Three women, including two former aides, have accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of harassment, including inappropriate touching and sexually suggestive language. These allegations come on the heels of a series of damning revelations about Gov. Cuomo including his cover-up of the number of COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes and his bullying of Assemblyman Ron Kim to lie about the cover-up.
After a week of silence, that coincided with the one-year anniversary of the pandemic, Gov. Cuomo said during a press conference Wednesday that he would not resign over the sexual harassment allegations. He also apologized multiple times during the briefing, saying: “It doesn’t matter my intent… If they were offended by it, then it was wrong. And I apologize.”
Just me, or does it feel like he was apologizing because he had been exposed and felt forced to apologize? Not because, you know, he recognizes the dissonance between what he thinks he intended versus what his actions indicated. Hear it again: “It doesn’t matter my intent… If they were offended by it, then it was wrong. And I apologize.” It’s more focused on him than the actions themselves and why those actions are classic patriarchal tactics of diminishing a woman’s worth and objectifying her. It’s a lot to ask of a woman to transcend such circumstances.
I do believe in redemption; I believe in restorative justice. If a perpetrator has acknowledged the harm he caused and put in the hard work to root out his abusive behavior, perhaps we can be open. But most perpetrators, including Gov. Cuomo so far, have not done either. Typically, perpetrators don’t face serious financial or legal consequences. They seem to think that they’re good guys and the women who say they were harmed merely misinterpreted their actions.
If a perpetrator has acknowledged the harm he caused and put in the hard work to root out his abusive behavior, perhaps we can be open.
I know how it feels to be threatened by a powerful politician. I was in a relationship with the former attorney general of New York State, Eric Schneiderman, who resigned from his post in May 2018 after The New Yorker published an investigation into his abusive actions. These were different types of abuses of male power—Schneiderman’s took place primarily in the bedroom and involved slapping, choking, and spitting; Gov. Cuomo’s happened in public and at the office.
What’s important, however, is not to fixate on individual cases of such abuse but to focus on eradicating the mindset that encourages harmful behavior. To break the inextricable link between misogyny and power, there must be graver repercussions for perpetrators. People waste time asking, “How could so-and-so do that?” or “How can they live with themselves?”
But instead we need to focus on what we need to see that might indicate restorative justice. I asked Jennifer Friedman, the director of Bronx and Manhattan Legal Project and Policy of Sanctuary for Families, for her opinion. She told me:
When men ask me how they can be better allies of women, I alternate between wanting to say “get out of the way” and actually saying that they can examine their own patterns of behavior and have hard conversations with their male friends. Do men really need to ask women about how not to be an asshole? I myself am tired of having to point out misogyny, even after writing about intimate partner violence in my new book Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. It is well past time for men in power to do the work of understanding the pain they cause. I’m so tired of having to be resilient, of having to overcome. Women need a break.
Gov. Cuomo, you are the fruit, not the root, of the conditioning that normalizes your alleged behavior towards multiple women. But next time you apologize, please don’t put the onus on the victim by separating your intent from her experience.
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