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tara reade
Joe Biden, Rape Culture, and Living in the Dark
It's hard when someone you like, someone you think is a good man or woman, is accused of rape. Our first instinct is to not believe it. That's normal. But that cannot be the end.
May 27, 2020
Rape culture is defined by Oxford as "a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse". When Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner to 6 months in jail (he ended up serving only 3) for raping an unconscious woman, that was an example of rape culture. When the teenage football players who raped a girl in Steubenville, Ohio received more public sympathy than their victim, that was an example of rape culture. When the GOP defended Brett Kavanaugh as he was being accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, that was an example of rape culture, too. And when Nancy Pelosi said "Joe Biden is Joe Biden", despite 8 women having come forward in 2019 with allegations of inappropriate non-consensual touch against him and despite Tara Reade coming forward with a disturbing allegation of digital rape, that, too was an example of rape culture.
Rape culture holds victims to a higher standard than it does abusers. Rape culture allows us to turn a victim's life upside down, looking at every tweet, post, public or private statement, for any inconsistencies, even when it has nothing to do with the crime perpetrated against them. Especially when it has nothing to do with that crime. Rape culture does this while making sure we're never allowed to ask the same things of the alleged perpetrator. We don't turn their lives upside down. We ask them for a denial, they give it, and then we move on. Nancy Pelosi, in a recent CNN interview, said she was done talking about the Tara Reade allegations. Case closed. Nothing to see here. Move along. Rape culture.
"Rape culture thrives in the dark. It hates the light. It tries to tell victims and future victims that the dark is normal. That the dark is the way it's always been, and the way it always will be."
In the case of Tara Reade, Joe Biden's documented history of public lying is never looked at. His fantastic and completely false claim of being arrested in South Africa while visiting Nelson Mandela goes unmentioned by politicians and the media. His years of lies about having been involved in the civil rights movement go unnoticed. We're not allowed to talk about why he had to drop out of a presidential race because he plagiarized and then lied about it multiple times on the campaign trail. We only seem to have permission to deconstruct his victim, Tara Reade. We question the timing of her disclosure. We say she changed her story. We look for inconsistencies in her claims about filing a complaint after she was sexually harassed while working for then-Senator Biden. We share hit pieces on social media that paint her as a "manipulative, deceitful user" because she may have been late on her rent and owed people money. We attempt to look into every nook and cranny of her life, and while doing so, make sure we keep the spotlight off of the man accused of victimizing her. It's hot under those lights, best we keep them turned on the victim.
In rape culture, we say the alleged perpetrator is a "good man". That's what we're saying about Biden now. He passed the Violence Against Women Act. He was Obama's VP. Sure, he gets a little handsy sometimes, but he doesn't mean anything by it. He didn't mean to offend or harm women when he sniffed their hair, planted long kisses on their heads while touching their waists from behind, touched their thighs or caressed them - all without their consent. Joe Biden is Joe Biden. Move along.
Senator Dianne Feinstein waded into the world of rape culture and victim-blaming when she said of Tara Reade, "Where has she been all of these years?". Questioning the timing of a victim's disclosure is the epitome of rape culture. It's what defense attorneys who represent men accused of sexual assault do. All the time. It's an uninformed and ignorant way of looking at rape. It's understandable when it comes from the mouths of lawyers defending rapists, like when it was uttered by Harvey Weinstein's lawyers - that's their job. It is completely unacceptable when it comes from a leading Democrat like Feinstein. The Democrats were supposed to be the party of #MeToo. They were supposed to be the party that didn't defend men credibly accuse of rape. They were supposed to be the opposite of the Republicans, who defended Trump and Kavanaugh. They were supposed to be, but when it comes to rape and sexual assault, they are not.
Rape culture pervades every institution in our society. College campuses are notorious for sweeping rape under the rug. They've been called out on it. A young student from a renowned university walked around campus carrying her mattress to remind people that she was raped by another student and that she felt she wasn't getting justice. She brought her mattress to graduation. Her rapist didn't have to carry a thing.
Most victims don't carry their mattresses around with them. Brock Turner's victim doesn't carry the dumpster around that Turner dragged her behind when he raped her. Anita Hill doesn't carry the Coke can around that Clarence Thomas said someone may have put a pubic hair on. Dr. Blasey Ford doesn't carry the bed around that Brett Kavanaugh held her down on when he assaulted her. And Tara Reade doesn't carry the cold wall around that Joe Biden pinned her against when he groped her, kissed her, and penetrated her with his fingers.
