vox--2020-05-06--Covid-19 is overwhelming the death system. Funeral directors keep it from spiraling into chaos.

Kim Zambito , a 29-year-old funeral director in Brooklyn , is driving , always driving .
On April 18 , a week after New York City ’ s Covid-19 daily death toll peaked at over 800 , she did three house removals , put about six bodies in caskets , and moved at least a dozen more around the funeral home to prepare them for burial the next day .
After dinner , Zambito retrieved three more bodies from Lutheran Hospital and brought them back to Sherman ’ s Flatbush Memorial Chapel , a busy Jewish firm where she works @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director , is struggling to keep up with phone calls .
She has her own boutique firm , Fitting Tribute , and is affiliated with Sherman ’ s and Green-Wood cemetery , home to one of the city ’ s very busy crematoriums .
In contrast to the embalming , elaborate caskets , and formal viewings offered at legacy funeral homes , Fitting Tribute emphasizes green burial practices and home rituals .
Cunningham gives families the opportunity to prepare the body of their loved one for burial or cremation and to create their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of spreading Covid-19 further has prevented families — and Cunningham — from being in casual contact with the dead , deeply altering her practice .
There is no anointing of the body , no comforting embraces for the grieving .
The entire industry is so busy , firms have begun sending families to their competitors .
“ I ’ m getting thanked for just staying on the line with people , ” Cunningham told me .
Some of the most memorable images of the pandemic are forklifts loading bodies into refrigerator trucks and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city ’ s potter ’ s field near the Bronx , where the poor and unclaimed are buried .
But talking to funeral directors like Zambito and Cunningham reveals that the forklifts and the mass graves are not chaos and crisis , but the death industry expertly managing the spike in fatalities with orderly and well-planned contingencies , and creativity .
Despite limited resources and New York ’ s largest mass casualty event in more than 100 years , there are no bodies in the street .
That ’ s because Zambito , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city have been racing to balance the needs of bereaved families with the overwhelmed resources of the funeral industry .
Most have put aside competition , budget goals , and the more elaborate practices of their trade to manage as best they can the unprecedented challenges Covid-19 has brought them .
“ I think the public would feel comforted knowing there are people who care this much to ensure dignity in death remains intact , ” says Zambito .
Funeral directors ’ care for the dead honors our longstanding social contract .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ if it were ordinary organic matter , ” writes Thomas Laqueur in The Work of the Dead , “ is to erase it from culture and the human community.
” Particularly in times of crisis , the work of funeral directors is to reassure people that society will remain intact .
Yet the death of more than 18,000 people in New York City and over 25,000 in the state from Covid-19 as of May 5 has also exposed the often-hidden industrialized nature of funeral home work .
Forklifts , body bags , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for all to see , the reverence of funeral ceremony displaced by the pragmatism of corpse management .
The disillusion reminds us of the conundrum of the dead : The body is both organic matter and sacred to our conceptions of self and society .
“ A Brooklyn hospital on Tuesday resumed its use of a forklift to move the dead bodies of coronavirus victims , just hours after the shocking practice was exposed on the front page of The Post , ” the New York Post proclaimed on March 31 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ like When a Hospital Runs Out of Room for Coronavirus Corpses , ” read a headline at Vice News about Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit .
Drone footage of mass graves on Hart Island appeared in multiple newspapers , including the New York Times .
The New York Police Department later seized the drone , reinforcing the perception that the graves are disrespectful .
Forklifts and other large equipment have long been a part of the behind-the-curtains work of morticians and funeral directors .
Mechanized lifts make the work of moving bodies — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less laborious and dangerous .
The unclaimed and indigent of New York have been buried in mass graves on Hart Island for a hundred years .
Body bags are standard issue for hospitals and funeral homes .
Yet the media has fixated on these common tools and procedures to capitalize on people ’ s fear and romantic notions of death — it ’ s been generations since American families have handled their own loved ones ’ corpses .
Our contemporary understanding of death seldom includes decomposition .
“ The media is acting like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vile conspiracy , ” Caitlin Doughty , a California mortician and bestselling author , recently said in a lively video installment on her YouTube channel , “ Ask a Mortician , ” “ Refrigerated trucks are a good thing .
They keep those extra bodies cool , safe , and distant from the population.
” Cunningham explains the equipment comes into play when there are many bodies and little space to keep them .
“ It ’ s not a juicy scandal , ” she said .
“ It ’ s orderly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bodies have to be stacked in trucks out of necessity .
Maybe , Doughty offers , the public outrage at forklifts is because many don ’ t understand how industrialized the funeral industry is .
Maybe people are ( rightly ) made uncomfortable when they see how the city ’ s poor are buried , in plain boxes in mass graves on Hart Island .
Or maybe , she suggests , public reaction to these images is caused by death ’ s emergence from our subconscious ; the pandemic has made death a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epidemic has made clear that most of us don ’ t have a clear understanding of the work done by the people in the death trade .
“ Along with terror , suffering and death , a plague brings a macabre logistical problem : lots of corpses that need to be disposed of , ” Jody Rosen recently wrote at the New York Times .
We enter into the funeral directors ’ realm once a loved one takes their last breath .
If they unexpectedly die at home — 1,125 New Yorkers died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days of April , per the New York City Fire Department , more than eight times the normal rate — the family will call 911 , who will send the police .
The police will contact the medical examiner ’ s office .
At the peak of the virus in the city , it took nearly 24 hours for pickups to be arranged , Zambito told me , when it normally takes only a few hours .
She ’ s since noticed a decline in wait times .
Once the NYPD has cleared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will try to find a funeral home to prepare the body for burial or cremation .
But as the death toll has risen , funeral homes had a harder time meeting the demand for their services .
Then , as cemeteries and crematoriums got busier , their services scheduled weeks in advance , funeral homes experienced the challenge of running out of space for incoming bodies .
Many became unable to take new cases .
On a podcast with Tanya Marsh , a professor at Wake Forest University who specializes in human remains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was getting calls like , “ Can you help us ?
We keep calling funeral homes and no one can help us ?
” “ Some of these guys are at such risk , but they ’ re totally committed to being a part of this effort ” Usually funeral directors work with the medical examiner to track down the deceased ’ s doctor , who , in normal times , must sign the death certificate .
But for the moment , the need for a doctor ’ s signature has been suspended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are also no longer holding viewings or ceremonies in most of New York City .
“ That ’ s the last time they ’ re going to see that person , ” Zambito said of families she met during home removals , “ and it ’ s the saddest thing ever.
” When families tell Cunningham that they would typically hold a wake , she reminds them , gently , firmly , that they will never see the body of their loved one again : “ Now is your wake.
” Another departure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death is the hospital deaths .
To prevent the spread of coronavirus , city hospitals have ended visitations — which means if the ambulance takes you to the hospital and you do not survive , your family will never see your body again .
Your body will perhaps be placed , by hospital staff , in one of the refrigerated trucks in back .
The hospital will contact your family and your family will contact a funeral home , like Sherman ’ s .
A funeral director will check eVital , the electronic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to confirm that your paperwork is in order .
Then they will go out to pick up your body .
Bodies are often in white body bags , sometimes orange body bags , the two types the city was able to procure , unless hospitals have run out .
When the body is brought back to the funeral home , it is organized in a holding area , labeled and kept cool as the wait for a scheduled burial or cremation begins .
When Zambito says she moved bodies , she means she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ placed in cardboard boxes for cremation or in a casket for burial .
But finding the bodies slated for removal can take a while ; they ’ re clearly marked , but limited space has required stacking bodies on top of each other .
“ We wind up having to play Tetris , where we have to move all these other people to get to them , ” she said .
“ It ’ s pretty awful , I ’ ll be honest.
” When Zambito says she casketed bodies , she means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For half a century , preparing a casketed body for a viewing has been an art : the facial features set , makeup applied , the body carefully dressed in clothes selected by the family .
None of that can be done now when the dead threaten to share their disease .
“ We have to just put them in the casket and drape clothes over them , ” Zambito told me .
As the crematoriums and cemeteries got backed up in late March and early April — the former were scheduling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were performing as many as 60 funerals a day — funeral homes found they were running out of room to store bodies .
Funeral home chapels , no longer accessible to visitors because of physical distancing , became makeshift morgues .
Sherman ’ s installed a refrigerator in its front garden ; it was immediately filled with bodies in cardboard boxes waiting for cremation .
Briefly , some thought that embalming bodies would help preserve them longer , allowing crematories and cemeteries to catch up with the demand , but the sheer number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ directors to embalm .
The bodies came too fast .
Within five days , Sherman ’ s staff began placing them wherever they could , including in the hallways .
Casket selections also became depleted .
Zambito told me that Sherman ’ s usually gets caskets from one company , but high demand now requires them to source them from wherever they can .
“ We ’ re getting caskets that were discontinued — close-out caskets , ” she said .
There ’ s been a shortage of hearses , too , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SUVs .
