Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. What Happens Roy Wood Jr.
Speaker 1: Next year about to hear a special presentation of the
Speaker 1: Daily Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now,
Speaker 1: all it is, It's very simple. If it's a topic
Speaker 1: that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
Speaker 1: it again and we go even deeper on the topic
Speaker 1: and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
Speaker 1: get deeper into the origins of the problem. When we
Speaker 1: do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
Speaker 1: guests who know a hell of a lot more about
Speaker 1: it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's up? Welcome to Beyond the Scenes. We are the
Speaker 1: podcast that goes deeper into segments and topics that originally
Speaker 1: aired on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I'm Roy
Speaker 1: Wood Jr. As always, and today we're talking about a
Speaker 1: very serious issue, violence against women and why it's up
Speaker 1: to men to stop it. Will also be taking a
Speaker 1: look at a recent segment about Kim Kardashian and Kanye
Speaker 1: West and the harassment that many women face when trying
Speaker 1: to leave a relationship. Now, before we get started, I
Speaker 1: just want to just add a quick little disclaimer. Today's
Speaker 1: conversation might contain some tough subject matter, so I just
Speaker 1: want everyone to be aware of that and give you
Speaker 1: an off ramp if you need it. Alright, with that side,
Speaker 1: let's roll the clip. For many women, every time they
Speaker 1: leave the house, it's a risk. And this is not
Speaker 1: something that men experienced, Like when the pandemic hit. Men
Speaker 1: were like, so just going outside is dangerous now, and
Speaker 1: women are like, yeah, added to the list because for women,
Speaker 1: just being out in public means facing a wide array
Speaker 1: of potential threats from men. The top story at this
Speaker 1: hour the violence against women and the conversation that it
Speaker 1: has sparked among women around the world. For many, it
Speaker 1: can feel like the only way to guarantee your personal
Speaker 1: safety is to stay at home, law your doors, and
Speaker 1: never leave. The World Health Organization says one in three
Speaker 1: women worldwide have been subjected to physical or sexual violence,
Speaker 1: and data shows the violence starts alarmingly young. Around the world,
Speaker 1: six women are killed every hour by men, and for
Speaker 1: women of color, their cases rarely in the headlines. On
Speaker 1: social media, the post text me when you get home
Speaker 1: now going viral, women all over the world sharing their
Speaker 1: stories as men, we should be steering those conversations where
Speaker 1: it belongs centered on us, because this is our responsibility
Speaker 1: not to be creeps, right, So let's not make it
Speaker 1: the one thing that we don't take credit for. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Daily Show writer Christiana Mbakwe, and I'm
Speaker 1: also joined by journalists and author of the book No
Speaker 1: Visible Bruises Rachel Louise Snyder. Welcome to the show. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having us, Roy, thank you now this topic, Christiana,
Speaker 1: you know the show first covered the topic after the
Speaker 1: murder of Sarah ever Art, the young woman who was
Speaker 1: abducted while walking home from a friend's house in London,
Speaker 1: and it sparked a much larger conversation that even something
Speaker 1: as simple as walking home isn't safe for women. What
Speaker 1: are some of the ways that women encounter violence on
Speaker 1: a daily basis? It can be anything. It can be
Speaker 1: being on the subway and a man sitting a bit
Speaker 1: too close and intimidating you with his body language and
Speaker 1: I becoming aggressive when you maybe ask him to back
Speaker 1: off um, and it can get a lot more gruesome
Speaker 1: than that. There's an entire spectrum of violence that women
Speaker 1: have to face and navigate in their daily life. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of issues on the show Christianity. You know,
Speaker 1: we we're on Comedy Central, but sometimes and you know,
Speaker 1: there's times where the comedy has to wait. How do
Speaker 1: you prioritize which things to inform aside? Men, let's just
Speaker 1: keep it real. How do you how do you all
Speaker 1: decide to prioritize? All right, men are dumb? Which things
Speaker 1: do they need to understand first? Do you start with
Speaker 1: the base level stuff? As I hear you laughing, like,
Speaker 1: how do you all decide which things? Because some of
Speaker 1: it you can sprinkle a joker too in and you
Speaker 1: can kind of like you kept calling. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that on the show in the past, but cat calling
Speaker 1: is a symptom of a far bigger issue. So how
Speaker 1: are you all, just you know, in the writer's room
Speaker 1: able to figure out and sparse out what people need
Speaker 1: to know versus what you could possibly try to make funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's particularly that Sarah Everard k switch happened
Speaker 1: where I'm from South London. I know that park. I've
Speaker 1: walked through that park many times, um and thinking about
Speaker 1: how horrifying it was. It is difficult to find any
Speaker 1: sort of humor in it because frankly, the subject matter
Speaker 1: is and funny, right, there's nothing funny about a woman
Speaker 1: being murdered when she's just simply trying to get home.
Speaker 1: And when I was working on that, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: from the perspective of a woman, what parts of it
Speaker 1: are kind of funny in a sick way. Um. And
Speaker 1: the joke I wrote that didn't make the show is
Speaker 1: like when you go out with your girls and they're like,
Speaker 1: text me when you get home, which is a thing
Speaker 1: that all women do. If you don't text you, then
Speaker 1: when you get home they get freaked out and you
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and you're trending on Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's like fine, Christiana, because every woman just thinks the worst. Right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just get home, you're a little bit tipsy,
Speaker 1: you fall asleep, you forget to text your loved ones.
Speaker 1: And that's happened to me on a few occasions. And
Speaker 1: my now husband when we was just dating, he would
Speaker 1: get freaked out if I didn't text him when I
Speaker 1: got home somewhere, and once he was even going to
Speaker 1: call his cousin to come to my apartment to check
Speaker 1: if I was there. Right, it became a big thing,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of funny that if you don't text
Speaker 1: when you get home, they're going to send out a
Speaker 1: search party, even if it was just that you kind
Speaker 1: of overslept or forgot. And we try and find the
Speaker 1: funny and those kind of the nuances of it all
Speaker 1: and how it makes your experience as a woman kind
Speaker 1: of inconvenient because you're constantly worried about your safety and
Speaker 1: then reassuring the people that you love that you are
Speaker 1: indeed safe. To Christiana's point about precautions, right, a woman
Speaker 1: waking up to being searched for because she didn't charge
Speaker 1: her phone and she didn't hear the text messages or whatever.
Speaker 1: Those are jokes amongst men. Those are text men when
Speaker 1: you get home. Ha ha ha. I remember doing a
Speaker 1: college show years ago when I was younger, and my
Speaker 1: younger pull off a student loan or a book by joke,
Speaker 1: the university we give comedians a swag bag, and swag
Speaker 1: bag was really the same stuff they were giving the
Speaker 1: kids for coming to the show. And there would be
Speaker 1: a cup and as a little rah rah rah goal
Speaker 1: team towel, and every now and then there would be
Speaker 1: a rape whistle in the bag and I could distinctly remember,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the other male comedians I was
Speaker 1: on the show, but they were like, take a look
Speaker 1: at the rap whistle and just throw that back on
Speaker 1: the top. I don't need one of those. Give me
Speaker 1: a key ring. As a man, you are oblivious to
Speaker 1: a lot of that. What are some of the other
Speaker 1: precautions that women have to take every day when they
Speaker 1: leave their home that men are just completely oblivious and
Speaker 1: stupid too. I mean, I take precautions in my home.