But they do.
I wish I was in the room when Senator Feinstein asked about Tara Reade, "Where has she been all these years?" I would have answered. I would have said:
She's been carrying around that wall. Trying not to think about it. Trying to go to sleep each night and praying she doesn't have nightmares again. She's been swimming in decades of self-blame and self-doubt, like every other victim of rape. She's been trying to raise a daughter in a world steeped with rape culture, praying it will be different for her. She's been painfully going back and forth, for years, about whether to come forward about her rapist. She's been second-guessing her years of silence like so many other victims do. She's been harder on herself than you'll ever be on her. That's what rape does. It leaves a trauma that stays for years, or for a lifetime. It makes you question yourself. It makes you doubt whether you even deserve to have a voice. And it keeps you silent. For years. For decades. For a lifetime. That's where she's been. Where every other rape victim has been. The dark. And your question has one purpose only: to push her back there.
When victims finally come forward, out of the dark, it can be terrifying. Coming into the light feels scary when you've been in the dark for years. It feels unfamiliar. It feels blinding. It feels unsafe.
I was a director of two rape crisis centers in New York. I've seen children and adults who've lived in the dark and kept their secrets for years finally come forward, finally find their voice. I've seen 10-year-olds who were raped by their fathers sit on witness stands while the family members of their rapist sit behind him, supporting him, staring her down. I've seen women in their fifties come forward, after decades of living in the dark, and finally talk about how they were raped when they were nineteen. I've seen men come forward, too, telling their stories of how they were raped in foster homes, or at soccer practice. And I've seen the good people I work with, counselors and advocates and attorneys, stand with these victims when they came into the light. So it was less scary. So it felt safer. So they could get used to being in the light and not crawl back into the dark.
"Victims are still carrying their mattresses, their walls. But we can't see them. We've pushed them back into the dark. It's safer for us when they're there."
Rape culture thrives in the dark. It hates the light. It tries to tell victims and future victims that the dark is normal. That the dark is the way it's always been, and the way it always will be. It succeeds in hiding the sun, keeping the light away and changing the subject. It makes excuses for the dark. Joe Biden is Joe Biden. Boys will be boys. Move along. Leave the room. Turn off the light.
At one rape crisis center where I was a director, there was a thirteen-year-old girl who was repeatedly sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend. He raped her, then he prostituted her out to his friends, other adult men who also raped her. Unlike most child abusers, he was arrested, tried and found guilty. The day he was sentenced, that thirteen-year-old girl stayed home from school and took her own life. She didn't want to spend a lifetime carrying her mattress. She didn't want to spend a lifetime in the dark. She found her voice, but it was silenced. Her mother still loved the man who raped her daughter. She still had pictures of him around the house. She still referred to him as a "good man".
It's hard when someone you like, someone you think is a good man or woman, is accused of rape. Our first instinct is to not believe it. That's normal. But when the evidence starts to pile up, when multiple witnesses come forward, as is the case with Tara Reade, saying she told them decades ago about how Joe Biden raped her, it gets harder to not believe it. When Tara's mother's voice crosses space and time to ask Larry King in 1993 about a serious problem her daughter was having with a prominent senator, it's even harder. That's where rape culture comes in. It gives us an out. Like the mother who said her daughter's rapist was a "good man". It makes it easier to move through this world thinking men we like don't rape, thinking victims are liars. He's a good man, something must be wrong with her.
And all the while we do this, the victims are still carrying their mattresses, their walls. But we can't see them. We've pushed them back into the dark. It's safer for us when they're there. Then we can go back to our denials. Then we can breathe easy.
Joe Biden is Joe Biden.
He passed the Violence Against Women Act. He's just a little handsy. He means well.
Turn off the light.
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Vowing to Be 'Fully Accountable' to Movement, Ocasio-Cortez Joins Biden's Climate Crisis Task Force
"I commend Joe Biden for working together with my campaign to assemble a group of leading thinkers and activists who can and will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction," Sen. Bernie Sanders said.
May 13, 2020
Following her call for former Vice President Joe Biden to reach out to progressives in order to win the 2020 general election against President Donald Trump, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accepted an invitation to co-chair the Biden campaign's newly-formed "unity task force" on the climate.
