Lucy Flores once encouraged me to come forward after a man acted inappropriately toward me. Your experience matters, she explained. Let him know he was inappropriate—and help women in the same situations feel less alone.
I chose not to come forward, for some of the same reasons that so many women stay silent. But I was struck by her crystal-clear insistence that what happened to me and how I felt about it was important—and I’m blown away by her courage today.
Last week Flores published an essay that described how former Vice President Joe Biden touched her shoulders and kissed her on the back of the head at a 2014 campaign event, and explained how he made her feel “uneasy, gross, and confused.”
In my experience, and in her more recent revelation about Biden, Flores had the tenacity to say: These men make us feel uncomfortable. Their hands. Their lips. Their breath. I felt embarrassed. I felt my space invaded.
And in her decision to come forward about, Flores is stating loudly: Women’s feelings matter.
Flores’ bravery goes beyond speaking out against inappropriate men. She has the courage to claim that her feelings are worth equal consideration. Imagine: a woman of color, with the nerve to assert that her feelings are just as important as a powerful white man.
It’s enough to shake the foundations of our country.
The absurd response to Flores’ revelation—from Biden, his supporters, and the inevitable brigade of defensive white men—has been entirely focused on Biden’s feelings. You see, they explain, Biden felt the situation was perfectly appropriate. First Biden’s spokesperson provided Biden’s assessment of Flores’s comfort: “Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable.” Then Biden himself expressed his own complete comfort with the situation: “Not once—never—did I believe I acted inappropriately.” And most recently Biden’s allies explained that Biden’s goal was Flores’ comfort and relaxation: “He often drew close to people who were nervous in an effort to relax them.”
Built into this stream of defenses is the assertion that Biden’s feelings of comfort and appropriateness should negate Flores’ feelings of discomfort and unease. If Biden was comfortable, the rationale seems to go, if his goal was to make her feel good, then nothing else matters.
Setting aside Biden’s intent, his line of defense speaks volumes. In our society, a man’s level of comfort is more important than a woman’s unease. We live in a world where a man can defend himself by merely explaining, “Felt fine to me!”
In the week since Flores spoke up, numerous former aides have also stepped forward to say they felt completely comfortable around Biden—as if their experiences negate her own. Former staffer Kendra Barkoff Lamy tweeted, “I was never uncomfortable with how he treated me.” Former chief of staff Sheila Nix reiterated Biden’s claim that “he had no intention of making anyone feel uncomfortable.” Even MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski chimed in, “I don’t think there is bad intent on his part at all.”
The conversation around Lucy Flores is not a debate over what happened on that stage. Even Biden himself doesn’t deny it. Instead Flores is forcing us to look in the mirror as a country and think: Whose feelings matter? Why is the pain and discomfort of women, and especially women of color, so often dismissed? Flores has the temerity to demand that men consider the comfort of others as much as they consider their own. She is asking men who have always touched women’s backs, thighs, shoulders, and waists how that might make us feel.
