Question of Personal Privilege

Floor Speech

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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I am here not only to defend my friend and colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; I am here on behalf of women around the world. This is not just about one woman, one incident, or one verbal assaulter. This is about respect and fundamental equality.

Like Alexandria, I was raised by a dignified man who told me that I deserved equality because I was an equal human being to my brothers. I am appalled often, like Alex was, when we hear men say: I would never do this because I have a wife, I have a daughter, I have sisters.

Madam Speaker, you don't only respect women because they could be your mother, they could be your wife, and they could be your sister. No. You respect women because they are equal human beings to you. That is how my father raised me, and that is how Alexandria's father raised her.

Nearly every woman in the world has experienced verbal abuse, not just once, but since they were little girls. We experience it on playgrounds; we experience it in workplaces; and we experience it in our social media feeds. We see it coming regularly from the President of the United States, and now we see it coming from his partisan lackeys. From birth, little girls are sent the message that they don't matter.

In this body, we have seen men who are afraid of Muslim women like me and Rashida Tlaib because we say proudly that you cannot ban us from this country because we pray differently than you. They are afraid of women everywhere fighting systems of repression and sexual harassment through the Me Too movement. They are afraid not just of us but of losing their own power.

It is no accident that Alex was verbally abused for speaking up for poverty in her district and its relation to unrest because when you push power, power pushes back. When we speak for people from marginalized communities, we understand, as people who come from those marginalized communities, that is a threat to those who wield power against marginalized communities.

So, we are here to say that we will not allow sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy to hold us back. We will not apologize for advocating for women everywhere. We will not apologize for claiming the power that women deserved for centuries. And we will send a message to our daughters and their daughters that they deserve fundamental equality.

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