Drivers find they may have to wait hours once they reach the cemetery , the line of vehicles ahead of them snaking through the cemetery ’ s drives .
Cunningham has been trying to convince families , particularly those without the extra funds for an expected funeral right now , to think of Hart Island as a spiritual place .
“ We can sanctify the grounds and make it okay to be there , ” she told Marsh .
“ I can only anticipate that it will be made beautiful and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zambito if she ’ s afraid of getting sick , she says no , but it ’ s clear she ’ s trying not to think about the possibility .
When I ask again , “ Are you willing to do this job regardless ?
” she answers , “ Absolutely , yeah , yeah.
” As with many hospital and nursing home workers , those in the funeral industry see the pandemic as a time to pitch in , not duck out .
“ So far , no one ’ s sick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ and I ’ m amazed that they want to work .
...
Some of these guys are at such risk , but they ’ re totally committed to being a part of this effort.
” As the number of deaths climbed , New York ’ s governor called in funeral directors and ambulances from out of state .
In came 150 refrigerated trucks and out went bodies to mass graves on Hart Island .
Despite casket shortages , the long hours , and the grim retrievals , the funeral industry carries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its scandals .
“ We had bodies coming out of our ears , ” Andrew T. Cleckley , owner of the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn , told the New York Times after police found at least 50 corpses in the back of two trucks outside the funeral home the last week of April .
Neighbors had reported a pervasive smell and fluids running out of the trucks .
Cleckley ’ s funeral director license was valid , but the space , which had been the address for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was registered for “ automobile retail , ” and “ the manufacture of machinery.
” Industry associations were aghast .
The New York Funeral Directors Association said Cleckley was not a member .
According to Time magazine , city health officials immediately issued guidance to all funeral homes .
The Cleckley example highlights the challenges the pandemic has presented as well as the inadequacies of government responses to systemic shortfalls caused by Covid-19 .
Like recommending that all nurses wear face masks but not providing them , government officials are not doing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like funeral homes and the families who rely on them .
Still , despite the casket shortages , the long hours of waiting , and the grim retrieval , the funeral industry carries on , shuffling bodies and delivering them to their final disposition .
For now , the number of deaths is declining .
Future outbreaks , the full depletion of personal protective equipment reserves , and the long grieving process the city faces loom ahead .
Everyone is tired .
“ It ’ s hard because you end up working with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so labor-intensive , ” Cunningham told me .
If you drive north of the city , west of the Hudson , and cross the Wallkill River , you ’ ll find a sleepy little cemetery called Rosendale Plains , which has been around since the late 1800s .
The proprietor ’ s name is Floyd Craig ; his son Brandon makes pine caskets .
This is where Cunningham has been taking bodies .
Because of the shortage of hearses , she loads the casket into the back of her Honda Pilot , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the front seat .
She slides in the casket on top of an Oriental rug and plays music — classical , or a playlist provided by families — appropriate to the task of hauling someone ’ s remains to their final resting place .
“ I make it a funeral , ” she told me .
It ’ s a reverential task , one that Cunningham , and every funeral director I ’ ve spoken to , takes seriously even as the customary rituals are upended for time and space .
One of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uncommonly low price : A plot there costs $ 800 , and the opening fee , the rate to dig a grave and close it , is only $ 800 .
( For comparison , a single plot in Green-Wood Cemetery can cost $ 12,000 . )
The high national rate of unemployment weighs on her .
When the body is laid to rest , Cunningham puts one of Brandon Craig ’ s empty pine caskets in the back of the Pilot and heads home .
It will be an inexpensive alternative to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ families .
“ That ’ s what I ’ ve decided will be my contribution , ” Cunningham told me , referring to the solemn burials in Rosendale Plains , “ one body at a time.
” Ann Neumann is author of The Good Death : An Exploration of Dying in America and a contributing nonfiction editor at Guernica magazine .
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is an independent documentary photographer based in New York City .
She is the co-author of MFON : Women Photographers of the African Diaspora .
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Kim Zambito, a 29-year-old funeral director in Brooklyn, is driving, always driving.
On April 18, a week after New York City’s Covid-19 daily death toll peaked at over 800, she did three house removals, put about six bodies in caskets, and moved at least a dozen more around the funeral home to prepare them for burial the next day. After dinner, Zambito retrieved three more bodies from Lutheran Hospital and brought them back to Sherman’s Flatbush Memorial Chapel, a busy Jewish firm where she works.
Amy Cunningham, another Brooklyn funeral director, is struggling to keep up with phone calls. She has her own boutique firm, Fitting Tribute, and is affiliated with Sherman’s and uses the chapels at Green-Wood cemetery, home to one of the city’s very busy crematoriums.
In contrast to the embalming, elaborate caskets, and formal viewings offered at legacy funeral homes, Fitting Tribute emphasizes green burial practices and home rituals. Cunningham gives families the opportunity to prepare the body of their loved one for burial or cremation and to create their own memorial service.
But the risk of spreading Covid-19 further has prevented families — and Cunningham — from being in casual contact with the dead, deeply altering her practice. There is no anointing of the body, no comforting embraces for the grieving. The entire industry is so busy, firms have begun sending families to their competitors. “I’m getting thanked for just staying on the line with people,” Cunningham told me.
Some of the most memorable images of the pandemic are forklifts loading bodies into refrigerator trucks and mass graves on Hart Island, the city’s potter’s field near the Bronx, where the poor and unclaimed are buried. But talking to funeral directors like Zambito and Cunningham reveals that the forklifts and the mass graves are not chaos and crisis, but the death industry expertly managing the spike in fatalities with orderly and well-planned contingencies, and creativity. Despite limited resources and New York’s largest mass casualty event in more than 100 years, there are no bodies in the street.
That’s because Zambito, Cunningham, and funeral directors all over the city have been racing to balance the needs of bereaved families with the overwhelmed resources of the funeral industry. Most have put aside competition, budget goals, and the more elaborate practices of their trade to manage as best they can the unprecedented challenges Covid-19 has brought them. “I think the public would feel comforted knowing there are people who care this much to ensure dignity in death remains intact,” says Zambito.
Funeral directors’ care for the dead honors our longstanding social contract. “To treat a dead body as if it were ordinary organic matter,” writes Thomas Laqueur in The Work of the Dead, “is to erase it from culture and the human community.” Particularly in times of crisis, the work of funeral directors is to reassure people that society will remain intact.
Yet the death of more than 18,000 people in New York City and over 25,000 in the state from Covid-19 as of May 5 has also exposed the often-hidden industrialized nature of funeral home work. Forklifts, body bags, and refrigerators are now out in the open, for all to see, the reverence of funeral ceremony displaced by the pragmatism of corpse management. The disillusion reminds us of the conundrum of the dead: The body is both organic matter and sacred to our conceptions of self and society.
“It’s orderly chaos, well-labeled and dated”
“A Brooklyn hospital on Tuesday resumed its use of a forklift to move the dead bodies of coronavirus victims, just hours after the shocking practice was exposed on the front page of The Post,” the New York Post proclaimed on March 31.
“Shocking Photos Show What It Looks like When a Hospital Runs Out of Room for Coronavirus Corpses,” read a headline at Vice News about Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit. Drone footage of mass graves on Hart Island appeared in multiple newspapers, including the New York Times. The New York Police Department later seized the drone, reinforcing the perception that the graves are disrespectful.
Forklifts and other large equipment have long been a part of the behind-the-curtains work of morticians and funeral directors. Mechanized lifts make the work of moving bodies — into morgue refrigerators, into crematoriums — less laborious and dangerous. The unclaimed and indigent of New York have been buried in mass graves on Hart Island for a hundred years. Body bags are standard issue for hospitals and funeral homes.
Yet the media has fixated on these common tools and procedures to capitalize on people’s fear and romantic notions of death — it’s been generations since American families have handled their own loved ones’ corpses. Our contemporary understanding of death seldom includes decomposition.
“The media is acting like they’ve caught the government in a vile conspiracy,” Caitlin Doughty, a California mortician and bestselling author, recently said in a lively video installment on her YouTube channel, “Ask a Mortician,” “Refrigerated trucks are a good thing. They keep those extra bodies cool, safe, and distant from the population.”
Cunningham explains the equipment comes into play when there are many bodies and little space to keep them. “It’s not a juicy scandal,” she said. “It’s orderly chaos, well labeled and dated.” Bodies have to be stacked in trucks out of necessity.
Maybe, Doughty offers, the public outrage at forklifts is because many don’t understand how industrialized the funeral industry is. Maybe people are (rightly) made uncomfortable when they see how the city’s poor are buried, in plain boxes in mass graves on Hart Island. Or maybe, she suggests, public reaction to these images is caused by death’s emergence from our subconscious; the pandemic has made death a daily fact of conscious life.
Covid-19 is straining funeral homes, crematoriums, and cemeteries
The epidemic has made clear that most of us don’t have a clear understanding of the work done by the people in the death trade. “Along with terror, suffering and death, a plague brings a macabre logistical problem: lots of corpses that need to be disposed of,” Jody Rosen recently wrote at the New York Times.
