Question of Personal Privilege
Floor Speech
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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, that was brilliance, grace, intelligence, and complete dedication to what justice, equality, and dignity in the United States looks like. That is our colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and we are so grateful to her for her voice.
What my colleague from Florida did was unacceptable. It was violent. It was sexist. And I do believe he needs to apologize, not because it is going to make our colleague, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, feel any better, but because he, too, needs to learn what unacceptable behavior looks like and rise to the level of the office that he has been elected to. It does not dignify just him, but the 750,000 people that he represents.
And I thought, Madam Speaker, that it would be good to review for my colleagues a little bit of the history of the word that was used, the word that begins with a b that is five letters and that rhymes with ``witch,'' that word.
From 1915 to 1930, Madam Speaker, that word suddenly took off in usage in newspaper reports and articles. And do you know why? Because, in 1920, this body gave women the right to vote, and that was just a little too much power for too many men across the country.
And so all of a sudden, that word rose in prominence because, God forbid, that women would have the right to vote, that we would have power in this body, that we would have power anywhere in this country. God forbid, that women would actually have a voice to speak out on issues that matter and be the arbiters of what is fair and right and spoken with dignity and truism. And so that is when that word started to take off.
Now, I want to be clear that this violent language is about power. It is about power. It is about exerting power. It is about wielding power over people. It is about fear of people who may well be smarter than you, harder working than you, and more dedicated to achieving justice than you. It just may be that. It may be that fear. It is about diminishing and disrespecting when you have no other tools to do so.
And it is not new. Madam Speaker, you were right here managing time on this floor when I, as a new Member of Congress, was told by one of my Republican colleagues that I was a young lady, and I didn't know a damn thing about what I was talking about. You were right here managing the time for our side, and you helped me through that moment. Thank you. And I did get an apology on this floor from my colleague across the aisle.
I was also told in Judiciary Committee to learn how to read by another one of my Members across the aisle. These are the things that happen to us all the time. These are not jokes. They are not little things, not because they hurt us--we are way too strong for that--but because they say something about the caliber of person that is here in the United States Congress.
Do you know, Madam Speaker, out of the 11,000 people who have ever served in the United States Congress, there are only 79 of us women of color who have ever served in this body. And, yes, we bring a new voice.
And so I say to my colleague, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, thank you for your grace and for your brilliance and for your dignity.
And to everybody who is out there watching us and to our colleagues across the aisle, let me say this: We are not going away. There are going to be more of us here. There is going to be more power in the hands of women across this country. And we are going to continue to speak up. We are going to continue to say, ``Madam Speaker.'' We are going to continue to have a voice for people so that everyday working people, our daughters and our mothers and our wives across the country, understand that somebody is standing up for them.
So, Madam Speaker, I believe Mr. Yoho should apologize. I have been on a trip with him across the globe. I never thought I would hear this kind of language from him. I really didn't. And I am stunned, and yet, at the same time, it is a pattern, and it is an old pattern.
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