By Catherine Orr ’22, News Writer

As many of you may know, on April 8th, Bernie Sanders decided to suspend his campaign, making Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential election. What many do not know, however, is the recent sexual assault allegations made against Biden. Last year, several women came forward publicly to state that Joe Biden had touched or kissed them in an inappropriate manner which made them uncomfortable. One of these women was Tara Reade, who worked in his Senate Office in 1993. In a recent podcast interview released on March 25, Reade opened up on a series of transgressions she experienced from Biden in her time working for him. She claims he not only inappropriately touched her, but held her up against a wall, put his hands up her skirt, and penetrated her without consent. The alleged event happened 27 years ago, and there were no witnesses present. However, her brother and a close friend of Reade recall her telling them about it at the time it occured. If this case sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is. Just two years ago, we witnessed similar accusations against another prominent U.S political figure, Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In the infamous Senate hearing in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh, at the time a candidate to serve on the Supreme Court, was accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Ford. Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a highschool party in the 1980s. In her statement, she described that Kavanaugh had pinned her down on a bed and covered her mouth to the point of suffocation. Ford had no confirmed witnesses, but she had told her husband and her therapist years later.

Although there has not been a formal investigation on the allegations against Biden, parallels can already be seen between the two cases. First, in both cases, the accuser hesitated to come forward due to a lack of witnesses, and only had two people they originally confided in. Both cases happened more than twenty years ago, making it harder to ascertain the truth, and both of the accused men are powerful political figures, whose alleged actions were brought into the public at critical points in their political careers. But, the most significant parallel between the two cases has been the polarized reaction of the media and the general public. When Kavanaugh’s case was being heard in 2018, many mainstream news sources covered it. However, different parties put their own bias on it. Two different news sources, Fox and CNN, known for leaning on opposite sides of the political spectrum, had very different articles covering the hearing. One of CNN’s headlines at the time reads, “The Case Kavanaugh has to make and slim his margin of error”, while one of Fox’s headlines reads, “Kavanaugh denies sexual misconduct in Fox News Exclusive: ‘I know I’m telling the truth’”. 

Currently, more than two weeks after Joe Biden’s sexual assault allegations have come into the public, major liberal news sources such as CNN and NBC have yet to write about them, while more typically conservative sources such as Fox News have already written multiple articles on the subject. While it is possible that this is a product of the mass media coverage on the coronavirus, the same patterns were shown during the Kavanaugh case. Rather than using these cases as an opportunity to further our progress and support for women’s rights, the media has taken it as an opportunity to further turn political parties against each other. They have used women’s rights and struggles as a pawn to further political polarization, devaluing and hindering the progress of the #metoo movement. And so this begs an important question: do we really care about advancing women’s rights? Or do we only care when we need them to advance our own political agenda?