No man should swear at a woman full stop, you don’t need to pretend to be a white knight mate, we all agree he’s overstepped the mark in swearing at AOC but we don’t need to try and pretend it’s some sexist injustice.
I’m no white knight, unless that means “treating women with respect,” and you’re right, it only includes, but goes far beyond “sexist injustice”...or are you saying he would have used that language to a man?
As for AOC, she is simply using Yoho as a prop for the concept she is trying to get across. The diminution of “other,” as it pertains to the old white males who run everything in American society, is the point she is making. The comfort they enjoy, such that he felt quite comfortable saying such a thing to and about her, is what she is getting at.
It is so institutionalized within American society, where women have not made the strides they have elsewhere, where the glass ceiling is a real obstacle that is being chipped away at in places, but is still derided in even more, that is also an issue she is speaking to.
As a Latina woman, she feels this even more, because that same society is also inherently racist, was literally built on racism, and didn’t even acknowledge that the races
should have equal rights until 100 years AFTER the Civil War to free slaves. And, even then, in many areas of the country, the white society closed ranks and kept inequality alive and well, while still lynching any negro who stepped out of line or forgot “his place.”
I have not expressed a single thing about my politics or theirs, because the politics of this are simply the backdrop to the event, the stage in which the play took place. The substance of this interaction, and the much deeper, darker, pervasively prevalent issues she is addressing should be the focus.
Against the backdrop of a country where black men are gunned down by police with relative impunity, where pleading for your life to a policeman while convicted of no crime carries not only no weight but no mercy, and where the simple protest of these things leads to the assembling of an unidentifiable federal army descending upon your city to create a law and order crisis where only one side is armed, where only one side is extra-judicial, where only one side is unwelcome...all so that an old white man can cling to the last vestiges of the awesome power he has as the country turns away from him... Against THAT backdrop of racial and political divide, AOC was making the point that we are ALL equal, women and men, black, white and everything in between, and she is demanding that Neanderthals like Yoho, and the other Neanderthals he represents, wake up to the realities of the world that is moving beneath their feet.
Never has the term “fucking woman” carried so much not-so-hidden meaning, but then never has it been met by a speech from a young woman who met the moment so eloquently and forcefully.
Yoho should be forced to retire, just as if he had walked into work, walked upto a co-worker, and said it in front of everyone in the office and all the shareholders, because in doing it where he did it, when he did it, that’s exactly what he did.
Will he retire? Not a chance, because when your bio starts with “Yoho, a Florida man...” there is literally nothing that comes next that surprises anyone.
Turning the Titanic, one degree at a time...