We enter into the funeral directors’ realm once a loved one takes their last breath. If they unexpectedly die at home — 1,125 New Yorkers died outside a hospital in the first five days of April, per the New York City Fire Department, more than eight times the normal rate — the family will call 911, who will send the police. The police will contact the medical examiner’s office. At the peak of the virus in the city, it took nearly 24 hours for pickups to be arranged, Zambito told me, when it normally takes only a few hours. She’s since noticed a decline in wait times.
Once the NYPD has cleared the body for pickup, the family will try to find a funeral home to prepare the body for burial or cremation. But as the death toll has risen, funeral homes had a harder time meeting the demand for their services. Then, as cemeteries and crematoriums got busier, their services scheduled weeks in advance, funeral homes experienced the challenge of running out of space for incoming bodies. Many became unable to take new cases. On a podcast with Tanya Marsh, a professor at Wake Forest University who specializes in human remains and cemetery law, Cunningham said she was getting calls like, “Can you help us? We keep calling funeral homes and no one can help us?”
“Some of these guys are at such risk, but they’re totally committed to being a part of this effort”
Usually funeral directors work with the medical examiner to track down the deceased’s doctor, who, in normal times, must sign the death certificate. But for the moment, the need for a doctor’s signature has been suspended in New York City.
Funeral homes are also no longer holding viewings or ceremonies in most of New York City. “That’s the last time they’re going to see that person,” Zambito said of families she met during home removals, “and it’s the saddest thing ever.” When families tell Cunningham that they would typically hold a wake, she reminds them, gently, firmly, that they will never see the body of their loved one again: “Now is your wake.”
Another departure from what most would deem a good death is the hospital deaths. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, city hospitals have ended visitations — which means if the ambulance takes you to the hospital and you do not survive, your family will never see your body again. Your body will perhaps be placed, by hospital staff, in one of the refrigerated trucks in back. The hospital will contact your family and your family will contact a funeral home, like Sherman’s. A funeral director will check eVital, the electronic service run by the medical examiner, to confirm that your paperwork is in order. Then they will go out to pick up your body.
Bodies are often in white body bags, sometimes orange body bags, the two types the city was able to procure, unless hospitals have run out. When the body is brought back to the funeral home, it is organized in a holding area, labeled and kept cool as the wait for a scheduled burial or cremation begins.
When Zambito says she moved bodies, she means she retrieves from storage those that must be placed in cardboard boxes for cremation or in a casket for burial. But finding the bodies slated for removal can take a while; they’re clearly marked, but limited space has required stacking bodies on top of each other. “We wind up having to play Tetris, where we have to move all these other people to get to them,” she said. “It’s pretty awful, I’ll be honest.”
When Zambito says she casketed bodies, she means she placed them in their appropriate containers. For half a century, preparing a casketed body for a viewing has been an art: the facial features set, makeup applied, the body carefully dressed in clothes selected by the family. None of that can be done now when the dead threaten to share their disease. “We have to just put them in the casket and drape clothes over them,” Zambito told me.
As the crematoriums and cemeteries got backed up in late March and early April — the former were scheduling cremations into late May and the latter were performing as many as 60 funerals a day — funeral homes found they were running out of room to store bodies. Funeral home chapels, no longer accessible to visitors because of physical distancing, became makeshift morgues.
Sherman’s installed a refrigerator in its front garden; it was immediately filled with bodies in cardboard boxes waiting for cremation. Briefly, some thought that embalming bodies would help preserve them longer, allowing crematories and cemeteries to catch up with the demand, but the sheer number of bodies became too much for funeral directors to embalm. The bodies came too fast. Within five days, Sherman’s staff began placing them wherever they could, including in the hallways.
Casket selections also became depleted. Zambito told me that Sherman’s usually gets caskets from one company, but high demand now requires them to source them from wherever they can. “We’re getting caskets that were discontinued — close-out caskets,” she said.
There’s been a shortage of hearses, too, so the livery companies are sending limousines or SUVs. Drivers find they may have to wait hours once they reach the cemetery, the line of vehicles ahead of them snaking through the cemetery’s drives.
Cunningham has been trying to convince families, particularly those without the extra funds for an expected funeral right now, to think of Hart Island as a spiritual place. “We can sanctify the grounds and make it okay to be there,” she told Marsh. “I can only anticipate that it will be made beautiful and visitable, historic.”
When I ask Zambito if she’s afraid of getting sick, she says no, but it’s clear she’s trying not to think about the possibility. When I ask again, “Are you willing to do this job regardless?” she answers, “Absolutely, yeah, yeah.” As with many hospital and nursing home workers, those in the funeral industry see the pandemic as a time to pitch in, not duck out.
“So far, no one’s sick,” Cunningham said of her colleagues, “and I’m amazed that they want to work. ... Some of these guys are at such risk, but they’re totally committed to being a part of this effort.” As the number of deaths climbed, New York’s governor called in funeral directors and ambulances from out of state. In came 150 refrigerated trucks and out went bodies to mass graves on Hart Island.
Despite casket shortages, the long hours, and the grim retrievals, the funeral industry carries on
The industry has not been without its scandals. “We had bodies coming out of our ears,” Andrew T. Cleckley, owner of the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, told the New York Times after police found at least 50 corpses in the back of two trucks outside the funeral home the last week of April. Neighbors had reported a pervasive smell and fluids running out of the trucks. Cleckley’s funeral director license was valid, but the space, which had been the address for five coordinating funeral homes for two years, was registered for “automobile retail,” and “the manufacture of machinery.”
Industry associations were aghast. The New York Funeral Directors Association said Cleckley was not a member. According to Time magazine, city health officials immediately issued guidance to all funeral homes. The Cleckley example highlights the challenges the pandemic has presented as well as the inadequacies of government responses to systemic shortfalls caused by Covid-19. Like recommending that all nurses wear face masks but not providing them, government officials are not doing enough to help overwhelmed social services, like funeral homes and the families who rely on them.
Still, despite the casket shortages, the long hours of waiting, and the grim retrieval, the funeral industry carries on, shuffling bodies and delivering them to their final disposition. For now, the number of deaths is declining. Future outbreaks, the full depletion of personal protective equipment reserves, and the long grieving process the city faces loom ahead. Everyone is tired.
“It’s hard because you end up working with each individual case and it’s so labor-intensive,” Cunningham told me.
If you drive north of the city, west of the Hudson, and cross the Wallkill River, you’ll find a sleepy little cemetery called Rosendale Plains, which has been around since the late 1800s. The proprietor’s name is Floyd Craig; his son Brandon makes pine caskets. This is where Cunningham has been taking bodies. Because of the shortage of hearses, she loads the casket into the back of her Honda Pilot, where she’s got 78 inches behind the front seat. She slides in the casket on top of an Oriental rug and plays music — classical, or a playlist provided by families — appropriate to the task of hauling someone’s remains to their final resting place. “I make it a funeral,” she told me.
It’s a reverential task, one that Cunningham, and every funeral director I’ve spoken to, takes seriously even as the customary rituals are upended for time and space. One of the benefits of Rosendale Plains is the uncommonly low price: A plot there costs $800, and the opening fee, the rate to dig a grave and close it, is only $800. (For comparison, a single plot in Green-Wood Cemetery can cost $12,000.)
The high national rate of unemployment weighs on her. When the body is laid to rest, Cunningham puts one of Brandon Craig’s empty pine caskets in the back of the Pilot and heads home. It will be an inexpensive alternative to a standard casket for one of her families. “That’s what I’ve decided will be my contribution,” Cunningham told me, referring to the solemn burials in Rosendale Plains, “one body at a time.”
Ann Neumann is author of The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America and a contributing nonfiction editor at Guernica magazine.
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is an independent documentary photographer based in New York City. She is the co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.


vox--2020-05-06--The economy is in free fall. So why isn’t the stock market?

The stock market is doing fine , even though everything else is definitely not .
At the onset of the coronavirus crisis , Wall Street had a meltdown .
Stocks plunged amid fears of the disease ’ s spread and its potential impact on the global economy , sometimes to the point that trading was halted altogether to rein in the chaos .
But in recent weeks , the market has been pretty okay .
It ’ s not at the record highs it was in mid-February , but it ’ s not bad — the S & P 500 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall .
And given the state of the world — a deadly global pandemic with no end in sight , 30 million Americans recently out of jobs , an economy that ’ s fallen off of a cliff — a relatively rosy stock market is particularly perplexing .
Sure , the stock market isn ’ t the economy , but right now , it seems particularly divorced from what ’ s happening on the ground .
“ The gap between markets and economic data has never been larger , ” wrote Matt King @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Citigroup , in a recent note .
It ’ s impossible to pinpoint what exactly is driving the market ’ s moves at any given moment — investors , after all , aren ’ t a monolith .
But there are a handful of explanations that get at what ’ s happening now .