Speaker 1: You know, I have an alarm system. I live in
Speaker 1: a city that has fairly high crime. And I remember
Speaker 1: about midnight one night, I stay awake really late. I'm
Speaker 1: a writer where you know, we're creatures of habit I guess,
Speaker 1: and this person knocked at my door and I was
Speaker 1: only like three ft away from the door, and I
Speaker 1: just like, holy fuck, you know, I like, you're like huh.
Speaker 1: And and then I went and hid behind like one
Speaker 1: of my chairs in my living room, which is stupid,
Speaker 1: Like what's that gonna do, Like I'm not here, I'm
Speaker 1: not here. And I just remember feeling this like, you know,
Speaker 1: of course I called the police and whatever, but there's
Speaker 1: this feeling I get. I don't know if it's the
Speaker 1: same for you, Christiana, where it feels like it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what prep preparations I have. I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a journalist who's covered war zones and natural disasters, and
Speaker 1: you know, I took a class for journalists and hostile
Speaker 1: environment and all these things that are supposed to like
Speaker 1: give me the some advantage that other women don't have.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't feel those advantages in any tactile way. I still
Speaker 1: feel vulnerable. It really is something I open. And you know,
Speaker 1: even something that I try to do is not walk
Speaker 1: too fast or make my presence known. If I'm coming
Speaker 1: up behind you, you make a call for your scuff
Speaker 1: your feet, like you just want to be president of
Speaker 1: other people's space as well. Yeah, you know, to the
Speaker 1: point you made there, sometimes feels like a futility to
Speaker 1: all of these precautions, because the implication is the women
Speaker 1: that do suffer from violence is that they weren't cautious enough.
Speaker 1: But of course we know there's not that's not true.
Speaker 1: There's kind of this randomness to it, all right, And
Speaker 1: I mean, for me, I have all of these measures.
Speaker 1: I tend not to go out too late by myself.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, someone always knows where I am and
Speaker 1: where I'm expected when I'm expected to be back. Some
Speaker 1: of that is just growing up African. Your parents are strict.
Speaker 1: I'm very used to you know. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be called like a Roman ambassador because you're always in
Speaker 1: the streets. So I feel like I'm always trying to
Speaker 1: be accountable to someone. So that's probably just like immigrant trauma. Really,
Speaker 1: but my parents are like, are you still here? Coming?
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of just always just these little things. Um,
Speaker 1: I would rarely order maybe uber eats when it's just
Speaker 1: me and my son in the house because I'm concerned
Speaker 1: about if a man sees me alone. You know, it's
Speaker 1: very You're very vulnerable as a woman when a man
Speaker 1: knows you're alone, you know. So oftentimes I'll send my
Speaker 1: husband to the door, or even if we have a
Speaker 1: handyman come to the house, I won't come downstairs because
Speaker 1: it's just like there's a there's a man I don't
Speaker 1: know in this house. Never and have you ever done
Speaker 1: that thing where you like shout as if someone's there? Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah. People,
Speaker 1: I live in a house, own apartment, but people who
Speaker 1: come and do surveys and stuff like that. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: hold on, my husband needs met like I'm not married.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just just that that apt. You learn
Speaker 1: to pretend quickly and use it as some sort of
Speaker 1: shield because from experience, I have learned that men will
Speaker 1: defer to men. And you know, a woman will tell
Speaker 1: you from a man comes up to you and ask
Speaker 1: for your phone number. If you say, oh, I have
Speaker 1: a husband or I have a boyfriend, they will respect
Speaker 1: that invisible man far more than the woman they see
Speaker 1: in front of them. So you just learned to do
Speaker 1: all of these things, and far more than a woman
Speaker 1: saying no, I do you know that that's not enough.
Speaker 1: He would rather respect this mythical creature, this mythical boyfriend
Speaker 1: or husband. UM, then respect your consent in wanting to engage.
Speaker 1: So how do we get to this place where? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is the burden on women to stay safe than
Speaker 1: on men to change their behavior? Oh? Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: due question. I don't want to make it seem like
Speaker 1: I walk around every moment of every day with this
Speaker 1: um like hyper vigilance, Like I don't. In general, I
Speaker 1: feel safe in my life and in the life. I've
Speaker 1: carved out, um, sometimes going to unfamiliar places. My you know,
Speaker 1: I have my spidy senses are a little heightened. I
Speaker 1: think that to answer that question, the simplest answer to me,
Speaker 1: why has there been this entitlement is because they can
Speaker 1: and because all of the systems of our world, you know,
Speaker 1: from the judiciary to law enforcement, to all these major
Speaker 1: systems education, they all started, you know, by men with
Speaker 1: men in mind. You know, I'm talking more specifically about
Speaker 1: this country, but I think it's true of other countries
Speaker 1: as well, that like men write the rules, men make
Speaker 1: the rules. Men you know, um, in many countries still
Speaker 1: today control the literal behavior of the women around them,
Speaker 1: all the women around them. And so I think it
Speaker 1: feels to me like we're going through a growth period,
Speaker 1: even just having this conversation. We didn't have these conversations
Speaker 1: when I was like in college, you know, bazillion years
Speaker 1: ago or whatever. So I do think it's growth. Well,
Speaker 1: let's bat track for a second for before the next
Speaker 1: question I have for you. Let's talk about the different
Speaker 1: types of violence against women, because so far we're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, home invasion or someone kidnapping. But if
Speaker 1: you could Rachel breakdown. You know some of the other
Speaker 1: ways that men can abuse or create some sort of
Speaker 1: domestic discomfort of that terrorism, I'm going used to work
Speaker 1: create a little domestic terrorism on people that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: involve physical violence or physical harm. Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason that my book is called
Speaker 1: No Visible Bruises, Right, It's like, so, you know, there's
Speaker 1: emotional abuse, their psychological abuse, and there's coercive behavior. For example,
Speaker 1: I covered the Orlando Pulse trial that Omar Matine killed
Speaker 1: nightclub nightclub shooting and his um. He had been married twice,
Speaker 1: so he was it was his second marriage when the
Speaker 1: shooting happened, and with both women he had been incredibly controlling.
Speaker 1: So with his second wife, he moved her three thousand
Speaker 1: miles across the country where she had no one. She
Speaker 1: was from California and he moved her to Florida. She
Speaker 1: didn't drive, and he wouldn't let her drive, so she
Speaker 1: was really isolated. She didn't have her name on the
Speaker 1: bank accounts, and he would give her money to spend
Speaker 1: for her and her son every week. None of these
Speaker 1: are physical violence, and in fact, none of them are
Speaker 1: against the law. It's just a way of coercing and
Speaker 1: controlling somebody. Now, he did actually strangle both women non fatal,
Speaker 1: non fatally obviously um and in in in Florida. In fact,
Speaker 1: in most states, if you're convicted of non fatal strangulation strangulation,
Speaker 1: it can carry a ten year prison sentence. But he
Speaker 1: was never convicted. I mean, he could have should have
Speaker 1: been in prison when that Orlando pulse shooting happened, but
Speaker 1: he was never charged and never convicted. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's two types of violence, one or not. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of way. I mean, there's another there's another
Speaker 1: guy in my book who went out into the countryside.
