Justice for Sandra Lee
Or, how Andrew Cuomo achieved bipartisanship in the worst fucking way
Men have this uncanny habit of both getting defensive when someone of their gender is critiqued for doing the wrong thing and saying they would never do the wrong thing, and then doing the wrong thing continuously without fail.
Take, for example, a Democratic New York Governor who convinced us all he was A Good Guy and a foil to the Very Bad Guy who was the most recent Republican president. But it turns out the governor is a Very Bad Guy, too!!
Would you look at that— bipartisanship in Joe Biden’s America.
Anyway, we’re talking about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal today because, just as I said when we talked about Rep. Matt Gaetz’s underage sex trafficking scandal, men still have not recognized that their actions have consequences.
This week, I talked with Samantha Jaloza about her thoughts on the Cuomo scandal as a New York voter, the political double standard for men who are also sexual assailants, and whether or not there are any good men in this world (hint: there’s not).
Every time I have a guest join me for E4P, I send a very vague request asking them to introduce themselves however they see fit. Most of the time, they’ll share just a brief tagline or maybe a little joke. Sam’s response needed to be included in its entirety:
Sam: I am a recent graduate from Emory University where I double-majored in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Sociology. I was going to come up with a cute catchphrase about saying I am from Queens like that catchy line from In the Heights but I realized both of my parents are just Jews from Brooklyn and that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I am back in New York City to be broke and busy as a law student at NYU. My fun fact of the week is that I just walked a marathon, and will not stop telling people about it until I find something new to make my only personality trait.
That 26.2-mile journey (did I tell you I walked a marathon???) confirmed to me that New York really is the center of the world.
TW: sexual harassment, assault, and use of the word rape
For the Record
While I was at one time in my life a devoted fan of the Cuomo Brothers Power Hour, I am proud to say I never made this part of my identity. Recalling this led me to ask Sam today’s first question:
Emily: Do people that called themselves "Cuomosexuals" last year deserve a second chance?
Sam: Nope.
Men 🤢 (cont.)
Last December, a former Cuomo aide named Lindsey Boylan accused the governor of sexually harassing her for years. Proving once again that harassers and assailants are predatory in their behaviors, more female employees began to recount their experiences, alleging the governor of acts like unsolicited kisses, requests to play strip poker, and asking invasive questions about their sex lives.
An investigation conducted by the New York Attorney General’s office (lead by the incomparable Letitia James) “found that Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed current and former New York State employees by engaging in unwelcome and non-consensual touching and making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.” (x)
As it was during our Matt Gaetz chat, the word of the day is allegedly. The AG’s findings are not indictments themselves, but can be used as evidence in court by Cuomo’s 11 accusers and has already led local prosecutors to launch a criminal investigation.
The scandal is still evolving as well: in the last 24 hours, Cuomo’s secretary has resigned and Brittany Commisso, one of his former executive assistants who had previously gone unnamed, has spoken out and called for the governor to be held accountable.
With all of this in mind, I asked Sam:
Emily: What are your general opinions on the Cuomo situation as a whole?
Sam: During those few months of being in lockdown during the peak of the pandemic, my family would tune in every day to listen to Cuomo’s press conference. Cuomo, especially after our former president who would come on TV like a bumbling conspiracist, seemed like a natural leader.
New Yorkers respected him (even amidst the nipple ring rumors), and I would have put a decent amount of money down that after his very public and praised handling of the pandemic, he would be putting in a bid for the presidency sometime in the near future.
As a woman, a New Yorker, a registered Democrat, and a future lawyer, I found myself thinking a lot about how the situation escalated and saw how my identities were interacting with each other. With Trump, there was a resounding response from many of the people I know and respect that Trump’s treatment of women and others was cause for uproar and should certainly have cost him his candidacy.
Despite information about Trump’s behavior (and besides all of his other flaws) being public information, he went on to win the election. As a woman, I remember feeling deeply saddened that Trump’s blatant misogyny was not a dealbreaker for holding one of the highest offices possible.
The number of men in power who have been under fire has only increased since Trump’s election. I like that we are holding these individuals accountable but I also am consistently frustrated that not much actually changes.
I was talking with my mom after the AG’s office released the results of their investigation and she kept getting hung up on how could Cuomo have done this when he knew harassment and assault are wrong. But the issue here is not whether he was conscious of making a wrong decision because to him, there was no wrong option.
