Why Are We Only Talking About AOC’s Sexual Assault?
Yesterday AOC posted an Instagram video about her experience on January 6th.
In the course of that hour and a half long video, she mentions that she is a survivor of sexual assault.
She then goes on to describe, in great detail, how the assault on the Capitol made her fear for her life, and the actions she and others took to hide.
But how did the NYT, and others, headline this?
Ocasio-Cortez Says She Is a Sexual Assault Survivor
Rather than focus on her accounting of the insurrection, most news outlets chose to run with headlines like this, about a moment in the video that is, at most, 30 seconds long.
I urge everyone to watch the full video; her account is gripping and terrifying.
From that NYT article with the disappointing headline:
Those who have argued that it is time to move on from the events of that day, she said, were “using the same tactics of every other abuser who just tells you to move on.”
They were the tactics, she suggested, “of that man who touched you inappropriately at work, telling you to move on.”
“Are they going to believe you?” she said. “Or the adult who, you know, if they hurt you when you were a child and you grow up and you confront them about it, and they try to tell you that what happened never happened.”
This is the bit that should have made headlines; her account of the insurrection, and her stinging rebuke to all those Republicans, and others, who tell us to ‘get over it’— it’s the language and thought process of abusers.
I hope people watch the full video, it’s absolutely worth it.