“Just saying ‘I don’t rape my girlfriend’ isn’t something guys should be getting high fives for.”
For this educator, violence against women is a men’s issue. Here’s why ...
For this educator, violence against women is a men’s issue. Here’s why ...
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00:00Just saying, I don't rape my girlfriend or I don't abuse women is not something guys
00:06should be getting high fives for.
00:07I mean, we need a whole lot more from men than that.
00:19As long as we continue to call it a women's issue, we're in a sense doing a subtle form
00:24of victim blaming.
00:25We're saying it's about women's responsibility to deal with it, women's responsibility because
00:29they're the ones who are affected and they're the ones who have to figure out how to address
00:33it.
00:34That's not fair.
00:35The language that people use around the subjects of domestic and sexual violence, they use
00:38passive language.
00:40Like it's like how many, we'll ask how many women were raped last year rather than how
00:43many men raped women.
00:45If you insert the active agent, men, you have a new phrase, men's violence against women.
00:50It doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, but it's actually more accurate and it's more
00:54honest.
01:03I frame these issues as a leadership issue for men.
01:05I mean, women's leadership has been the utterly world changing predicate for all this great
01:10work that's been happening all over the world in gender violence prevention, sexual assault
01:15prevention, domestic violence, sexual harassment.
01:17Women have been at the forefront in a multiracial, multiethnic sense.
01:20What's been missing is men and men's leadership.
01:24By framing it that way in a sports culture, in the military, with other groups, all kinds
01:29of groups of men, it's like we need more men who have the courage and the strength and
01:32the self-confidence to start standing up and speaking out and challenging, interrupting
01:36other men's sexism or abusive behavior.
01:39We need more men who have the courage and strength to stand with women as their partners
01:42and allies, not as their antagonists in some battle between the sexes.
01:48By framing it as a leadership issue, you frame it aspirationally and positively to men.
01:53Instead of pointing your finger at them and telling them, stop doing bad things.
02:04I can count the number of times men have actually given a serious answer to what they do every day.
02:10And by the way, men are sexually assaulted and men do take precautions.
02:14But in the settings that we do this, you know, in university campuses or whatever, very few
02:20men say, you know, I do this or that.
02:21I ask the same exact question to the women, what steps do you take every day or on a daily
02:25basis to prevent yourself from being sexually assaulted?
02:29And the board fills up really quickly, whether it's an urban area, a suburban area or a rural
02:34area, the things that women do every day, you know, you know, don't put your drink down
02:38at a party because a guy raped you, drug in your drink, or look in the back seat of your
02:42car before you get in, have a man's voice in the voicemail, hold your keys as a potential
02:46weapon.
02:47There's hundreds of things that women do every day.
02:49The visual power of seeing the men's side completely blank, men, men who don't even
02:54think about this.
02:55And then the women's side, which is completely full for a lot of young guys and a lot of
03:00older guys.
03:01It's like, wow, you know what?
03:03You know, I didn't really think about it like that.
03:05Even if a woman herself hasn't been physically or sexually assaulted, and many have, but
03:10even if she hasn't, she's ordering her daily life around the threat of violence from men.
03:16And it's just completely unfair.
03:23What we need more men to do is to have the strength and the self-confidence to turn to
03:27their friends and say, look, guys, the way you're talking about girls or the way you're
03:30talking about women, that's just not cool.
03:32And I think if guys will do that over time, it'll become much more normal to hear men
03:37talking like I'm talking and people won't think, wow, that was weird hearing a guy say
03:41those things.
03:42I never heard a guy talk like that.
03:44I mean, what I'm saying should be completely normal to hear from men.
03:57I think a lot of men are scared of other men.
03:59They're scared, not just physically, they're scared of losing status among their peer culture.
04:04But unless you talk about those dynamics in male peer culture, in other words, what guys
04:09are thinking about, why they're saying something or not saying something, the impediments to
04:13action, even when they know something is wrong, if you don't talk about any of that,
04:19it's going to still have its power and guys are still not going to speak out.
04:22You have to bring it to the surface.
04:24I think a lot of men have a sense of, finally, somebody's talking about some of this stuff.
04:30Finally, there's some breathing space because a lot of men do really feel constrained and
04:35young men and older men feel constricted and constrained because they worry so much about
04:40other men and what other men are going to think.
04:47The same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men.
04:52And so if we're concerned about men as victims, let's talk about what is it about manhood?
04:57What is it about male culture?
04:58What is it about the way we socialize boys?
05:00What is it about the way that we connect notions of power and control to masculinity that leads
05:07a certain percentage of men to actually act out in those ways, both towards women and
05:13towards other men?
05:14And then how can we change that?
05:15If we want to be healthier, if we want to have less violence and abuse and more justice
05:19and fairness, what can we do about that?
05:22And how can men and young men be a part of the solution?
05:25Gender inequality is one of the great tragedies and unfinished business of the human species globally.
05:43I realized that as a man, as a heterosexual white man who had some strengths and some
05:49advantages that I was in a position to change or help to change some of the underlying
05:55structures that perpetuated some of the biggest problems of our species.
05:59We need a lot more men who are willing to join with women in that effort because women
06:04have their hands full.
06:06Women are doing so much.
06:07It shouldn't be an added burden on women to like, how do we educate men?
06:11How do we organize men?
06:12How do we bring men?
06:13I think a lot of women want men to do this work, but I don't know that they want to spend
06:17the time and energy on the nuts and bolts of it.
06:21But men need to be spending the time and the nuts and bolts on the nuts and bolts of
06:25it.
06:26And there's an awful lot of men with an awful lot of resources out there, an awful lot of
06:30friends and an awful lot of access to groups of men.
06:33And if we can just, like I said, ramp it up, scale it up, I think the change will happen
06:40much more quickly than it has been happening.