Vice President Joe Biden, speaking today at the White House State of Women Summit, made two things abundantly clear: violence against women is an epidemic, and the country is a long, long way from eradicating it.

That much is obvious to anyone online this month as a powerful letter written by a rape survivor went viral. The letter lays out in stony detail everything the woman knows and feels about the crime committed against her. It inspired a deluge of posts on social media, with people voicing support for the woman and condemning the judge who sentenced her rapist to six months in jail, arguing that prison would too adversely impact his life.

Biden was among those who lent support to the survivor, who remains anonymous. In his own viral open letter, the vice president told the woman, "I do not know your name — but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed."

He reinforced that message today. "Those of us who find this action reprehensible, the talk reprehensible, you have to be heard," he said. "You are the ones who are going to impact the change in the culture."

Having a man—vice president or otherwise—address 5,000 women about rape and gender-based violence is, well, ballsy and easily construed as the worst kind of mansplaining. Yet, key to Biden's message was the notion that truly changing this culture of violence requires getting men involved. "It’s ultimately about the abuse of power," he said. "It’s all about power."

And, for better or worse, it's men who've held power throughout this country's history. Biden, for his part, has used his power to encourage action on gender violence throughout his political career. In 1990, when Biden was a senator from Delaware, his office introduced and eventually passed the Violence Against Women Act, which was aimed at curbing and addressing domestic violence and sexual assault. As vice president, he oversees the Office of Violence Against Women.

Granted, his record isn't spotless. Biden is widely criticized for his treatment of Anita Hill as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which subpoenaed Hill to testify about allegations that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. The recent HBO film about the hearings, Confirmation, casts Biden in a far from flattering light.

But the public memory can be short, and the crowd gathered in DC Monday cheered as the vice president spoke about what it will take to rid society of gender-based violence. "Changing the laws is only the beginning," he said. "We have to change the national culture, a culture that condones and that often promotes violence against women."

Technology, Biden said, can be central the these culture shifts. "There's been an outpouring over social media of thousands of other survivors, because some have spoken up," Biden said.

He acknowledged that in a legal sense, at least, the country's outlook on this issue improving. But as the Stanford rape case shows, a culture of blaming the victim and offering leniency to the abuser still lives on. "We will have succeeded when not a single woman who is violated ever, ever asks herself the question: 'What did I do?'" Biden said. "We will have succeeded when not one man who raises a hand or takes a violent action against a woman is able to say without any credibility in his own mind, 'She deserved it.'"