Ocasio-Cortez will join former Secretary of State John Kerry in leading the task force, which also counts among its members Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash and Poor People's Campaign leader Catherine Flowers.
Both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who suspended his presidential campaign last month, and Biden nominated members of their campaigns to join the panels.
A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, Lauren Hitt, said in a statement that the congresswoman "will be fully accountable to" members of the climate justice community while serving on the task force.
"She believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system," Hitt said. "This is just one element of the broader fight for just policies."
Ocasio-Cortez's appointment to the panel comes a month after she said in a New York Times interview that she intends to support Biden in the general election, but that he must work closely with and listen to progressives to win over the vast majority of Democratic voters who support bold policy proposals like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and economic reforms focused on working people.
"If Biden is only doing things he's comfortable with, then it's not enough," Ocasio-Cortez said last month, adding that Biden's campaign had not yet reached out to her. Days before her interview, Sanders had suspended his campaign, urging Biden to bring both of their teams together to "work out real solutions to these very, very important problems."
"I commend Joe Biden for working together with my campaign to assemble a group of leading thinkers and activists who can and will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction," Sanders said Wednesday.
Justice Democrats Waleed Shahid wrote that Ocasio-Cortez's appointment to the climate task force is in line with what progressive groups demanded when they called on Biden to "Earn Our Vote" last month.
\u201cAppointing @AOC to this role is in the spirit of the #EarnOurVote letter organized by progressive groups calling on Joe Biden to appoint personnel to his campaign from the progressive movement.\n\nhttps://t.co/eCuD9S5NVl\u201d— Waleed Shahid (@Waleed Shahid) 1589335492
Other progressives and former Sanders surrogates and advisers who are joining Biden's new committees include:
- Labor leader Sara Nelson, co-chair of the economy task force.
- Economist Stephanie Kelton, member of the economy task force.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the healthcare task force.
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights president Vanita Gupta, member of the criminal justice task force.
"The work of the task forces will be essential to identifying ways to build on our progress and not simply turn the clock back to a time before Donald Trump, but transform our country," Biden said in a statement Wednesday.
That comment from Biden echoed Ocasio-Cortez's words in her interview last month, when she said, "I just don't know if this message of 'We're going to go back to the way things were' is going to work for the people for who the way things were was really bad."
On Twitter, Prakash shared why, "after much deliberation," she had accepted the invitation to join the climate task force.
"What I do on a task force is much less important than what we do collectively as a movement this year," Prakash wrote. "Our political power exists because of our people power."
"As I step onto this task force," she added, "I'm taking each and every member of our movement with me. I will fight as hard as I can for a platform that will do the most good for the most people."
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From Juanita Broaddrick to Tara Reade: In Forty Years Has Nothing Changed at All?
"If Christine Blasey Ford is credible, then Tara Reade is credible at the very least—and so is Juanita Broaddrick."
May 10, 2020
Hidden among the grease and grime of the Tara Reade rape discussion -- "Should we believe her? To what extent? Would Biden really do such a thing? But what if a public discussion leads to Trump's reelection?" -- lies the shadow of another rape accusation.
Undiscussed, rarely brought up, as carefully hidden or moreso by the Democratic Party-supporting media as the Tara Reade story was, stands the rape charge by Juanita Broaddrick against 32-year-old Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton, a rape said to have occurred in 1978.
The facts are these (source: a nicely researched 2017 piece by Dylan Mathews at Vox). First, this is what Broaddrick says happened:
In 1978, Broaddrick was volunteering for Clinton's gubernatorial campaign, and claims she met him when he visited his campaign office in her home town of Van Buren, Arkansas, that April. She says he then invited her to visit his office in Little Rock, which Broaddrick agreed to do a week later, when she was in the state Capitol anyway for a conference of nursing home administrators. Once she was at a hotel in Little Rock, she claims Clinton told her that he wasn't going to the campaign headquarters and offered to meet her in her hotel lobby coffee shop instead. Once he arrived, she says he called her room and suggested that they have coffee there, since the lobby had too many reporters. Broaddrick says she agreed.
Then according to a 1999 Washington Post story:
As she tells the story, they spent only a few minutes chatting by the window -- Clinton pointed to an old jail he wanted to renovate if he became governor -- before he began kissing her. She resisted his advances, she said, but soon he pulled her back onto the bed and forcibly had sex with her. She said she did not scream because everything happened so quickly. Her upper lip was bruised and swollen after the encounter because, she said, he had grabbed onto it with his mouth.
