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I'm going to share with you

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a paradigm-shifting perspective

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on the issues of gender violence --

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sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse,

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sexual harassment, sexual abuse of children.

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That whole range of issues that I'll refer to in shorthand

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as "gender violence issues,"

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they've been seen as women's issues that some good men

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help out with, but I have a problem with that frame

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and I don't accept it.

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I don't see these as women's issues that some good men help out with.

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In fact, I'm going to argue that these are men's issues,

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first and foremost.

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(Applause)

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Now obviously, they're also women's issues,

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so I appreciate that, but calling

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gender violence a women's issue is part of the problem,

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for a number of reasons.

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The first is that it gives men an excuse not to pay attention.

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Right? A lot of men hear the term "women's issues"

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and we tend to tune it out, and we think,

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"Hey, I'm a guy. That's for the girls," or "That's for the women."

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And a lot of men literally don't get beyond the first sentence

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as a result.

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It's almost like a chip in our brain is activated,

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and the neural pathways take our attention in a different direction

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when we hear the term "women's issues."

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This is also true, by the way, of the word "gender,"

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because a lot of people hear the word "gender"

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and they think it means "women."

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So they think that gender issues is synonymous with women's issues.

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There's some confusion about the term gender.

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And actually, let me illustrate that confusion by way of analogy.

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So let's talk for a moment about race.

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In the U.S., when we hear the word "race,"

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a lot of people think that means African-American,

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Latino, Asian-American, Native American,

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South Asian, Pacific Islander, on and on.

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A lot of people, when they hear the word "sexual orientation"

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think it means gay, lesbian, bisexual.

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And a lot of people, when they hear the word "gender,"

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think it means women. In each case,

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the dominant group doesn't get paid attention to.

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Right? As if white people don't have some sort of racial identity

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or belong to some racial category or construct,

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as if heterosexual people don't have a sexual orientation,

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as if men don't have a gender.

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This is one of the ways that dominant systems maintain

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and reproduce themselves, which is to say

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the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance,

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because that's one of the key characteristics

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of power and privilege, the ability to go unexamined,

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lacking introspection, in fact being rendered invisible

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in large measure in the discourse

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about issues that are primarily about us.

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And this is amazing how this works

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in domestic and sexual violence,

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how men have been largely erased from so much

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of the conversation about a subject

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that is centrally about men.

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And I'm going to illustrate what I'm talking about

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by using the old tech.

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I'm old school on some fundamental regards.

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I work with -- I make films -- and I work with high tech,

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but I'm still old school as an educator,

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and I want to share with you this exercise

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that illustrates on the sentence structure level

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how the way that we think,

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literally the way that we use language,

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conspires to keep our attention off of men.

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This is about domestic violence in particular,

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but you can plug in other analogues.

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This comes from the work of the feminist linguist Julia Penelope.

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It starts with a very basic English sentence:

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"John beat Mary."

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That's a good English sentence.

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John is the subject. Beat is the verb.

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Mary is the object. Good sentence.

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Now we're going to move to the second sentence,

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which says the same thing in the passive voice.

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"Mary was beaten by John."

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And now a whole lot has happened in one sentence.

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We've gone from "John beat Mary"

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to "Mary was beaten by John."

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We've shifted our focus in one sentence from John to Mary,

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and you can see John is very close to the end of the sentence,

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well, close to dropping off the map of our psychic plain.

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The third sentence, John is dropped,

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and we have, "Mary was beaten,"

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and now it's all about Mary.

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We're not even thinking about John. It's totally focused on Mary.

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Over the past generation, the term we've used

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synonymous with "beaten" is "battered,"

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so we have "Mary was battered."

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And the final sentence in this sequence,

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flowing from the others, is,

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"Mary is a battered woman."

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So now Mary's very identity -- Mary is a battered woman --

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is what was done to her by John in the first instance.

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But we've demonstrated that John has long ago left the conversation.

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Now, those of us who work in the domestic and sexual violence

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field know that victim-blaming is pervasive in this realm,

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which is to say, blaming the person to whom something was done

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rather than the person who did it.

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And we say things like, why do these women go out with these men?

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Why are they attracted to these men?

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Why do they keep going back? What was she wearing at that party?

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What a stupid thing to do. Why was she drinking

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with that group of guys in that hotel room?

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This is victim blaming, and there are numerous reasons for it,

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but one of them is that our whole cognitive structure

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is set up to blame victims. This is all unconscious.

