Former Vice President Joe Biden has been wrapped up in a recent controversy regarding the way in which he interacts with women. Lucy Flores, the former candidate for lieutenant governor in Nevada, accused Biden of “inappropriately kiss[ing] and touch[ing] her after he offered to help her with her 2014 campaign.” The specific claim was this: Biden agreed to stump for Flores during her campaign, and they were scheduled to do a speech. Flores was waiting to head on stage, when Biden approached her from behind. Biden put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on the top her head, smelling her hair in the process. It is important to note that Flores didn’t qualify this experience as assault or harassment — just an incredibly uncomfortable and off putting experience.
Biden has said he’s given “countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support, and comfort” over the years and never believed he acted inappropriately. “If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never [his] intention.” Neither party believing that this was heinous doesn’t mean we can’t glean insights about gender power dynamics in the workplace, and men’s relationship with women.
Before I begin, I should say: it’s probable that Biden truly didn’t have any mal intent. It’s probable that he thought he was being supportive. Despite that, the situation was still incredibly troubling. Imagine this, for a moment, disregarding gender: you work at a company, and are gunning for a big promotion. A manager at a different branch of the company agrees to come help you out, and before you walk into the meeting, this manager puts his hands on your shoulders, kisses you on the top of the head, and smells your hair. Weird, right?
That doesn’t begin to express the strangeness that the situation actually measured up to. The man second in line to the presidency kissed a candidate for office who was in desperate need of his endorsement. It certainly doesn’t help that candidate was a woman, and the Vice President was a man. She felt uncomfortable, but what was she to do? File a complaint against the second most powerful man in the country? The second most powerful man in her field? With the extreme stigma that came with women speaking openly about sexual harassment (see: Monica Lewinsky and Anita Hill). It’s seemingly insurmountable.
If she were to come out, she’d be vilified, not believed, and her career in politics would be over. She’d remain just “the woman who accused Joe Biden of kissing her, and it wasn’t even that bad.” Even if those things are hyperbole, it’s more than likely what she truly believed. Biden didn’t have bad or sexual intentions, but he was completely oblivious to the fact that the power imbalance between the two was ginormous.
Additionally, why do men think that they can just cozy up to women in the first place? I sincerely doubt if I were the candidate Biden was stumping for, he would have kissed me on my head and smelt my hair. Maybe he’d give me a firm shoulder squeeze, or a handshake. Women aren’t items for men to kiss and hold and reassure whenever they feel that they’ll be of assistance. It wasn’t cozy Uncle Joe giving reassurance to an insecure woman about to speak to a large crowd, it was a man who Flores barely knew, kissing her.
Profoundly, Flores shared what happened when she divulged the fact that she was going to go public with her experience with Biden: “he did what no one else had and made me question myself and wonder if I was doing the right thing.” Of course, this could be a one off, but it is endemic of a much larger problem — men are simply extremely oblivious to the struggles that women go through in the workplace every day.
I’ll leave you with the final quote from Flores’ post: “I’m not suggesting that Biden broke any laws, but the transgressions that society deems minor (or doesn’t even see as transgressions) often feel considerable to the person on the receiving end. That imbalance of power and attention is the whole point — and the whole problem.”
View the whole story here: https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/an-awkward-kiss-changed-how-i-saw-joe-biden.html
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
Thanks for the careful analysis of a current event. I am most grateful to your nuanced approach in dissecting what Lucy Flores experienced. In a cancel culture, we often skip over discussions of power imbalance, toxic masculinity in workspaces, and personal space, opting to go straight to– Biden’s X or Flores is Y. Do you think the feminist framework offered an opportunity to use a more pragmatic approach in discussing this news story? What would a radical approach look like? I’m not sure answering these questions is entirely aligned with your project; however, given your shift to West Wing, I’m wondering if you might pay attention to the way the show handles complex issues.
Congrats on completing all of your writing exercises. I hope you’ll find the kind of thinking you did in these writing responses useful as you continue to work on your autoethnography.
DW