good morning, everyone. i'm elise nelson i'm president and ceo here. if i can just say here on behalf of everyone at vital voices how absolutely proud we are to join with pro mund doe and new america to host this discussion. men in the me too movement moving from silence to solidarity and how do we do that? i think all of us in this room would agree that we are in the middle of something pretty darn historic. but just how historic, i think remains to be seen. this could be the beginning of the end of a culture of silence, of fear, of complacency. this could be the beginning of the end of violence against women, one of the most destructive and universal challenges we face. i think it's too early to see where this momentum right now with the me too movement is

going to lead, but the one thing we do know is that we're going to make sure more women's voices are heard and more women's rights are protected, absolutely. you know, when vital voices was started 21 years ago, we didn't have the allies or the awareness that we have today. today we have stronger laws and louder advocates. but violence against women still persists. in fact, many people would believe looking at the numbers that things are getting worse, not better. why? why in 2018 do we still face this major problem? why? because violence against women is tolerated. it's accepted. it's culturally condoned. so really we're not going to be able to address the issue of violence against women until we change culture. men are absolutely critical this that equation. what we've known at vital voices for a long time is that we are

never going to get from where we are today to where we want to be in the future without men as our partners and allies. and i'm so thrilled to have so many of these great men with us here today. in fact, each year vital voices honors extraordinary men with the voices of solidarity award, and we actually have three of those extraordinary guys here who have really dedicated their lives, 20, 30 years to ending violence against women. we have don mcpherson with us today, one of our first honorees. gary barker, of course from promundo, and jackson katz. these are men i really feel are helping us deal with the silent majority. the majority of men are nonviolent, but they're also silent. so how do we move from that silent majority to voices of solidarity to truly create

change? launching us in this first discussion i'm going to turn it over to my great colleague cindy die dyier. sin did i. >> thank you so much, elise. we are so excited, thank you all for coming out here on a cold friday morning and more joining us as we begin a discussion about what is driving some of this sexual assault and harassment that we see and how can men and women work together to move forward to change that pattern? i have got an amazing pane he will. immediately to my first left is eye anta summers who is the national organizers of the women's march the to her left, gary barker president and ceo of promundo. jack conkatz, professor and founder of nvp strategies. and jessica raven, executive

director of collective action for safe spaces. i'm going to start off the conversation and encourage all my other panelists to jump in with gary barker. gary has been a long-time advocate in the engagement of men's engagement to end violence against women and he and his promundo has conducted extensive research against violence. so i'm going to start off with you, gary, and if you can tell us based on your experience and knowledge, what do we know about what drives sexual assault and harassment? >> well, first i get to say that promundo believes in data and research so we're kind of about making facts great again. particularly important in this moment, which is to say what is it that -- what do we know about it as we got lots of blogs going out, lots of conversation, what do we know that drives sexual

harassment and sexual assault? and the simple answer is the way that we raise our sons. this thing that we call manhood, sometimes we call it toxic which i think kind of takes us down a negative it kind of doesn't give much space for men to do other things. and that's not just a vague thing. we can measure it and we can look at whether we're making changes to improve. so we've -- some of you know we did a study together with acts last year called the man bucks and we included questions there about sexual harassment. so what do we know what drives it and which men are carrying it out. we talked to random samples of young men in the u.s., uk, and mexico. it's not about toppling a few men many power. we found in the last month 20% of men ages 28 to 30 carried out some kind of harassment or bullying against women or same sex peers. it's not the same thing. it's important to say what elise did, that the majority are not. but it's important to say that's in the last month how many young

men are carrying out some kind of harm, most of it sexual and most of it gender based with that frequency. which young men? it wasn't education, ethnicity, it wasn't urban rural or much difference across the three countries except the u.s. young men did it more so that's also a little bit sobering. >> more. >> yes, more. you can see why mexico wants to build a wall, because our young men were the ones showing the most rigid norms about this. which young men? the single largest factor was if you bought into a rimg rigid tough-guy version of manhood you were more likely to harass. forthoifs that like grass were we did those tiles, if you're in the farthest tough guy quinn tile, you are five times more likely to harass than the guys who are not in that box. so what this says is these norms are created every single day and it's the silence around them. if we're not talking to our sons we know that they're happening out, whether it's online porn, whether it's male peers who say

this is how you fit in, this is how you be the cool guy, we know what it takes to break that cycle. so i think we're sobered by how big and how powerful that version of manhood is and yet we've got a lot of voices this this room who know what we can do to dhang. -- change it. what do we know about what breaks that cycle and changes those norms? >> the description that gary has given for the other panelists, is that consistent? i know that many of you have done research or have anecdotal information from your direct work. is that consistent with your experiences of what is driving or empowering young men to behave in this way? >> i'm just going to jump in and say first of all thank you for having me. >> thank you for being here. >> i wanted to just add a little caveat to that. i think that what drives men to harass is based on power. >> yeah. >> and pain. and we all know that assault is

a behavior that is a negative behavior that it's unacceptable pretty much and it harms other people. and i think that a lot of times men are driven by power to dominate and to, you know, to put their thumb down on other people. that's one way that, you know, one behavior that we can look at. and also i think a lot of it is driven from what comes out of pain is rejection. >> i'm going to ask my next question is actually for jessica down at the end. we are so excited to see more men taking a stand in this movement, whether it be from wearing buttons at the awards ceremonies or speaking out, we're so happy to see more men. you can talk with us about in your experience what is it that you think not only we like to point or what are men getting wrong, but also what are men getting right and what do you want to see more of?

>> yeah, thank you for this question. i think that -- well, in terms of what we're getting -- i think all of us what we're doing better now is believing in supporting survivors, not just men but people are starting to pay attention to the experiences of survivors. i think that what we often are getting wrong in this national conversation on sexual violence is getting stuck in the gender b binary. so this idea that -- basically i think that when we divide the genders between, you know, like it's men's violence against women, what happens is we leave out experiences those who are most marginalized, transwomen of color, homeless survivors, nonbinary people, in terms of what men are getting right, i think there are a lot of men, queer and trance men ws men, so

straight men can learn a lot from them. we can't talk about gender straight -- we're talking about sis gender straight men and often white women. and that, evench in using the term sexual harassment, i've started to move away from that term because it doesn't include often the experiences of transwomen of color that i work with in the community or muslim women who do experience sexual violence but it's broader than that, it's not about sex, it's about power. and that manifests in different ways for different communities. so transwomen of color are often be misgendered, experiencing employment discrimination, being excluded from public spaces. muslim women that i've worked with have been harassed about their job. so by narrowing the conversation to sexual harassment, we also narrow our idea of what the solutions might be so we don't think about housing as a solution to sexual violence

