Stop Blaming Kirsten Gillibrand for Your Misogyny

Kirsten Gillibrand is running for President. So is Kamala Harris. And Elizabeth Warren. And Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, and Marianne Williamson. It’s the most women to run for president in any election in history — and by a lot. Invariably, the media and the electorate (but mostly the media) have begun to examine their records, rightly so for presidential candidates. But as has been clear for the past, well, forever, these female candidates tend to face much more scrutiny than their male colleagues. It’s probably one of the reasons Beto O’Rourke gained a national profile after his close loss to Ted Cruz while Stacey Abrams came even closer to beating Brian Kemp in arguably redder Georgia and hasn’t attracted nearly as much attention for the feat (other than, of course, the speculation around Joe Biden’s blatant attempt at tokenizing her). And it’s one of the reasons for the continued “controversy” surrounding Kirsten Gillibrand.

In the wake of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein and all that ensued, the Democrats seemed to position themselves as the party of #MeToo, while elected Republicans largely seemed to ignore the issue (and fringe conservatives and alt-right members seemed to take any opportunity they could find to discredit women). Republican politicians thought it was fine when their presidential nominee was credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault by at least nineteen women (most notably in the infamous Access Hollywood tape). They thought it was fine when their Supreme Court nominee was accused of sexual assault — in fact, it seemed to strengthen their resolve in his confirmation process. Democrats reasonably fought against these nominees, and, better yet, called on their own to step down when harassment allegations were made against longtime Representative John Conyers and again when similar accusations were levied against Senator Al Franken. But one Democratic politician is facing more pushback than anyone else for her commitment to accountability: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Gillibrand was one of the first elected Democrats to call for Franken’s resignation after the revelation of his past behavior. She was quickly followed by many of her Senate colleagues, including Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. But none of them have seen the backlash that Gillibrand has. Big Democratic donors have pulled funds from her election campaigns and even some of the rank-and-file Democratic base has turned against her. Her Twitter is awash with Democrats, some presumably former supporters of hers, saying that “what she did to Al Franken” is “inexcusable” or “unacceptable.” It hangs over her presidential campaign not just online, but at her CNN town hall (which seem to have become a rite of passage for candidates this election) where she faced questions about it and had to defend her stance yet again. A stance that, I’ll reiterate, is simply that credible allegations of sexual assault should be a disqualifier for public office — as they would be for just about any other job.

Blaming Gillibrand for “the Al Franken thing” says much more about you than it does about her, and it only perpetuates stereotypes that allow this to keep happening and allow predators to continue their behavior. Make no mistake: Kirsten Gillibrand did the right thing. Obviously. If the simple morals of the situation weren’t enough to convince you, take note that nearly the entire Senate Democratic Caucus joined with her in calling for accountability. Initially, many of these Democrats called for simply an ethics committee investigation into the matter, saying that the need for Franken to resign was contingent on the findings of such an investigation. There was no rush to judgement, no usurping of due process; it was all quite calm and controlled. Franken chose to resign of his own volition before an investigation. While I don’t think he would have done so were it not for pressure from his Democratic colleagues, it’s also disingenuous to say that they forced him out unceremoniously. At the end of the day, Al Franken’s situation was the fault of one person: Al Franken. Blaming anyone else for the aftermath of his misogynistic actions, especially a woman, is misogynistic in and of itself.

Which begs the question, why? Why are people so willing to throw another woman under the bus for the predatory actions of a man? Is it because you’re concerned about the politics of the ensuing situation in Minnesota? You shouldn’t be. Minnesota has become a fairly reliably Democratic state, and Franken’s appointed successor, former Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith, has done a fine job as Senator and won election to the remainder of Franken’s term in November by a margin of over 10 percent of the vote. Is it because you’re disappointed Franken can’t run for President in 2020 now? I mean, sure, he could have been a pretty decent candidate, but there’s twenty-three other Democrats running now. I’m sure at least one of them will be more than acceptable — and nearly all of them have not been publicly accused of sexual impropriety.

And that brings me to Joe Biden, of course. Joe Biden has a fifty-year history in public service. He was first elected to the county council in his Delaware hometown in 1969 and ran for the US Senate two years later, where his problems began, most notably, as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The most remarkable moment of Joe Biden’s Senate career was the 1991 confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. As you probably know, Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawyer Anita Hill, who testified against his nomination in front of the Senate committee, where Biden simply could not seem to empathize with her, even being openly antagonistic at points. He has since said that he “wishes I had been able to do more for Anita Hill,” which, to this day, is quite rich considering he had presided over the hearing as the chair of the committee. If anyone had been able to make Anita Hill’s testimony more comfortable, or slightly better in any way, it would have been Joe Biden.