One thing that often goes unsaid about harassment or assault is that it is never actually about sex or sexual attraction. It’s about power.
Whether Cuomo was talking to touching women in a certain way “as a sign of endearment” in a sexual or non-sexual manner is irrelevant. He had the power over these women to do what he wanted —to get what he wanted— and he did it. The issue is less about intent than it is about the actions themselves.
The case this is clearest in is that of a female security guard assigned to protect him. When men see women in traditionally masculine-coded roles, they often try to assert the dominance the patriarchy has told them they’re owed.
A key Cuomo personality trait (noted by both his supporters and detractors) is that he is a power-hungry, bureaucratic ladder-climbing, son-of-a-former-governor-who-didn’t-get-a-fourth-term.
Which is why I asked Sam:
Emily: Why do you think people are so surprised that a power-interested politician is now accused of taking advantage of those who worked for him?
Sam: I have no idea because I was not surprised at all. I feel like this has happened so many times that there is no reason to be surprised anymore - only frustrated.
Emily: Are there any good men? can you list them?
Sam:
(I left this blank on purpose.)
Timbaland Said, “It’s Too Late to Apologize, Andrew”
Last week in a recorded video —after he co-opted an unnamed family member’s story of sexual assault but before he included a montage of him hugging and kissing random people— Governor Cuomo denied the claims against him and said he had no plans to resign.
I asked Sam:
Emily: What is your initial reaction to Cuomo's apology? Do you feel it was an actual apology?
Sam: I feel like my first reaction was an eye roll because I am tired of men making meaningless apologies that simultaneously discredit victims while also attempting to seem empathetic. Maybe Cuomo is a frequent hugger, but that does not detract the fact that an independent investigation found that his actions went beyond that and his attempts to deny his behavior fell flat.
Cuomo’s defense is two-fold: first, he denies anything that he did was wrong because second, he argues that he is old-fashioned when it comes to displays of affection.
First of all, what the fuck kind of excuse is that? Just because there was no MeToo movement in the 1950s doesn’t mean sexual harassment or assault was okay. Men using this defense —and anything along the lines of, “Oh, he’s of a different time” or “We said/did that all the time when I was growing up”— are (number one) wrong, but also signaling to everyone else that they are so comfortable preserving their personal status quo that they are willing to ruin other people’s lives in order to protect it.
There is no past in which harassment or assault was acceptable. There is only a past in which women were not empowered to speak up about it.
It’s worth noting that Cuomo’s defense also sets our society back ten paces for every step we take. In her book, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, activist Florence Given writes about women:
“What kind of relationship are we expected to have with our own bodies when we are socialized to believe that they exist for male consumption? We are taught that men are entitled to our bodies so much that we are blamed for being assaulted because of our choice of clothing but still expected to present ourselves in a way that is desirable enough for their validation and basic respect.”
That was written in 2020. The last sentence reads like a piece of logic from yesteryear and yet, because of men like Cuomo, it still rings true today. Because by not only acting as they do but subsequently rejecting accountability and consequences for their actions as well, Cuomo and other men like him continuously deny women the right to exist freely in their own bodies as they prevent us from making true progress.
Color that statement dramatic or angry or whatever you want to preserve your own status quo, but it’s still more true than New York’s reported nursing home COVID death statistics.
Bipartisan Assholery
It is so beautiful that, in these highly polarized times, there is something the two parties in American can come together on.
Unfortunately, it’s fucking sexual misconduct.
Thinking on all of these men who have been accused of doing harmful and horrible things to women and are still in power —casually counting: the President, two Supreme Court justices, Matt Gaetz— makes it unsurprising that Cuomo is rejecting calls from literally everyone to resign.
I asked Sam:
Emily: Do you think Cuomo is going to stay in office despite calls for him to resign or be impeached? Donald Trump was allowed to stay in office— is there a political double standard?
Sam: I have had mixed feelings on this situation and comparing it to Trump.
When politicians started calling for Cuomo’s resignation, it made me think about what role politicians play and if it is their place to call for resignation as a response to an issue that is under an active investigation. Politicians are not our judicial system, but we do elect them to represent our best interests and uphold their responsibilities to the community.
