Vice President Joe Biden mused at a Domestic Violence Awareness Month roundtable today that new rules about affirmative consent for any sexual activity can be “tricky.”
Biden said “that’s my instinct” when talking about leaning toward both parties in sexual activity giving a “yes” first.
“The cultural norms make it still kind of hard to say ‘yes, I’d like you to kiss me or yes, I’d like you to do that,’” he said. “So it’s still tricky.”
The vice president consistently brings up at such events his role in passing the Violence Against Women Act during his Senate career.
“This is an issue that is extremely close to my heart; it’s something that I have cared maybe more about than anything else in my political career,” Biden said, adding that “this bill, now 21 years old, has saved an awful lot of lives.”
He boasted that “there’s not a town I go where a woman doesn’t come up to me on a rope line and say ‘thank you.’”
At a 2013 benefit dinner for a volunteer legal group that helps domestic violence survivors, Biden drew parallels with the movie Deliverance.
Biden was talking about his work in Congress on the Violence Against Women Act when he brought up the dueling banjos reference.
“After those guys tied that one guy to the tree and raped him, man-raped him in the film, why didn’t the guy go the sheriff?” Biden asked. “They don’t want to get raped again by the system.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member