For one thing , the Federal Reserve and , to a lesser but still significant extent , Congress have taken extraordinary measures to pump money into the economy and prop up markets .
The amount of spending they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one-third of GDP in a very short period of time , and that ’ s calming investors ’ nerves .
“ The fundamentals don ’ t matter quite as much with that kind of liquidity deluge , ” said Isaac Boltansky , director of policy research at Compass Point Research & Trading .
Moreover , investors don ’ t really have a lot of places to go with their money — government bonds are offering super-low returns , if much at all .
Among some on Wall Street , there ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appears retail investors have been playing the markets while in quarantine .
Overall , it just seems the market may be feeling a bit more optimistic about the future than the science around coronavirus would suggest .
To be sure , there ’ s no guarantee this market rally will last , nor that investors have it right .
And many traders , analysts , and experts admit everyone is operating in a black box .
One West Coast-based equities trader told me it makes “ zero sense.
” A Goldman Sachs associate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but then offered a caveat , “ If I ’ m being dead-ass honest , though , nobody knows what ’ s really going on.
” Many people on Wall Street point to actions from the Fed as a main driver of the market ’ s rebound in recent weeks .
Since late March , the central bank has announced a series of sweeping measures designed to help stabilize the economy , including plans to buy both investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds .
That basically translates to the Fed saying it will buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk for default , and debt that is not .
The Fed ’ s maneuvers have injected an enormous amount of liquidity in the market and restored faith of both private corporate bond buyers and equity investors that the central bank is there to back them up .
The Fed still hasn ’ t spent money on its corporate bonds program , but the promise that it could has been enough .
“ This rally in equities is clearly not driven by fundamentals — it ’ s driven by the liquidity support from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities , told the Financial Times .
“ Companies are getting cash to keep the lights on through the significant support to credit markets.
” In the modern bailout era , between the Fed and the federal government , there ’ s reason for equity investors to feel generally okay This isn ’ t an entirely new phenomenon , explained Kristina Hooper , chief global market strategist at Invesco .
We saw something similar happen during the last crisis .
“ I think of it as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not surprised that we ’ re seeing it , because this is very similar to what we saw during the global financial crisis , and it has to do , primarily , with monetary policy , ” she told me .
“ What we saw during the global financial crisis is a Fed that provided extraordinary policy tools that it had never used before … and that was what decoupled the stock market ’ s fortunes from that of the economy .
And so it came as no surprise that we saw the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can all feel a little wonky , but it basically boils down to : In the modern bailout era , between the Fed and the federal government , there ’ s reason for equity investors to feel generally okay .
A concrete example of the impact of the Fed ’ s maneuvers is Boeing .
Last week , the aerospace company said it had raised $ 25 billion in a bond offering , and it didn ’ t need federal aid to do it because private investors had taken up the offer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ including Nike , Procter & Gamble , and Visa .
“ If there ’ s that much appetite in the bond markets to invest in debt , as an equity investor , that ’ s a reason to feel okay about things in relative terms , ” the Goldman associate , who asked to remain anonymous , told me .
Political will to do more on the stimulus end of things may be waning in the White House and among some Republicans , at least in the near term , but the Fed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At a press conference last week , Fed chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is committed to using its “ full range of tools ” to support the economy as long as needed .
“ We have a number of dimensions on which we can still provide support to the economy , ” he said .
“ As you know , our credit policies are not subject to a specific dollar limit.
” Gillian Tett , editorial board chair at the Financial Times , recently argued that what ’ s happening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you think this is a liquidity crisis or a solvency crisis — basically , whether you think corporate America ’ s woes are a short-term question or a long-term one .
The Fed ’ s actions solve the immediate liquidity problem — they keep companies afloat right now — but they don ’ t solve whether a business is going to be viable and therefore able to pay back their debts in the long run .
To go back to Boeing : That $ 25 billion bond raise is helpful right now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on someone buying its planes .
“ Many zombie companies will fail , no matter how much is sprayed around by the Fed , ” Tett wrote .
The music ’ s still playing , so Wall Street ’ s still dancing Ahead of the global financial crisis in 2007 , then-Citigroup chief executive Chuck Prince made an observation : “ When the music stops , in terms of liquidity , things will be complicated .
But as long as the music is playing , you ’ ve got to get up and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” While the context of his remarks was different — he was talking about private equity deals — in the current moment , the spirit of them still holds .
The music ’ s still playing , and Wall Street ’ s still dancing .
Part of the issue is likely there isn ’ t really a lucrative alternative to investing in stocks right now .
As Paul Krugman at the New York Times recently noted , bonds offer super-low returns : The West Coast trader joked , “ It ’ s tough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on stocks right now that isn ’ t , ‘ Welp , everyone else is buying and bonds are trash.
’ ” Which gets at another facet of this : fear of missing out .
The market , broadly , is going up , everyone else still seems to be playing , and so people are staying in .
And it ’ s not just big institutional investors , it ’ s individual retail investors , too .
Bloomberg reports that E*Trade , Ameritrade , and Charles Schwab all saw record sign-ups in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a lot of it amid coronavirus-induced volatility .
One analyst speculated to Bloomberg that with casinos and sports betting closed down , some people were playing the markets instead .
Many companies are doing well , particularly in tech : Microsoft , Apple , Amazon , Google-owner Alphabet , and Facebook reported strong earnings last week and make up about one-fifth of the S & P 500 ’ s market value .
And the stock market doesn ’ t reflect the economy in total ; small businesses and companies that aren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right now , and that doesn ’ t show up in stocks .
“ The market is probably priced somewhere between the most likely case and the best case , certainly on the most optimistic side of the most likely case ” The stock market is sometimes considered to be a leading indicator of what ’ s going to happen in the economy .
And at the onset of the pandemic , it sounded the alarm before the economic data did , giving up 30 percent of its value in the course of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a leading indicator now , that means investors think things will be better in three to six months from now .
Investors are pegging some of their hopes to a treatment for the coronavirus , and they ’ re excited about states reopening .
Jack Ablin , chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors , told me in a best-case , likeliest-case , and worst-case scenario frame , the market is certainly looking at the sunnier side of the possibilities .
“ I will say the market is probably priced somewhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best case , certainly on the most optimistic side of the most likely case.
” Is the optimism warranted ?
Well , that ’ s the issue of the entire coronavirus crisis : No one has any idea what ’ s to come .
“ The coronavirus outbreak has rendered forecasting impossible , ” wrote Ian Shepherdson , chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics , in a recent note .
“ As a policy analyst , the motivation in the market right now is driven by the policy intervention and not the economic fundamentals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on contouring the policy intervention , it ’ s possible that they miss some of the broader fundamental trends , or at least neglect them , ” Boltansky said .
Even if the stock market recovery holds , that might not translate to a comparable recovery for the economy .
Hooper , from Invesco , pointed out that Main Street America had a “ very anemic recovery for years ” coming out of the global financial crisis compared to Wall Street .
If we don ’ t see enough fiscal stimulus , namely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now .
One theme of the coronavirus crisis is that anyone who tells you they know what ’ s about to happen next is lying , and that holds when it comes to the stock market .
It moves on day-to-day news and headlines , which are constantly changing , and has been pretty volatile in recent months .
There are plenty of voices out there warning that just because the market is up now doesn ’ t mean it will stay that way .
The Wall Street Journal over the weekend delved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blind , ” where no one is exactly sure what ’ s going to happen with corporate earnings or the economy .
Bob Michele , chief investment officer at JPMorgan , told Bloomberg in a recent radio interview that the market ’ s current optimism reminds him of the early days of the financial crisis .
“ There ’ s a lot of hardship ahead , ” he said .
“ This feels to me like the second quarter of 2008 , where the first quarter was horrible , there were policy responses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the horror of what actually happened starts to hit into the data.
” In the current moment , we ’ re starting to get data about how bad the economic crisis is .
The economy shrunk by 4.8 percent in the first quarter , and 30 million people have filed jobless claims .
We ’ ll get a look at April unemployment numbers on Friday , and other data is still trickling in .
“ Beware of the oddity in this bear rally , ” Andrew Lapthorne , global head of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a recent note .
“ Given the overall negative undertone from the economic challenges ahead , the dramatic reversal of global markets after the pandemic lows is more puzzling.
” High-profile investor Jeffrey Gundlach recently said he is shorting the market , meaning he ’ s betting it will go back down .
Former Goldman analyst Will Meade predicted this year is poised to look “ exactly like ” the dot-com bubble .
Billionaire Warren Buffett , who in 2008 encouraged investors to “ buy American , ” at Berkshire Hathaway ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a more somber tone .
“ You can bet on America , but you kind of have to be careful about how you bet , ” he said .
“ If we haven ’ t hit the bottom yet , things will get very , very bad , because then you ’ ll see a lot of cascading effects where a hedge fund will blow up , which means the pension fund that is invested in the hedge fund now has to take that loss , which means they have to de-risk , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ equities , ” the Goldman associate said .
