All the cites on the prior page, plus, no cite, a 14 year old stated recently that Biden discussed her breasts.
I see that you have tried to pigeonhole this by using the qualifier “by the accusers’ own words” but that distinction, respectfully, is a special pleading to disqualify Biden from this. The accusations are nearly all sexual in nature even if the accuser did not cite the magic talisman “assault” or “harassment.”
Likewise, with Kavanaugh, none of the other accusers said that he got on top of her in a bed. I think these distinctions are without a difference unless we are trying to reach a “good” political result.
“No cite” allegations are not allegations. The other cites specifically noted that the accusers did not consider the behavior sexual in nature.
The accusers specifically called them non-sexual when asked by reporters. According to the accusers, these were not sexual offenses of any kind. Very specifically, according to the accusers. Biden acknowledged these boundary violations and apologized.
I reach the same conclusion, but that’s not how I would handle it, and that’s not something that gives me confidence that the allegation is completely without merit.
I don’t think he did quite what she claims, but I suspect that if we were at a point in his life where nothing was on the line, and we gathered around the campfire over a few beers, and we asked, “Okay, come on, Joe, just between you, me, the fire, and the trees, did you do it,” he’d probably say something like:
“<sigh>You know, we were alone and I don’t know, I thought there was sexual tension. She looked great in that dress. Don’t quite remember how it all happened, but yeah, I leaned in and tapped her on the ass. I thought she’d, you know, like it. But she didn’t. <sigh> I don’t know, man. It just got awkward after that. I didn’t fire her, but I guess she didn’t feel comfortable working there anymore. I kinda wish now it wouldn’t have happened, but it did.”
Again, hunch based on reading people all these years, but hunches can be wrong and I acknowledge my hunches aren’t facts.
But you can see how even if it wasn’t penetration, and it was something more, ahem, ‘benign,’ you could see how she’d feel violated. Because it wasn’t just inappropriate touching that happened in that case; from Reade’s perspective, it’s the ruination of a career. This happens to women all the time. They get ‘inappropriately touched,’ which seems relatively harmless. But it’s less harmless once you find out that they got reassigned, or they had to quit, or they got denied a promotion that would have changed the trajectory of their career. Women have been putting up with this shit since they first started trying to be taken seriously in the office, which is forever.
If this went down - and again, I’m not saying it did - but if it did, yeah, I could see why she’d hold a grudge and maybe want to twist inappropriate touching into something different. If that’s what Joe Biden actually did, then while maybe he didn’t assault her physically, it’s an emotional assault with lifelong consequences.
None of that changes my vote, though. I’m voting for Biden because the GOP is a clear and present danger to the world.
As for the second part, it is just verbal tap dancing. If I fire a gun at you, that is attempted murder now matter how you “felt” or whether in your statement to the police you use the words “attempted” or “murder.” Many of those things that Biden did, even on video, were indisputably sexual in nature. You don’t see him kissing guys do you?
Thanks for the cite. This is indeed an additional allegation, sexual harassment in this case, against Biden.
Maybe you have different life experiences than I do, but many of the hugs and kisses I’ve experienced have been entirely non-sexual in nature, and I always knew when they were sexual or not. All the allegations I’ve seen of touching against Biden, aside from Reade’s, were specifically described as non-sexual by the accuser.
This isn’t a new thing – ascribing sexual motive to behavior described specifically by the women in question as non-sexual. It’s wrong and gaslighting – these women are allowed to speak for themselves and their own experiences. If they say the behavior they experienced was not sexual, it’s morally wrong to insist that they’re wrong or lying and that it was indeed sexual.
I agree, and the only thing I took out was your last sentence. That’s probably what happened from my reading of people as well. Also, the human memory is a terrible thing. I don’t know how many times on appeal I went to the transcript where I just *knew that I said a certain thing, and I either didn’t say it at all or said it very differently that how I remembered it. So a lot of times, these exaggerations are a result of remembering an event, adding a little detail, then the next time you remember it, the new detail is part of the event. I have no trouble believing exactly what you said.
And I think the same may be true of Kavanaugh. He and Ford could have been drunkenly making out at a party, he misread her intentions, and did something she didn’t approve. Then through the years, the details get added and it is nothing like what really happened. So Kavanaugh denies it because it isn’t true, but to the failing human memory of Ford, it is real to her.
And those words would be displayed against a backdrop of Biden touching various women in an awkward manner with their own public admission of how inappropriate it was. In essence, it would be a video produced and narrated by Democrats and played on Youtube for free.
At this point his choice for VP reads as follows: Wanted, woman interested in a hands-on position in my administration. Applicants should enclose samples of conditioner.
This, especially the last paragraph, is just “woke” psychobabble. A thing is objectively either sexual or not. It matters not whether the woman felt it to be sexual. Biden’s intent, not the woman’s is what is being questioned.
But that’s not our real dispute. If I understand your argument, these many videos of Biden touching and kissing and rubbing women do not “count” as corroboration because they were not “sexual.” If I have misrepresented your argument, I apologize.
Why does it matter how these touchings are classified? They are on video. They clearly show a man with no respect for the personal privacy of women. He feels (or at least felt) that woman could be touched whenever he wanted. I think it clearly shows that he would be more likely than the average, well, heh Joe, to think he could get away with a sexual touching and acts as some corroboration.
Indeed, if the allegations are false, these videos did a lot of lifting into a false allegation being made: because you could believe a handsy guy would do something like this.