Of course, I want the politicians representing me to also believe that harassment is bad and that we should not be giving positions of power to people who abuse their power; especially now when we are all constantly connected to each other and the news through social media, political figures hold even more power to use their voice to speak up on issues. But part of me wondered if them calling for an outcome before the results of the investigation does undermine the separation of our judicial system from our legislative body. Just my thoughts.
To be fair, I didn’t have any problem when everyone called for Trump to resign, so I guess maybe there is a political double standard in a way.
While I won’t delve too deep into this line of thinking since I’ve already done it before (but rest assured, I will do it again), Cuomo is taking notes off the pages Trump stole from Roy Cohn’s rulebook. Partisanship be damned (seeing as Cohn too was a lifelong Democrat), men who believe they are entitled to their power will do anything to preserve it.
But partisanship not damned, this since-deleted Tweet from former Trump staffer A.J. Delgado raised two interesting questions I had for Sam:
Emily: This tweet articulates a counterpoint to "holding Cuomo accountable.” Two questions:
1.) Did you think Al Franken was funny when we saw his set in the Comedy Cellar?
2.) What are your thoughts on this argument?Sam: I feel like it’s just a matter of integrity. To forgive people’s bad behavior for the sake of letting your party succeed is just a sign of no integrity.
I feel like we are at a time when it’s so easy to make things Democrat vs Republican, liberal vs conservative. It would be easy to push things under the rug and say, “It was years ago,” “People make mistakes,” etc etc, in order to not feed into the ideological warfare.
But I’d like to think that part of the reasons why I vote a certain way is because i believe in integrity and hope that the people I vote for do as well.
And yes, Al Franken was funny.
The argument that political gains are more important than women’s lives and safety is so asinine and yet so prevalent that it is in effect in many people’s minds. You can’t truly ever get ahead by playing by losers’ rules.
Are You There, Silver Lining? It’s Me, a Desperate Bitch
Cuomo’s case shows us that regardless of every other qualifier, men are still men. And no, this is not some “boys will be boys” horseshit.
What I mean by that is that regardless of education or punishment or partisanship, men will still feel endowed by the patriarchy to act as they always have, which is with power and without consequence.
Men benefit from the existence of rape culture or, as our favorite historian puts it, “a sociological theory of a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.” And before the Andrew Cuomos in the chat start getting defensive, stop for a second and ask yourself if you’ve ever done anything to objectify a woman.
If you automatically said no, ask yourself these follow-ups:
Have you thought about how a female stranger’s outfit seems provocative?
Have you fixated on a female stranger’s sexualized body parts like her breasts or butt?
Have you seen a female stranger and immediately visualized having sex with her, thus reducing her to nothing more than a blow up sex doll designed for your pleasure?
Have you recognized that all of these things reduce her to nothing more than an object designed for your pleasure?
That’s rape culture.
I asked Sam:
Emily: Is there a way out of this rape culture we live in?
Sam: I think with the way power dynamics work in bureaucratic systems, it is hard to believe that we will ever not suffer from people in power taking advantage of those below them. The inclusion of more diverse people in higher positions hopefully will allow for some change in this field.
I think it's great that we have started to speak up about these injustices but without systemic changes, I don't honestly know how much will change especially considering how much of our society is designed to benefit men in power.
Emily: What is the best lesson we can teach boys and men about this scandal? What is there to be learned?
Sam: To recognize the power dynamics you are upholding by existing.
I think women can learn from this, too. We all have to do better at recognizing situations that are not okay, and holding each other and ourselves accountable.
Emily: What would be the right thing for Governor Cuomo to do now?
Sam: First step is probably to stop coming up with excuses. Second, probably to resign. I don't see a path where he can come back from this.
If you can’t be responsible around women in your own office, what the fuck makes you think you’re responsible enough to manage a state filled with them?
This One Goes Out to Sandra Lee in the Back
As a tried and true fan of both the Food Network and Vine, I had to close out today’s newsletter by asking:
Emily: How would you imagine Sandra Lee is feeling right now?
Sam:
Thank you so much to Sam for answering these questions and also brilliant!!! If anyone down the line in her law career finds this, we fully avoided talking about any legal issues.
If you won’t disbar Rudy, don’t disbar Sam!!!