“ There ’ s a very real possibility that people could get washed out , not just retail investors , but everybody.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

The stock market is doing fine, even though everything else is definitely not.
Earlier in the coronavirus crisis, Wall Street had a meltdown. Stocks plunged amid fears of the disease’s spread and its potential impact on the global economy, sometimes to the point that trading was halted altogether to rein in the chaos. But in recent weeks, the market has been doing okay. It’s not at the record highs it was in mid-February, but it’s not bad — the S&P 500 is hovering around where it was last fall. And given the state of the world — a deadly global pandemic with no end in sight, 30 million Americans recently out of jobs, an economy that’s fallen off of a cliff — a relatively rosy stock market is particularly perplexing.
Sure, the stock market isn’t the economy, but right now, it seems particularly divorced from what’s happening on the ground. “The gap between markets and economic data has never been larger,” wrote Matt King, global head of credit strategy at Citigroup, in a recent note.
It’s impossible to pinpoint what exactly is driving the market’s moves at any given moment — investors, after all, aren’t a monolith. But there are a handful of explanations that get at what’s happening now.
For one thing, the Federal Reserve and, to a perhaps lesser but still significant extent, Congress have taken extraordinary measures to pump money into the economy and prop up markets. The amount of spending they’ve done so far amounts to about one-third of GDP in a very short period of time, and that’s calming investors’ nerves. “The fundamentals don’t matter quite as much with that kind of liquidity deluge,” said Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at Compass Point Research & Trading.
Moreover, investors don’t really have a lot of places to go with their money — government bonds are offering super-low returns, if much at all. Among some on Wall Street, there’s a fear of missing out, and it appears retail investors have been playing the markets while in quarantine. Overall, it just seems the market may be feeling a bit more optimistic about the future than the science around coronavirus would suggest.
To be sure, there’s no guarantee this market rally will last, nor that investors have it right. And many traders, analysts, and experts admit everyone is operating in a black box. One West Coast-based equities trader told me it makes “zero sense.” A Goldman Sachs associate provided a variety of detailed explanations, but then offered a caveat, “If I’m being dead-ass honest, though, nobody knows what’s really going on.”
You can’t fight the Fed
Many people on Wall Street point to actions from the Fed as a main driver of the market’s rebound in recent weeks. Since late March, the central bank has announced a series of sweeping measures designed to help stabilize the economy, including plans to buy both investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds. That translates to the Fed saying it will buy corporate debt that’s at low risk for default, and debt that is not.
The Fed’s maneuvers have injected an enormous amount of liquidity in the market and restored faith of both private corporate bond buyers and equity investors that the central bank is there to back them up. The Fed still hasn’t spent money on its corporate bonds program, but the promise that it could has been enough.
“This rally in equities is clearly not driven by fundamentals — it’s driven by the liquidity support from the Federal Reserve,” Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, told the Financial Times. “Companies are getting cash to keep the lights on through the significant support to credit markets.”
In the modern bailout era, between the Fed and the federal government, there’s reason for equity investors to feel okay
This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, explained Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. Something similar happened during the last crisis.
“I think of it as a great decoupling, and I’m not surprised that we’re seeing it, because this is very similar to what we saw during the global financial crisis, and it has to do, primarily, with monetary policy,” she told me. “What we saw during the global financial crisis is a Fed that provided extraordinary policy tools that it had never used before … and that was what decoupled the stock market’s fortunes from that of the economy. And so it came as no surprise that we saw the same thing happening this time.”
This can all feel a little wonky, but it boils down to: In the modern bailout era, between the Fed and the federal government, there’s reason for equity investors to feel okay.
The best multiple a printer can buy pic.twitter.com/sOcG0hvCzs — Not Jim Cramer (@Not_Jim_Cramer) April 30, 2020
A concrete example of the impact of the Fed’s maneuvers is Boeing. Last week, the aerospace company said it had raised $25 billion in a bond offering, and it didn’t need federal aid to do it because private investors had taken up the offer. Other companies have done the same, including Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Visa.
“If there’s that much appetite in the bond markets to invest in debt, as an equity investor, that’s a reason to feel okay about things in relative terms,” the Goldman associate, who asked to remain anonymous, told me.
Political will to do more on the stimulus end of things may be waning in the White House and among some Republicans, at least in the near term, but the Fed has indicated it plans to forge ahead. At a press conference last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is committed to using its “full range of tools” to support the economy as long as needed. “We have a number of dimensions on which we can still provide support to the economy,” he said. “As you know, our credit policies are not subject to a specific dollar limit.”
Gillian Tett, editorial board chair at the Financial Times, recently argued that what’s happening now with stocks is a test of whether you think this is a liquidity crisis or a solvency crisis — basically, whether you think corporate America’s woes are a short-term question or a long-term one. The Fed’s actions solve the immediate liquidity problem — they keep companies afloat right now — but they don’t solve whether a business is going to be viable and therefore able to pay back their debts in the long run. To go back to Boeing: That $25 billion bond raise is helpful right now, but the future of the company hinges on someone buying its planes.
“Many zombie companies will fail, no matter how much is sprayed around by the Fed,” Tett wrote.
The music’s still playing, so Wall Street’s still dancing
Ahead of the global financial crisis in 2007, then-Citigroup chief executive Chuck Prince made an observation: “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”
While the context of his remarks was different — he was talking about private equity deals — in the current moment, the spirit of them still holds. The music’s still playing, and Wall Street’s still dancing.
Part of the issue is likely that there isn’t really a lucrative alternative to investing in stocks right now. As Paul Krugman at the New York Times recently noted, bonds offer super-low returns:
The interest rate on 10-year U.S. government bonds is only 0.6 percent, down from more than 3 percent in late 2018. If you want bonds that are protected against future inflation, their yield is minus half a percent. So buying stock in companies that are still profitable despite the Covid-19 recession looks pretty attractive.
The West Coast trader joked, “It’s tough for me to make a bull case on stocks right now that isn’t, ‘Welp, everyone else is buying and bonds are trash.’”
Which gets at another facet of this: fear of missing out. The market, broadly, is going up, everyone else still seems to be playing, and so people are staying in. And it’s not just big institutional investors, it’s individual retail investors, too. Bloomberg reports that E*Trade, Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab all saw record sign-ups in the first three months of the year, a lot of it amid coronavirus-induced volatility. One analyst speculated to Bloomberg that with casinos and sports betting closed down, some people were playing the markets instead.
Many companies are doing well, particularly in tech: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google-owner Alphabet, and Facebook reported strong earnings last week and make up about one-fifth of the S&P 500’s market value. And the stock market doesn’t reflect the economy in total; small businesses and companies that aren’t publicly traded are being hit hard right now, and that doesn’t show up in stocks.
“The market is probably priced somewhere between the most likely case and the best case, certainly on the most optimistic side of the most likely case”
The stock market is sometimes considered to be a leading indicator of what’s going to happen in the economy. And at the onset of the pandemic, it sounded the alarm before the economic data did, giving up 30 percent of its value in the course of a month. If you think it’s a leading indicator now, that means investors think things will be better in three to six months from now. Investors are pegging some of their hopes to a treatment for the coronavirus, and they’re excited about states reopening.
Jack Ablin, the chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors, told me the market is certainly looking at the sunnier side of the possibilities. “I will say the market is probably priced somewhere between the most likely case and the best case, certainly on the most optimistic side of the most likely case.”
Is the optimism warranted? Well, that’s the issue of the entire coronavirus crisis: No one has any idea what’s to come. “The coronavirus outbreak has rendered forecasting impossible,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a recent note.
“As a policy analyst, the motivation in the market right now is driven by the policy intervention and not the economic fundamentals, and so when investors are focused on contouring the policy intervention, it’s possible that they miss some of the broader fundamental trends, or at least neglect them,” Boltansky said.
Even if the stock market recovery holds, that might not translate to a comparable recovery for the economy. Hooper, from Invesco, pointed out that Main Street America had a “very anemic recovery for years” coming out of the global financial crisis compared to Wall Street. If there isn’t enough fiscal stimulus, namely from Congress, that could replay now.
Investors could be completely wrong
One theme of the coronavirus crisis is that anyone who tells you they know what’s about to happen next is lying, and that holds when it comes to the stock market. It moves on day-to-day news and headlines, which are constantly changing, and has been pretty volatile in recent months. There are plenty of voices out there warning that just because the market is up now doesn’t mean it will stay that way. The Wall Street Journal over the weekend delved into the ways investors are “flying blind,” where no one is exactly sure what’s going to happen with corporate earnings or the economy.
Bob Michele, chief investment officer at JPMorgan, told Bloomberg in a recent radio interview that the market’s current optimism reminds him of the early days of the financial crisis. “There’s a lot of hardship ahead,” he said. “This feels to me like the second quarter of 2008, where the first quarter was horrible, there were policy responses, and the market immediately became optimistic, and the horror of what actually happened starts to hit into the data.”
