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I'm going to share with you
a paradigm-shifting perspective

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on the issues of gender violence:
sexual assault, domestic violence,

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relationship abuse, sexual harassment,
sexual abuse of children.

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That whole range of issues

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that I'll refer to in shorthand
as "gender violence issues,"

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they've been seen as women's issues
that some good men help out with,

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but I have a problem with that frame
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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Now obviously --

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(Applause)

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Obviously, they're also women's issues,
so I appreciate that,

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but calling 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, right?

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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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"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 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 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 US, 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.

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In each case, the dominant group
doesn't get paid attention to.

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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 and reproduce themselves,

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which is to say the dominant group
is rarely challenged

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to even think about its dominance,

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because that's one of the key
characteristics of power and privilege,

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the ability to go unexamined,

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lacking introspection, in fact being
rendered invisible, in large measure,

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in the discourse about issues
that are primarily about us.

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And this is amazing how this works
in domestic and sexual violence,

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how men have been largely erased
from so much of the conversation

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about a subject
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 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,
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,
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,

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the term we've used
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,
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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Those of us who work
in the domestic and sexual violence field

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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: why do they
go out with these men?

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Why are they attracted to them?
Why do they keep going back?

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What was she wearing at that party?
What a stupid thing to do.

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Why was she drinking
with those guys in that hotel room?

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

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but one is that our cognitive structure
is set up to blame victims.

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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, thinking, wearing.

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

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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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The questions are not about Mary,
they're about John.

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They include things like,
why does John beat Mary?

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Why is domestic violence still a big
problem in the US and all over the world?

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

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emotionally, verbally, and other ways,

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the women and girls, and the men and boys,
that they claim to love?

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What's going on with men?

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Why do so many adult men
sexually abuse little girls and 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.

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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 in our society

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that are helping to produce
abusive men 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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The perpetrators aren't these 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, and everyday than that.

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So the question is, what are we doing here
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 to be asking

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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 and thinking

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in relationships or elsewhere,

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we're not going to get to that piece.

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I understand that a lot of women

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who have been trying to speak 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" 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,

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it's a statement to them
to sit down and shut up,

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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
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, but it's the truth.

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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 a battle between the sexes

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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
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 in a negative way

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by what some adult man is doing 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?

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The same system that produces
men who abuse women,

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produces men who abuse other men.

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And if we want to talk about male victims,
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 US 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.

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I know there's more 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 a perpetrator or a victim

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in a given situation,

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so in other words friends, teammates,
colleagues, coworkers, family members,

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those of us 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

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00:10:29,106 --> 00:10:31,134
with people who might be
in that situation.

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00:10:31,158 --> 00:10:34,358
What do we do? How do we speak up?
How do we challenge our friends?

241
00:10:34,382 --> 00:10:35,876
How do we support our friends?

242
00:10:35,900 --> 00:10:38,411
But how do we not remain silent
in the face of abuse?

243
00:10:38,435 --> 00:10:41,121
Now, when it comes
to men and male culture,

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00:10:41,145 --> 00:10:44,541
the goal is to get men who are not abusive
to challenge men who are.

245
00:10:44,565 --> 00:10:47,812
And when I say abusive, I don't mean just
men who are beating women.

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00:10:47,836 --> 00:10:52,632
We're not just saying a man whose friend
is abusing his girlfriend

247
00:10:52,656 --> 00:10:55,473
needs to stop the guy
at the moment of attack.

248
00:10:55,497 --> 00:10:59,951
That's a naive way
of creating a social change.

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00:10:59,975 --> 00:11:03,871
It's along a continuum, we're trying
to get men to interrupt each other.

250
00:11:03,895 --> 00:11:06,823
So, for example, if you're a guy
and you're in a group of guys

251
00:11:06,847 --> 00:11:09,715
playing poker, talking, hanging out,
no women present,

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00:11:09,739 --> 00:11:16,088
and another guy says something sexist
or degrading or harassing about women,

253
00:11:16,112 --> 00:11:18,964
instead of laughing along
or pretending you didn't hear it,

254
00:11:18,988 --> 00:11:21,005
we need men to say,
"Hey, that's not funny.

255
00:11:21,029 --> 00:11:23,279
that could be my sister
you're talking about,

256
00:11:23,303 --> 00:11:25,267
and could you joke about something else?