"The last thing he said to me was, 'You better get some ice for that.' And he put on his sunglasses and walked out the door," she recalled.
Broaddrick's story has no third-party witness, but quite a lot of contemporaneous corroboration:
- The director at the nursing home where Broaddrick worked told reporters "that she entered the hotel room shortly after the assault allegedly took place, and 'found Mrs. Broaddrick crying and in 'a state of shock.' Her upper lip was puffed out and blue, and appeared to have been hit.' Kelsey elaborated to the New York Times, "She told me he forced himself on her, forced her to have intercourse."
- In 1999, three of Broaddrick's friends told NBC News on camera that Broaddrick told them at the time that Bill Clinton had raped her.
- In addition, David Broaddrick "with whom Broaddrick was having an affair ... also NBC that Broaddrick's top lip was black after the alleged incident, and that she told him, 'that she had been raped by Bill Clinton.'"
The Other Side
Opposed to this evidence lie the usual adversarial questions about why Broaddrick delayed so long to say something, why she chose the time she did to come forward, and what her underlying motives might have been. Bill Clinton was being impeached for the Monica Lewinski affair -- pilloried, really, by Ken Starr's special prosecutor's office -- when Broaddrick's story was leaked to the public.
The response to this has been that Broaddrick, according to Vox, "had been courted to come forward about the allegations by Clinton enemies for years," and refused many pleas that she speak out.
"She only came forward after she was interviewed by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office and her allegation leaked. Broaddrick told the [Wall Street] Journal [here] that NBC News reporter Lisa Myers pursued her for nearly a year before she agreed to an interview, and that she came forward because she wanted to rebut false rumors circulating after her statements to prosecutors (like that David Broaddrick had accepted hush money from the Clintons in exchange for silence)."
In short, if Vox's account is correct, Broaddrick was almost literally the most reluctant of reluctant witnesses at a time when Bill Clinton was beset on all sides with eager ones.
Did Hillary Clinton Weigh In?
It's an ugly story, both in the context in which it occurred -- the dubiously moral, hypocritical Republican Party assaulting a presidency it never considered legitimate using charges they themselves were guilty of at the time -- and in the Broaddrick story itself.
And the ugliness continued, according to Broaddrick, shortly after the event. In a 1999 interview she gave to the Drudge Report and quoted by Vox, Broaddrick said that "mere weeks after the alleged [1978] assault, Hillary Clinton had tried to thank her for her silence on the matter at a political rally." Broaddrick:
She came directly to me as soon as she hit the door. I had been there only a few minutes, I only wanted to make an appearance and leave. She caught me and took my hand and said 'I am so happy to meet you. I want you to know that we appreciate everything you do for Bill.'
Here her husband had just done this to me, and she was coming up to thank me? It was scary...I started to turn away and she held onto my hand and reiterated her phrase -- looking less friendly and repeated her statement----'Everything you do for Bill'. I said nothing. She wasn't letting me get away until she made her point. She talked low, the smile faded on the second thank you. I just released her hand from mine and left the gathering.
No one knows for sure what happened between Broaddrick and Bill Clinton in the hotel room save Broaddrick and Clinton himself, just as no one but Broaddrick and Hillary Clinton knows for sure what passed between them at the rally just a few weeks later -- and only Clinton herself knows for sure what she meant to convey, regardless of how Broaddrick took it.
But if Christine Blasey Ford is credible (in my opinion, eminently so), then Tara Reade is credible at the very least -- and so is Juanita Broaddrick.
The #MeToo Era: The Briefest of Lights in 40 Years of Darkness
Why bring this up? Because the alleged Broaddrick rape occurred in 1978 -- and here we are, in 2020, with many of the same actors, all with the same loyalties, using much the same tactics to silence and sidestep the consequences of almost the same (alleged) crime, the forceable rape of a low-level female political associate by a high-level male with a history of intruding on women.
Juanita Broaddrick, 1978; Cover-up continuing, 2020
Tara Reade, 1993; Cover-up continuing, 2020
Has nothing changed for Democratic Party leaders in those 42 years?
It's almost as though the #MeToo era, two and a half years at most, the briefest of lights in two dark generations, never occurred at all.
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