In the current moment, we have some data about how bad the economic crisis is. The economy shrank by 4.8 percent in the first quarter, and 30 million people have filed jobless claims. We’ll get a look at April unemployment numbers on Friday, and other data is still trickling in.
“Beware of the oddity in this bear rally,” Solomon Tadesse, head of North American quant equity research at Societe Generale, wrote in a recent note. “Given the overall negative undertone from the economic challenges ahead, the dramatic reversal of global markets after the pandemic lows is more puzzling.”
High-profile investor Jeffrey Gundlach recently said he is shorting the market, meaning he’s betting it will go back down. Former Goldman analyst Will Meade predicted this year is poised to look “exactly like” the dot-com bubble. Billionaire Warren Buffett, who in 2008 encouraged investors to “buy American,” at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting over the weekend, struck a more somber tone. “You can bet on America, but you kind of have to be careful about how you bet,” he said.
“If we haven’t hit the bottom yet, things will get very, very bad, because then you’ll see a lot of cascading effects where a hedge fund will blow up, which means the pension fund that is invested in the hedge fund now has to take that loss, which means they have to de-risk, so they have to move out of equities,” the Goldman associate said. “There’s a very real possibility that people could get washed out, not just retail investors, but everybody.”
Correction, May 13: A previous version of this article misidentified the author of the Societe Generale note.


vox--2020-05-06--The debate over what “believe women” means, explained

What does it mean to believe women ?
It ’ s a question Joe Biden had to consider last week when he went on national television to address Tara Reade ’ s accusation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993 .
Biden denied the allegation forcefully : “ It never , never happened , ” he said .
But Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski pressed him to square that denial with previous comments he ’ d made about sexual assault .
In 2018 , when Christine Blasey Ford accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault , Brzezinski reminded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be believed.
” Brzezinski wanted to know : When it comes to Reade , do different rules apply ?
“ From the very beginning , I ’ ve said believing women means taking the woman ’ s claim seriously when she steps forward , and then vet it , ” Biden responded , adding , “ In this case , the truth is the claims are false.
” His answer was a reminder of something crucial about the phrase “ believe women ” : It ’ s easy to say , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The term , along with the broader “ believe survivors , ” rose to prominence as the Me Too movement gained national attention in late 2017 and became even more common as a response to the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 .
In September of that year , Me Too campaign founder Tarana Burke and other activists led a walkout in support of Ford , encouraging supporters to tweet with the hashtag # BelieveSurvivors .
Over time , the phrases “ believe women ” and “ believe survivors ” became broadly used , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and members of the public .
Biden , for example , said in a 2018 PBS interview that “ women should be believed.
” But the concept has been controversial almost from the beginning .
Critics have charged that the phrase “ believe women ” is simplistic and implies that women are somehow biologically incapable of lying .
But many advocates say that the call to believe women doesn ’ t mean we shouldn ’ t investigate allegations .
Instead , they say , it ’ s simply an appeal for people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society historically has not done .
The message of “ believe survivors ” is that when people come forward to report sexual assault and seek support , “ Their stories are listened to and are taken into account and are not immediately discredited , ” Sage Carson , manager of Know Your IX , a project combating sexual violence at schools and on college campuses , told Vox .
But it ’ s not always clear what it means to take allegations seriously , especially when they ’ re made against the presumptive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called on the National Archives to “ identify any record of the complaint [ Reade ] alleges she filed , ” but Reade has asked for a fuller investigation .
Meanwhile , the public is weighing the allegation : 26 percent of Democrats now want a different nominee , according to a Morning Consult poll conducted after the Morning Joe interview ( though some respondents may have preferred a different candidate to begin with ) .
And others , including prominent Democrats like Sens .
Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand , are lining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying they still support him despite the allegation .
Whatever happens with Reade ’ s allegation , it ’ s clear that Democrats are in the midst of a reckoning around what it really means to believe women .
“ What we ’ re seeing now with Tara Reade ’ s story is that there were too many people who jumped on that catchphrase for political purposes , ” Lucy Flores , a social justice advocate who wrote at the Cut last year about experiencing an unwanted kiss from Biden , told Vox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jump on this because it was politically convenient.
” Now , it ’ s politically inconvenient for Democrats to believe an allegation against their party ’ s presumptive nominee for president — especially since he ’ ll face President Trump , who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women .
And this particular moment in history has focused new attention on what it really means to believe women and what it means to give their stories a fair hearing , even when it ’ s not easy to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prominence with the Me Too movement The phrase “ believe women ” has been around since before the Me Too movement entered its most public phase in October 2017 .
But “ believe women ” became more common as Me Too gained attention .
“ As America ’ s very public reckoning with sexual harassment and assault continues , the conversation around ‘ believe women ’ and # MeToo , inevitably , also becomes more complicated and fractured , ” Gillian B .
White wrote for the Atlantic in November 2017 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” many activists used the term “ believe survivors ” in recognition of the fact that people of all genders can experience sexual harassment and assault .
And both terms became even more visible during the confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh , who was accused of sexual misconduct by Ford and other women .
In September 2018 , Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse called the Kavanaugh confirmation process “ a test of what it looks like to believe women.
” Hesse argued that a vote on Kavanaugh ’ s nomination should be postponed until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ That ’ s how the Senate can show it believes women , ” she wrote .
“ By saying , We believe women ’ s stories should be heard .
We believe this is a serious enough topic to deserve our attention.
” A few days later , Me Too founder Tarana Burke , along with Planned Parenthood , the National Center for Transgender Equality , and other progressive groups , participated in a nationwide protest called the # BelieveSurvivors walkout .
Participants were encouraged to post photos or videos of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was confirmed despite Ford ’ s testimony , Burke and other advocates wrote a public letter to her .
“ This letter is our love offering to her so that she has a constant reminder that there is enormous support for her and other survivors like her , ” they wrote .
“ We heard her .
We saw her .
And we believed her.
” For many , calling for Americans to “ believe women ” and “ believe survivors ” is a way to push back against a culture in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they are women — have often been automatically disbelieved .
That knee-jerk disbelief is still a problem , many say .
When someone comes forward to report sexual misconduct , “ we do still very much default to immediately questioning the person telling the story , ” Flores said .
“ We immediately ask , what ’ s their motive , what is their character like , why are they saying this now ?
It ’ s literally a litany of questions that people jump to first and foremost before even processing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assault are also often blamed , shamed for their clothing or sexual behavior , or subjected to public scrutiny .
These are some of the reasons why less than a quarter of assaults are reported to police , according to Rainn.org .
And only a tiny fraction of assaults that are reported ever lead to a conviction .
Ultimately , in many allegations of sexual assault , only the person reporting the assault and the person accused know firsthand exactly what happened .
And for years , American society ’ s response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person reporting — especially if the person accused is a powerful man .
“ Believe women ” and “ believe survivors ” are meant as antidotes to that tradition , as calls to question the status quo .
“ I understand these phrases sort of as correctives , ” said Moira Donegan , a columnist for the Guardian US and the creator of the Shitty Media Men list , a crowdsourced list of men accused of sexual misconduct that roiled the worlds of literature and journalism as Me Too rose to prominence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is historically presumed that women are both less competent and less honest than men are , ” she explained .
The call to “ believe women , ” she said , “ asserts women ’ s capacities as knowers and as credible interpreters of their own experience.
” The concept has often been misinterpreted But as with many other aspects of the Me Too movement , “ believe women ” soon inspired backlash .
“ The huntresses ’ war cry — ‘ believe all women ’ — has felt like a bracing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss wrote in November 2017 .
“ But I also can ’ t shake the feeling that this mantra creates terrible new problems in addition to solving old ones.
” Weiss was concerned that the call to believe women would leave men with little recourse if they were falsely accused .
“ In a climate in which sexual mores are transforming so rapidly , ” she wrote , “ many men are asking : If I were wrongly accused , who would believe me ?
” However @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ believe women ” doesn ’ t mean that women are incapable of lying or that allegations should be accepted without investigation .
“ I think that folks have really twisted the idea of what ‘ believe survivors ’ means , into this idea that you never provide a fair process for folks to go through , you never require there to be reporting mechanisms , you never have formal processes available , ” Carson , the Know Your IX manager , told Vox .
“ That ’ s simply not true.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means that when someone does report , that person is heard rather than brushed off .
“ When I worked as an advocate directly with survivors , there were so many times that when someone went to report , they were immediately questioned , ” she said .
“ Believe survivors ” is a call for something different , a caution that the first response to a story of assault should not be “ trying to discredit that story , ” Carson said .
The Biden allegation shows how the catchphrase has become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , many Democrats have expressed support for this message .
Even accused men have at least paid lip service to the idea of listening to women .
In a 2017 speech announcing his resignation after allegations of sexual misconduct , Sen. Al Franken said , “ all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously.
” And during his Morning Joe interview on Friday , Biden also talked about the importance of hearing women ’ s claims .
