The state, however, is by no means monolithic. All states, and particularly liberal democracies, are a terrain of struggle between different groups, in which social movements of the exploited and the oppressed can contest or even capture power. The events surrounding Kavanaugh’s appointment were enmeshed in an unusually frank conversation about sexual assault, and gave new momentum to an increasingly militant and rebellious feminism, one that sees patriarchy as part of a regime of social and economic oppression. Reverberating through Ford’s statement, as in so many recent public acts of protest and testimony, is this tremble of hegemony fracturing.