Please note: This piece contains discussion of sexual harassment and/or assault.
I am not equipped to write about Tara Reade’s horrifying allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden. I am not prepared to stake my position in a debate over epistemology and evidence that encircles the truth, but doesn’t quite touch it.
Instead, I want to write about something that does not require a leap of faith on the part of the reader. I want to write about those times Joe Biden publicly kissed, touched and stroked women and girls without their permission, the awkwardness of those countless moments unendurably prolonged in YouTube compilations.
Peers and commentators alike have dismissed these moments as manifestations of overflowing tenderness and “exuberant human warmth.” They have absolved Biden for being born of another time, one in which physicality was part of good politics. It is not that we didn’t believe he did these things; we simply didn’t believe they counted as real violations.
I urge you to Google the videos and witness Biden’s farcical oblivion to the visible discomfort of the girls and women he is putting his hands on. I urge you to observe their suddenly rigid posture, their incredulously shifting eyes, their ultimate resolve to stiff stoicism. I urge you to marvel, for a moment, at the fact that Biden literally cannot feel their palpable unease.
What I see when I watch the videos is a willful disregard for the fact that these women and girls are sentient beings who have thoughts and feelings about being touched. It is as if any fellow politician’s wife or daughter is a stranger’s dog he has stooped down to pet on the street.
It’s not malicious; it’s oblivious. But it’s oblivious in a way that erases women’s sentience and erodes their personhood.
This fall, I was assaulted when a fellow student took off the condom during sex without my knowledge or consent. I doubt he was trying to hurt me or take advantage of me. I think it simply never occurred to him that his action might have an effect on me; that I might have an opinion about having unsafe sex.
What bothered me most is that I was overwhelmed by this boy’s personhood. I deduced what classes he was taking from the books scattered across his messy room. I sheepishly skimmed through his Spotify playlists to get a sense for his taste in music. I even noticed how he used “quite” as a filler word in the way a British person would, despite being American.
And yet, my personhood did not come through clearly enough for him to seek my consent.
He never bothered to ask if I was on any protection. I was not. He was oblivious to my privately humiliating quest to find Plan B, for which I paid $50. He was oblivious to the hormonal storm my body weathered in the days after I took the pill.
All of that really sucked, for lack of a better word, but what cut deep in the end was knowing that my interiority was irrelevant to him and his interests.
I understand that it is counterintuitive to see Biden’s gestures of amity, made unabashedly in the public view, as acts of violence. But when his performance of paternity occludes the intense discomfort of the women he is touching, he is contributing to a project of erasure — one that makes nonconsent generally permissible in our culture.
His oblivion to their experiences is not a defense. It is the very heart of the problem.
I will vote for Biden in the coming election. But I think he owes us an apology proportional to the damage he has caused.
If you have experienced sexual assault and wish to report the incident or make use of Harvard’s support resources, please see the information below:
- Office of Sexual Assault Prevention & Response (Confidential and open to all members of the Harvard community) 24-hour hotline: 617-495-9100. To make an appointment: 617-496-5636 or osapr@harvard.edu.
- Harvard College Title IV Office: 617-496-3336.
- Counseling and Mental Health Services (Confidential and open to all members of the Harvard community): 617-495-2042
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center: 24-hour hotline: 800-841-8371.
- National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline (Confidential and open to all): 800-656-4673.
Image Credit: Creative Commons/JohnJackPhotography