“ Women are to be believed , given the benefit of the doubt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If they come forward and say something that is , that they said happened to them , they should start off with the presumption they ’ re telling the truth .
Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts.
” What ’ s less clear , especially in the statements of accused men , is what hearing women really means .
Biden ’ s position on Reade ’ s allegation is that the “ circumstances and facts ” in the case have already been examined and found wanting .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this case do not exist.
” However , several people have come forward to corroborate that Reade told them about the alleged assault in the 1990s .
Others , including Reade , are now pressing Biden to allow an investigation of his papers held at the University of Delaware to see if a complaint filed by Reade is held there .
Biden has resisted this , though he has called on the National Archives to release any record of a complaint by Reade from his time in the Senate .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the record will be there , ” he said in a statement ahead of the Morning Joe interview .
Absent further evidence , that leaves the decision of how to think about Reade ’ s allegation up to voters .
Despite the work of the Me Too movement , we haven ’ t yet truly developed the tools to do that .
For Flores , the concept of believing women “ never got its due conversation ” because it too quickly became a way for people to oppose political opponents , like Kavanaugh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get to the foundation of this problem if we ’ re constantly talking about it in a political context , ” Flores said .
The case of Kavanaugh was an easier one for Democrats for a number of reasons .
Kavanaugh was a Trump appointee who was seen as hostile to many Democratic priorities ; it was in Democrats ’ political interests not to have him on the Supreme Court .
Moreover , Ford lived up to many of society ’ s expectations — however unfair — about how survivors of sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of media often expect survivors to remember their assaults perfectly , to be scrupulously clear when describing highly traumatic events , and to be emotional but not too emotional in recounting their pain .
Americans ’ “ ideas of perfect victimhood are so pervasive that I know survivors , including myself , often try to shift ourselves to fit into these perfect molds , so we are less likely to be picked apart , ” Carson said .
Ford happened to fit into the mold relatively well : She did not remember every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but she was consistent and clear , emotional yet contained , and a powerful speaker when she testified before the Senate .
Reade , meanwhile , has offered different versions of her account .
Last year , she said that Biden had touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable — an allegation similar to those made by Flores and others .
But this year , she said he also assaulted her .
While many Democratic voters may have been willing to forgive the allegations from several women of inappropriate touching — Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an affectionate person but would be more mindful of boundaries — assault is more concerning .
At the same time , Reade has come in for criticism due to her support of Sen. Bernie Sanders and her writings in praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin .
Some have suggested she may be a Russian plant .
Overall , while Ford came close to society ’ s ideal of a “ perfect ” survivor , Reade does not .
Moreover , it ’ s not clear what it would mean to take Reade ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to see a new nominee , others — including Me Too advocate Alyssa Milano — seem to be arguing for the possibility of believing Reade , or at least giving her a hearing , and nominating Biden anyway .
“ It falls upon women to navigate within the system of men ’ s design to make pragmatic choices that we hope will lead us to a more equal future , ” Milano wrote in an April op-ed .
“ I still support Joe Biden because I believe that ’ s the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the allegation against Biden puts voters “ in a really unfair position , ” Donegan said .
On the one hand , they ’ re faced with supporters of Biden “ perpetuating some myths about women as either incompetent or insincere with the supposed aim of reducing harm by fighting to deny Donald Trump a second term.
” On the other , they see opponents of Biden , including supporters of Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders , “ who are sort of looking to use Tara Reade and by extension the pain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which to further their own interests.
” “ You see women ’ s pain being used as a tool for the agendas of men , ” Donegan said .
The way to move forward and examine what it means to believe women A real conversation about believing survivors has to address not just the public reaction to allegations of sexual misconduct , but the options people have when they experience such misconduct in the first place , some advocates say .
“ The hope , at least for me , around ‘ believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ building better paths forward , ” Carson said , “ that don ’ t force survivors to have to out themselves in the media and bring attention they may not want to themselves.
” Reade ’ s allegation is an opportunity for reform , both in Congress and elsewhere , so that “ we can have fair and unbiased processes that survivors can come forward and report violence they experience , and that they can get a process that is unbiased , that is fair and that is respectful of them , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Carson said .
And for Donegan , it ’ s an opportunity for a wider inquiry into the bargains that female voters are asked to accept .
“ We need to be thinking more critically about what women ’ s citizenship and political responsibilities as voters really mean when we are being asked to reduce harm for the many at the expense of our own dignity , ” she said .
With Reade ’ s claim still being litigated on social media and TV news — and Trump accused of sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of whom he has publicly shamed — it ’ s hard to imagine a world where such processes are the norm .
But change has to start somewhere .
For Flores , it ’ s a slow process of cultural shift , driven by “ these conversations that we ’ re having now again , journalists that are covering these topics , thought leaders that then go on to publish conversations about this.
” That process might be slow , but it ’ s how we move forward as a society , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she thinks about the fact that , just a few decades ago , women weren ’ t allowed to wear pants on the state legislative floor .
“ No one can fathom this concept now of a woman not being able to wear pants to work , ” she said , but it took a steady process of changing attitudes to get us to this point .
“ That ’ s the way that I think about progress in general , ” she said .
“ It ’ s so many little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happen at the same time.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

What does it mean to believe women?
It’s a question Joe Biden had to consider last week when he went on national television to address Tara Reade’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993.
Biden denied the allegation forcefully: “It never, never happened,” he said.
But Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski pressed him to square that denial with previous comments he’d made about sexual assault. In 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Brzezinski reminded Biden, “You said that women should be believed.”
Brzezinski wanted to know: When it comes to Reade, do different rules apply?
“From the very beginning, I’ve said believing women means taking the woman’s claim seriously when she steps forward, and then vet it,” Biden responded, adding, “In this case, the truth is the claims are false.”
His answer was a reminder of something crucial about the phrase “believe women”: It’s easy to say, and perhaps significantly harder to act on.
The term, along with the broader “believe survivors,” rose to prominence as the Me Too movement gained national attention in late 2017 and became even more common as a response to the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018. In September of that year, Me Too campaign founder Tarana Burke and other activists led a walkout in support of Ford, encouraging supporters to tweet with the hashtag #BelieveSurvivors.
We believe Dr. Blasey Ford. We believe survivors. Join us for a national walkout in solidarity w/ survivors of sexual violence on Mon., Sept. 24 @ 1PM EST by wearing black and posting a message to say #BelieveSurvivors #MeToomvmt https://t.co/txx6X9KcxQ — Tarana (@TaranaBurke) September 22, 2018
Over time, the phrases “believe women” and “believe survivors” became broadly used, not only by activists but also by politicians and members of the public. Biden, for example, said in a 2018 PBS interview that “women should be believed.”
But the concept has been controversial almost from the beginning. Critics have charged that the phrase “believe women” is simplistic and implies that women are somehow biologically incapable of lying. But many advocates say that the call to believe women doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate allegations. Instead, they say, it’s simply an appeal for people to take such allegations seriously — something American society historically has not done.
The message of “believe survivors” is that when people come forward to report sexual assault and seek support, “Their stories are listened to and are taken into account and are not immediately discredited,” Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, a project combating sexual violence at schools and on college campuses, told Vox.
But it’s not always clear what it means to take allegations seriously, especially when they’re made against the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Biden has called on the National Archives to “identify any record of the complaint [Reade] alleges she filed,” but Reade has asked for a fuller investigation.
Meanwhile, the public is weighing the allegation: 26 percent of Democrats now want a different nominee, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted after the Morning Joe interview (though some respondents may have preferred a different candidate to begin with). And others, including prominent Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, are lining up behind the former vice president, saying they still support him despite the allegation.
Whatever happens with Reade’s allegation, it’s clear that Democrats are in the midst of a reckoning around what it really means to believe women. “What we’re seeing now with Tara Reade’s story is that there were too many people who jumped on that catchphrase for political purposes,” Lucy Flores, a social justice advocate who wrote at The Cut last year about experiencing an unwanted kiss from Biden, told Vox. “It was very easy to jump on this because it was politically convenient.”
Now it’s politically inconvenient for Democrats to believe an allegation against their party’s presumptive nominee for president — especially since he’ll face President Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women. And this particular moment in history has focused new attention on what it really means to believe women and what it means to give their stories a fair hearing, even when it’s not easy to do so.
“Believe women” rose to prominence with the Me Too movement
The phrase “believe women” has been around since before the Me Too movement entered its most public phase in October 2017.
But “believe women” became more common as Me Too gained attention. “As America’s very public reckoning with sexual harassment and assault continues, the conversation around ‘believe women’ and #MeToo, inevitably, also becomes more complicated and fractured,” Gillian B. White wrote for the Atlantic in November 2017.
In addition to “believe women,” many activists used the term “believe survivors” in recognition of the fact that people of all genders can experience sexual harassment and assault. And both terms became even more visible during the confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct by Ford and other women. In September 2018, Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse called the Kavanaugh confirmation process “a test of what it looks like to believe women.”