Speaker 1: They lived in Montana, went out into the countryside and
Speaker 1: got a rattlesnake and brought it home and he kept
Speaker 1: it in a cage um and told his wife that
Speaker 1: he was going to put it in bed with her
Speaker 1: or put it in the shower with her if she
Speaker 1: did anything that piste him off. You don't have to
Speaker 1: physically be violent to control somebody. And there's no there's
Speaker 1: only two states with laws against coercive control right now,
Speaker 1: and they're both brand new and really haven't been tested.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially in this digital age, there's so
Speaker 1: many ways where you can terrorize a woman without even
Speaker 1: physically seeing her or touching her. You can leak her nudes,
Speaker 1: you can threaten to leak any intimate videos or photos
Speaker 1: you've taken. You can create fake Instagram and Twitter accounts
Speaker 1: and follow her every move, and whether it's a Snapchat,
Speaker 1: you know there's women that's he was following me on
Speaker 1: Snapchat and turning up to where I was because if
Speaker 1: you know, like geo locations now, right, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to find where people are doxing. There are just so
Speaker 1: many ways that if a man wants to make a
Speaker 1: woman's life incredibly difficult but still be within the limits
Speaker 1: of the law, he can do so. And it's quite
Speaker 1: terrifying for both of you. Then what are social media companies?
Speaker 1: Because on the other side of the break, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about um oh, Kanye and Kim and my
Speaker 1: friend Pete Davidson, But what are what are you all?
Speaker 1: In your eyes, the two of you, what do you
Speaker 1: think social media companies are doing right now to try
Speaker 1: and regulate that type of behavior. It's enough happening in
Speaker 1: that regard because it feels like if I can get
Speaker 1: a rattlesnake, or I can intimidate you, I can drive
Speaker 1: by your job. That's more individual, one on one. But
Speaker 1: social media is a space, it's regulated. There are moderators.
Speaker 1: At least they claimed that there's moderates who are supposed
Speaker 1: to be monitoring and policing and regulating that type of behavior.
Speaker 1: Our social media companies are doing enough. I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on that. In any ways, I think we know
Speaker 1: that they're kind of failing in a lot of areas
Speaker 1: in terms of racial harassment abuse. Um, A lot of
Speaker 1: women do do not feel safe on Twitter or YouTube
Speaker 1: or even streaming on Twitch because of what they'll see
Speaker 1: in the comments section. I know Instagram has a feature
Speaker 1: now that if you block someone, you can also put
Speaker 1: the option to block any other accounts they create. But
Speaker 1: for some of these men or sometimes women who are
Speaker 1: incredibly obsessive and determined, that type of safe measures is
Speaker 1: simply not enough. But I think even if we resolve
Speaker 1: some of the social media piece and make tech companies
Speaker 1: ensure that everyone that has, say a Twitter account, is
Speaker 1: someone who's not anonymous and they have to be a
Speaker 1: real human being and etcetera, etcetera, it's such a wider
Speaker 1: societal problem. It just doesn't get to the root and
Speaker 1: the heart of the issue. And I think that's that's
Speaker 1: the big problem. I think part of the problem is
Speaker 1: they're not regulated, right, we as as society are relying
Speaker 1: on them to, you know, have our best interests at art.
Speaker 1: Like like there's a group of twenty people reading every
Speaker 1: post on Facebook. Like it's just it's it's an algorithm,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it catches it, sometimes it doesn't. Lately, I've
Speaker 1: been getting, um, these emails that go through I have
Speaker 1: a website, and I have a I have someone else
Speaker 1: who gets that email for me. It doesn't come directly
Speaker 1: to me, and they keep sending the same thing, like
Speaker 1: Rachel Snyder has a lot to answer for with pictures
Speaker 1: of me pulled from all over the web, and that's it.
Speaker 1: There's no threat, there's no um direct question about what
Speaker 1: it is. I have something to answer for, and you know, I, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me nervous. I have a kid, I you know,
Speaker 1: live where I live. Um, I've alerted campus security where
Speaker 1: I'm a professor. So but what can you do it?
Speaker 1: None of it is against the law, and none of
Speaker 1: it is like specific. You know, yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: great area. Well, after the break, I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about um, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West
Speaker 1: and how Christian and the Daily Show writers almost got
Speaker 1: Trevor now into a fight with Kanye West, and I
Speaker 1: want you to explain yourself almost time. It was a
Speaker 1: real fine he might have came up here. You never know.
Speaker 1: It was during a hiatus week, so Kanye couldn't come
Speaker 1: fight is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Before
Speaker 1: the break, we were talking a little bit about Kim
Speaker 1: Kardashian and Kanye West and everything that Kanye has been
Speaker 1: doing against her, and we did a segment on that
Speaker 1: on the show. Well, Trevor did I want to say,
Speaker 1: wait in case Kanye com up here and try to
Speaker 1: fight it is Trevor. Trevor did it Kanye. But that's
Speaker 1: probably one of the most high profile examples of harassment
Speaker 1: that we have right now. You know, Johnny Depp and
Speaker 1: Amber heard as well. But Christiana, we spoke on Kim
Speaker 1: and Kanye on the show. How did you all decide
Speaker 1: how to tackle this topic? Because this isn't a typical
Speaker 1: Daily Show piece. You know, we're told the night before
Speaker 1: what's going to be on the show the next day
Speaker 1: and sometimes so we can just read that more on
Speaker 1: the stories or just you know what's happening. And when
Speaker 1: I saw in Slack that we were doing Kim and Kanye,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's surprising. When anything involved a
Speaker 1: Kardashians immediately becomes tabloid, and we historically don't touch tabloid stories.
Speaker 1: So there was this just the very natural reluctance that
Speaker 1: comes with us, like why are we doing this very
Speaker 1: tabloid story? And then there was some trepidation because it
Speaker 1: involves miners. You know, they have children, and there's some
Speaker 1: icky about discussing such a public dispute when there are
Speaker 1: children at the center of the center of it. And
Speaker 1: even though these are children that are on reality TV
Speaker 1: a lot, this just feels a lot more sensitive and
Speaker 1: like there are so many land mines, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, about how we could weave it and
Speaker 1: do it well. And again, remember where a comedy show,
Speaker 1: so we're going to be making jokes, right, so it's
Speaker 1: the task is incredibly difficult. But the feeling was from
Speaker 1: Trevor when Trevor and myself spoke about it that even
Speaker 1: though this was quote unquote being viewed as a tabloid story,
Speaker 1: It was really a microcosm of so many themes that
Speaker 1: happen in society in general, and there were bigger lessons
Speaker 1: to learn from it, and Kim, in a despite her
Speaker 1: vast wealth and resources, was kind of emblematic of what
Speaker 1: so many women are going through right now, and they're
Speaker 1: not being believed and people treating it like a joke,
Speaker 1: and everyone is standing by watching this escalating behavior and
Speaker 1: not spotting them as red flags. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: that being our entry point made what was a very
Speaker 1: difficult and tricky process made it a lot easier. And
Speaker 1: then you know, from the comedy side outside, what I
Speaker 1: found funny and it was a joke that did make
Speaker 1: the segment was just like, you know, Kim, in her
Speaker 1: effort to kind of rebrand, has gone down this social
Speaker 1: justice route and she's training, she's trying to do the
Speaker 1: bar or whatever, and in her spare time, she frees
Speaker 1: black men from jail. Right, That's that's what kind of
Speaker 1: hobby is right now, black women to black women too,
Speaker 1: So what are the optics of you like, free and
Speaker 1: black men from jail in your spare time and then
Speaker 1: calling the police and the black man who happens to
Speaker 1: be your ex husband harassing you. Like she she's kind
Speaker 1: of in this real branding, real life conundrum, which isn't funny,
Speaker 1: but it's also funny, right, And and we're just talking
Speaker 1: about that, like there are many reasons why she can't
Speaker 1: call the police, but there is probably on her part,
Speaker 1: like this look hypocritical. I'm supposed to be like this abolitionist.
