Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Responds to Rep. Yoho

Maeve Korengold writes about the alleged verbal abuse faced by Representative Ocasio-Cortez. The 30-year-old was reportedly called "disgusting" and sworn at. Yoho offered an apology in which he insisted he was not misogynistic, however Ocasio-Cortez delivered an impassioned response. Tasfia Ahmad writes about the etymology of "the b word", delving into its offensive roots, and explaining how it has been somewhat reclaimed.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a progressive American Democrat, who is currently serving in the House of Representatives for the fourteenth congressional district of New York. Ocasio-Cortez was sworn in at the age of twenty-nine, making her the youngest woman to be elected to congress. She often sports red lipstick and hoop earrings to work, which she says is a nod to Sonia Sotomayor: the first Latina Supreme Court justice. Ocasio-Cortez once tweeted that Sotomayor was “advised to wear a neutral-colored nail polish to her confirmation hearings to avoid scrutiny,” but kept her red polish. She followed this up by saying, “Next time someone tells a Bronx girl to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a congresswoman.” Ocasio-Cortez is a third-generation Bronxite, and she became aware of the income inequality that was growing in the cities of New York from a young age. She applied this experience to her platform, pushing against corporate political action committees (PACs) and for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. Before she was elected to congress, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an Educational Director for the National Hispanic Institute, in addition to waitressing and bartending to support her family, while campaigning for Bernie Sanders as a volunteer organizer.

Recently, a situation in which conservative Florida Representative Ted Yoho allegedly accosted Ocasio-Cortez in front of the Capitol building, gained a large amount of media attention. The interaction between the two of them, which occurred on Monday, July 20th, was reported to be “brief but heated.” According to a reporter who overheard them, Yoho was descending the stairs outside of the building after voting as Ocasio-Cortez was heading into the building to vote. When he approached her, Representative Yoho told Ocasio-Cortez that she was “disgusting” for commenting that “poverty and unemployment are driving a spike in crime in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic.” Yoho continued by saying that she was “out of [her] freaking mind,” to which she replied by saying that he was “being rude.” Then, both Representatives went their separate ways, and Yoho, thinking that Ocasio-Cortez was out of earshot, said: “f------ b----.”

After their exchange, Ocasio-Cortez said: “That kind of confrontation hasn't ever happened to me — ever, I've never had that kind of abrupt, disgusting kind of disrespect levied at me.” Yoho, on the other hand, refused to make any comment regarding the situation. Roger Williams, a Republican Representative for Texas who was alongside Representative Yoho for the entire interaction, reported that he wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation. “I was actually thinking, as I was walking down the stairs, I was thinking about some issues I've got in my district that need to get done," Williams said. "I don't know what their topic was. There's always a topic, isn't there?”

According to the Washington Post, Representative Ocasio-Cortez hadn’t planned to respond to Representative Yoho because “being a woman had required a lifetime of ignoring such insults,” but she decided to speak on the situation after Yoho brought it up in his speech on the House floor. In his approximately two-minute apology, he cited his forty-five-year marriage to his wife and his two daughters as reasons to why he would never behave in a misogynistic way. Yoho apologized for the “misunderstanding,” but stated that he “cannot apologize for [his] passion or for loving [his] God, [his] family and [his] country.” In addition to this, he maintained that he had not uttered the words “f------ b----,” and that he was “misheard.”

Image credit: Matt Johnson via Flickr

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez made her own speech the next day. “I am someone’s daughter, too,” she said. “Thankfully, my father is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect of me on the floor of this House, on television. I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter, and they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.” She went on to say: “This harm that Mr. Yoho tried to levy at me was not just directed at me. When you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters. . . . I am here to say, that is not acceptable.” Ocasio Cortez finished by saying, “Having daughters is not what makes someone a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect is what makes a decent man. And when a decent man messes up, as we all are bound to do, he does apologize. Not to save face. Not to win a vote. He apologizes, genuinely, to repair and acknowledge the harm done, so that we can all move on.”

Both Representative’s speeches garnered reactions.

An article in the New York Times described Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s response as “disruptive,” and a means to “amplify her own political brand.” Miranda Devine, a writer for the New York Post, argues that “[Ocasio-Cortez’s] story should be challenged” and that her concern for women and girls is “phony.” She adds that Yoho “deserves the benefit of the doubt” because he has lived in poverty, has been married for forty-five years, and is pro-life. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, reported that Rep. Yoho apologized to Ocasio-Cortez "not once but twice,” and that he holds the belief that “when someone apologizes, they should be forgiven."

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that this situation is “a manifestation of attitudes in our society.” She added that “There's no limit to the disrespect or the lack of acknowledgment of the strength of women, and nothing brings more, nothing is more wholesome for our government, for our politics, for our country, than the increased participation of women, and women will be treated with respect." Linda Seabrook, the general counsel and director of workplace safety and equity for an anti-violence organization called Futures Without Violence, says: “We have to change the fact that Rep. Yoho saying [those remarks] was treated as OK because his colleagues didn’t call him out. That’s the norm that has to be changed. And, I think that’s changed through greater accountability. We need good men to stand up and say, ‘That’s wrong’ and hold other men accountable for that type of language and behavior.”

Tasfia Ahmad takes a look at the etymology of “the b word”

The word “bitch” comes from an old English word, “bicce”, meaning “female dog”. Before the word ever existed, women and even gay men had been compared to dogs in a range of ancient cultures. Female dogs were known for constantly giving birth, and, therefore, they were known for constantly mating. This word was eventually used against women to describe them as a “sl*t” or domineering. It has grown to become sexist, misogynistic and generally offensive to women in the 18th century, where patriarchal values were widespread.

However, in the 1920s, gay men began reclaiming the word, turning it into something “friendlier”, yet interesting. For example, they created bitchery (gay bar) to bitched up (dressed up), and using bitch as a funny greeting. At that time, women were still fighting for gender equality, with suffrage in the USA having been granted at the start of the century. During that time, the word was used as a form of empowerment and commonality between women activists.

In the next 50 years, this new significance was stripped when events such as World War 1, The Great Depression, and World War 2 broke out. Once again, it became an insult. The word did not become popular again until the 1970s, when women and non-binary activists took to the streets to demand the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

But ever since the fight for gender-equality returned in the 1970s, activists, unwittingly and otherwise, have attempted to reclaim it. "Bad bitches, rad bitches, bitchin' bitches" are a few phrases given to women and/or other genders feeling confident and special. It has even become more gender-neutral as not only can it uplift and harm women and other people with a variety of sexuality and gender, but also uplift and harm men in a sense. However, when it comes down to its most common usage, the word has not escaped its derogatory origins, ultimately seeking to keep women down by condemning that which makes them women.

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