because we're not thinking about homeless survivors. we don't think about employment as a solution to sexual violence because we're not thinking about, you know, black transwomen who are excluded from many places of employment and then turning to sex work to survive and then experiencing high rates of police sexual violence. so i think that's what we i think can do a lot better at, centering the experiences of marginalized communities so that we can broaden our solutions and develop comprehensive solutions to sexual violence. >> i hear, gary, that was similar when you were discussing the research that you had done, you specifically noted that the hara harassment was occurring to women but also you said to the lgbt community so i can see the consistency and similarity in jessica's comments. >> sure. and i think, you know, yonta was saying that as well, i think this is a challenging topic to bring up, which is that we know that another driver of men's use

of violence is the violence they've experienced or witnessed growing up. and in saying that, we've got to be very humble and thoughtful about not trying to say men are the victims here after all. i think that's where that conversation sometimes goes. but i do think to acknowledge the humanity that's often beaten out of boys of all sexual hor yentations growing up in far different ways needs to be acknowledged as part of this. i'm glad you brought up the trauma issue. that's a huge driver. the violence that we carry out as men is the violence that we have learned and often had happen on our bodies. if you ask boys and men about men's violence, all of us have an experience that we also feel i'm atrade of that too. in saying that too we have to say it's not the same as your experience of that violence, and i think that's a tough one for us to hang on to and be humble about. >> you know, as a perfect segue, neal, you and your colleagues that men can stop rape have been working directly with young men, the people that we are in fact

talking about. and i am so -- what a valuable perspective that is. and i'm so curious to know is, you know, what do the young men, these individual men that you are working with, what do they feel about this movement? how are they reacting to this movement? >> yeah, i think it's a great opportunity to build on what's been said. i think our young people and for those of you who may not be aware, men can stop rape through our men of strength club and through our women inspiring strength and empowerment program for our female peers meet weekly with young people not only here in washington, d.c., but 19 states and we do it through middle school through post secondary. for us, the conversations that are being had are very similar that older adults may be having. it makes sense to them intellectually. but for us, even more important, it makes sense to them emotionally that they get -- we were talking last night at dinner that the younger people really grasp not only the intersections of all of this violence, but the impact it's

having on their own lives and their friend's lives. so they're really motivated during this time to speak out. you know, young people are very empowered to talk and share their positions. so for us at men can stop rape we're very excited to see it because it does support the primary prevention, it does support the messages that we've been trying to promote. it is an invitation and it's male positive. i mean, it's celebrating the fact that boys do like and want to be boys and that is not antisomeone else, anyone else, but allows them space to figure out how they can contribute in the work. so we're very pleased with that because we feel that they are getting both kind of healthy body healthy mind approach to responding to this for a lifetime, not just for a season. >> i think one of the concerns is that because there are so much of a focus on women and, as you said, sort of this negative men are bad, men are doing these

bad things that we don't want to have young men and boys say, well, no, this is -- this movement is not for me because it's not about me. i'm a good -- you know, we won't want to turn them off. i'm wondering if any of you in your work are seeing men or young men and boys respond negatively to this focus on young women. jackson. >> clearly one of the things you have to deal with as an educator or trainer or somebody who engages men and young men and boys across the spectrum, racial and ethnic spectrum is guys do come to these conversations often defensive and they think they're going to be lectured and told whatnot do. none of us who have been doing this work, i can speak for those of us that i know and certainly to my colleagues to my left and right, we never do that. that's not how the good education works. you engage people where they're at. you engage young men, you talk to them about how sort of

cultural ideas how manhood have impkt pacted them negatively as well as contributing to them harming other people. if you make those connection, michael kauffman wrote an article 31 years ago called the pry add of men's violence. it's men's violence against women, men's violence against other men, men's violence against themselves. all three are connected. people don't make these connections normally, but have you rape oncology campuses where young men are reigning their fellow students, women, men, and others. but you also have men over 50 committing suicide by gun. gun violence say huge problem in this country. some people don't even realize that the majority of gun violence is suicide. and older white men are the primary category of men who commit suicide by gun. in other words, violence turned inward. the same system that produces young men who rape women oncology campuses is the same system that produces older men who take a gun to their head. when you talk to men about these kind of things and make these

connections, a lot of men realize this isn't just aboutal truism, although that's important, it's also about self-interest. it's about taking care of themselves and their buddies. when you broaden the conversation that way, a lot of men relax, it's like i'm not being bashed in this moment, i'm actually being challenged in a way to look inward, to be intra inspective and take that and that new self-awareness and do something about it. that's the other piece. it's important that men have personal self-reflection and personal self-awareness and personal growth but it can't end there because with privilege comes responsibility. vow to have growth personally and then take whatever have you learned about yourself and others and then go out and change the world, if you will, and change the spheres of influence that you have in your life. whether it's young boys in the peer cultures or men in the highest pin knack cals of power and authority. >>i jackson, i appreciate this.

this movement there are is not your first rodeo. you've been in this movement a long time and you've seen sort of phases and cycles, so you've seen this before. and i want to ask you, you know, based on the really the lengthy work that you have done, what is the way for us to -- what are some things that have really worked as a way to make sure that men feel like this is a movement that they can join rather than a movement that is being pushed on them? and you mentioned one of those ways, but i'm wondering what are the best -- how do we get them to feel more involved and more engaged? >> that's a great question. i think that this has to be understood as a leadership issue and a social justice leadership empairtive, period, end of sentence. for example, oncology campuses where i worked for years and decades, people still to this day organizers try to figure out how do we get men involved. ? it used to be when i was young we would have table tents and posters put up on the wall and we'd be asking people to come to a meeting. now the technology has shifted

obviously and there's texted messages and all kinds of social media. we're going to have a meeting we hope some young men who are interested are going to come to this event. i'm done with that. if this is an imperative, if college campuses are interested in saying we're going to end violence, it can't be an optional thing where we hope men will come. it has to be at all levels that starts from the top. i think we have to make clear this is a leadership imperative. what i mean by that, at every level of institutional power, because this isn't about individual behavior, this is about institutional priorities and follow through and accountability. at every level, if you're a principal of a high school, think of all the men and women obviously and there's men and women who are the principals of high schools, but there air lot of people who are men who are the principals of high schools who haven't done anything about these issues. they haven't used their platform in any way. meanwhile, we know from decades of research and gary's research is cutting edge as well as other resthaerth shows this. >> yes. >> we know that something over