Speaker 1: So we were just teasing through the comedy in the
Speaker 1: complications of it all, but still trying to convey the
Speaker 1: gravitas of the situation and our belief that Kim could
Speaker 1: be in grave danger. Even even someone like me. I
Speaker 1: was like so tuned in to these issues. And it's
Speaker 1: like when I heard that monologue from him, I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, even I had been had this casual celebrity
Speaker 1: relationship to her, like I do, okay all that. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people go like Kim Kardashian. She loves publicity,
Speaker 1: she loves celebrity, she loves all of this. She does
Speaker 1: the Kardashian this is her life, this is her thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I get it, But there's also an element of
Speaker 1: a woman saying to her ex, hey, Please leave me alone.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Please leave me alone, Because
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you what I see from this situation.
Speaker 1: I see a woman who wants to live her life
Speaker 1: without being harassed by an ex boyfriend or an ex husband,
Speaker 1: or an ex anything. What she's going through is terrifying
Speaker 1: to watch, and it shines a spotlight on what so
Speaker 1: many women go through when they choose to leave. You know,
Speaker 1: people always say that phrase to women. They go like,
Speaker 1: why didn't you leave? Oh, why didn't you leave? Why
Speaker 1: didn't you leave? Yeah, because a lot of women women
Speaker 1: realize when they do leave, the guy will get even crazier.
Speaker 1: And when I say crazy, I don't mean mental health crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's you. You understand what I mean. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. The point is that Kim Kardashian
Speaker 1: and countless other women, they find themselves in a terrible position,
Speaker 1: you know, because asking Kinye to stop clearly isn't helping.
Speaker 1: If Kim cannot escape this, Kim Kardashian, if she cannot
Speaker 1: escape this, and what chance to normal women have? Roy
Speaker 1: will tell you Twevor and I have a very interesting
Speaker 1: dynamic and relationship. We kind of like butt heads a lot,
Speaker 1: and that's I think how we produce some really good stuff.
Speaker 1: We don't always agree, but there's a deep respect there.
Speaker 1: And it was just one of these things that I
Speaker 1: had been on sabbatical and I've been talking a lot
Speaker 1: about it on my Instagram, and Trevor follows me on Instagram,
Speaker 1: so he was seeing a lot of what I was
Speaker 1: saying about this particular case. And then he was like
Speaker 1: he wanted to do on the show, but he didn't
Speaker 1: know I was back off sabbatical, and then he reached
Speaker 1: I was like Christian and I'm doing kim K tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Like it was weird because you're not here, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm back, and we kind of just rang stormed it
Speaker 1: and did a lot of talking and I just gave
Speaker 1: him my whole speeled about it. And then the next
Speaker 1: day it did like a smaller meeting with the other
Speaker 1: producers and our show runner and then yeah, really it
Speaker 1: really came together, and I think we were like buzzing
Speaker 1: for about a week afterwards because of the conversation it
Speaker 1: generated that felt so important. Trevor said that he was
Speaker 1: biking down Hudson Highway and some dude was jogging and
Speaker 1: then ran after him. I want to say thank you
Speaker 1: to you for what you said about Kim Kardashian. I
Speaker 1: never saw it that way, but now I'm different. It
Speaker 1: was like, look at you drive making allies. I like,
Speaker 1: I don't know those Kardashians, but wow, this is horrible,
Speaker 1: like the way people really switched. And you know, Kim's
Speaker 1: kind of unlikable to a lot of people. And I
Speaker 1: don't think you should be likable to be a victim,
Speaker 1: but it says a lot that if you can get
Speaker 1: people to be like, oh, you know what, if it's
Speaker 1: not it's not right. So it felt like important. It
Speaker 1: felt important, you know, totally, and coming from him. It's
Speaker 1: the you know, if I said it, I'd get like,
Speaker 1: we can't come. It can't come from a woman. That's
Speaker 1: why I explained that to him. I don't look forever.
Speaker 1: The reason it's resonating so much. It's a bit like racism,
Speaker 1: when when white people say this is racist, everyone's like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, this must really be racist. So if a
Speaker 1: man comes out and says this is why, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let me and everyone kind of steps back and said, well,
Speaker 1: if because the bath men have for violence is different,
Speaker 1: they always feel that women are being hysteric cool, so
Speaker 1: for trying to be like, hey, guys, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: he's going to do anything, but we may need to
Speaker 1: just step back. So they rachel to that point. What
Speaker 1: are some of the examples that you've seen in Kanye's
Speaker 1: behavior that our textbook examples of this of the harassment
Speaker 1: and abuse that women deal with when trying to leave
Speaker 1: a relationship. Yeah, that's a good question because my guess
Speaker 1: is that what we're seeing on the outside is just
Speaker 1: at the tip of the iceberg. You know, there have
Speaker 1: been the text there's been the manipulation of his social media, right,
Speaker 1: so he has this kind of like hidden army behind him.
Speaker 1: There's been um, the children used as leverage, right like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was not allowed to go to the
Speaker 1: birthday part. I wasn't told that. You know. There's that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and the video, which I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, but it's the collective of that that is
Speaker 1: concerning to me, and not just the collective, but the
Speaker 1: escalation of it, where it's like he's upping the anti
Speaker 1: And I should mention that he apparently a week or
Speaker 1: two ago there rely said he's going to get help
Speaker 1: and whatever. And you know, I hope that's true and
Speaker 1: that he does get help. Um, but it's it's the escalation,
Speaker 1: which I think the most extreme is the video, right,
Speaker 1: Like it all kind of leads up to that video.
Speaker 1: We'll talking about the Pete Davidson where he threatened Pete
Speaker 1: Davidson in a music Yeah. Yeah, I know that he
Speaker 1: hides behind his art, right these says I'm an artist,
Speaker 1: this is just art. But really, um, you could then
Speaker 1: choose anybody, right like you you actually have Pete Davidson's
Speaker 1: name in your song, So it's not art when when
Speaker 1: it's a threat, like don't house across the street from
Speaker 1: you from your soon to be ex wife is exactly art,
Speaker 1: right right? Yeah, it's this stock. It's this stocking that's harassment.
Speaker 1: You know, She's been very good about not making too
Speaker 1: many public statements, but she's made a few, and even
Speaker 1: that I feel like fuels him, Um, fuels the type
Speaker 1: of person that he is to like up the game
Speaker 1: to him. Christiana. The thing that I found very interesting
Speaker 1: about Trevor's pieces that you're looking at an abusive dynamic
Speaker 1: between him and Kanye and for the people who have
Speaker 1: read Trevor's book and no Trevor's history. Trevor is a
Speaker 1: child that grew up in an abusive home, so he's
Speaker 1: seen a lot of the stuff that is starting to
Speaker 1: mirror itself. Now. How much of a decision was there
Speaker 1: for Trevor to put his own emotions into into the
Speaker 1: segment because I felt like somewhere underneath all of that
Speaker 1: there was still a piece of compassion for Kanye and
Speaker 1: wanting Kanye to get better. It didn't seem like a
Speaker 1: full blown villa, like a dunk on him, like you
Speaker 1: weren't dunking, as much as it was acknowledging the behavior,
Speaker 1: acknowledging how corrosive it is, and trying to find solutions.
