Conservatives, straight men, and “predatory cisgender” people are attacking transgender and LGBT people, in an effort to turn Americans against “gender expressiveness,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) says.

Ocasio-Cortez introduces one of her recent Instagram video commentaries by vilifying heterosexual men as sexual abuses and praising the LGBT+ community for standing up to them:

“Much of the attacks on the LGBT+ community are, whether consciously or not, deflecting attention away from one of the actual largest sources of SA: abusive heterosexual men.

“And it’s actually the LGBT+ community doing much of the work of challenging those same patriarchal and oppressive norms that uphold the kinds of silence that benefits abusers. It is critical that we stand with our trans and LGBT+ neighbors. Their safety is all our safety.”

Ocasio-Cortez begins her video by claiming that conservatives are using “culture wars” to turn Americans against LGBT people who are “challenging the institutions of power”:

“So, we know how people in power and conservatives use culture wars in order to distract and diffuse us from challenging the institutions of power. Right?

“And, I want to talk about how the attacks on trans and LGBT people factor into this.”

She says she was “hit on” by a grown male when she was a young teen, and saw an obscene act by a man when she was in her twenties – adding that she “can’t tell you how many stories” like those she’s heard about sexually abusive by straight men:

“And, when you actually look at who’s committing this abuse, it’s majority straight men.”

She then warns of the danger of leaving straight men in the presence of women and children:

"Many of these disgusting and insinuating attacks on trans and LGBT people are actually projections of what predatory cisgender and often straight men do when left in the presence of women or, sometimes horribly, children."

"So instead of getting you to challenge the patriarchy, they're trying to get you to challenge the very gender expressiveness that challenges patriarchy," the congresswoman concludes.