Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she is not seeking an apology from Ted Yoho.
Washington, United States:
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star in the Democratic Party, warned a Republican congressman on Thursday who hurled a sexist insult at her on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Ocasio-Cortez, 30, a progressive New York lawmaker popularly known as “AOC,” said Florida Representative Ted Yoho had “put his finger on my face.”
“He called me disgusting, he called me crazy, he called me out of my mind,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a nearly 10-minute speech to the House of Representatives.
“In front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me – and I quote – a ‘fucking bitch’,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest member of Congress, said she was not looking for an apology from Yoho, 65, but that her behavior was symptomatic of a larger problem with attitudes towards women.
“What we are seeing is that incidents like these are happening according to a pattern,” she said. “It is a model of attitude towards women and of dehumanizing others.”
“We’ve all had to deal with this in one form or another,” she continued. “I waited for tables in restaurants. I’ve kicked men out of bars who use language like Mr. Yoho’s.
“It’s not new and that’s the problem,” she said. “It’s cultural.
“It’s a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting violence and violent language against women, a whole power structure that supports that,” the New York lawmaker said.
“Because not only have I been spoken to in a disrespectful manner, especially by members of the Republican Party,” she said.
“But last year the President of the United States told me to go home to another country with the implication that I don’t even belong to the United States.”
Ocasio-Cortez is of Puerto Rican descent but was born and raised in New York City.
Speaking in the House on Wednesday, Yoho apologized “for the abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York” but denied calling it an “offensive name.”
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