50% of rape victims are raped by the age of 15 can which means that high school principals are presiding over kids who are already survivors of sechual violence, teen relationship abuse. we though this. why aren't those principals and superintendents initiating mandatory program, training for all the coaches in those systems, why isn't temperature built into the educational on the curricular side not just object student affairs side if we know this and if we as a society are taking this seriously? so i would say the key thing is institutional leadership. in the military there's a concept that's called command climate is response ability of guess who? the commander. not the troops. individual troops have responsibility for their behavior, but the commander has the responsibility for setting the tone, for making accountability follow through for is unsurvivors, and for creating a tone. and that's in the corporate world where it's tone, the corporate ceos and the directors

and managers, they're ultimately responsible for what happens. those people need to be challenged. if it becomes clear that it's an institutional priority, then other men will follow. because i think a lot of men have been waiting and eager for this conversation, a lot of young men. they don't know it necessarily and like i said earlier they're often defensive. but if you get them through the door, you can begin the process. but you have to get them through the door. >> may i just -- >> neal. >> just to support everything that jackson said, particularly we see it in schools, urban, rural, doesn't matter. it does start with how do we institutional lies this in terms of dosage? and i thing i said last night and i say all the time, we would never teach algebra once a week. and around these issues we wait until they're eeth air senior about to leave for college or during orientation. and so just to support everything that jackson said, if we do not start training principals, school boards around how to institutional lies this and to help them understand, and i know there's the research out there to support this, the

academic performance will be better. so we'll still get to algebra and calculus and all that. we have to create an institutional norm that this is a priority from k-12 and into post secondary and then it will transfer into the workforce as a cultural expectation. and as jackson also said, we can look to the military for things they still need to improve, but there is a structure there about leadership taking responsibility for the tone that is set. and wherever we have seen the most impact, male, female, however identified, when young people are being prioritized and the environment they're in is being prioritized as one that is equitable and safe and i exclusive, we see the production of it go through the roof. >> yes. >> i just wanted to build on that because i think that jackson and neal are absolutely correct, it starts with leadership and also has to start young. i'm the mother of a very three-year-old -- or actually just turned 4, 4-year-old boy

who likes to wear dresses. we're on a plane the other day and looking through a magazine and -- and we saw a picture of what appeared to be a man wearing a skirt. and he said, boys don't wear dresses. and i thought, max, that's very strange, you were wearing a dress the other day, don't you like to wear dresses? >> and he said, oh, yeah. and he said, yeah, i'm a boy. but somehow even though he's been wearing dresses all his life has been learning in daycare and preschool, you know, that suddenly that this isn't okay, that that's not appropriate. so it does have to start with leadership. but also i think that we do have power to change those norms. i'm a big believer in bystander intervention. so speak out and calling out every day sexism, every day isms in our lives and institutional lizing it, standard prevention in schools at a young age. like jackson was saying earlier, it's not helpful to talk to men

and boys as perpetrators of violence. it's not helpful to say stop rape, stop harassing women. what's helpful is to tell them what they can do. so intervening is one of the things that they can do, intervening to stop the violence of other people, stop harassment of other people. and going by standard prevention training not only helps men or people who are likely to cause harm to intervene, to stop harms from being caused, but also it builds empathy and helps them -- and make thems less likely 10 to gamg engages in behaviors themselves. >> twuns becomes a leadership problem it's a learned behavior. so i think that to stop this issue and to be more progressive on these harassment issues that we really need to start at the adolescent age, at like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, we need to be teaching our children what correct socially accepted behavior is. and it all goes down to, you

know, be kind to one another, keep your hands to yourself. your body is your temple. you don't own anyone else's body and you don't have the right to put your hands on anyone else. so i think that, you know, it's great to say that leadership needs to take control and be more progressive and speak up, but i also think that in our homes, in our parents need to be responsible for the way they raise their children. because i don't think that you go to school and you learn how to beat up kids. i think that you're already learned that behavior and temperature comes from your society and it's something that you learn as early as 4, 5, 6, 7. >> i can comment on -- >> yes. >> the parent training issue? i think absolutely agree and i think both jessica and yonta are saying this with t. we need to do all this stuff in school. we also don't make algebra voluntary. so we say this is stuff you need

in the world to be a citizen, we expect this of you. we're not negotiating about gender equality anymore. we said we believe in it, you must come into this world living it. and i think another paiece wher we need to think about institutionizing this, parents need training. we're making interesting progress with watching corporations that are taking a lead since our government does not, but i think other ways to say we nudge you towards, we make obligatory certain kinds of training and we support new that role. because i think that's a crucial moment of early childhood whether are you watching gender equality modeled in the home? are you watching violence modeled in the home is such a huge driver. so i think it's school, i think it's parenting, all the big institutions, think it's got to be part of the workplace that we don't ask you do you have to do your time sheet. there are things we're making do you and those are the institutions where leadership has to say this is

nonnegotiable, we're not asking for volunteers. i love your notion we're not trying to recruit them, but we're making them do it in a nice boy-positive way. >> jackson. >> just building on something that jessica had said, i'm one the architects of the bystander approach and iver been very frustrated in the last number of years in the united states how many people have taken the social justice and feminist foundations of the bystander approached and moved it away towards what i would refer to as a glorified nightclub bouncer model with if you see something say something. in other words, not diving deep into the gender norms that underlie the abusive behaviors but talking about how do you intervene at the point of attack. and gary's work and a lot of both researchers and activists kblo globally, the men doing this work in engaging young men and boys in gender violence prevention, that's sexual harassment, assault, domestic

and relationship abuse, is gender work. which gives them the opportunity to think critically about manhood underlies most of the abusive behavior that boys and men engather in towards men and women and towards themselves. if you don't do the gender transformative work, absthaent deeper dive, it's just superficial. and it's a wastes of resources. we have enormous resources in the united states and the we have progressive programs in countries in the global south that are doing more progressive work in this matter than we are in the united states, it's pathetic. i also say i can't let this moment go. at the white house right now in the popular conversation right now is the discussion about domestic violence and what's the difference between a guy who's a really good employee and he's a good worker but he's got a side to himself that is, you know, a dark side in his personal life. women in the battered women's movement and then men in the battered waens movement have known about this for 50 years at least that this is -- it doesn't

matter, a guy could be a great performer at work, he could be a great professional and be abusive. it's like, by the way, where are the voices of women and men in the domestic violence movement on cnn today? it's like you have the same talking heads talking about domestic violence because they read an article in huffington post or something and now they're the experts on domestic violence. why don't they bring in men and women who work with abusive men who have incredible insight into abusive behavior? why sent that part of the cultural conversation at this moment? it would be a way to elevate the work of domestic violence folks who have been added and working for low wages and high-stress jobs for decades without very much cultural recognition. now it's right in the white house and they should be on tv, they should be interviewed. the insight that they have is incredible. there's a disconnect that many of us have going to our professional conferences where you're surround by people who are really smart about sexual assault, ma ras meant, abuse and

then you turn on the tv and have you talking heads who barely know anything about the issue and they're considered experts? give me a break. one of the things we need to do about this moment staking advantage of the cultural spotlight and pushing media to cover these issues more deeply and bring in the people who actually know what they're talking about. >> well, you know, as the national organizer of the women's march certainly knows a thing or two about inspiring and organization. so tell us how do we inspire and organize around this topic? and make it be really lasting and meaningful? >> well, i think that how we organize around things, we usually organize -- sorry, organize around things when there's a crisis. so we were able to in the women's march we were able to organize around what many felt was a crisis in our country. and right now we are experiencing a crisis of leadership and i think that through popular conversation, popular television, popular