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Our whole cognitive structure is set up to ask questions

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about women and women's choices and what they're doing,

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thinking, and wearing.

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And I'm not going to shout down people who ask questions

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about women, okay? It's a legitimate thing to ask.

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But's let's be clear: Asking questions about Mary

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is not going to get us anywhere in terms of preventing violence.

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We have to ask a different set of questions.

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You can see where I'm going with this, right?

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The questions are not about Mary. They're about John.

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The questions include things like, why does John beat Mary?

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Why is domestic violence still a big problem

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in the United States and all over the world?

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What's going on? Why do so many men abuse,

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physically, emotionally, verbally, and other ways,

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the women and girls, and the men and boys,

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that they claim to love? What's going on with men?

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Why do so many adult men sexually abuse little girls and little boys?

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Why is that a common problem in our society

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and all over the world today?

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Why do we hear over and over again

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about new scandals erupting in major institutions

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like the Catholic Church or the Penn State football program

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or the Boy Scouts of America, on and on and on?

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And then local communities all over the country

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and all over the world, right? We hear about it all the time.

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The sexual abuse of children.

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What's going on with men? Why do so many men rape women

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in our society and around the world?

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Why do so many men rape other men?

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What is going on with men?

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And then what is the role of the various institutions

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in our society that are helping to produce abusive men

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at pandemic rates?

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Because this isn't about individual perpetrators.

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That's a naive way to understanding what is a much deeper

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and more systematic social problem.

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You know, the perpetrators aren't these

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monsters who crawl out of the swamp

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and come into town and do their nasty business

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and then retreat into the darkness.

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That's a very naive notion, right?

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Perpetrators are much more normal than that,

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and everyday than that.

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So the question is, what are we doing here

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in our society and in the world?

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What are the roles of various institutions

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in helping to produce abusive men?

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What's the role of religious belief systems,

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the sports culture, the pornography culture,

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the family structure, economics, and how that intersects,

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and race and ethnicity and how that intersects?

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How does all this work?

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And then, once we start making those kinds of connections

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and asking those important and big questions,

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then we can talk about how we can be transformative,

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in other words, how can we do something differently?

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How can we change the practices?

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How can we change the socialization of boys

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and the definitions of manhood that lead to these current outcomes?

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These are the kind of questions that we need

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to be asking and the kind of work that we need to be doing,

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but if we're endlessly focused on what women are doing

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and thinking in relationships or elsewhere,

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we're not going to get to that piece.

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Now, I understand that a lot of women

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who have been trying to speaking out about these issues,

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today and yesterday and for years and years,

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often get shouted down for their efforts.

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They get called nasty names like "male-basher"

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and "man-hater,"

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and the disgusting and offensive "feminazi." Right?

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And you know what all this is about?

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It's called kill the messenger.

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It's because the women who are standing up

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and speaking out for themselves and for other women

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as well as for men and boys, it's a statement to them

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to sit down and shut up, keep the current system in place,

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because we don't like it when people rock the boat.

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We don't like it when people challenge our power.

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You'd better sit down and shut up, basically.

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And thank goodness that women haven't done that.

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Thank goodness that we live in a world

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where there's so much women's leadership that can counteract that.

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But one of the powerful roles that men can play in this work

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is that we can say some things

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that sometimes women can't say,

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or, better yet, we can be heard saying some things

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that women often can't be heard saying.

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Now, I appreciate that that's a problem. It's sexism.

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But it's the truth. And so one of the things that I say to men,

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and my colleagues and I always say this,

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is we need more men who have the courage and the strength

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to start standing up and saying some of this stuff,

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and standing with women and not against them

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and pretending that somehow this is

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a battle between the sexes and other kinds of nonsense.

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We live in the world together.

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And by the way, one of the things that really bothers me

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about some of the rhetoric against feminists and others

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who have built the battered women's

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and rape crisis movements around the world

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is that somehow, like I said, that they're anti-male.

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What about all the boys who are profoundly affected

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in a negative way by what some adult man is doing

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against their mother, themselves, their sisters?

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What about all those boys?

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What about all the young men and boys

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who have been traumatized by adult men's violence?

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You know what? The same system that produces

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men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men.

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And if we want to talk about male victims,

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let's talk about male victims.

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Most male victims of violence are the victims of other men's violence.

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So that's something that both women and men have in common.

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We are both victims of men's violence.

