Joe Biden’s remarks at the United State of Women (USW) summit has been poorly received by some attendees, who accused the vice president of using “triggering” language and marginalizing female voices by talking for too long.
Biden used his speech at the USW summit in Washington, D.C. to focus on the topic of violence against women. During a White House staff picnic Monday, he said, seven different women approached him to talk about being sexually assaulted.
“Seven, yesterday,” Biden said in his remarks. “The reason I tell the story, it’s not about me … it’s about women getting to the point where they feel somebody [will] listen to them.”
One might expect Biden’s choice of subject to appeal to USW’s attendees, and appears most of them did strongly appreciate his speech. But is appears that some other attendees were upset because Biden allegedly took too long and was also inadvertently offensive.
MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon, an attendee at the event, tweeted Tuesday afternoon about how numerous attendees were distressed by Biden’s remarks..
It appears that because Joe Biden spoke for almost an hour at #StateOfWomen, the rest of the schedule is truncated.
— Irin Carmon (@irin) June 14, 2016
Several activists I spoke with after Biden’s speech at #StateOfWomen this morning found it to be “triggering” and patronizing.
— Irin Carmon (@irin) June 14, 2016
According to Carmon, Biden’s speech was triggering to some female attendees because he spoke in detail about abuse some women had suffered, without providing a trigger warning in advance.
Other confirmed Carmon’s statement that Biden’s speech (which lasted about 43 minutes, not an hour) went on for too long and mucked with the schedule.
I am so enjoying seeing all the amazing women here at #StateOfWomen but all the talk is about Joe Biden and his looong speech.
— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) June 14, 2016
The schedule is definitely a mess because of Biden’s speech, as well-intentioned as it may have been.#StateofWomen https://t.co/KFErlm6v56
— Charles Clymer (@cmclymer) June 14, 2016
Later, Jezebel’s Ellie Shechet got in on the action, publishing a piece in which she describes Biden’s speech as both “very long” and “slightly offensive.”
“Biden’s speech was slightly rambling, occasionally powerful, and at some points, in extremely typical Joe Biden fashion, wildly crass and apparently unaware of the survivor-sensitive protocol surrounding how we speak about rape and sexual violence,” Shechet says in her piece.
Shechet identifies several parts of Biden’s speech as particularly problematic.
“Women who have suffered domestic abuse ‘are raped again and again and again by the system,’ he intoned during one particularly cringe-worthy moment,” she says. “In another, Biden imitated a man who doesn’t intervene in an abusive situation, saying, ‘I know he bangs her around, but you know, it’s not my place.”
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