music, popular movies is how we get the message out there. but i am one that always feels that organizing anything you do has to start at the local level first. and it has to be a conversation that starts in the home, it has to be a conversation that's in the community, it has to be a conversation that's regional and it also has to be national and international. so i think that when you have people who are experiencing these horrible atrocities to their person, you don't want to exploit them, you want to give them a platform, but you also want people to feel like they can relate to what this person is going through. so to organize around this topic we just need more -- we need music that says violence -- violence to women is bad. we need people to stop using words that are negative like the "b" word and calling women words that are unfavorable. and i don't like to repeat those things, but we all know what i'm

talking about. and i think that we also need to make sure that leadership, like you said, which is very vital to this conversation, that leadership is projecting a body positive kind of -- projecting a body-positive conversation, and that we all understand that violence of any kind is unacceptable. so, you know, in spite of -- until we get somebody like, you know, a very popular person, let's say princess diana for example. if she had experienced some kind of sexual violence, the whole world would be outraged. we usually organize around crisis, but we have to be smarter and deeper than that and we have to be able to organize it in our communities first. >> jessica, i'm going to give you one last comment and then if we have -- we may have a couple of minutes to take a few questions from the audience. so be thinking. >> i just wanted to quickly echo what she said and say that, yes,

and like jackson said, it's not the talking heads on tv that we need to uplift, the change happens on the grassroots level and we need to uplift the experience of survivors. survivors of the experiences and we can learn a lot when we listen to them and listen to them as to what we need to build zblaft i agree completely. one of our main focuses is developing more survivor advocates and giving them leadership opportunities and recognizing their true expertise. that's music to my ears. are there questions that we have from the audience during the last now minutes of this panel? oh, yes. >> hi, i'm avery and i'm a senior any george washington university, also love vital voices. my question is how do we ensure i guess for jackson katz, how do we ensure the actual quality and content of this educational material is good? because i'm gone through all these things and i've gone through trainings and they

haven't been comprehensive or effect fife and i've spoken to men after who didn't feel like they learned a lot from it. how do we ensure the content is quality? >> that's a great question. it's a work in progress. i mean, i think those of us men, some of us are meeting in d.c. this week talking about how we can use our expertise and our decades, some of us our decades of experience about what we know works with men and young men and try to figure out how to translate that into broader policy around the country. because i do think there is very variable education going on. there's a lot of noneducation going on, a lot of -- most high schools have zero on these matters. and the ones that do i think are mostly inadequate, to be quite blunt about it. so we have a long way to good. but i think part of the way that 10 to sure the quality is to get the right people in the room. and get right people in the room making policy decisions as well as following through. and how do you evaluate the effectiveness of a prevention program? that's a big question.

i won't take anymore time on it. how do you evaluate what you're preventing if you're preventing it. some of this is long-term social change and sort of gender norms change. and how do you measure that? let me just say one thing in the positive way. when i was in high school i never met an openly gueay perso. i met many gay people, but never an openly gay person. what i'ming a saying is change happens. there's a movement, there's an organized movement, lgbt movement that has been incredibly transformative and if you look at the demographics, the younger population of the united states, for example, is heavily supportive of a full spectrum of lgbt rights in a way that's distinct from the older population, if you will. and that's because the change has happened. but it doesn't happen passively, it happens through movements, engagement. i think if we do that then overtime we will see the change and you'll be able to measure it. but it's all political. by the way, everything that gets measured, because people want to get fund and you have to prove

your efficacy through funding sources, and that's all political. because how you define your success matters in terms of whether you're going to get funded. and it's difficult to measure social change if you're actually having an effect. >> neal, i want to see if you -- because you operate 19 states you're doing this very thing. >> i would say too, this is where gary's research is so important and michael and donna when they come up and obviously jackson. when you say comprehensive, if we could make a half day, a three-day, an hour-long workshop comprehensive enough to make it so the behaviors and the emotions connected to what this work requires of us for a lifetime, we probably would focus on world peace and everybody would have it. so when we talk about comprehensive, you're literally talking about in moments men can stop rape right now, partner with our crisis center to reposition the coalition work here in the city. so we're talking about people's

lives who are in crisis when we maybe first meet them. then by the time they start their healing they're going to need a job, they're going to node training. so comprehensive is a really important word. so the vetting of the content of the kir rick cue laum depending on what we're trying to acomplush goes back to what i said earlier, mandating how we teach this. by the time you get to george washington and one of our club members an alum of g.w. matt is here now, i didn't know matt was going to be here, by the time you step on to that campus in goinggy bottom, you should be entering your 13th year of training in this issue. that's what comprehensive looks like. it's a really challenge for us to figure out how to be as strategic as we can with the resources that are available to really promote what comp pree preece -- comprehensive training requires of us. >> it's easier to raise a

nonviolent boy than to change a man. >> fact. >> and so i'm excited to be able to turn this panel over to the next panel. first let me thank our amazing panelists. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> hour neour next panel is goi take a closer look at how to work with young men and women on these issues focusing on the campuses, the 13th year of training. i'm happy to introduce the next mod ratedtor, haley swinson, the melon acls public fellow and editor of the better lives slate channel. thank you so much for being here. haley, thank you to our panelists. [ applause ] >> thank you for your patience we're just going to be a minute

to swap out the panels. [ indiscernible conversations ]

>> really grateful for this opportunity to sit here with some amazing activists and scholars today, and we're really focusing on the way in which sexual assault for years has been considered a campus issue. that when we hear about violence against women, it's often with the shocking statistic of one in four to one in five women on a college campus will be raped before she graduates, and i

think that the me too moment has shown us that that doesn't end at graduation, right? that sexual violence and sexual harassment continue to follow people into their careers after college. so the purpose of this panel is to think more wholistically about this question of violence and to just as the last panel finished off, think about what kind of groundwork we're laying in college that can be sort of transferred from beyond. so, i'm going to start by introducing michael kimmel, who's one of the foremost experts on men and masculinity and author of many books about men and masculinity. michael had studied this issue in many different parts of the life span but i'm really interested to ask michael about what it is when men enter their careers, they need to have already learned to be people who promote gender equity in the workforce. >> thank you. thanks for inviting me. i'm just -- i'm thrilled to participate and basically just want to say to the last panel, what they said. you know? i mean, that's really -- so --

but i have a couple of things that i want to amplify from what i heard. so, the first thing i heard was that, you know, this is not necessarily normative. i think getting inside the idea of masculinity is really important. what i hear in the workplace, what i hear on college campuses from a large number of men, now, in the me too moment is, we don't know what to say. we don't want to be -- we're walking on egg shells. we don't want to be jerks. you know, that's good news! most men don't want to be jerks. most men don't do this. our role in some respects is to provide support for those who don't do it so they can intervene and challenge those who do. most men don't want to be jerks. but they don't know how to not be jerks because of what they have learned from other men. so, i want to say two things about this. first, i want to echo something that was said earlier that we don't teach algebra once a week.

