Joe Biden is using his last few months in office to speak out against campus sexual assault. The vice-president already condemned campus assault at the Academy Awards, wrote an open letter to the Stanford rape victim, and schooled Jimmy Fallon about the issue. On Wednesday he continued his crusade in an interview with the Skimm.
“The issue is a woman should never have to ask herself, ‘What did I do?’” he said when asked about the letter. “A woman could get up, walk across a stadium stark naked, violate the laws of decency, but no man has a right to put a hand on her. Period. Period. Period.”
He went on to discuss his anti-sexual assault PSA with Adam Devine, which had him go undercover to a fraternity party:
I never belonged to a fraternity. Any ‘frat brother’ who starts to walk an inebriated coed up the stairs and someone else doesn’t come up and say ‘hey, Jack, not on my watch,’ he’s an accomplice. We’ve got to shame these people. We’ve got to make them the pariah. We’ve got to change the culture.
But how do we change the culture around sexual assault? Joe Biden is glad you asked:
[Skimm readers] can demand that people be held accountable. If they have children they can teach their sons and their daughters. Their daughters should never, ever have to be in a position where she has to yield to a man, where she thinks this is what society asks of her. And young men should know never, never, never do they have a right to touch a woman, do anything with a woman without her permission.
He also shared some thoughts on Donald Trump, which amounted to: “Can you imagine any president of the United States in the past and the future getting up at 3:30 in the morning and tweeting vitriol about a beauty queen who gained weight? I mean, what have we come to?” Good question, Joe.
