When I decided to come forward with what it felt like to be on the receiving end of Joe Biden’s inappropriate behavior, I knew I would face criticism. I didn’t anticipate that my truth would be so easily manipulated and distorted.

I intended to describe what it was like to be inappropriately touched by a powerful man who would likely declare his presidential candidacy. Instead, I watched as the conversation about my essay, published in the Cut, morphed into a simplistic — and misguided — discussion of hugging in America. I had made it explicitly clear that I didn’t consider Biden’s unwanted intimate touching to be sexual in nature and his behavior to be harassment or assault. Nonetheless, one of the first headlines out of my home state of Nevada inaccurately stated, “Nevada Politician Has Accused Joe Biden of Sexual Harassment.” Other commentators and defenders took it to the other extreme, describing Joe Biden as nothing more than a serial hugger. What everyone missed was that what I was describing — the ease with which Biden physically, and often inappropriately, engages with some of the women around him — is part of the gray area that is being left out of the national conversation launched with the #MeToo movement.

I have repeatedly said that I suspect part of the reason Biden’s inappropriate behavior is not taken seriously is because this kind of behavior, while considered wrong by most people for a very long time, hasn’t been exposed or debated in a public way before. It’s long been public knowledge that Biden has a penchant for getting too up close and personal with women he doesn’t know, but it’s either been treated as a joke by fellow politicos and the media or brushed off as just “Biden being Biden.” In the wake of my essay, Biden said, "Social norms have begun to change.” But the only thing that’s changed is that women are now feeling empowered to call this behavior what it’s always been: wrong and unwanted.

In the days following my essay, character witnesses came forward with their personal versions of “not the Biden I know” stories to underscore just what kind of a well-meaning person Joe Biden really is: Biden is a jovial fellow, a grandfatherly person, an empath, a man who endured much trauma; he didn’t mean anything by it.

These positive character reviews are probably all very true, but entirely irrelevant to the women on the receiving end of his unwanted expressions of well-meaning affection. These actions weren’t just hugs. I agree that next to “hugger” in the dictionary, Joe Biden flashing his million-dollar smile should be entered next to it. But in my case, Biden’s version of a friendly hug was his hands on my shoulders, his body close to mine, from behind, smelling my hair and planting a slow kiss on my head when we had no personal relationship whatsoever and just minutes before a stressful, high-profile public event.

For the other women who also had no previous personal relationship with Biden, it was his hand on the thigh of a sexual assault victim just minutes after disclosing her trauma at an It’s On Us event. It was Biden pulling in close to the face of a young sexual assault survivor while holding her hands. Biden pulling a woman’s face by the back of her neck to his own, so suddenly that she was horrified that he was about to kiss her. Characterizing this behavior as everyday, run-of-the-mill friendliness is grossly inaccurate, and whether they knew it or not, every last public commentator who referred to Biden as just being a “hugger” participated in the classic strategy of discrediting women who speak out against powerful men by minimizing the behavior.

I listened and watched as debates began to rage over hugging. To hug or not to hug. Pictures of me casually touching colleagues, friends, and family in social settings such as selfies began to circulate the dark corners of social media. Even conservative commentator Tucker Carlson came to Biden’s defense for what he described as “hugging people wrong.” It was clear that the minimization strategy was at least partially effective. Biden himself said he’d never “thought of politics as cold or antiseptic,” implying that those of us who didn’t give him permission to behave as if we’ve been intimately acquainted for years must be frigid robots.

While at times it seemed like the conversation I started had gone entirely off the rails, I also knew that in the short and long term, we would get back on track. I knew this because every day I heard from women who recalled the instances when bosses, colleagues, or strangers subjected them to the same type of unwanted, inappropriate behavior. And I also heard from men who immediately knew that they would never violate a woman’s space and bodily autonomy in that way, and if it were easy for them to refrain from acting that way, then Joe Biden and other powerful men could refrain from doing it too.

What became very clear to me then was that this wasn’t only about minimizing serious behavior for the purpose of defending a very well-liked political figure. It was also very clear that a long overdue conversation about basic consent was necessary.