257
00:11:25,291 --> 00:11:27,167
Or could you talk about something else?

258
00:11:27,191 --> 00:11:29,022
I don't appreciate that kind of talk."

259
00:11:29,046 --> 00:11:30,691
Just like if you're a white person

260
00:11:30,715 --> 00:11:33,958
and another white person makes
a racist comment, you'd hope, I hope,

261
00:11:33,982 --> 00:11:36,606
that white people would interrupt
that racist enactment

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00:11:36,630 --> 00:11:37,867
by a fellow white person.

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00:11:37,891 --> 00:11:40,757
Just like with heterosexism,
if you're a heterosexual person

264
00:11:40,781 --> 00:11:43,588
and you yourself don't enact
harassing or abusive behaviors

265
00:11:43,612 --> 00:11:45,822
towards people of varying
sexual orientations,

266
00:11:45,846 --> 00:11:49,566
if you don't say something in the face
of other heterosexual people doing that,

267
00:11:49,590 --> 00:11:52,901
then, in a sense, isn't your silence
a form of consent and complicity?

268
00:11:52,925 --> 00:11:55,760
Well, the bystander approach
is trying to give people tools

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00:11:55,784 --> 00:11:59,605
to interrupt that process and to speak up
and to create a peer culture climate

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00:11:59,629 --> 00:12:02,293
where the abusive behavior
will be seen as unacceptable,

271
00:12:02,317 --> 00:12:05,084
not just because it's illegal,
but because it's wrong

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00:12:05,108 --> 00:12:07,159
and unacceptable in the peer culture.

273
00:12:07,183 --> 00:12:09,579
And if we can get to the place where men

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00:12:09,603 --> 00:12:11,894
who act out in sexist ways
will lose status,

275
00:12:11,918 --> 00:12:13,823
young men and boys who act out in sexist

276
00:12:13,847 --> 00:12:15,863
and harassing ways
towards girls and women,

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00:12:15,887 --> 00:12:17,826
as well as towards other boys and men,

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00:12:17,850 --> 00:12:20,367
will lose status
as a result of it, guess what?

279
00:12:20,391 --> 00:12:23,372
We'll see a radical
diminution of the abuse.

280
00:12:23,396 --> 00:12:26,043
Because the typical perpetrator
is not sick and twisted.

281
00:12:26,067 --> 00:12:28,761
He's a normal guy
in every other way, isn't he?

282
00:12:28,785 --> 00:12:32,153
Now, among the many great
things that Martin Luther King

283
00:12:32,177 --> 00:12:33,696
said in his short life was,

284
00:12:33,720 --> 00:12:37,123
"In the end, what will hurt the most
is not the words of our enemies

285
00:12:37,147 --> 00:12:39,201
but the silence of our friends."

286
00:12:39,225 --> 00:12:42,396
In the end, what will hurt the most
is not the words of our enemies

287
00:12:42,420 --> 00:12:43,935
but the silence of our friends.

288
00:12:43,959 --> 00:12:46,414
There's been an awful lot
of silence in male culture

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00:12:46,438 --> 00:12:48,511
about this ongoing tragedy
of men's violence

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00:12:48,535 --> 00:12:50,505
against women and children, hasn't there?

291
00:12:50,529 --> 00:12:52,315
There's been an awful lot of silence.

292
00:12:52,339 --> 00:12:55,191
And all I'm saying is that we need
to break that silence,

293
00:12:55,215 --> 00:12:57,077
and we need more men to do that.

294
00:12:57,475 --> 00:13:00,774
Now, it's easier said than done,

295
00:13:00,798 --> 00:13:02,188
because I'm saying it now,

296
00:13:02,212 --> 00:13:04,686
but I'm telling you
it's not easy in male culture

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00:13:04,710 --> 00:13:06,611
for guys to challenge each other,

298
00:13:06,635 --> 00:13:09,016
which is one of the reasons

299
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:11,348
why part of the paradigm shift
that has to happen

300
00:13:11,372 --> 00:13:14,110
is not just understanding
these issues as men's issues,

301
00:13:14,134 --> 00:13:16,181
but they're also
leadership issues for men.

302
00:13:16,205 --> 00:13:19,643
Because ultimately, the responsibility
for taking a stand on these issues

303
00:13:19,667 --> 00:13:21,942
should not fall
on the shoulders of little boys

304
00:13:21,966 --> 00:13:24,786
or teenage boys in high school
or college men.

