Surprised by Rep. Yoho’s verbal abuse? Ask yourself why

are roughly four times as likely as men to say they have been treated as if they were not competent because of their gender (23% of employed women versus 6% of men).” And women are around “three times as likely as men to say they have experienced repeated small slights at work because of their gender (16% versus 5%),” researchers found in that same survey.

As Representative Ocasio-Cortez aptly pointed out, she dealt with men speaking to her like this when she was a bartender and a waitress, before she was elected to Congress at age 29. Her speech was filled with the ethos of a woman who had worked both in the working class and now in Congress, in a position of immense power. And there lies the deeper issue. The shock and indignant response, singular to this issue that so many expressed, begs the question: is it only loathsome to you when a congresswoman is spoken to like this?

That mindset is folded into internalized misogyny, where the expectation is that some women are just bound to face this type of sexist verbal abuse. But Representative Ocasio-Cortez is in a unique position, something she used to her advantage, making her argument all the more cogent. And she chose to use her platform to fight for verbal abuse railed against working-class women to be treated with the same disgust and ire as the verbal abuse against herself, the most admirable way to turn an impossibly denigrating comment into a substantive spotlight on the truth of misogyny in this country.

AP Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks on the House floor on July 23 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Ocasio-Cortez's objections to a Republican lawmaker's verbal assault on her expanded as she and other Democrats took to the floor to demand an end to a sexist culture of accepting violence and violent language against women.