By Patricia Teffenhart and Marissa Marzano

As women came forward and shared that former Vice President Joe Biden’s behavior made them uncomfortable, questions in the media and on the morning shows swirled. “Has #MeToo finally gone too far?” “Where do we draw the line?”

Despite what headline writers and Sunday show hosts would have you believe, none of the women who have come forward and talked about how Biden’s behavior made them feel uncomfortable have equated the behavior with a sexual assault. In fact, all have gone to great lengths to state that while the behavior was inappropriate and uncomfortable, it wasn’t a criminal assault and as such they aren’t advocating for Biden to be exiled from public life or even to necessarily face punitive consequences.

Many of them did state wanting an acknowledgment; a clear “I am sorry” that is still yet to come. They wanted Biden, who stakes much his reputation on drafting and passing the 1992 Violence Against Women Act and championing campus sexual assault as one of his pet issues during the Obama presidency, to recognize his behavior is harmful. From our vantage point working at the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, we did too.

Many people – especially women, perhaps even more so women who work in male-dominated industries – are uniquely angry about Biden because they recognize the behavior all too well. It’s not an outright assault, but it’s uncomfortable, or paternalistic, or even misogynistic. Many women see these interactions and deeply identify with an experience they have had, where they’ve confided their discomfort with others and been told “he didn’t mean it like that” and “he’s just from a different generation” and “it’ll just end up hurting you if you say something,” which of course all really means, “His comfort is more important than yours.”

Still others, tongue in cheek, comment that “the times are a-changing” and how our interactions are held to a different standard now in this #MeToo era. But that simply isn’t true – these types of behaviors in the workplace and social settings were always uncomfortable and inappropriate and just plain wrong. That’s not new. The only thing that’s “a-changing” is our readiness to hear and understand and validate these experiences. It’s not lost on us that many men in politics and other male-dominated industries have responded to Biden’s behaviors in ways that reaffirm this has always been “business as usual.”

#MeToo is a “big tent” movement, providing opportunities for survivors to share how their lives have been impacted by a wide-range of entitled, toxic behaviors. Aziz Ansari. Joe Biden. Harvey Weinstein. These men, their behaviors, and the intentions behind them all vary, though they are born from the same root causes: oppression and toxic masculinity, The conversations we can have about the differences and similarities can help us identify ways to increase the safety and comfort for all of us, especially women who have been disproportionately impacted by these harmful behaviors for too long.

Biden could have taken this moment to reflect and deeply apologize. Instead, he offered a mealy-mouthed statement that stopped short of “I’m sorry” and then joked about the situation at a public event. It reflects a phenomenon we’ve seen over and over.

As a society, we’re becoming better at addressing root causes of sexual violence in institutions – we need not look further than the plethora of bills in the halls of Trenton and beyond looking to address sexual violence on college campuses or faith-based institutions or our school system. That is a good and necessary step forward, and we’re heartened by it. But we can’t legislate our way out of this problem.

The far more complex and difficult work happens in addressing situations like Biden’s and the systemic power imbalances that make them possible. Sexual violence doesn’t occur in a vacuum – it exists in a pressure cooker of oppression, racism, misogyny, inequity. Let’s have those nuanced conversations without dipping into hyperbole that tries to paint all disclosures into the same box. Until we begin to squarely face the microaggressions and day-to-day misogyny that permeates our culture, we will not make true progress to ending sexual violence.

Patricia Teffenhart is executive director of the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NJCASA). Marissa Marzano is the coalition’s communications manager.

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