Seventeen years later, Biden was elected Vice President, and in that capacity, President of the Senate. One of his (few) ceremonial duties as the Senate’s presiding officer is swearing in new Senators and taking photos with families. This, to any normal person, should be an easy responsibility, but Biden always seems to find a way to make it weird. Throughout his eight years as Vice President, Biden’s awkward encounters with female senators, male senators’ wives, and even senators’ daughters were well-documented and are really quite uncomfortable to watch — Biden can be seen putting his hands around the waists of clearly uncomfortable women and even on the shoulders of young girls.

Even more recently, Biden has continued these actions on the campaign trail. On a book tour after his tenure as Vice President, he tried to make strides to apologize for, or at least to acknowledge, his poor treatment of Anita Hill and subsequent actions in the Senate. But now, as he travels around Iowa and New Hampshire vying for primary votes, he has continued in his old ways, dismissive of and condescending toward the concerns of women. He has repeatedly turned valid complaints about his behavior into jokes for an easy line and a quick laugh at town halls and speeches and even more recently, he lectured a female voter and activist about his “progressive” record on women’s rights issues just days after repeatedly revising his longstanding position in favor of the Hyde Amendment — a law that specifically inhibits access to reproductive care for low-income women — all while pointing his finger abnormally close to her face.

And, consistently, through all of this, Biden’s supporters have defended his actions, brushing them off as “meaningless” or “unimportant” because “he’s the guy who can beat Trump.” But the question is: does that matter? I would argue it doesn’t. I’d argue that an eighty-year-old man largely out of step with and decades of progress behind the ideology of the modern Democratic Party isn’t a great candidate for president, and that even if he had a better chance in a general election, sacrifices on women’s rights, criminal justice, healthcare, and economic inequality don’t amount to much of a win at all.

These Biden supporters who defend his apparent belittlement and objectification of women largely seem to be the same people who refuse to even look at Kirsten Gillibrand because of her involvement in making sure that the Senate Democratic Caucus had less sexual assaulters than the Republican equivalent. The most perplexing piece of this saga, to me, is that most of these shared people are women. Granted, they’re mostly white women and seem to be for the most part relatively well-off; they may not have faced as much of the sexual harassment that I’d venture to say the vast majority of women in America have faced over the course of their personal and professional lives. I used to think that there wasn’t a place in the Democratic party for people who don’t support and believe women (especially other women), but the confluence of Gillibrand’s mob of harassment and Biden’s cult of apologists may prove otherwise.

I’m not going to vote for Kirsten Gillibrand, and I wouldn’t actively encourage any of my friends to do so either (to be fair, I’d never vote for Joe Biden), but I think she brings an important voice to this primary campaign. Through her active repudiation of Al Franken and her further activism in that area, she has become the default #MeToo candidate in the race, like it or not. And so far, she seems to have focused on matters that have been stereotypically (and patronizingly) seen as “women’s issues” — childcare, paid family leave, education, women’s rights, and even explicitly ending sexual assault and harassment. But what many voters and the media forget (and that Kamala Harris often reminds us) is that these issues are not only women’s issues and these issues are not the only women’s issues — every issue is a women’s issue, just as much as every issue is a Latinx issue or an LGBTQ+ issue. Next Thursday, Gillibrand will share the debate stage with Biden, and in the absence of Elizabeth Warren (the only other candidate who has explicitly criticized Biden this year), who will debate on Wednesday night, Gillibrand will have the distinct opportunity to call him out for his words and his actions while still remaining remarkably on-brand. If the average voter isn’t going to make Joe Biden own up to his problematic past (and present) regarding women, Kirsten Gillibrand sure will.

White neoliberals love to pretend that they’re looking out for the downtrodden, that they support programs to help the poor and disenfranchised; but when it comes down to it, they’ll defend an old white man with a history of sexual harassment over a woman trying to right those wrongs. It reminds me of a labor activist who once told me that there’s no such thing as the libertarian “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”: whoever claims to support welfare programs and civil rights without supporting the financial means to keep them afloat is no supporter whatsoever. Likewise, whoever claims to support women while defending the men who have mistreated them for decades is no ally in my book.