Speaker 1: We were very keen not to villainize anybody in this piece,
Speaker 1: right because I think that's the ink that the public
Speaker 1: leaned towards. You know, we need to have a villain
Speaker 1: in this story. You need to have a hero in
Speaker 1: this story. You need to have a perfect victim in
Speaker 1: this story. And it's really complicated. Um. Kanye has also
Speaker 1: been very open about his mental health struggles over the years,
Speaker 1: and they've been courageous and been candid about the difficulties
Speaker 1: he had, and not to use his mental illness as
Speaker 1: a route to justify any of this this behavior, because
Speaker 1: that's not the case. But that was really important context
Speaker 1: for us that there are their times when Kanye's unwell,
Speaker 1: this time when he's lucid. You know, he's very complicated man,
Speaker 1: But none of that justified what was happening. So we
Speaker 1: were very keen to say, Okay, what Kanye is doing
Speaker 1: is terrible, it's harassment, but we're not here to beat
Speaker 1: Kanye up or beat men like Kanye. We didn't think
Speaker 1: there was a productive way to frame things, um because
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't and it would have gone over the
Speaker 1: heads of a lot of people who interesting enough, so
Speaker 1: many people were team Kanye that that that was where
Speaker 1: the public discourse was at that point, and anyone that
Speaker 1: came up against Kanye in a specific way were like,
Speaker 1: Kanye is a villain. They weren't hearing it. So we
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, Kanye is doing a really bad thing,
Speaker 1: and we need to get people who don't see that
Speaker 1: to see that. We also need really need to make
Speaker 1: it clear about what Kim is going through. And we
Speaker 1: also knew that there was an audience that was unsympathetic
Speaker 1: because she's incredibly wealthy, she has this reality show. She's
Speaker 1: seen as a low brow celebrity who has no talent,
Speaker 1: even though I think her talent is like making many
Speaker 1: do you think, yeah, exactly. Appropriation pieces, the har phobia,
Speaker 1: and the fact that this empire was kind of built
Speaker 1: on a sex tape. There there are so many things
Speaker 1: that mean that people do not want to receive it
Speaker 1: when they hear that Kim Kardashi and a woman like
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian is being harassed and stalked, they just don't
Speaker 1: get it. So we were conscious of all the nuances
Speaker 1: of the piece going into it and just trying to
Speaker 1: cover each part of the argument. And of course you
Speaker 1: heard Trevor say a lot. I'm not saying that Kanye
Speaker 1: is going to kill him or God forbid that happens,
Speaker 1: but he was just saying the warning signals are here,
Speaker 1: and he was able to spot those signals, I think
Speaker 1: because of his personal experience. But I will say that
Speaker 1: you know, when you work with Trevor on a headline,
Speaker 1: he's not something He's quite journalistic in the sense that
Speaker 1: he doesn't necessarily want to insert himself in the story
Speaker 1: that's not his impulse. His impulse is actually to kind
Speaker 1: of be like UM, impartial observer in times, and then
Speaker 1: at the end will kind of give his take. And
Speaker 1: I feel he was a bit reluctant to tell the
Speaker 1: personal side of his story, not because he's not courageous
Speaker 1: enough to do that. He's been really open about his life,
Speaker 1: but there was a feeling that perhaps that would color
Speaker 1: the entire piece. But in my view, Trevor's personal story
Speaker 1: was perhaps one of the most powerful parts of that
Speaker 1: segment because he has been a witness to that type
Speaker 1: of violence and intimidation and harassment, and he was saying, guys,
Speaker 1: this is also coming from a very personal connection UM,
Speaker 1: and I felt the audience found that compelling as kind
Speaker 1: of end note to this entire monologue that he did.
Speaker 1: He built a really strong case, and then he brought
Speaker 1: himself into the story. I grew up my whole life
Speaker 1: in an abusive household, right most of mine, let's say,
Speaker 1: from the age of nine to whatever sixteen. One of
Speaker 1: the things I found most interesting was how often people
Speaker 1: told my mom that she was overreacting. What I found
Speaker 1: interesting was how many times people told my mom to
Speaker 1: calm down. People told my family to calm to everyone,
Speaker 1: you know, and everyone had different reasons. Oh. I remember
Speaker 1: once we went to the police station and they said
Speaker 1: to my mom, oh, but did you talk back? Is
Speaker 1: that why you're here? You know? You know? Oh, but
Speaker 1: but what did you say to it? It's all these questions,
Speaker 1: all these questions. I remember seeing this as a child.
Speaker 1: By the way, you see this as a child, you know,
Speaker 1: and you see a world where women are questioned for
Speaker 1: what is happening to them, as opposed to people questioning
Speaker 1: what is happening to them. And for years people said
Speaker 1: this ship, no, this are you know this? This, this happens,
Speaker 1: This happened, that happens. There is everyone, police, some families, stranger,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, whatever it was, And I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: One day I got a call from my brother saying, hey,
Speaker 1: mom has just been shot in the head. She's in
Speaker 1: the hospital now. She's just been shot. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it to make it about me. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why I look at the story differently. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, is I go, it seems like nothing.
Speaker 1: And again I'm not saying Kanye will please, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he will not saying that, but you see it
Speaker 1: in all these stories. People say we saw it, but
Speaker 1: we didn't we whether it's the people around him, whether
Speaker 1: it's the people in their lives, whether it's us as
Speaker 1: society condoning or not condoning. And I know it's nuanced.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying kind of is just a bad guy, please,
Speaker 1: But just as society, you know, we have to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves questions. Do we wish to stand by and watch
Speaker 1: a car crash when we thought we saw it coming,
Speaker 1: or do we at least want to say, hey, slow down,
Speaker 1: let's put let's all put our hazards on because there's
Speaker 1: a storm right now and some ship might go down.
Speaker 1: Let's just let's just put our hands. If it doesn't happen, Hey,
Speaker 1: the worst thing we did was we all had our
Speaker 1: hazards on like idiots. I'm I'll be fine to say
Speaker 1: I was an idiot, nothing happened. I'd rather be in
Speaker 1: that situation than to be in one way. I say, man,
Speaker 1: I wish we didn't think the whole thing wasn't worth
Speaker 1: looking at. It was beautiful and it was I love
Speaker 1: what you said about not essentially not taking away Kanye's humanity,
Speaker 1: because that's that's how we don't solve problems, is by
Speaker 1: flattening the other person, right. I spent a lot I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with abusers, and um, they're
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, they're they're sort of simultaneously out
Speaker 1: of control and in control at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're usually filled with shame about their behavior too.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're doing this and they feel good
Speaker 1: about it. They feel. As one researcher said to me,
Speaker 1: I've never met a happy abuser ever. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: not happy either. Trevor in a ridiculously long Instagram post
Speaker 1: about Kanye and really, to Kanye, I don't know, this
Speaker 1: must be like some special celebrity Instagram. It is like
Speaker 1: fifteen paragraphs, but one part of it that really really
Speaker 1: stuck out and touched me, you know, he said, it
Speaker 1: breaks my heart to see you like this. I don't
Speaker 1: care if you support Trump. I don't care if you
Speaker 1: roast Pete. I do, however, care when I see you
Speaker 1: on a path that's dangerously close to peril and pain.