and i'm university based, and i also do a lot of work outside universities, and in universities, we're constantly bemoaning the fact that the american public school system has ill prepared students for college-level work. so, we have remedial math programs, remedial writing programs, you know, the things that we assumed once upon a time they would have gotten in high school, but you know, they don't. so we're so sorry about that, we're going to do something about it. so everybody has to take a writing course. everybody has to take these entry level courses that should have been done in high school. so, why don't we transfer that to sex education? because most american students in public high schools across this country get virtually no sex education, and if they do, it's abstinence-based, which means it's even worse than no sex education. and it seems to me that instead of sitting on a college campus going, oh my, we should everyone is required to have

comprehensive sex education in their college years, not just orientation, not just for an hour during orientation. when you're brand-new on a new camera approximate bus a campus and all you want to do is make friends, get trudrunk and laid. but all through your years in college, i think mandatory comprehensive sex education in college should be one thing that we can do. the second thing i want to say about universities, and i want to echo something that jackson said earlier, is these are institutional arrangements, and these kinds of impulses come from the top down. you know, we talk about the military that way or politics that way. it's certainly true in corporations. when ceos and c suite executives say this is important to me, i want to -- i want my -- this workplace to be so safe that everyone can completely show up and be really productive, because we know that more gender equal workplaces are more productive and more profitable. so, i'm thinking about this sort

of institutionally. here's something that happens on college campuses. you may not even know this, but this is an institutional thing. so, i keep thinking, like, this isn't on young people. this is on us. do you know that according to national pan helenic rules, nationally recognized greek letter sororities are prohibited from serving alcohol at parties. but according to the inter-fraternity council, nationally recognized greek letter fraternities are permitted to serve alcohol at parties. subject to local alcohol regulations, of course. who has the parties? this is a structural thing. you know, i keep thinking, you want to reduce -- i don't know, it's an experiment. i'm an empiricist. i have this experiment idea. i want one campus to come forward and say for the next two years, only sororities can serve alcohol at parties. the fraternities are prohibited.

do you think sexual assault would go down? i don't know. it's an open question. i'm an empiricist. let's find out. because what might happen is that instead of the guys standing at the door saying, you know, is she hot enough? does she dance the way we want? does she drink the way we want? we'll let her in. are you a babe enough to come in? no, we would have some women at the door saying, are you a gentleman enough to come in i know some guys would sneak in. it's okay. but even if she does get so drunk she can barely stand up, she goes upstairs to her bedroom. i just think -- again, i'm an empiricist. i'm a social scientist. i think it's worth a try. this is an institutional arrangement. this is on us. we let this happen. and then we blame students for it. >> thank you for that. well, what a way to start out. >> i have nothing to say. >> yeah. >> i hope you have something to say because my next question is for annie clark, executive director of end rape on campus

and has also co-authored a bo , book, "we believe you." so speaking of elevating stories from survivors, i wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the sudden surge of stories about workplace abuse has affected what you do on campuses, and the sense of the movement on campus. >> thank you so much for having me and for hosting this lovely panel discussion. so, i think the first thing to recognize is that this isn't sudden. we have been talking about this for centuries, quite literally centuries. and i also want to say that there are people in this room and on this stage with me who have been doing this work since before i was even born. >> centuries. >> and so it's really because of you that we're able to have this conversation, but we also have all of these young folks who are growing up in this time, and i think it's really important to have this cohubert humphr-learn. so to start out with, this is

not new. it's just maybe fallen on deaf ears and i think it's also really important to recognize that the way we've been having a lot of these conversations has been very siloed. it's been workplace, college campus, k-12. but they're all interconnected, and we can't talk about sexual violence on college campuses without talking about the military, without talking about the catholic church, and we also can't talk about sexual violence without talking about racism and homophobia and transphobia so that is another thing i want to touch on later. but to echo what you were saying on the previous panel and to answer your question, yes, we absolutely have to start earlier. if the first time we're talking about sexual assault is at college orientation, it is way too late. and to sort of tie those strings together -- my sister is a kindergarten teacher, and she hears on the playground, he hits you because he likes you. he's chasing you because he thinks you're cute. it's just a schoolyard crush.

right? fast forward that a little bit to middle school. i want a researcher to tell me how many hours of a girl's education are lost every single year because they're taken out of their chemistry class, their algebra class, their english class, because their skirts are too short. their collarbones are showing. and then we're giving a message to our young men that they're suddenly not responsible enough to control their behavior. what message does that send their kids? or our kids. and then we know sexual assault happens much earlier than college. so, whether this is elementary school, high school, college, somebody reports abuse. the questions they get, why did you go home with them? what were you wearing? flashback to that high school classroom where you were removed from your educational setting because you were told that your collarbones were too distracting. and so all of this is very interconnected, and so i just really wanted to tie that together from the first panel to

say that if we're starting at the college level, not to excuse the responsibility of colleges to teach our students, but it's too late. and so i wanted to say that. what else? >> has the enthusiasm of this moment, you know, just -- i mean, even starting off with the #metoo, which millions of people shared and stepped forward and told their stories, who many of whom had never been a part of any kind of activism on this issue at all, has its invigorated the campus movement? >> i think it's really important to recognize that there are many different ways to be a survivor, and that there is not one right way. and while the me too movement -- and i say that in quotes because it was started in the '90s and even before that -- no one should have to publicly stand on

a stage and tell their story in order to be believed and supported. and if somebody wants to share their story, absolutely. if they don't want to, their story is no less valid. and so i think, yes, while, if you give people a safe space to share their story, many people will, but we can't judge people for not, because they might not feel safe doing so. i also think it's really important to recognize whose stories are being elevated. the media, to be quite honest, likes stories of people who look like me, and we need to start changing that narrative, especially when we know that native women, women of color, black women, lgbt communities experience much higher rates of violence and are often erased from the conversation. and so, while this effort is getting so much traction, and i'm grateful for that, i think it's really important that we take a critical look at the media and how different folks'

narratives are being told, which is one of the reasons we wrote "we believe you," my co-author and i, to make sure that folks could tell their stories in their own words. >> i want to bring our third panelist into the conversation. don mcpherson is an all-american quarterback at syracuse. >> was. >> more importantly for our purposes, a decades-long activist on this issue who has spent a long time talking about to college students specifically about these questions, and i'm really curious, don, about the way in which colleges have been a place, of course, they get most of their attention for being breeding grounds for toxic masculinity, but other ways in which colleges have actually been a place for transformation. >> i think that the last thing you said is significant. colleges are a place for transformation. not around this issue, but everything that goes back to the algebra analogy. colleges are a place of