There are millions of non-sexual kissing and touching going on every day that aren’t necessarily sexual. Using videos of people being kissed or touch for political attacks, without the permission of the individual in question (the one kissed or touched), is utterly disgusting. That’s using their images in lurid ways without their consent. If you want to try and interview these women (and some men, from what I’ve read – Biden is a touchy-feely guy regardless of gender, based on my reading) and see what they say, go right ahead. Some journalists have, and in my understanding, none of these individuals that Biden might have kissed or touched on video have reported that they felt sexually violated. Yet some disgusting people continue to use videos of their bodies being touched/kissed for lurid political attacks without their consent.
It’s disgusting and wrong, and representative of the type of disdain for consent that our society still has.
Kavanaugh ended up being blamed for being and ‘too angry’ and ‘partisan’ (granted a presidential candidate is supposed to be partisan, in theory a USSC justice isn’t but the standards applied, eg. to various RBG partisan statements, not so uniform). Anyway not to compare K and B cases too closely (plenty of other people will do that for me I’m sure ) ‘righteous anger’ on the part of the accused doesn’t necessarily work well, depends on your audience.
Biden is surely doing what he thinks most Democratic and independent voters want to hear, which could fairly different from what most GOP voters want to hear. How many of them really want to hear that, the formula ‘the accuser needs to be heard, respected, etc. …but ultimately ignored because I’m not going anywhere’, I don’t know.
I doubt many people really think you have to meaningfully ‘believe’ old and unprovable allegations, if ‘believe’ really meant you’d act as if the accusation was proved, and including against political figures you otherwise agree with, and where abandoning them let the ‘evil’ other side win the election. It’s some other kind of ‘believe’ which means you can ultimately ignore the accusation and move on when it’s your guy in the crosshairs. Andrew Sullivan’s piece on this is, typically for him, straightforward: doesn’t know if Biden did it, does know that by the standards and procedures of the campus kangaroo courts on sexual allegations Biden has loudly supported over the years he would absolutely be found guilty and expelled, he’s a huge hypocrite (again per Sullivan) at the least, but Sullivan is still going to vote for him, in his words “because Trump”.
If there is a silver lining to this mishigas, it will hopefully be that Democrats realize they went too far with that campus rape standards stuff in the Obama years.
Sullivan and co will be remembered like the white “liberals” who told MLK Jr. he was moving too fast. Overturning the abominable way our society treats women has been a long time coming, and there’s still a lot of work to be done… but that work will get done. Our society will, someday, become a society that treats women fairly and equally, a society that considers consent to be paramount, and a society in which sexual assault and rape are rightfully considered monstrous crimes that are virtually never defended, excused, or swept under the rug.
The dinosaurs like Sullivan (and unfortunately some of the posters in this thread) will be left behind, wondering how they missed such an obvious and long-lasting miscarriage of justice.
I’m not following at all. Sure, Biden is a handsy guy in many non-sexual ways. He’s the kind of guy that would probably greet another guy with a hearty handshake and a slap on the back. He will greet a woman with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a rub of the shoulders when he is standing behind her (which, IMHO, is sexual).
It is corroborative because he exerts a familiarity and no shyness from touching people. Not a slam dunk. Not proof. But it shows he is the type of guy who will use physical contact without much thought.
The consent angle has nothing to do with it. If we take a poll of these people that Biden gladhands when he meets them and X% found it sexual and Y% did not consent or whatever, that doesn’t change the fact that he did it–which is all that it is being used for.
And I’m very lost on this using videos without consent being disgusting. These people are in a public place. Longstanding case law and common sense says that they have no reasonable expectation of their images not being used in news or political stories. Their consent is not needed for that and never has been. When you expose yourself to the public, the public can see you. I’m not sure where you are even coming from on this.
You didn’t respond to the substance of the article or the post. You simply make an ad hominem attack against Sullivan. But the point is unassailable.
By the standards that Biden has previously advocated (and respectfully from you as well), he would be disqualified from a public body and certainly from being President. But the Dems just want to ignore that convenient fact now.
And if you were tempted to say “But Trump” our side doesn’t suffer from that hypocrisy because we never advocated for the “guilty until proven innocent” standard.
We disagree politically, but I agree with this 100%. If any group pushes too hard one way another group pushes even further in the other direction. It’s the First Rule of Political Thermodynamics: For every action, there is a double and opposite reaction.
#metoo has simply gone too far is allowing a stage for anyone who wants to bring uncorroborated allegations against a famous politician no matter how many years later and creating a presumption of truth in the accusation. ** iiandyiiii** is likely right that in the near distant past this was unjust in the other direction, that women with corroborated claims of sexual assault or harassment were dismissed or told that they probably brought it on themselves.
This demonstrates, IMO, that you really don’t understand human affection and sexuality.
You’re lost on this because you don’t understand consent. If someone takes a video of my dad hugging and kissing me as a child, and then uses this video in political attacks against my dad saying that he likes to touch children, then I’ll feel pretty damn violated. It’s wrong to use such videos for lurid political attacks without the consent of the one whose body is being touched/kissed.
People are using images of someone’s body being kissed and touched for political attacks without their consent. If you don’t understand why this is disgusting, then you don’t really understand consent for the use of someone’s body.
) ‘righteous anger’ on the part of the accused doesn’t necessarily work well, depends on your audience.