Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor on Thursday morning to address the clash she had with a Republican member of Congress.
The freshman congresswoman from New York said she was not “deeply hurt or offended” by the comments made by Republican Rep. Ted Yoho, but she noted that she views the incident as being part of a pattern in which men “dehumanize” women through power.
“I want to be clear that representative Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing to me. Because I have worked a working-class job. I have waited tables in restaurants. I have ridden the subway,” she said. “I have walked the streets in New York City. And this kind of language is not new. I have encountered words uttered by Mr. Yoho and men uttering the same words as Mr. Yoho while I was being harassed in restaurants. I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s, and I have encountered this type of harassment riding the subway in New York City. This is not new. And that is the problem.”
The Hill first reported that Yoho accosted Ocasio-Cortez with insults on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Monday after she suggested that crime had surged in New York City over the summer because of poverty. As the two departed, Yoho reportedly called the freshman congresswoman a “f—ing bitch.”
Yoho denies insulting Ocasio-Cortez with vulgar language.
Ocasio-Cortez claimed Yoho was with Rep. Roger Williams, and his willingness to use such language shows “that this issue is not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and haven’t language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that.”
The congresswoman said she has been attacked by elected GOP officials and President Trump himself, which she characterized as “a pattern of an attitude towards women and dehumanization of others.”
Later on in her address on the House floor, Ocasio-Cortez brought up Yoho’s two daughters, one of whom is two years older than herself.
“I am someone’s daughter too. My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect on the floor of this house towards me on television, and I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men. Now, what I am here to say is that this harm that Mr. Yoho levied, he tried to levy against me, was not just an incident directed at me, but when you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters.”
.@AOC calls out Rep. Yoho: “I could not allow my nieces, I could not allow the little girls I go home to, I could not allow victims of verbal abuse and worse to see that, to see that excuse and to see our Congress accept it as legitimate and accept it as an apology.” pic.twitter.com/lmhBtXRbJZ
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 23, 2020
Yoho delivered his own speech about the incident on the House floor on Wednesday.
“I rise to apologize for the abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York. It is true that we disagree on policies and visions for America, but that does not mean that we should be disrespectful,” Yoho stated. “Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I’m very cognizant of my language. The offensive, name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues, and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding.”
In a statement on social media, Ocasio-Cortez noted that Yoho, in his remarks, “does not name any action he did,” nor does he “accept responsibility.”