transformation when you talk about any kind of academic discipline or any kind of excellence in pursuit of any endeavor. except this. and that's where the shift has to change on college campuses. i think there's something that's really important, and i can go back to what michael said and the previous panel, and we had at the end of last night, just listened to these men talk. it's what they said. and i was 29 years old, and i tell this story often, when i met jackson. at 29 years old, i knew what it meant to be black. i knew what it meant to be an american when i played in the canadian football league, and i knew what it meant to be a new yorker just because i'm a new yorker. i was 29 years old. i knew what it meant to be the youngest of five children. i knew all these things that shaped my identity, except i never considered masculinity. i was considered this iconic understanding of masculinity and i had no idea what that meant. and so in order to have that

conversation, like you mentioned, how do we have these transformative conversations, we do have to get to the point where we're talking to men in a different way than we -- and this the this is the other side of this -- we on the outside of the movement typically talk about this. and there's the one thing that we do in activism, which is pushing the issue, pushing the facts, pushing the statistics, being more inclusive, and then there's really the education that needs to happen. and i always say that we don't raise boys to be men, we raise boys not to be women. so i was raised in that ideology. i was raised not to be a woman in terms of what my masculinity meant, which is why when i met jackson, all of a sudden i had to switch to being very proactive in how i understood masculinity. i had to reconstruct so many different lessons that i learned and rehabilitate so many different things i had learned about what it meant to be a man, and that took being immersed with jackson. i mean, if you listen to

jackson, you hear that, i used to sit, and sit together, as we did last night, and listen to men really grapple with how the culture -- what culture expects of us as men and how do we internalize that and how do we make that work for us in our lives. that, to me, is where i feel like, if we're going to do the work in higher education, then we need to approach this issue not necessarily in the way that we approach as activists but the way that we approach it as educators. education, we don't do prevention work. we do excellence work. we do competency work. and so you know, very often, people look at sports and want to elevate sports, let's use sports as a platform. the problem with that is we miss what the reality of what the sports analogy or the sports example can do. sports, what we do is we prepare to make good decisions. it's not what you see on game day or see in the olympics. you'll see athletes compete in the olympics this week who have been preparing four years for 90

seconds. so when we talk about -- this is why, when jackson mentioned the bistanding behavior, that takes the generate analysis and wants to create a bouncer program, is not looking at the everyday conversations that are happening over and over and over that lead to what happens in 90 seconds. and so that's where the education needs to happen. and it needs to understand that men who come to this conversation with really no understanding of our masculinity. this is one of the reasons why gender equality falls on deaf ears with men, because we don't realize we have gender. >> of course. >> and so women are saying, we want equity, and men are saying, equity with what? because we don't have that thing that you want. because we're devoid of any kind of gender ideology because we've never been raised to be full, whole people. >> i'd like to ask each of you to give us something, for the men who are listening, it's not falling on deaf ears, maybe men in this audience, men who are watching our live stream or men we might encounter after we

leave here today, what is one thing, one concrete thing you would advise men who are serious about thinking of themselves as having a gender and being invested in gender equity? what should they do? who wants to start? >> go for it. >> well, i'll say two things. first of all, i just want to say, in a general context, i think this is -- i want to echo something that annie said. it is really a moment of where, for the first time, when women are speaking, they're being believed. and i think this took a long time and i keep thinking that the person who started this was anita hill and after what happened to her, women went quiet. but they've been talking to each other all this time, and they know how to believe each other. they know how to talk about this. so, this is a moment where women are being believed. even mitch mcconnell said he believed the women that were accusing roy moore. i mean, women are being believed and this is a moment now of opportunity for us. it is not inevitable that this

will continue to become the watershed moment that it has the potential to be. i think part of the answer to whether that happens or not is how we engage with men. i want to say one other thing, which is to say, i want to tell you that i'm very -- i'm both an activist and an academic, right? so i'm very optimistic. as an activist, i'm optimistic because i believe change is possible. as an academic, as a professor, i believe that if my students engage with their world more critically, their lives will be better. that's optimistic. so i'm temperamentally optimistic. so bear with me. but i think it's really important. there was a survey -- what this moment -- the opportunity that this presents to men is to rethink past behavior, to rethink what they have learned, what they have been taught, how they have behaved, and to begin to atone for some of that, to begin to retheorize that. and the economist published a survey in november that showed

that -- that asked men in workplaces, two age cohorts of men, 18 to 30 and over 60, and they asked them questions about workplace interactions, workplace behavior. now, let's be clear. you know, masturbating in front of someone has always been wrong. but they asked them the sort of low-level stuff. is it okay to call a woman "honey" or "sweetheart." is it okay to come up behind her and give her a neck massage. is it okay to say, you look beautiful today? well over, about two-thirds of the 18 to 20-year-olds said, that's not okay and 80% of the 60 and more said it was. young people know this. we have to -- we that have been doing this for a really long time, we have to follow them. because those new norms are becoming more embedded in young people's culture. so here's one very concrete thing. i think that this is a moment that men can do two things.

the first is we have to listen to oprah, which is stfu. we have to listen to women. we've got to stop talking to them and telling them about their oppression and man splainings. we've got to listen because we can believe them. if we're going to start to listen to women, we've got to start talking to other men. so i have a very concrete workplace idea. every woman in this room has probably had this experience. you've been in a meeting where you're virtually -- one of the only women or there's another woman in the room and there's a lot of men in the room, and you -- and somebody says something stupid and sexist. and everybody looks at you like, oh god, here she goes. big eye roll, like she's going to ruin it now. so the woman is put in the position of feeling terrible and making everybody else feel terrible or feeling terrible alone. but she's now in the position, she's going to feel bad. after the meeting, one of the guys who was in the room, half hour later, comes up to you and says, oh, i'm really sorry about

what happened in that meeting. at that point, you want to strangle him. you want to say, where were you when i needed you? so here's what i think has to happen. when that -- and i would say, well, you don't want me to -- i can't speak up myself because they'll marginalize me. aisle become an honorary woman. then i'll get the condescending, patronizing oh, hailey aley and michael, in that condescending way. men, you have to look around that room and see if there's somebody else besides you who's looking down at their shoes, shuffling papers uncomfortably, and you have to say -- half hour after the meeting, you go up to them and you say, listen, i'm not down with what bob was just saying over there. so i'm going to -- next time we go to a meeting, i'm going to say something. but listen, as soon as i do, you have to jump in and say, i don't like it either. >> right. >> right. because if two people -- one person does it, he's marginalized. if two people do it, we open up a space, and all the other guys

