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AOC, Desire, and the Politics of Sexual Critique

AOC AND HER BOYFRIEND’S FEET

In late December 2021, the American nationalist Rightist Steve Cortes tweeted a photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, enjoying their Christmas break in Florida. Cortes wrote: “Her guy is showing his gross pale male feet in public—not at a pool or beach—with hideous sandals.” AOC quipped back: “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me, they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos.”96

Her reply triggered mixed reactions. One user responded: “Bold move … when people disagree with my policy positions or call me a hypocrite, I tell them they just want to f… me as well.” Another responded, “Why did your mind automatically go to ‘dating you’ and ‘sex’? That’s very conceited.”97 At some level these reactions were right; AOC brought sex into a situation that was not sexualized (explicitly, at least).

Incidentally, I don’t think the reasoning implied by AOC is correct—there is another more probable version. Her Republican critics primarily disagree with her policies, but they also notice her sexual attractiveness, so they bring in sexuality to devalue her arguments. This is in accordance with the standard male-chauvinist wisdom that beautiful women are stupid: “Stick to sex, avoid argumentation which is beyond your league …” The implicit reference to foot fetishism (Roberts’s foot really does protrude a little bit excessively in the photo) is even more ambiguous. Cortes (who made this move from AOC to Roberts’s foot) could have made AOC mad for another unexpected reason—instead of really desiring her (as AOC’s reply suggests), he seems to prefer her partner to her. The implicit surmise of her reply could thus be: “I am the real beauty in the photo, so why did you mention my boyfriend’s foot and not me?”

Such tensions indicate that a truly radical feminist should do what Amia Srinivasan proposes in her path-breaking book, The Right to Sex.98 Srinivasan writes that “beyond the parameters of consent,” she is not afraid to confront sex in all its complexity and ambiguity. Consent? Yes, but why is it always the woman who gives consent or denies it? Why should a woman not be the active part in a seduction, not just reacting to male advances? Plus, consent relies on a logic of market exchange. “The idea of consent presupposes a contract: Someone is asking to do something to you, and they have to get permission to do it.”99 To that end, consensual sex can also be exploitative. And what about my unconscious, which can make me desire things I do not know, including a desire to humiliate others and myself? What if suffering brings a perverse pleasure? And what about the social dimension of desire? Is my intimate desire not always affected by public and secret social norms and expectations? The image of a sexual partner who is perceived as “desirable” obviously depends on the society in which I live. For example, Srinivasan concludes: “We need a feminism that is truly internationalist, that centres on climate disaster, colonialism, and the voices of women in the global south.”100

Here is such a case from the “global south,” a terrifying event that took place on the morning of January 26, 2022, in a New Delhi neighborhood in India.101 A young woman, the mother of a three-year-old child, was attacked by a mob in her parent’s house. Her hair was chopped off and her face blackened; she was brutally slapped and kicked as others in the house clapped and cheered. The attack continued for several minutes as the woman pleaded for mercy, her body crouched and hands folded. After the beating she was paraded in the narrow lanes of the neighborhood and dragged by the mob to her “victim’s” house, where she was gang-raped.

练习题

According to the passage, what was the main move AOC made in her reply to Steve Cortes’s tweet about Riley Roberts’s feet?

A. She accepted Cortes’s criticism as a neutral comment on public etiquette.

B. She interpreted the criticism as a projection of Republican sexual frustration.

C. She denied that Roberts’s feet appeared in the photograph.

D. She shifted the discussion entirely to climate policy.

Which interpretation does the author present as more probable than AOC’s claim that her critics simply wanted to date her?

A. Her critics were only interested in Roberts’s fashion choices and had no political motives.

B. Her critics primarily disagreed with her policies but used sexuality to devalue her arguments.

C. Her critics supported her policies but disliked her vacation destination.

D. Her critics were making a purely aesthetic argument about photography.

In the passage, why does the reference to Roberts’s foot complicate the interpretation of Cortes’s criticism?

A. It suggests that Cortes may have been focused on Roberts rather than AOC, introducing an ambiguous foot-fetish dimension.

B. It proves that Cortes was making a medical diagnosis of Roberts’s foot.

C. It shows that AOC and Cortes agreed about standards of footwear.

D. It removes sexuality from the situation entirely.

Which claims about consent and sexual ethics are attributed to Srinivasan or developed through the passage? Select all that apply.

A. Radical feminism should confront sex beyond the parameters of consent.

B. Consent may reinforce the idea that women are passive respondents to male initiative.

C. Consent relies on a contractual or market-exchange logic.

D. Consensual sex can never be exploitative.

E. Unconscious desire can complicate what a person wants or thinks they want.

Which statements correctly describe the passage’s account of desire, social norms, and internationalist feminism? Select all that apply.

A. Intimate desire is shaped by public and hidden social norms.

B. The image of a desirable partner depends partly on the society in which one lives.

C. Internationalist feminism should center climate disaster, colonialism, and voices of women in the global south.

D. The New Delhi case is introduced as an example from the global south.

E. Desire is presented as purely biological and unaffected by culture.

The passage states that AOC introduced sex into a situation that was not explicitly sexualized.

The passage treats the male-chauvinist association of beauty with stupidity as a neutral and acceptable assumption.

The passage’s critique of consent and the earlier discussion of NFTs both involve suspicion toward relations modeled on exchange, contract, or ownership.

Srinivasan argues that feminism should be truly ___, centering climate disaster, colonialism, and the voices of women in the global south.

The passage says the idea of consent presupposes a ___: someone asks to do something to another person and must get permission.

How does the passage use the New Delhi attack to expand the discussion of sexual critique beyond individual consent?

Compare the passage’s account of socially shaped desire with the prior discussion of digital control and manipulation.

Which interpretation best integrates the discussion of AOC’s response to Cortes with the earlier account of Cambridge Analytica’s political profiling?

A. Both show that political conflict is always reducible to direct sexual desire.

B. Both show that apparently personal or intimate features can be mobilized within political struggle to shape perception and devalue opponents.

C. Both show that digital ownership is more important than political persuasion.

D. Both show that consent eliminates exploitation when people freely exchange information or sexual access.

Which statements correctly connect Srinivasan’s critique of consent and desire with the earlier critique of digital libertarianism and control?

A. Both critiques challenge the idea that formal freedom by itself guarantees real autonomy.

B. Srinivasan’s claim that consensual sex can still be exploitative parallels the earlier claim that the appearance of freedom can depend on underlying systems of control.

C. Both sections argue that all social relations should be understood only as private contracts between isolated individuals.

D. The critique of consent’s contractual logic can be related to the earlier claim that market-based systems may conceal deeper structures of power.

E. Both sections reject the idea that social norms or systems affect individual choices.

The claim that desire is shaped by public and secret social norms is compatible with the earlier claim that targeted digital manipulation can influence political behavior through psychological profiling.

In both the critique of consent as a contract and the critique of NFTs as symbolic ownership, the text questions whether relations organized through market-like exchange fully capture the underlying ___ involved.

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