Speaker 1: I've woken up too many times and red headlines about
Speaker 1: men who have killed their excess, their kids, and then themselves.
Speaker 1: I never want to read that about you. If you're
Speaker 1: just joking about it all, then I'm an idiot for caring,
Speaker 1: and so be it. But I'd rather be the idiot
Speaker 1: who spoke up and said something to you in life,
Speaker 1: then the cool guy who said nothing and then mourned
Speaker 1: you in prison or the grave. Yere, he should write
Speaker 1: a book. I got goose bumps, you know. And at
Speaker 1: a time where so many people can just ride the
Speaker 1: wave of the way the media has set this up.
Speaker 1: It's Kanye crazy, Kim trippling man. Let that man see
Speaker 1: his kids? Like, what role does the media play in
Speaker 1: shaping the one sided nous of it all? Because no
Speaker 1: one can find the nuance in the middle. And I
Speaker 1: know that the media plays a role in it. So
Speaker 1: you journey, What did you do wrong? Um? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what I would say I have. I have a
Speaker 1: lot to say about this, So sit back. No, how
Speaker 1: does the media help shape this narrative that keeps me?
Speaker 1: We've we've we've minimized the problems the problems of wealthy,
Speaker 1: famous people. We we put them on a pedestal. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so that's a particular problem with Kim and Kanye that
Speaker 1: you know, we don't feel for her because how could
Speaker 1: she have problems when she's when she's rich, or she's beautiful,
Speaker 1: or she has this you know, perfect butt or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think there's a bigger problem with the media
Speaker 1: in minimizing domestic violence as a as a whole. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I could take the phrase domestic dispute and like
Speaker 1: blow it off the landscape of media forever, I would,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about crime, and there's no other crime
Speaker 1: I can think of where we downplay it and call
Speaker 1: it a dispute, like like Omar Mateen non fatally strangling
Speaker 1: straight going his first wife or a second wife is
Speaker 1: not a domestic dispute. It's attempted murder, and we need
Speaker 1: to call it what it is. To me, it also
Speaker 1: just feels like sexism, right. No one cares about the
Speaker 1: pain of women. People don't take it ceriously, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's not seen as valid pain. And my anger at
Speaker 1: the media narrative about Kim and Kanye before we'd done
Speaker 1: that segment was that everyone was treating it like a joke.
Speaker 1: There was this he he ha. Kanye put a truck
Speaker 1: full of roses outside of Kim's house, he liked people.
Speaker 1: It was funny and I was looking at like, this
Speaker 1: is scary. Love makes you crazy? Yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just it was seen as a funny kind of tabloid
Speaker 1: spat rather than a really insidious step domestic. I always
Speaker 1: tell my daughter like, if if a man hires an
Speaker 1: orchestra to come play on your lawn, like that's not romantic,
Speaker 1: run run as fast as you can. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like grand justice. I mean, it's used so much now
Speaker 1: I kind of hate the phrase. But love bombing, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all of this stuff he was doing, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at it and I thought, I'm scared for
Speaker 1: this woman. And the only other people I saw saying
Speaker 1: that were like other women. But the media coverage, just
Speaker 1: the way the story was framed, was not framed as
Speaker 1: this is a mother and a wife um who is
Speaker 1: in danger, in some sort of peril. It was like
Speaker 1: Kim k you know, doesn't want kinyes flowers, ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: He's doing his best. It was weird, and even if
Speaker 1: it goes south is just called a crime of passion,
Speaker 1: Like it's still like, well, you know, look if you
Speaker 1: be tripping sometimes he's still a good person. But how
Speaker 1: do how do women who don't have the resources and
Speaker 1: the the high level of celebrity that Kim Kardashian hair,
Speaker 1: How do we get the media to even look at
Speaker 1: these stories? Because there's a million Kim Kardashians happening on
Speaker 1: a regular basis in this country, especially women of color.
Speaker 1: How do we get the media to start turning their
Speaker 1: ads towards those those types of stories. I have no idea,
Speaker 1: And I think the distressing thing about all of this
Speaker 1: is if a woman with Kim Kardashian's resources and visibility
Speaker 1: and wealth, is this vulnerable and the world kind of
Speaker 1: just looks on and laughs. What does it mean for
Speaker 1: the woman who's undocumented and is afraid to go into
Speaker 1: the police station because there's a language barrier and she's
Speaker 1: afraid of getting deported, and her abuser uses that against her,
Speaker 1: her community are using that against her. What does that
Speaker 1: say about a woman who's being financially abused and doesn't
Speaker 1: have access to her bank account and has no idea
Speaker 1: about an escape route. Because the reason we didn't want
Speaker 1: to villainize Kanye is because abuses are very complicated people.
Speaker 1: There are so many men that people are He would
Speaker 1: never beat his wife. He's the nicest guy ever, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they're really charismatic and charming, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to make it clear that the men that are doing
Speaker 1: this to women in your everyday life are often like
Speaker 1: Kanye in the sense that you're enamored with a part
Speaker 1: of them, You really like them, that make you feel good.
Speaker 1: But there's also side to them that's much darker. And
Speaker 1: I don't know how we make that change where people
Speaker 1: are actually really concerned by the about the under privilege
Speaker 1: and under resourced women, or and us even learning that
Speaker 1: super wealthy women who perhaps becomes stay at home mom
Speaker 1: and relied on their husband for income for the last
Speaker 1: fifty to twenty years, they're vulnerable too. It's it's a
Speaker 1: really hard thing because I don't think most people understand
Speaker 1: how difficult it is for one woman to escape, especially
Speaker 1: um the low on the socio economic ladd as she is.
Speaker 1: There was research done by a woman named Joan Meyer
Speaker 1: at George Washington University. She did research on custody cases
Speaker 1: where there were custody disputes and found that of the
Speaker 1: cases where abuse was alleged by a woman, they lost
Speaker 1: the kids. They lost the kid, the woman lost the kids. So,
Speaker 1: you know, abusers used that I'm going to have your
Speaker 1: kids taken away from you, and it works. That works, right.
Speaker 1: There's a there's you know, there's a guy that I
Speaker 1: spoke with years ago, a researcher who talked about how abusers,
Speaker 1: just like you said, Christiana, are they're charming. That's how
Speaker 1: they get victims in the first place. They're often very
Speaker 1: very quick courtships. I'm completely skeptical of fast courtships now,
Speaker 1: I have to admit, and they mess up victims lives
Speaker 1: because we want our victims to be a certain way, right,
Speaker 1: we all have. I mean, I think even if you
Speaker 1: weren't a child of the eighties like I was, you
Speaker 1: still have an image of like the burning bed, right
Speaker 1: like that, that's your that's your image, and the fact
Speaker 1: is like that, that's not realistic. You know, people can't leave.
Speaker 1: Women can't leave because bureaucracy holds you in place. You can't,
Speaker 1: you know, get the name of your husband off your
Speaker 1: checking account without his permission, interacting with him. You can't
Speaker 1: sign your kids up for another school. I did a
Speaker 1: story on a woman who had been to shelter in
Speaker 1: and out of shelters for twenty years she tried to leave.