can say, oh, i don't like it either. and it stops right there. so, what i'm saying is, men have to do two things. one, we have to support each other in challenging one another. those are the conversations i think have to happen with men. very concretely, because we've all been in that meeting. >> thank you. >> maybe the other -- more brief? >> sorry. i'm a college professor, they pay me to think in hour and 20-minute chunks. >> thank you. annie? >> vote. seriously. run for office. show up and vote. and i will be brief, i promise. but i really want everybody to take away that there is something that you can do on an individual level, and everybody's activism does not have to look the same. i give this example often when

trying to convince legislators that we should talk about consent and preschool and elementary school. my partner has a dog. it's a really cute dog. anecdotally, there's no scientific research to back this up, but young boys will more often than not pet this dog without asking permission, and parents will not do anything. young girls are more likely to ask permission. i have a dog. where does your dog like to be pet? can i pet your dog? and if they don't, parents will punish them. and so, thinking about consent and permission in everyday ways is really important, and whether you are a doctor, a teacher, a student, a sister, a friend, a parent, an ally, there is something you can do. and so my challenge would be not only to vote but to look at your everyday life, whether it was watching the super bowl last saturday and there was a sexist commercial on and you didn't say anything, or who you're going to have lunch with after this. i'm getting hungry.

and so, think about those things that you can do in your everyday life, and then finally, it should not be on the backs or incumbent on survivors to end sexual violence and rape culture. and i know that centering allies is very important, but i just will end on a note that if you are a survivor of sexual violence, that i see you, i believe you, and to know that what happened was not your fault, whether you're live streaming or you're in this room, and yeah. i believe you. and you're not alone. >> thank you. >> i think that the thing that men should understand -- and i think this is not just about fathers, but men in general -- is that this is not a matter of talking to our daughters. this is a matter of talking to our sons. and being courageous in talking to our sons so that they are better men than we are. that's the whole goal of any generation is the next generation is better. there was this commercial that's a really pathetic commercial of a father and a son in a car that breaks down and they're waiting

for someone to come fix the car because they're waiting for roadside assistance and the father goes, this is a good opportunity to have this conversation. whatever the difficult conversation that follows, and all of a sudden the roadside assistance comes and the father's like, whew. masculinity and being a man is being courage, courageous, and strong. men are punks when it comes to this. >> right. that's right. >> right? if being a man is being courageous, then -- i know this is c-span -- shut the -- up and listen. be courageous and be introspective and listen. and be engaged in the conversation. i'm tired of this notion of this bravado masculinity and then at the same time, we're saying, oh, well, i'm going to be accused of saying something wrong. okay, so say something wrong and own it. right? and then have the conversation. then be brave in the conversation. be brave enough to be wrong. and so that's a challenge, you know, i don't like getting into

this sort of like antagonistic, but this is a challenge to men. enough with this already. right? enough of saying, i don't know what, i'm going to say the wrong thing. say the wrong thing. have the conversation. be engaged in the conversation. and here's the thing. if you don't, in your silence, you are hurting your son, because right now -- and this is a -- you know, when a social change happens, it happened at the tip of the spear, because right now, women are saying, it's going to happen at the tip of the spear. and you better wake up. and so, if we as men don't say, hey, we need to wake up and help our sons -- and this is also same philosophy around higher education. do i want to be at an institution if i'm a college president where my men at my institution know how to behave in the workplace, or do i want to be an institution where we say, no, we like our frat boys because they donate well to the institution. >> right. >> or do i want my men leaving this institution knowing how to function in an egalitarian workplace and relationships. that's what we should be

striving for. if i'm a dad and i see my son, do i want my son to be the guy who's going, hey, yeah, i'm an olympic-grade swimmer and i'm at stanford on scholarship, but i raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. where is the dissonance in our culture that we don't see that an absolute failure of men, of raising our sons to be better people instead of defending that behavior. we should be ashamed that those men are living in the same decade that we are. because we haven't given them the tools to be better people. >> right. >> and so i say to men, this is on -- to use the expression, this is on us to raise the next generation of men to be better than we are. >> good for you. >> thank you. some concrete takeaways. i'll paraphrase in c-span-friendly language. be quiet. listen. be engaged. and then be brave, right? actually step up and face these things head on.

the worst thing that happens to you seems to be that somebody's mad at something you said and the stakes of this debate, as we've talked about today, are so much higher for survivors and potential future survivors. thank you so much to our panel. at this point, i'm going to turn things over to gary, who you have met already. do we have time for questions? let's take a question! >> our first question is facebook live. speaking of technology. this question comes from someone who's following along on facebook live. she is also a inviting voices global leadership awards honoree. the question is, what does the panel think of the #mentorher campaign? it seems very patriarchal and sends the wrong message that women need help. how can we get our business leaders to stop patronizing women and sending them the wrong message through their organizations. >> michael? >> michael.

i think the context of this is very, very important. i share the same kind of discomfort with the hashtag, with the idea that it seems to be a kind of rescuing or condescending idea. but in the corporate world, let me tell you, i work a lot with companies. mentorship programs, sponsorship programs are vital for people to be able to navigate successfully their corporate, you know, their rise in the corporation. we know that mentorship programs, and especially sponsorship programs, mentoring -- mentoring programs basically are, you know, sort of, you're basically a cartographer. you sort of take, you know, take someone under your wing and you help them map the company. and then you're kind of a civil engineer, right? you help them build a bridge from one part of it over this obstacle or something. and then you're a cheered. you say, you go. and it seems to me, i've worked with a lot of these mentoring

programs internationally. they tend to be very success. and women like them. and they're successful. they're effective. so in the corporate world, that idea of mentoring has a somewhat different -- it has different connotations for us. and the research, by catalyst on this is really quite persuasive as well. on the other hand, i had the same reaction when i heard it. which is, eek, this is one of those moments where, you know, it sounds like it's inviting men to rescue damsels in distress. you know, like, we'll take it from here. we'll help you. we'll take it from here. and i always think that that results in something that i like to call premature self-congratlation for the men. i'm not thrilled about it. but i'm really quite -- i feel -- i go both ways on that.

