raise doubts.

Along with the French, when it comes to men and women, I say, “vive la difference.” I don’t say one is better than the other, that one ought to have privileges over the other as a condition of birth, that the things one does better are more important than the things the other does better. America for two centuries moved toward the point at which we all would begin the race at the same starting point. We need to start moving again in that direction.

Maybe we can start in the Senate.

Bob Neal aced the jurisprudence course at UMKC. Fortunately, he didn’t use that A as a platform to apply to law school.