Tactilicity
Oh is that what we’re calling it.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. came up in politics as an old-school backslapper whose greatest strength was his ability to connect. He doled out handshakes and hugs to friends and strangers alike, and his tendency to lavish his affections on women and girls was so central to his persona that it became fodder for late-night television jokes.
But the political ground has shifted under Mr. Biden, and his tactile style of retail politicking is no longer a laughing matter in the era of #MeToo.
His “tactile style” is it. I’ve heard that before – creepy guys explaining their creepy guy ways with “I’m a tactile person.” Uh huh, a tactile person with an oddly specific preference for tactiling laydeez.
For Mr. Biden, 76, the risks are obvious: the accusations feed into a narrative that he is a relic of the past, unsuited to represent his party in the modern era, against an incumbent president whose treatment of women should be a central line of attack. Mr. Biden has denied acting inappropriately but has said he will “listen respectfully.”
…
With a vibrant, youthful and multicultural field of candidates on the Democratic stage — and after a midterm election that swept dozens of women into Congress — Mr. Biden is already facing questions about whether this is the time for an older white man to carry his party’s banner into 2020. His handling of the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by the law professor Anita Hill, has also been the subject of scrutiny.
As it should be.
I think Biden is basically a mensch, but I don’t think we need him to run for president.
I’m not defending the creepy behavior, but I do think this is partially a generational thing. There are a lot of montages of Biden’s “creepy Uncle Joe” moments, and it really stuck out that he does this with women of all shapes, sizes, and ages. It doesn’t seem to be a sexual thing. It’s how he thinks he should interact with women, kind like how some people will shake hands with their male friends and hug their female friends, except dialed up 10 times to super creepy levels.
Along those lines, when Colbert started his new show, I was surprised by his interactions with women. He’d rush out to greet them, kiss them on the cheek, take their hand to help them up the stairs, and often compliment them on what they were wearing. I found it very weird. I don’t really watch any other talk shows, so I don’t know if this is typical, but nobody seemed to really react to it as if he were doing anything wrong. I can’t image greeting a colleague that way though.
I don’t really see why there should be such vastly different behavior toward men and women. Shake everyone’s hand. Hug them if they’re close family or close friends and want to be hugged by you. And women should probably wear shoes that allow them to ascend a couple of stairs without someone holding their arm.
I’m glad Biden has acknowledged this behavior is not acceptable and has vowed to change. If he does, then I don’t think this should necessarily be disqualifying. As for whether he should run, I’m of mixed feelings. He’s quite old, and he’s not the most exciting candidate. On the other hand, I think he’d probably do a good job as president, and he has the kind of fire in his debating style that I think would work well against Trump. I think the “mensch” thing would also counter some of Trump’s appeal. Basically I’m not really rooting for him to win the nomination but would be OK with it if he did.
You know, Skeletor, it is a generational thing, but it isn’t that people thought it was fine in that day. I am not exactly a spring chicken myself (though at least somewhat younger than Biden, but he is younger than my father, so I am aware of the norms). Men knew that women often felt uncomfortable with that sort of behavior. What was different then is that they knew they could get away with it. They knew they could do what they wanted because women weren’t speaking up. Why? Because we were dismissed, ridiculed, mocked, made light of when we spoke up. Because men had gotten away with it for so long, it was seen as normal for them to get away with it. And because men mattered more than women, and because women knew they risked their futures if they spoke up, they often stayed quiet.
I dealt with handsy men my whole life. I hated it. Most of them knew I hated it, but they did it anyway. Maybe because they knew I hated it, because it gave them power. It proved they were more than me, stronger than me, more important than me. And once, I did speak up. That set into motion a sequence of events that led to me losing my job. Women speaking up were not appreciated because it brought into focus what we all knew, what everyone knew…this was not good, it was not okay, and the men were violating a taboo. As long as women kept their mouths shut, men could enjoy their taboo violating. The moment we said anything, they were uncomfortable, and the gears started rumbling to protect them, shelter them back behind a wall of silence.