>> annie, don? >> i'm sorry. >> do we have time for one more? >> yes. >> questions. >> let's move on. >> my name is lisa. and i'm coming from the international organization for migration. i just have a question in regards to the study that you spoke of. you mentioned some examples, some gray areas of sexual harassment and where you noted that you saw in the study that men over the age of 60 were more likely to not be so aware that their actions were inappropriate. how do we hold people that are currently in their positions at the top, how do we hold them accountable? because right now, it's a lot of he said, she said, how do you prosecute that a lot of the times. for example, from things that i've heard, those people are maybe placed on administrative

leave, or they're moved somewhere else. that's how it's dealt with. so, how do we change that to set the example? >> yeah, and not just simply wait for the next wave of people to rise to that. you know, this is -- this is the key question right now. a lot of the accusations that have been levied against some of the people have been 30 or 40 years old. and i think we have to acknowledge that the rules have changed. my dad worked in a workplace that looked like don draper's. and by that, i mean all the men had all the offices with the windows, and the women, the secretarial pool, were gathered in the center, and sexual access to them was considered a perk of the job. that was normal. it is not normal anymore. so, the norms have changed. and it is important to say, with that, you know, we then are being invited to retheorize our

past behavior. the stuff that we learned in locker rooms, you know, is now not acceptable. we have to acknowledge that. so, i kind of think, in one respect, we have to hold people accountable for past behavior. on the other hand, i also think that we have to acknowledge that we are playing by different rules. and so i think it's important, maybe something in the neighborhood of a truth and reconciliation idea where if we say, i did this, i was taught to do this, i behaved in this way because i thought that was normal, right, and so if i do that, what do i get in return for that? you know, the idea is some kind of reconciliation. i get to come back into the universe of discourse. i don't get, then -- well, you did that so you're now exiled. so we have to find a way to both acknowledge what we did and then also find ways to come back and be accountable for it in moving forward.

inadequate answer. >> very short? >> very short. i think two things. one, we need to talk about accountability. like we're all pretty, c-span, aware. we're very aware of what's happening. we need accountability and that can look like legislation, but it also needs to be cultural shifts and change. and those things, it's the chicken or the egg. they need to happen together, and yeah. i just think accountability is huge, and just because somebody grew up 60 years ago, that might be an explanation, but that is not an excuse. >> exactly. >> that's right. thank you so much to my fantastic panelists. at this point, i am going to bring up gary barker to leave with us some final thoughts. [ applause ] >> just a quick couple of final reflections, and first, i want to thank vital voices for

hosting us. thanks to elise and cindy and all the vital voices staff and to new america as well for being part of this. really hard to follow up with any kind of overarching conclusions because i think we had lots of points right to what we need to get. just a couple of reflections. one, i was giving a couple of talks in davos. you've seen the images, if you haven't been there. it's about 2,500 white entitled men and a small percentage -- growing percentage of women. and giving a couple of talks on this topic. a lot of nervous men who i think were actually thrilled when trump came in because they had a reason, then, not to have to talk about sexual harassment. the main question they kept coming up with was, well, isn't this going too far? now i'm suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. and i said, embrace that moment. this is what women have felt like for centuries of where are they, you know? and of course that didn't get me many friends and i probably won't get invited back, but i did say, this is the moment of

change. and that moment where you don't know where you're going, we can also do something that men don't do very often, which is ask for directions. then they just ran off to the coffee bar. but i think that is one of the things that we have to talk about is to say, men, ask for directions. you don't know if this is harassment. ask. i'm sorry. c-span and all. but that is part of what we have to say clearly. stop and ask. the other point i wanted to bring up is, i think while we're focused on this me too moment and the issue of harassment, to remember this sexual harassment is not the disease. it is a symptom of this thing called patriarch and gender equality, which particularly in this country, we like to pretend that we have overcome it, that we're done. and i think we've also got to put it in that framework. the solution is not a one-off. it's not that 45-minute powerpoint that hr departments are doing across businesses. this is the whole suite of policies that we need. from parental leave to equal pay to 40% of women on boards, norway did it and they don't

seem to have sunk into the atlantic. you know, we know that full suite of things to achieve full equality. let's remember this is a bigger picture. and third, you heard me make the joke about making facts great again at the beginning. this, we do have evidence of things that work, and we have a thing called the centers for disease control that has not been put out of business yet, but this administration is trying to. there are funds under office of adolescent health. there is data around comprehensive sexuality education and sexual violence prevention that the cdc's been developing over the years. there's a lot more needed, but they certainly can't do it if they're being systematically gutted and we're paying attention to a lot more stuff so i think that's one of the casualties in this administration that we need to pay attention to. and the fourth and final point is that while, you know, men should be uncomfortable, and that is okay, and live with that moment, i think we can also add a couple of drops of sugar or honey to the water at the end of

this, which is to say, i think this moment also has a potential to be kind of greatest revolution in our lives as men, which, and i think several of you alluded to, and i think don, you in particular, we get to be better men. we get to be wholer. we get to have the connections that we want. we get to acknowledge that we don't know everything, that we haven't done all those brave things that we said we did, and we actually get to be, you know, kind of more connected, rounded, happier human beings, which is not a bad thing for us or the planet, i think. part of this is to figure out, we want men in the door to say, we've got skin in this game, not to take it over. and i love your posters here that kind of keep us -- and i'll stand down. is to remember where this conversation started. so not that we're going to take it over and it's about us. not to recenter it. but to kind of live in that moment to say, our lives as men can get better in this me too moment as well, and i learned that from these gentlemen but also the women whose pictures here led us to being able to say gender exists and it's causing harm and we as men have a stake

in it. so, some of us are conversing after this because we want to try to say, we didn't just invent this work yesterday. there are things we can put out there. there are things we can do in a more unified way. thanks for offering us the space to do this. >> thank you, everyone. that's a wrap. thank you so much. to all of our panelists, please stick around to continue the conversation. and thank you again for being here. [ applause ]

>> today on our companion network, c-span, a look at the civil war in syria and how turkey's relationship with ethnic kurds complicates the u.s. role. that's at 11:45 a.m. eastern and live on c-span. at 4:00 p.m. eastern, a conversation on the trump administration's plans to renegotiate nafta and the role congress would play in approving a revised trade agreement between the u.s., mexico, and canada. also live on c-span. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, sunday, at 10:00 a.m. eastern, from the west point center for oral history, graduate kenneth carlson talks about growing up in a military family and his service in vietnam. >> we go out to this bunker and it had an actual viewpoint where

you could see what was going on over the combat base and we're watching the rockets coming in and miss arkansas is on one side and miss new jersey is on the other side, and explosions are going off. and these women are scared to death. but miss arkansas said, that kind of looks like the fourth of july. and i said, no, it doesn't. she said, what do you mean? i said, people are dying when those things land. that doesn't happen in the fourth of july. and she started crying. >> at 4:00 p.m. on real america, with the upcoming winter olympics, we're featuring two films, the 1953 film, "rebirth of soul" and 1960 film on the eighth winter olympics in california. >> and the united states team is causing plenty of unexpected excitement here. they were pregame underdogs, and now they've upset all predictions by winning this game with the russians. their play earning them the first gold medal ever won by a u.s. team in hockey. >> and at 8:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, scholars explore the relationships between presidents ronald reagan, george

h.w. bush, and russian leader gorbachev. >> when you look back at 1989, when bush comes in, and then you look at bush and gorbachev in '90 and '91, from gorbachev's point of view, bush is not measuring up to what reagan had been. >> watch american history tv every weekend on c-span3. >> announcer: c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> on tuesday, treasury secretary steve mnuchin testified before the house financial services committee about the financial stability oversight council's annual report and recent volatility in the stock market. this is about three hours.