Hello! In this week's newsletter I have a note about Biden's #MeToo situation and reading recommendations.
Biden is ... not a great fit for the #MeToo era
The emergence of accusations from women saying that Joe Biden has made them uncomfortable with his physical contact was inevitable. What what wasn’t certain was how he’d choose to respond to them. So far, his reaction has been pretty bad — and a reminder of how poorly suited he is for a 2020 run.
Former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores said that Biden’s decision to walk up behind her, smell her hair, and plant a kiss on the back of her head during a campaign event made her feel “uneasy, gross, and confused.” Former congressional aide Amy Lappos said that Biden’s decision at a fundraiser to put his hand around her neck, pull her in, and rub noses with her — an act so intimate that she thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth — crossed a “line of decency” for her. “Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It's not cultural. It's not affection. It's sexism or misogyny," she said.
One would have to be living under a rock to not expect these claims and possibly many more to come up as Biden contemplated making the plunge into the race for the White House. Biden’s creepy and over-the-top physicality has been the subject of countless highlight reels, memes and comedy show routines for many years. In the #MeToo era it’s clear that, for many, much of Joe Biden’s past behavior has gone from cringe-inducing to unacceptable.
But Biden doesn’t seem particularly interested in introspection or reflecting on changing standard of propriety. He has not apologized to Flores or to Lappos; he has not promised to reconsider or change his behavior; and he has not expressed a shred of self-doubt. He’s been avoiding public appearances, but in a statement he said, among other things: “In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”
Not only is there no “Sorry, I may have erred in my judgment” anywhere in his statement, but there’s also a focus on his intentions and perception rather than, you know, the experience of the women actually enduring his wandering hands and mouth. Biden’s defenders — many of them prominent women in politics and media — have also focused on his intentions, making the case for how his touchiness is grandfatherly or how his constant flirtatiousness is “safe.” (The very fact that some people alternate between these two defenses should give his advocates pause, by the way — flirty grandpa doesn’t seem to be a great affect.)
As the Washington Post’s Molly Roberts points out, it’s precisely because Biden cannot know how others will perceive his unusual touchiness that he should refrain from it, even if his intentions are "good."
“Biden can’t know when a woman will welcome a head-kiss as an exciting interaction with a beloved leader and when she will want to melt into the floor because it feels like a violation,” she writes. “That’s why he shouldn’t go around kissing women’s heads — a policy plenty of other politicians don’t seem to have any trouble adhering to.”
Biden's seeming insensitivity to the shift in the political climate is particularly striking given that he was a major figurehead of the Obama administration's "It's On Us" campaign, which advocates for men to realize that the burden is on them to create a culture that eliminates sexual assault. The message of that campaign, which calls for men be proactive in understanding their social environment, doesn't exactly comport withBiden's blinkered response to Flores et al.
It’s also been rather strange to see female Biden allies like Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice choose to defend Biden by recounting how pleasant their interactions with him have been. It’s completely irrelevant — it's plain as day that Biden constantly violates universally observed norms around personal space in the US and if some women didn't like it then that's really all that matters. In an excellent article in Current Affairs, Vanessa Bee argues that Biden's female friends and colleagues choosing to go public with how comfortable they personally are with handsy Biden is not just a distraction — it's a net harm to society:
Whether your timing is conscious or not, telling your story in the context of discourse about certain allegations casts doubt on the victim’s experience by suggesting that either the accused is simply not the kind of person who would ever cross boundaries (because they respected yours) or to imply that the victim is simply overreacting. The effect of the former is to excuse norms of behavior that perhaps we, as a society, would be better off changing while there is momentum. The effect of the latter is to send victims, or people offended by certain kinds of touching, the message that their discomfort should be suppressed. It also says, whether you intend it or not, that it is more valuable to protect the feelings of people who cross boundaries than it is to create a cultural and social environment in which others always feel safe to disclose harm or hurt they’ve suffered.
One last thing that's worth mentioning that I haven't seen discussed much: Biden's love for making comments about how attractive girls and women around him are. At events like swearing-in ceremonies, Biden seems incapable of talking to females without commenting on their looks and cracking jokes about how the pretty girls of a family ought to be protected by a big wall, or an older brother, and so on. This is vital context for Biden's touchiness — it's clear that he constantly sexualizes women and seems to hold a worldview that men can't help themselves when around a woman's beauty. Biden might only be trying to be a nice guy when he says what he says, but his comments are predicated on a notion of female identity that is pretty antiquated. Surely that shapes how he carries himself as well.
What should Biden do? At the very least, apologize properly and change the way he touches women he doesn't know personally. What should Biden's supporters do? Let Biden and his accusers talk it out, let voters decide what they think of the whole situation, and get over their delusion that he's the only man that can win the White House and that he's worth protecting at the cost of sacrificing the principles of the left.
What I'm reading
How to not talk about uncomfortable shoulder rubs.
Healthcare, not the Mueller report, is what Trump should be most worried about.
In praise of public libraries.
Democrats are divided on a $15 minimum wage.
The GOP has an older voters problem.
Who killed Tulum?
How to hide an empire.
Parkland, one year later.
Human contact is now a luxury good.
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