So, no, it isn’t that his generation thought it was okay, didn’t understand, just interacted differently. Perhaps Biden, seeing other men acting that way, thought it was okay, and didn’t understand. If so, maybe he shouldn’t be working around women.
Either way, I am sick and tired of hearing about how it was different then, because no one ever gets it right what was different. What was different was not that it was just a different way of interacting. It was merely that women did not speak up because the cost was too great, and when they did speak up, they paid that price, often without seeing anything change.
#2 Applause!
I think iknklast is exactly right about this. It’s a generational thing in exactly the sense that previous generations could get away with it and later generations slightly less so. Why else do we have wall-to-wall men bemoaning the fact that they’re ‘not allowed’ to touch women any more?
(Some parts of) the world is finally just beginning to become marginally aware that if women don’t want to be pawed, you probably shouldn’t do it.
But mostly this just seems to mean that men feel they have to denounce other men who paw and grope women. I don’t know that it actually prevents them from doing the same themselves.
I’m a lot younger than Biden but hardly in the blush of youth. I’m thinking of one acquaintance (and former friend) in particular who drapes himself across the women in our circle, routinely comments on their breasts and makes inappropriate comments. When he greets friends who are women, he will go in for a far-too-long-and-handsy hug. He will sit down far too close to women and constantly touch them while boring them to death with his drunken ramblings.
His behaviour is largely ignored because “he’s always been like that” and “that’s just Mark.” Plus most of the women in question are absolutely capable of looking after themselves. It doesn’t make me angry that he constantly pulls this on my wife, because she can certainly handle him. It makes me angry that she has to.
But here’s the thing: he wasn’t always like that. I met him sometime in my 20s and if we was like that then, we’d never have become friends. We stopped being friends (as far as I’m concerned) when he had an affair and used me as an alibi but before then he had always been a decent person. This creepy behaviour has crept up over the years.
At first I thought that it was his familiarity with the women involved that had caused this to happen. When you know someone for decades you become very comfortable with them and perhaps you misjudge some boundaries, right?
But no. When a new woman joins the circle, he spends a lot of attention on them. He lays it on with a Bobcat. He spends the entire evening ignoring everyone else (including his own wife) and acting for all the world like a horny teenager.
Worse, when we’ve been at weddings and so on and adolescent daughters have been present, he does the same to them. I’ve had heated words with him more than once about that behaviour. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her to be alone with him.
So what does this tell us? I think he’s got used to pushing the boundaries with his female acquaintances and feels like one motherfucker of a big, strutting alpha male and he believes his own bullshit. That emboldens him to swagger in front of new (and very young) women, too.
I don’t blame the women in the group for not explicitly calling him on his bullshit. We don’t meet very often and I expect they don’t want to feel as though they’re spoiling the evening. But it seems clear that he has begun to act that way because he can get away with it. Nobody makes a fuss and if they did he would certainly fall back on the ‘just joking’ defense.
We’ve never worked together, so I don’t know how he acts outside our social circle, but the woman he had an affair with (at least the one we know about) was subordinate to him at work. That seems very telling to me.
Biden’s behavior is out in open video footage. We don’t have any clips of Trump acting out his ‘policies’ as described on the Access Hollywood tape. Unless Vlad has a highlight reel…
How one might behave with close acquaintances or family members is going to be drastically different from one’s conduct in public, with strangers. Biden’s behavior is wrong-footed at best, by any standard. But it doesn’t appear secretive, or like the tip of the iceberg of some abusive and secretive nature.
Which is exactly why I think it’s a relic of those old days when men pushed the envelope (knowing where the borders were and deliberately crossing them) and no one called them on it. Does Biden know he’s crossing borders? Perhaps not. But that doesn’t make it any less a problem – in fact, it may be more because it’s harder to address when people really ‘don’t mean anything by it’. You start to look like an old grouch and most women do not want to be known as old grouches (or, actually, for women it’s bitches or ball busters).