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So we have it in our direct self-interest,

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not to mention the fact that most men that I know

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have women and girls that we care deeply about,

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in our families and our friendship circles and every other way.

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So there's so many reasons why we need men to speak out.

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It seems obvious saying it out loud. Doesn't it?

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Now, the nature of the work that I do and my colleagues do

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in the sports culture and the U.S. military, in schools,

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we pioneered this approach called the bystander approach

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to gender violence prevention.

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And I just want to give you the highlights of the bystander approach,

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because it's a big thematic shift,

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although there's lots of particulars,

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but the heart of it is, instead of seeing men as perpetrators

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and women as victims,

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or women as perpetrators, men as victims,

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or any combination in there.

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I'm using the gender binary. I know there's more

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than men and women, there's more than male and female.

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And there are women who are perpetrators,

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and of course there are men who are victims.

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There's a whole spectrum.

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But instead of seeing it in the binary fashion,

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we focus on all of us as what we call bystanders,

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and a bystander is defined as anybody who is not

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a perpetrator or a victim in a given situation,

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so in other words friends, teammates, colleagues,

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coworkers, family members, those of us

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who are not directly involved in a dyad of abuse,

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but we are embedded in social, family, work, school,

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and other peer culture relationships with people

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who might be in that situation. What do we do?

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How do we speak up? How do we challenge our friends?

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How do we support our friends? But how do we not

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remain silent in the face of abuse?

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Now, when it comes to men and male culture,

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the goal is to get men who are not abusive

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to challenge men who are.

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And when I say abusive, I don't mean just

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men who are beating women.

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We're not just saying a man whose friend

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is abusing his girlfriend needs to stop the guy

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at the moment of attack.

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That's a naive way of creating a social change.

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It's along a continuum, we're trying to get men

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to interrupt each other.

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So, for example, if you're a guy and you're in a group of guys

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playing poker, talking, hanging out, no women present,

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and another guy says something sexist or degrading

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or harassing about women,

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instead of laughing along or pretending you didn't hear it,

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we need men to say, "Hey, that's not funny.

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You know, that could be my sister you're talking about,

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and could you joke about something else?

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Or could you talk about something else?

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I don't appreciate that kind of talk."

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Just like if you're a white person and another white person

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makes a racist comment, you'd hope, I hope,

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that white people would interrupt that racist enactment

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by a fellow white person.

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Just like with heterosexism, if you're a heterosexual person

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and you yourself don't enact harassing or abusive behaviors

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towards people of varying sexual orientations,

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if you don't say something in the face of other heterosexual people doing that,

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then, in a sense, isn't your silence

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a form of consent and complicity?

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Well, the bystander approach is trying to give people tools

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to interrupt that process and to speak up

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and to create a peer culture climate

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where the abusive behavior will be seen as unacceptable,

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not just because it's illegal, but because it's wrong

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and unacceptable in the peer culture.

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And if we can get to the place where men

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who act out in sexist ways will lose status,

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young men and boys who act out in sexist

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and harassing ways towards girls and women,

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as well as towards other boys and men,

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will lose status as a result of it, guess what?

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We'll see a radical diminution of the abuse.

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Because the typical perpetrator is not sick and twisted.

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He's a normal guy in every other way. Isn't he?

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Now, among the many great things that Martin Luther King

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said in his short life was,

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"In the end, what will hurt the most

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is not the words of our enemies

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but the silence of our friends."

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In the end, what will hurt the most is not the words

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of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

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There's been an awful lot of silence in male culture

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about this ongoing tragedy of men's violence

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against women and children, hasn't there?

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There's been an awful lot of silence.

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And all I'm saying is that we need to break that silence,

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and we need more men to do that.

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Now, it's easier said than done,

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because I'm saying it now, but I'm telling you it's not easy

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in male culture for guys to challenge each other,

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which is one of the reasons why

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part of the paradigm shift that has to happen

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is not just understanding these issues as men's issues,

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but they're also leadership issues for men.

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Because ultimately, the responsibility for taking a stand

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on these issues should not fall on the shoulders

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of little boys or teenage boys in high school

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or college men. It should be on adult men with power.

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Adult men with power are the ones we need to be holding accountable

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for being leaders on these issues,

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because when somebody speaks up in a peer culture

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and challenges and interrupts, he or she

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is being a leader, really, right?

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But on a big scale, we need more adult men with power

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to start prioritizing these issues,

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and we haven't seen that yet, have we?

