New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram late last month to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community, and shed light on what the real sexual danger to women and children usually is.
The politician, better known as AOC, posted a video in which she explained that many attacks on women and young girls are committed by straight men, therefore disproving right-wing claims that LGBTQ+ people are particularly dangerous or predatory.
“I still had braces in my teeth,” AOC said of the first time she was hit on by a grown man.
“If you ask a lot of women about the first time that they had encountered something like that, they will often say 11, 12, 13, 14 years old.”
She went on to say that “almost every woman” has been harassed by a cis, often straight man at some point in her life and that anti-LGBTQ+ “groomer” rhetoric is a way to avoid the real problem: sexual assaults at the hands of men.
“When you actually look at who is committing this abuse, it’s majority straight men,” she said. She went on to say that not only to anti-drag and anti-trans rhetoric a diversion tactic, it is downright projection.
“Many of these disgusting and insinuating attacks on trans and LGBT people are actually projections of what predatory cisgender, and often straight, men do when left in the presence of women.”
AOC cited statistics from Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) in her video, showing that 82% of those suspected of committing child sexual abuse were, or had been, in a heterosexual relationship.
The research also found that the risk of a child being sexually assaulted by his or her parent’s heterosexual partner was 100 times greater than by someone who identified as LGBTQ+.
“Instead of getting you to challenge the patriarchy, they’re trying to get you to challenge the very gender expressiveness that challenges patriarchy,” AOC articulately observed.
She concluded, “Don’t get it twisted, because a lot of people attacking drag are projecting.”
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