Last Monday, February 1st, 2021, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Congresswoman from New York, shared on Instagram her harrowing experience on living through the January 6th, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol. In part, she said:

These folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the same tactics of abusers. And I’m a survivor of sexual assault.
~Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 2/1/21

Take in that last line: And I’m a survivor of sexual assault.

A number of people have taken offense to that, saying that she, as a politician, was using her experience as a sexual assault survivor as a tool to manipulate the public in some way or to make herself the center of attention.

The Spectator writer Amber Athey wrote:

This is gross manipulation, and AOC should be ashamed. Not for sharing that she was sexually assaulted — I have no way of knowing whether or not her story is true and, ultimately, it’s irrelevant to the issue of the storming of the Capitol.

The real story here is that AOC used her alleged trauma as a cudgel against her political opponents. She has weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her and even went so far as to compare them to the person or people who abused her. This type of behavior cheapens sexual assault.

To which conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh added during his February 2nd radio show:

And to show you how it’s working, I have a friendly supporter who calls and says, “You better be real careful what you’re saying here. It’s obvious you’ve never been abused.” How is it obvious? Maybe I should be proud that I don’t wear that around. That’s also something generational. You just didn’t talk about things. You just lived your life. You dealt with it as it happened.

Now, you wear the badge. Generational changes, generational shifts. But Amber Athey believes that AOC “weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her.” I know the left does that. They have become champions at that, in fact.

Badge?

There’s no fucking badge. Except in your head.

Generational changes, yes, Mr. Limbaugh. Generational shifts. You said it. Many people change their thinking on different matters over time, like sexual assault and rape. Thanks largely to social movements like #MeToo, survivors of sexual assault can feel safe that they are not alone – that they have the option to reveal they’ve experienced horrific violation, either publicly or privately – rather than burying their emotions.

In more survivors coming forward, they build solidarity in numbers and in shared experiences, so that society, rather than constantly blaming and dismissing them, begins to respect and believe them. And importantly, survivors expose and hold to account their perpetrators.

And maybe you are actually fine with that, I don’t know. But I’m gonna pick on you because you have a record of debasing women to your audience over many years. Notably, women who speak up for themselves: women who might talk about an intimately painful experience in their past, women with whom you disagree politically, or women whom you perceive to be an obstacle to the advancement of your favored person’s position (like a judge or a president). Does the name Sandra Fluke ring a bell? Dr. Christine Blasey Ford?

And now you cast aspersions on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

You started your broadcast on February 2nd introducing her Instagram video with “Have you seen this video, folks …If you haven’t, it’s amazing acting.”

ACTING?!

So most people besides Amber Athey aren’t gonna have the guts to properly characterize this. But you ought to see this video if you haven’t. I mean, it’s filled with acting and gyrations of the body in order to transmit the nature of the assault she feared was happening all over again. And it was a sexual assault that she was being reconnected to.

So you have no right to be critical, because this is a traumatic event, and so forth and so on.

But when did you ever hear Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez say that you can NOT criticize her for revealing she is a sexual assault survivor?

Those are YOUR words, dude.

YOUR WORDS.

Later in your broadcast, a caller implied AOC and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were pretending (acting?) when they revealed their traumatic experiences:

CALLER: Right. So when you have Christine Blasey Ford and AOC as someone, you know, pretending — and what they did to Justice Kavanaugh — what it does to people who really lived through it.

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: — is it minimizes or diminishes —

RUSH: What a great example.

CALLER: — those of us who go through it.

RUSH: What a greatly [sic] example. Christine Blasey Ford and all these people piling on Kavanaugh.

So you agree with the caller that Dr. Ford and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were just pretending about their sexual assaults? Do you think they were making stuff up to grab attention and/or elicit sympathy?

If that’s not making light of one’s experience, I don’t know what is.

Or maybe or a more accurate term for casting aspersions on them is cynical.

Cynical, according to Merriam-Webster, means:

Having or showing the attitude or temper of a cynic: such as
a) contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives
b) based on or reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest

You apologized for a misunderstanding at first. Namely, that you thought Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she was sexually assaulted during the January 6th insurrection. Later, you said your primary point was not disputing that she has been abused and you weren’t making light of it or laughing about it, yet you continued to minimize her experiences she had both during the insurrection and her mention of being sexually assaulted (along with some of your callers).

You know, the question that got all of this started about her divulging that she had been sexually abused — the question that got it all started — was, “Why don’t you guys just move on? The January 6 thing was January 6th. The siege of the Capitol is in the rearview mirror. It happened. Why don’t you just move on?”

That’s what triggered her to talk about her alleged sexual abuse, and that’s when she said (summarized), “Look, these instances of abuse don’t ever go away. They compound on one another,” meaning the impact is added to each new instance of abuse and what she went through during the siege on January 6 was abuse on top of — which she then shared — was her sexual abuse and so forth.

So put another way. She was asked why she can’t move on from January 6, and she said because of her alleged sexual abuse. She politicized it, not me. She did.

“…and she said because of her alleged sexual abuse.” Not.

You conveniently glossed over horrific insurrection by dismissing Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’ revealation as a sexual assault survivor as she spoke about the fears she experienced that day, comparing the tactics of her some of her naysayers as similar to abusers. And you said she politicized her trauma.

How cynical of you.

According to trauma experts interviewed by USA Today, Ocasio-Cortez’s reaction is normal and expected, and her account aligns with what science shows happens to a mind and body under extreme forms of stress. It’s likely, experts said, that Ocasio-Cortez’s experience with sexual assault intensified what she endured at the Capitol. Clinical psychologist Seth Gillihan told USA Today:

Trauma isn’t processing ‘sexual assault’ or ‘Capitol assault.’ What it’s processing is an overwhelming sense of danger, of feeling powerless, feeling my life is out of my hands. From an outsider’s perspective the sources look different, but inside our bodies and minds … it’s exactly the same message.

People died because of the assault on the Capitol! It was a potentially life-threatening attack on members of Congress, and for Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, it was a trauma compounded by her experience with sexual assault made all the more terrifying by the death threats she has received since she was elected to Congress.

It’s not triggering trauma, it’s trauma overlaid on trauma, Gillihan said.

Experts also said that Ocasio-Cortez’s gender is likely influencing reaction to her emotional disclosures. It’s much easier to suggest Ocasio-Cortez is fragile, oversensitive or even politically motivated than it is to accept the horror of what happened to her. They agreed with AOC and said denial and victim-blaming are common tactics abusers use.

One of the experts, Jennifer Gómez, a psychology professor at Wayne State University stated:

Abusers demand silence. The trouble is such a silence mandate is crazy-making for people who experience the violence and who see the world for what it is: a place that includes such violence just as much as it includes joy.

Screw silence on demand.

I believe as some observers have noted, that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez spoke in such personal terms in order to reject calls to move on from the events of January 6th. “We cannot move on without accountability,” she insisted. “We cannot heal without accountability.”

Accountability, indeed.

So go take your cynicism to the nearest toxic waste dump where it belongs, Mr. Limbaugh. And throw your imagined badges in there while you’re at it, please.

Y’all stop invalidating @AOC’s experiences because you aren’t hearing about the experiences of other members. Everyone deals with trauma differently, her stories are validating for so many of us with similar experiences and she is showing people that vulnerability is strength.
~ Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Congresswoman, 2/1/21

Sources

Nation
Washington Post
New York Times
Merriam-Webster
Newsmax
The Rush Limbaugh Show
The Spectator
Alternet.org
MSN
USA Today
NY Post
Wikipedia
CBS News
Wikipedia
New York Times
Real Clear Politics
Media Matters