“Our patience is wearing thin.”
Nearly four years after Joe Biden said these words, they still send a chill down my spine. I recently came across a Substack post from a writer called Holly MathNerd, which does a great job of articulating what was so disturbing about Biden’s speech:
“That speech triggered my PTSD from sexual assault. I sat there, slack-jawed and horrified, listening as the President of the United States — a male authority figure — declared that if I wanted to keep my job, I had to enter a room, remove part of my clothing, and have my body penetrated with a medical instrument of his choosing. My will and my consent were irrelevant.
He was making the rules. My body, his choice.”
You can read the rest here.
Although I myself am not a survivor of sexual assault, these words resonate with me. There is something about being told that you are required to have your body penetrated – and that you don’t have the right to opt out or decline – that is profoundly, enormously, and fundamentally wrong. Sickening. Horrifying. The right to control your own body is the most fundamental right that there is, but this right did not matter at all to Joe Biden and his supporters. In their eyes, my will and my consent were, indeed, irrelevant. For reasons that I will never be able to fully comprehend, Biden and his administration believed that when it comes to my body, what happens should be their choice. There are no words that can adequately explain how completely and utterly messed up that is. But Holly MathNerd’s explanation comes pretty close.