305
00:13:24,810 --> 00:13:26,755
It should be on adult men with power.

306
00:13:26,779 --> 00:13:29,940
Adult men with power are the ones
we need to be holding accountable

307
00:13:29,964 --> 00:13:31,629
for being leaders on these issues,

308
00:13:31,653 --> 00:13:33,972
because when somebody
speaks up in a peer culture

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00:13:33,996 --> 00:13:35,932
and challenges and interrupts,

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00:13:35,956 --> 00:13:38,530
he or she is being a leader, really.

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00:13:38,554 --> 00:13:41,805
But on a big scale,
we need more adult men with power

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00:13:41,829 --> 00:13:43,975
to start prioritizing these issues,

313
00:13:43,999 --> 00:13:46,428
and we haven't seen that yet, have we?

314
00:13:46,452 --> 00:13:49,858
Now, I was at a dinner
a number of years ago,

315
00:13:49,882 --> 00:13:53,071
and I work extensively
with the US military, all the services.

316
00:13:53,095 --> 00:13:55,937
And I was at this dinner
and this woman said to me --

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00:13:56,636 --> 00:13:58,793
I think she thought
she was a little clever --

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00:13:58,817 --> 00:14:03,363
she said, "So how long have you been doing
sensitivity training with the Marines?"

319
00:14:03,387 --> 00:14:06,633
And I said, "With all due respect,

320
00:14:06,657 --> 00:14:09,186
I don't do sensitivity training
with the Marines.

321
00:14:09,210 --> 00:14:11,488
I run a leadership program
in the Marine Corps."

322
00:14:11,512 --> 00:14:13,586
Now, I know it's a bit
pompous, my response,

323
00:14:13,610 --> 00:14:15,371
but it's an important distinction,

324
00:14:15,395 --> 00:14:18,544
because I don't believe
that what we need is sensitivity training.

325
00:14:18,568 --> 00:14:21,004
We need leadership training,
because, for example,

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00:14:21,028 --> 00:14:24,794
when a professional coach or a manager
of a baseball team or a football team --

327
00:14:24,818 --> 00:14:27,124
and I work extensively
in that realm as well --

328
00:14:27,148 --> 00:14:30,351
makes a sexist comment,
makes a homophobic statement,

329
00:14:30,375 --> 00:14:31,916
makes a racist comment,

330
00:14:31,940 --> 00:14:35,320
there will be discussions on the sports
blogs and in sports talk radio.

331
00:14:35,344 --> 00:14:38,126
And some people will say,
"He needs sensitivity training."

332
00:14:38,150 --> 00:14:40,155
Other people will say, "Well, get off it.

333
00:14:40,179 --> 00:14:42,349
That's political correctness run amok,

334
00:14:42,373 --> 00:14:44,177
he made a stupid statement, move on."

335
00:14:44,201 --> 00:14:46,831
My argument is, he doesn't need
sensitivity training.

336
00:14:46,855 --> 00:14:48,263
He needs leadership training,

337
00:14:48,287 --> 00:14:49,823
because he's being a bad leader,

338
00:14:49,847 --> 00:14:52,974
because in a society with gender diversity
and sexual diversity --

339
00:14:52,998 --> 00:14:54,063
(Applause)

340
00:14:54,087 --> 00:14:55,626
and racial and ethnic diversity,

341
00:14:55,650 --> 00:14:58,857
you make those kind of comments,
you're failing at your leadership.

342
00:14:58,881 --> 00:15:01,069
If we can make this point that I'm making

343
00:15:01,093 --> 00:15:03,734
to powerful men and women in our society

344
00:15:03,758 --> 00:15:06,829
at all levels of institutional
authority and power,

345
00:15:06,853 --> 00:15:10,083
it's going to change
the paradigm of people's thinking.

346
00:15:10,655 --> 00:15:12,161
You know, for example,

347
00:15:12,185 --> 00:15:14,461
I work a lot in college
and university athletics

348
00:15:14,485 --> 00:15:16,019
throughout North America.

349
00:15:17,087 --> 00:15:20,902
We know so much about how to prevent
domestic and sexual violence, right?

