A survivors’ rights activist who was featured in a photo with former Vice President Joe Biden at the 2016 Oscars that went viral penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Thursday, saying Biden needs to have a reckoning for his past “paternalistic behavior.”
Sofie Karasek wrote that she used to like the photo of herself and Biden — he’s holding her hands and their foreheads are touching — because it going viral helped the family of an Alabama college student, who died by suicide after she was raped, seek justice. While in the moment, she said she felt “taken aback” and said the intimacy was “unwelcome,” she said she once had it framed in her room until people began commenting that it looked like he was going to kiss her.
As time passed she said the photo brought about a sense of “shame and belittlement” even though she thinks the gesture may have been well-intended as a paternalistic or comforting act. But that “paternalistic behavior was another form of the sexism that for years he worked to oppose,” she said.
Read Karasek’s op-ed here.