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Now, I was at a dinner a number of years ago,

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and I work extensively with the U.S. military, all the services.

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And I was at this dinner and this woman said to me --

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I think she thought she was a little clever -- she said,

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"So how long have you been doing sensitivity training

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with the Marines?"

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And I said, "With all due respect,

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I don't do sensitivity training with the Marines.

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I run a leadership program in the Marine Corps."

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Now, I know it's a bit pompous, my response,

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but it's an important distinction, because I don't believe

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that what we need is sensitivity training.

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We need leadership training, because, for example,

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when a professional coach or a manager of a baseball team

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00:14:23,640 --> 00:14:26,685
or a football team -- and I work extensively in that realm as well --

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makes a sexist comment, makes a homophobic statement,

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makes a racist comment, there will be discussions

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on the sports blogs and in sports talk radio.

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And some people will say, "Well, he needs sensitivity training."

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And other people will say, "Well get off it.

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You know, that's political correctness run amok,

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and he made a stupid statement. Move on."

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My argument is, he doesn't need sensitivity training.

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He needs leadership training,

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because he's being a bad leader, because in a society

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with gender diversity and sexual diversity --

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(Applause) —

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and racial and ethnic diversity, you make

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those kind of comments, you're failing at your leadership.

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If we can make this point that I'm making

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to powerful men and women in our society

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at all levels of institutional authority and power,

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it's going to change, it's going to change

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the paradigm of people's thinking.

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You know, for example, I work a lot

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in college and university athletics throughout North America.

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We know so much about how to prevent

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domestic and sexual violence, right?

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There's no excuse for a college or university

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to not have domestic and sexual violence prevention training

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mandated for all student athletes, coaches, administrators,

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as part of their educational process.

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We know enough to know that we can easily do that.

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But you know what's missing? The leadership.

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But it's not the leadership of student athletes.

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It's the leadership of the athletic director,

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the president of the university, the people in charge

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00:15:42,536 --> 00:15:44,234
who make decisions about resources

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00:15:44,234 --> 00:15:47,190
and who make decisions about priorities in the institutional settings.

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That's a failure, in most cases, of men's leadership.

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Look at Penn State. Penn State is the mother

393
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of all teachable moments for the bystander approach.

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You had so many situations in that realm

395
00:15:59,149 --> 00:16:02,438
where men in powerful positions failed to act

396
00:16:02,438 --> 00:16:05,012
to protect children, in this case, boys.

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It's unbelievable, really. But when you get into it,

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00:16:07,285 --> 00:16:09,215
you realize there are pressures on men.

399
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There are constraints within peer cultures on men,

400
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which is why we need to encourage men

401
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to break through those pressures.

402
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And one of the ways to do that is to say

403
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there's an awful lot of men who care deeply about these issues.

404
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I know this. I work with men,

405
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and I've been working with tens of thousands,

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00:16:23,512 --> 00:16:26,953
hundreds of thousands of men for many, many decades now.

407
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It's scary, when you think about it, how many years.

408
00:16:29,847 --> 00:16:33,699
But there's so many men who care deeply about these issues,

409
00:16:33,699 --> 00:16:35,616
but caring deeply is not enough.

410
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We need more men with the guts,

411
00:16:38,378 --> 00:16:41,617
with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity

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to break our complicit silence and challenge each other

413
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and stand with women and not against them.

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By the way, we owe it to women.

415
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There's no question about it.

416
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But we also owe it to our sons.

417
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We also owe it to young men who are growing up

418
00:16:54,879 --> 00:16:57,911
all over the world in situations where they didn't make the choice

419
00:16:57,911 --> 00:17:00,051
to be a man in a culture that tells them

420
00:17:00,051 --> 00:17:01,515
that manhood is a certain way.

421
00:17:01,515 --> 00:17:02,909
They didn't make the choice.

422
00:17:02,909 --> 00:17:06,874
We that have a choice have an opportunity

423
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and a responsibility to them as well.

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I hope that, going forward, men and women,

425
00:17:11,615 --> 00:17:13,664
working together, can begin the change

426
00:17:13,664 --> 00:17:15,220
and the transformation that will happen

427
00:17:15,220 --> 00:17:17,880
so that future generations won't have the level of tragedy

428
00:17:17,880 --> 00:17:19,297
that we deal with on a daily basis.

429
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I know we can do it. We can do better.

430
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Thank you very much. (Applause)