Speaker 1: They had two girls, and he got really smart. The
Speaker 1: last time she tried to leave, she went to a
Speaker 1: shelter in Maine. She lived in Massachusetts, and he wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to the school system saying, you know, such
Speaker 1: as such has taken off. She's unstable, she bipolar. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid that she's going to do something with with the kids,
Speaker 1: So don't let her register the kids out of school
Speaker 1: without my permission. Right, And he's he and he ended
Speaker 1: up killing her, you know, and killed himself. So they
Speaker 1: know that our systems lock victims in place every bit
Speaker 1: as much as our own sort of social responsibility to
Speaker 1: not minimize this and not marginalize victims. After the break,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about solutions to these issues, and
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the phrase toxic masculine. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's what I just saw you shifting your seat
Speaker 1: right back. You know, we talk about these events of violence,
Speaker 1: but we usually only talk about them after something terrible
Speaker 1: has happened. On the prevention side, ladies, what can we
Speaker 1: do to keep these crimes from happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I will say that other countries
Speaker 1: are doing some interesting things. There's UM in the UK,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a there's a violence prevention hotline that
Speaker 1: anybody men or women, although it is men who call,
Speaker 1: can call and get help if they are in a
Speaker 1: moment that is UM problematic, I'll say problematic. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a solution in that it's gonna UM, you know,
Speaker 1: solve violence against women forever and ever, but it is
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do do. What you're trying to
Speaker 1: do is disrupt a moment of violence or potential violence.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's a useful tool. In the States,
Speaker 1: we just UH signed reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act.
Speaker 1: It had been sort of stagnant for roughly and for
Speaker 1: the first time ever, they have earmarked funds to UM
Speaker 1: figure out what works in anti violent lens prevention programs,
Speaker 1: and so I think, to me that's a really positive
Speaker 1: step that UM we're sort of talking about not just
Speaker 1: UM how to stop the violence before it happens, but
Speaker 1: how to keep victims in their community and in their families.
Speaker 1: Because you know, we haven't talked about this and we
Speaker 1: probably don't have a lot of time, but shelter is
Speaker 1: not a very good UM response to like take you know,
Speaker 1: a whole family out of everything familiar, allow them to suitcases,
Speaker 1: stick them in one room. You know. So I do
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of solutions out there, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that they are necessarily law enforcement solutions. I
Speaker 1: think that law enforcement often makes a terrible situation much
Speaker 1: much worse, and that we need to like in certain
Speaker 1: cities in UM San Diego, in UM, I think Baltimore.
Speaker 1: Here in Washington, d C. We have UM programs where
Speaker 1: and I think Denver has one where the domestic violence
Speaker 1: advocates will will go one calls with police officers. And
Speaker 1: I think that's really really important because just the police
Speaker 1: as a presence, with all of their gear and their
Speaker 1: tactical stuff, like their giant they're almost like machines, and
Speaker 1: they walk into a room, they're intimidating, right, So they're
Speaker 1: perceived to make the situation worse. And to Rachel's point
Speaker 1: about you know, police not being the solution, I'll say
Speaker 1: that the subculture, for lack of a better word, I
Speaker 1: grew up in in South London was predominantly made up
Speaker 1: of West African and West Indian immigrants, right, And if
Speaker 1: I speak from the vantage point of that particular subculture.
Speaker 1: Civic institutions have a lot of power, let's say, so,
Speaker 1: whether that's the church, um, whether those are like community
Speaker 1: groups that are linked to your tribe or your clan,
Speaker 1: whether those the mosques, local community centers. These civil institutions
Speaker 1: and the people that run them, so pastors and in
Speaker 1: mars and the deacons, etcetera, have a huge amount of
Speaker 1: authority over what people do. Right. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: having medical issues, you go to your pastor you like.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just talking about the way immigrants, subcultures,
Speaker 1: and subcultures in ten tend to work. And from my perspective,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of community based training needs
Speaker 1: to happen in a lot of civic institutions about understanding
Speaker 1: what abuses, and understanding who a victim is, and understanding
Speaker 1: that every man can't be her rehabilitated, and that women
Speaker 1: need to be protected and children need to be protected.
Speaker 1: And when a woman comes forward, she shouldn't be ostracized,
Speaker 1: she shouldn't be told to stay, but we also need
Speaker 1: to give her the means to escape that means she
Speaker 1: remains within the community, because it's actually the isolation that
Speaker 1: means a lot of women return their children, because when
Speaker 1: you leave the man, you leave the community. And for
Speaker 1: people I would say, especially of like minority descent, if
Speaker 1: you're of African or Asian extent, where being community, it's
Speaker 1: more about the collective than the individual. That is incredibly
Speaker 1: devastating because you lose your cousins, you lose your you
Speaker 1: lose so much. I think a big part of the
Speaker 1: solution is going into all of these subcultures, all of
Speaker 1: these communities and specifically looking at like, Okay, how do
Speaker 1: we work with these local synagogues about spotting abuse and
Speaker 1: how they can help their women, because those are really
Speaker 1: those civic institutions have so much power that they can
Speaker 1: use for good, but oftentimes they're ill equipped, right you know,
Speaker 1: they think, oh, okay, if you just pray, it'll go away,
Speaker 1: Keep praying for him, keep praying for him, and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, it's a funeral. You're burying that woman.
Speaker 1: So we need to really work through these civic institutions,
Speaker 1: in my mind, and with various community leaders and helping
Speaker 1: men being able to support women and men because women
Speaker 1: aren't the only ones being abused, um that need to
Speaker 1: leave these upper situations. Rachel, where are we with the legislation,
Speaker 1: and you know, is there a way to make restraining
Speaker 1: order is tougher? Like? Like, where are we on the
Speaker 1: I guess on the legal side of things, we have
Speaker 1: really good legislation. We just don't enforce it. We have,
Speaker 1: you know, a ban on convicted felons owning guns. But
Speaker 1: if you have a misdemeanor domestic violence charge and you
Speaker 1: live in um you know, Mississippi, no one's going to
Speaker 1: take your gun. You know, you live in Michigan, no
Speaker 1: one's going to take your gun. So I think that
Speaker 1: it's a matter of enforcing the legislation that we do have. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of states that have passed UM
Speaker 1: coercive control laws where you can't you can't you know,
Speaker 1: coerce someone into you know, doing what you want them
Speaker 1: to do or whatever. California has passed a course of
Speaker 1: control off Connecticut, and then there's a few other states
Speaker 1: looking at them. I'm not sure where they're at right now.
Speaker 1: I know Maryland and New York were looking at them.
Speaker 1: And then the other the other piece of it is
Speaker 1: offering parole to victims who essentially killed their way out
Speaker 1: of um a violent relationship. It was a killer killed
Speaker 1: kind of situation. And so there's a lot of states
Speaker 1: now looking at their parole and probation boards and seeing
Speaker 1: if there's alterations they can make. New York passed one
Speaker 1: a few years ago California. Wasn't there a woman in
Speaker 1: Florida who was taking in for simply firing warning shots? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same time, the same time Trayvon Martin was killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was sentenced to twenty years. She's out now. But
Speaker 1: you know that that's it that It's an interesting example
Speaker 1: because that's one of the states that has stand your
Speaker 1: ground laws. And stand your ground laws were meant to
Speaker 1: kind of address the shortcomings of self defense, like, you know,
Speaker 1: what if it wasn't somebody breaking into your house, but
Speaker 1: it was somebody threatening you out on the street. So
Speaker 1: all these states have stand your ground laws, which is
Speaker 1: does seem to be like a growing movement, and yet
Speaker 1: stand your ground laws women almost can never use stand
Speaker 1: your ground laws, almost never. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: problem isn't with the legislation itself. It's with the gender
Speaker 1: discrimination and the bias when it's implemented. And to speak
Speaker 1: to the legislation part, I think for black women, especially
Speaker 1: engaging with the justice system comes with a lot of
Speaker 1: historical baggage. Um, it starts with do you feel comfortable
Speaker 1: calling the police? Are the police going to shoot you
Speaker 1: when they arrived? Right? These are the questions going through
Speaker 1: a black woman who's being abused. Mind, if I have
Speaker 1: a teenage son at home, are they going to miss
Speaker 1: misidentify my teenage son as a suspect not my abuser?