Hesse argued that a vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination should be postponed until Ford’s allegation could be investigated. “That’s how the Senate can show it believes women,” she wrote. “By saying, We believe women’s stories should be heard. We believe this is a serious enough topic to deserve our attention.”
A few days later, Me Too founder Tarana Burke, along with Planned Parenthood, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and other progressive groups, participated in a nationwide protest called the #BelieveSurvivors walkout. Participants were encouraged to post photos or videos of themselves with the hashtag.
When Kavanaugh was confirmed despite Ford’s testimony, Burke and other advocates wrote a public letter to her. “This letter is our love offering to her so that she has a constant reminder that there is enormous support for her and other survivors like her,” they wrote. “We heard her. We saw her. And we believed her.”
For many, calling for Americans to “believe women” and “believe survivors” is a way to push back against a culture in which people who report sexual misconduct — especially if they are women — have often been automatically disbelieved.
That knee-jerk disbelief is still a problem, many say. When someone comes forward to report sexual misconduct, “we do still very much default to immediately questioning the person telling the story,” Flores said. “We immediately ask, what’s their motive, what is their character like, why are they saying this now? It’s literally a litany of questions that people jump to first and foremost before even processing the entire story.”
People who report assault are also often blamed, shamed for their clothing or sexual behavior, or subjected to public scrutiny. These are some of the reasons fewer than a quarter of assaults are reported to police, according to Rainn.org. And only a tiny fraction of assaults that are reported ever lead to a conviction.
Ultimately, in many allegations of sexual assault, only the person reporting the assault and the person accused know firsthand exactly what happened. And for years, American society’s response to that uncertainty has been to discount the person reporting — especially if the person accused is a powerful man. “Believe women” and “believe survivors” are meant as antidotes to that tradition, as calls to question the status quo.
“I understand these phrases sort of as correctives,” said Moira Donegan, a columnist for the Guardian US and the creator of the Shitty Media Men list, a crowdsourced list of men accused of sexual misconduct that roiled the worlds of literature and journalism as Me Too rose to prominence.
“We live in a culture where it is historically presumed that women are both less competent and less honest than men are,” she explained. The call to “believe women,” she said, “asserts women’s capacities as knowers and as credible interpreters of their own experience.”
The concept has often been misinterpreted
But as with many other aspects of the Me Too movement, “believe women” soon inspired backlash.
“The huntresses’ war cry — ‘believe all women’ — has felt like a bracing corrective to a historic injustice,” New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss wrote in November 2017. “But I also can’t shake the feeling that this mantra creates terrible new problems in addition to solving old ones.”
Weiss was concerned that the call to believe women would leave men with little recourse if they were falsely accused. “In a climate in which sexual mores are transforming so rapidly,” she wrote, “many men are asking: If I were wrongly accused, who would believe me?”
However, many anti-sexual assault advocates say that “believe women” doesn’t mean that women are incapable of lying or that allegations should be accepted without investigation.
“I think that folks have really twisted the idea of what ‘believe survivors’ means, into this idea that you never provide a fair process for folks to go through, you never require there to be reporting mechanisms, you never have formal processes available,” Carson, the Know Your IX manager, told Vox. “That’s simply not true.”
Instead, Carson said, believing survivors means that when someone does report, that person is heard rather than brushed off. “When I worked as an advocate directly with survivors, there were so many times that when someone went to report, they were immediately questioned,” she said. “Believe survivors” is a call for something different, a caution that the first response to a story of assault should not be “trying to discredit that story,” Carson said.
The Biden allegation shows how the catchphrase has become mostly political
In the past several years, many Democrats have expressed support for this message. Even accused men have at least paid lip service to the idea of listening to women. In a 2017 speech announcing his resignation after allegations of sexual misconduct, Sen. Al Franken said, “all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously.”
And during his Morning Joe interview on Friday, Biden also talked about the importance of hearing women’s claims. “Women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt,” he told Brzezinski. “If they come forward and say something that is, that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption they’re telling the truth. Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts.”
What’s less clear, especially in the statements of accused men, is what hearing women really means. Biden’s position on Reade’s allegation is that the “circumstances and facts” in the case have already been examined and found wanting. As he put it, “the facts in this case do not exist.”
However, several people have come forward to corroborate that Reade told them about the alleged assault in the 1990s. Others, including Reade, are now pressing Biden to allow an investigation of his papers held at the University of Delaware to see if a complaint filed by Reade is held there. Biden has resisted this, though he has called on the National Archives to release any record of a complaint by Reade from his time in the Senate. “If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there,” he said in a statement ahead of the Morning Joe interview.
Absent further evidence, that leaves the decision of how to think about Reade’s allegation up to voters. Despite the work of the Me Too movement, we haven’t yet truly developed the tools to do that.
For Flores, the concept of believing women “never got its due conversation” because it, too, quickly became a way for people to oppose political opponents, like Kavanaugh. “We’re never going to get to the foundation of this problem if we’re constantly talking about it in a political context,” Flores said.
The case of Kavanaugh was an easier one for Democrats for a number of reasons. Kavanaugh was a Trump appointee who was seen as hostile to many Democratic priorities; it was in Democrats’ political interests not to have him on the Supreme Court. Moreover, Ford lived up to many of society’s expectations — however unfair — about how survivors of sexual assault should behave. Juries and consumers of media often expect survivors to remember their assaults perfectly, to be scrupulously clear when describing highly traumatic events, and to be emotional but not too emotional in recounting their pain.
Americans’ “ideas of perfect victimhood are so pervasive that I know survivors, including myself, often try to shift ourselves to fit into these perfect molds, so we are less likely to be picked apart,” Carson said. Ford happened to fit into the mold relatively well: She did not remember every detail from the night she described, but she was consistent and clear, emotional yet contained, and a powerful speaker when she testified before the Senate.
Reade, meanwhile, has offered different versions of her account. Last year, she said that Biden had touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable, an allegation similar to those made by Flores and others. But this year, she said he also assaulted her. While many Democratic voters may have been willing to forgive the allegations from several women of inappropriate touching — Biden said in April 2019 that he was an affectionate person but would be more mindful of boundaries — assault is more concerning.
At the same time, Reade has come in for criticism due to her support of Sen. Bernie Sanders and her writings in praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some have suggested she may be a Russian plant. Overall, while Ford came close to society’s ideal of a “perfect” survivor, Reade does not.
Moreover, it’s not clear what it would mean to take Reade’s account seriously. While some voters want to see a new nominee, others — including Me Too advocate Alyssa Milano — seem to be arguing for the possibility of believing Reade, or at least giving her a hearing, and nominating Biden anyway. “It falls upon women to navigate within the system of men’s design to make pragmatic choices that we hope will lead us to a more equal future,” Milano wrote in an April op-ed. “I still support Joe Biden because I believe that’s the best choice for that future.”
In general, the allegation against Biden puts voters “in a really unfair position,” Donegan said. On the one hand, they’re faced with supporters of Biden “perpetuating some myths about women as either incompetent or insincere with the supposed aim of reducing harm by fighting to deny Donald Trump a second term.” On the other, they see opponents of Biden, including supporters of Trump and Sanders, “who are sort of looking to use Tara Reade and by extension the pain of survivors as a moral shield for which to further their own interests.”
“You see women’s pain being used as a tool for the agendas of men,” Donegan said.
The way to move forward and examine what it means to believe women
A real conversation about believing survivors has to address not just the public reaction to allegations of sexual misconduct, but the options people have when they experience such misconduct in the first place, some advocates say. “The hope, at least for me, around ‘believe survivors’ is that we can start building better paths forward,” Carson said, “that don’t force survivors to have to out themselves in the media and bring attention they may not want to themselves.”
Reade’s allegation is an opportunity for reform, both in Congress and elsewhere, so that “we can have fair and unbiased processes that survivors can come forward and report violence they experience, and that they can get a process that is unbiased, that is fair and that is respectful of them, and that can give them a meaningful outcome,” Carson said.
And for Donegan, it’s an opportunity for a wider inquiry into the bargains that female voters are asked to accept. “We need to be thinking more critically about what women’s citizenship and political responsibilities as voters really mean when we are being asked to reduce harm for the many at the expense of our own dignity,” she said.
With Reade’s claim still being litigated on social media and TV news — and Trump accused of sexual harassment or assault by multiple women, some of whom he has publicly shamed — it’s hard to imagine a world where such processes are the norm.
But change has to start somewhere. For Flores, it’s a slow process of cultural shift, driven by “these conversations that we’re having now again, journalists that are covering these topics, thought leaders that then go on to publish conversations about this.”
That process might be slow, but it’s how we move forward as a society, Flores believes. A former Nevada legislator, she thinks about the fact that, just a few decades ago, women weren’t allowed to wear pants on the state legislative floor. “No one can fathom this concept now of a woman not being able to wear pants to work,” she said, but it took a steady process of changing attitudes to get to this point.
“That’s the way that I think about progress in general,” she said. “It’s so many little steps, but they all begin to happen at the same time.”