350
00:15:21,613 --> 00:15:23,985
There's no excuse
for a college or university

351
00:15:24,009 --> 00:15:26,867
to not have domestic and sexual
violence prevention training

352
00:15:26,891 --> 00:15:29,701
mandated for all student athletes,
coaches, administrators,

353
00:15:29,725 --> 00:15:32,073
as part of their educational process.

354
00:15:32,097 --> 00:15:34,645
We know enough to know
that we can easily do that.

355
00:15:34,669 --> 00:15:36,757
But you know what's missing?
The leadership.

356
00:15:36,781 --> 00:15:39,021
But it's not the leadership
of student athletes.

357
00:15:39,045 --> 00:15:41,175
It's the leadership
of the athletic director,

358
00:15:41,199 --> 00:15:43,710
the president of the university,
the people in charge

359
00:15:43,734 --> 00:15:45,403
who make decisions about resources

360
00:15:45,427 --> 00:15:48,730
and who make decisions about priorities
in the institutional settings.

361
00:15:48,754 --> 00:15:51,290
That's a failure, in most cases,
of men's leadership.

362
00:15:51,314 --> 00:15:52,508
Look at Penn State.

363
00:15:52,532 --> 00:15:56,640
Penn State is the mother of all teachable
moments for the bystander approach.

364
00:15:56,664 --> 00:15:59,125
You had so many situations in that realm

365
00:15:59,149 --> 00:16:02,792
where men in powerful
positions failed to act

366
00:16:02,816 --> 00:16:05,227
to protect children, in this case, boys.

367
00:16:05,251 --> 00:16:06,504
It's unbelievable, really.

368
00:16:06,528 --> 00:16:09,611
But when you get into it,
you realize there are pressures on men.

369
00:16:09,635 --> 00:16:12,436
There are constraints
within peer cultures on men,

370
00:16:12,460 --> 00:16:16,644
which is why we need to encourage men
to break through those pressures.

371
00:16:16,668 --> 00:16:18,597
And one of the ways to do that is to say

372
00:16:18,621 --> 00:16:21,601
there's an awful lot of men
who care deeply about these issues.

373
00:16:21,625 --> 00:16:23,106
I know this, I work with men,

374
00:16:23,130 --> 00:16:25,309
and I've been working
with tens of thousands,

375
00:16:25,333 --> 00:16:27,697
hundreds of thousands of men
for many decades now.

376
00:16:27,721 --> 00:16:30,195
It's scary, when you think
about it, how many years.

377
00:16:30,219 --> 00:16:33,675
But there's so many men
who care deeply about these issues,

378
00:16:33,699 --> 00:16:35,840
but caring deeply is not enough.

379
00:16:35,864 --> 00:16:38,354
We need more men with the guts,

380
00:16:38,378 --> 00:16:41,813
with the courage, with the strength,
with the moral integrity

381
00:16:41,837 --> 00:16:45,829
to break our complicit silence
and challenge each other

382
00:16:45,853 --> 00:16:47,853
and stand with women and not against them.

383
00:16:48,192 --> 00:16:49,883
By the way, we owe it to women.

384
00:16:49,907 --> 00:16:51,349
There's no question about it.

385
00:16:51,373 --> 00:16:52,994
But we also owe it to our sons.

386
00:16:53,018 --> 00:16:56,237
We also owe it to young men
who are growing up all over the world

387
00:16:56,261 --> 00:16:58,528
in situations where they didn't
make the choice

388
00:16:58,552 --> 00:17:01,925
to be a man in a culture that tells them
that manhood is a certain way.

389
00:17:01,949 --> 00:17:03,615
They didn't make the choice.

390
00:17:03,639 --> 00:17:08,636
We that have a choice, have an opportunity
and a responsibility to them as well.

391
00:17:08,660 --> 00:17:11,591
I hope that, going forward, men and women,

392
00:17:11,615 --> 00:17:13,907
working together, can begin the change

393
00:17:13,931 --> 00:17:15,907
and the transformation that will happen

394
00:17:15,931 --> 00:17:18,706
so that future generations
won't have the level of tragedy

395
00:17:18,730 --> 00:17:20,506
that we deal with on a daily basis.

396
00:17:20,530 --> 00:17:22,340
I know we can do it, we can do better.

397
00:17:22,364 --> 00:17:23,747
Thank you very much.