Speaker 1: Like that, there are a lot of subterranean issues here
Speaker 1: that we need to unpack access to legal advice because
Speaker 1: we can, we can have great policy and great legislation,
Speaker 1: but what happens when you can't afford a lawyer? You know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a really significant population of women who
Speaker 1: are at greater risk of domestic abuse who, even when
Speaker 1: we put the right legislation in place, will still not
Speaker 1: be able to access it and the law really work
Speaker 1: on their favor in the way it needs to write.
Speaker 1: And do you want to put someone in prison who
Speaker 1: is from your own marginalized community area, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't want, right And you know, I think
Speaker 1: the abolitionists have really kind of brought this conversation to
Speaker 1: the four about like prison not necessarily being the solution,
Speaker 1: especially if that man is going to be out at
Speaker 1: some point. And you know, we've we've seen so many
Speaker 1: cases of men going to prison for domestic abuse, doing
Speaker 1: their stint, coming out killing another woman. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: kind putting this problem away for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: So if we look at the idea of restorative justice
Speaker 1: and what that looks like in some communities, that may
Speaker 1: need to be the model that's prioritized because those women
Speaker 1: don't want their abuser in the want the abuser to
Speaker 1: stop abusing them and abusing other people, but they're not
Speaker 1: going to engage with the justice, the justice system all
Speaker 1: or enforcement. So we need to figure out so how
Speaker 1: do we help and protect them? Okay, so then let's
Speaker 1: end with this men garbage as terrible as men? What
Speaker 1: role can men play in ending the culture of misogyny
Speaker 1: and violence against women? Because we talk about the phrase
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity and I pulled this up because I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm defining it properly. Toxic masculinity
Speaker 1: refers to the notion that some people's idea of manly
Speaker 1: is perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression. So my last question
Speaker 1: to both of you, what are the ways that men
Speaker 1: can help change the culture on this issue. You know,
Speaker 1: that's such a great question. And when I'm talking about
Speaker 1: this with the men in my life and how I
Speaker 1: intend to talk to my son about this, is that
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity, patriarchy, all of these you know, constructs this
Speaker 1: big academic language. It harms men to right. It doesn't
Speaker 1: allow you to experience the fullness of your humanity. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to be empathetic, You're not allowed to cry
Speaker 1: when you need to, You're not allowed to express the
Speaker 1: range of your emotions. So you curtail the human experience.
Speaker 1: You're not being yourself because you're so conscious of the
Speaker 1: perception of not being man enough. So don't think this
Speaker 1: only harms me as a woman or harms the children
Speaker 1: that look up to you. It's harming you because you
Speaker 1: become a prisoner of this construct. So that's where I
Speaker 1: always start the conversation. I'm like, this is bad for
Speaker 1: you because if you you know, humans are kind of selfish, right,
Speaker 1: So if you if you frame it as this is
Speaker 1: bad for women, and well, fucking I'm not a woman,
Speaker 1: like you know that that's how people think about it.
Speaker 1: But if you're like, now, this is really bad for you.
Speaker 1: This is why you're depressed and you can't say it.
Speaker 1: This is why you're going through and you can't even
Speaker 1: share it with your Your home is that you're with
Speaker 1: all the time. So if you start from that place
Speaker 1: of like, okay, so this is what toxic masculinity does
Speaker 1: two men, and how it makes you harm your self,
Speaker 1: and then you say, this is what toxic masculinity does
Speaker 1: to the people around you, like the women that you love.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, it's kind of sad that we have to
Speaker 1: use the women that men are connected to as an
Speaker 1: entry point, because you should just care of a woman
Speaker 1: irrespective if she's romantically or biologically or community wise attached
Speaker 1: to you. But for a lot of men, they're not
Speaker 1: going to care unless that's their daughter, their mother, their sister.
Speaker 1: So you have to explain how like the behavior you perpetuate,
Speaker 1: how it affects the women in your orbit. And then
Speaker 1: you say you need to check your friends. That's what
Speaker 1: I always say, you need to check your boys because
Speaker 1: I can't do it, Like there are men that everyone
Speaker 1: knows that guy is an abusa and you still have
Speaker 1: him around. Why is that you should be ashamed? Like
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed people I don't care. I'd be like, why
Speaker 1: is he around? Why do you roll with him? I
Speaker 1: don't want to hang with you because you hang with him?
Speaker 1: Is you kind of using that language, like why are
Speaker 1: you allowing this man still to have social access even
Speaker 1: though you know he gives women drinks, he gives them
Speaker 1: a bit too many drinks so he can fondle them,
Speaker 1: even though he shouts at his girlfriend, even though he's controlling,
Speaker 1: and you turn a blind eye because he's not doing
Speaker 1: it to you, But you're actually one of the few
Speaker 1: people that can check him right. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: like my three step way of unpacking this idea of
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity and then giving them something they can I
Speaker 1: get action on. And my whole thing is, and this
Speaker 1: is how my group of friends work. We see ourselves
Speaker 1: as a community and a family, and we have to
Speaker 1: be able to be radically honest with each other. If
Speaker 1: you have that type of dynamic with a man, and
Speaker 1: he's a man that you know has influence, you should
Speaker 1: be able to have those conversations. I mean, that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I approach it. Yeah, I mean I just
Speaker 1: think there's all kinds of ways that we can slightly
Speaker 1: reframe so many of the conversations that that we're having.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, like, i know more good
Speaker 1: men than bad and I've been in a lot of prisons,
Speaker 1: so i know a lot of bad men. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: completely agree. It's just like I I think I can
Speaker 1: have this optimism about having conversations about toxic masculinity because
Speaker 1: my father, my husband, my cousins, like my friends. I'm
Speaker 1: surrounded about like really remarkable men who are equally grieved
Speaker 1: by what men are doing to other women. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to emphasize there are good men, more good
Speaker 1: men than bad men, but more of those good men
Speaker 1: to speak up. Yeah, well, I wish that we have
Speaker 1: more time, but we are out of time. This has
Speaker 1: been an amazing conversation. Christiana has always thank you for
Speaker 1: being back on the Show's send the best to the
Speaker 1: husband and that child of yours with all of that
Speaker 1: wonderful hand. And Rachel Louis Snyder the book is No
Speaker 1: Visible Bruises, Thank you so much for all that you
Speaker 1: do on the journalistic side of this issue as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for going beyond the scenes with us today.
Speaker 1: For further resources and support, visit the National Domestic Violence
Speaker 1: Hotline at www. The Hotline dot org. The Hotline dot
Speaker 1: org See you next week. Listen to the Daily Show
Speaker 1: Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a
Speaker 1: Comedy Central podcast