Dr. Nicole Bedera talks about her research on college campuses and shows how many perpetrators of sexual violence face little to no consequences for their actions– and some of them even use allegations to their benefit.
Follow Dr. Nicole Bedera on Twitter
Transcript:
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| Timestamp | Speaker | Transcript |
| 00:00.00 | meghantschanz | Hello and welcome to the faith and feminism podcast today we have Nicole bedera on the line and I am so excited for this conversation I’ve been looking forward to it for. Weeks ever since I read a thread on Twitter that she wrote which we’ll get to but this is a really important conversation. So I’m really excited to have her which I’ve told her like 10 times before the podcast is even started. |
| 00:25.80 | meghantschanz | Um, but Nicole has a ph d in sociology and isn’t interested in gendered sexuality with an emphasis on college sexual violence and so that is what we’ll be talking about today. Um, and her dissertation settling for last hour organization shaped the experience of sexual assault. Um, she. She learns she talks about this. Um and she is um, it’s an it’s an organized and organizational ethno ethnographography ethnography of 1 university’s management of sexual violence including observation and interviews of survivors perpetrators and university. |
| 00:55.40 | Nicole | Ethnography Yes, ah. |
| 01:05.46 | meghantschanz | Administrators and clearly she has a ph d because I’m not even used to the word ethnography and I symboled over it and she has also studied queer women’s experiences of sexual assault undergraduate. Men’s attitudes towards campus sexual violence prevention and the gendering of university sexual violence and provincial. Prevention materials and those last 3 issues. We hope that we’re gonna get time to them to talk about them. But we may not. We’re just gonna just start about this incredible Twitter thread. She she wrote but before that I have given a very professional bio. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself. |
| 01:40.13 | Nicole | Yeah, so hello. Thank you for having me on I’m so excited to be here. Um, let’s see the less professional version because you know the academic version is so academic. But this research is so personal for all of us whether you’re survivor yourself or you know survivors and absolutely everyone does. |
| 01:59.30 | Nicole | Also absolutely every single 1 of us has had a close relationship with a perpetrator of sexual violence. At some point I feel so confident about that because that’s pretty common as well. And so the thing that I like to study is how I used to work as a victim advocate before I went to graduate school and in those moments. |
| 02:19.40 | Nicole | Survivors would almost always ask me the same questions during the forensic exam so you might notice the rape kit that happens immediately after the assault they would say why me? what did I Do Why is it my fault a lot of questions of what does this mean does this mean I’m a bad person. What did I do to deserve this things like that and after hearing those. |
| 02:57.93 | Nicole | Our culture and our norms and how sexual violence is produced so predictably and that’s the main thing I would say that I study is how this stuff is not surprising. It is not unusual. It is very predictable based off of our social norms and I specifically study our organizations So universities. |
| 03:17.30 | Nicole | Is the place that I am but you could say the same thing about workplaces about families that all of us contribute to creating a culture in which sexual violence is likely and that means all of us can do something to change that and so that’s really what my day-to-day work is and how I orient to it. |
| 03:27.31 | meghantschanz | I had. Yeah, and I mean it’s so powerful because I wrote a book but doing research and there’s 2 researchers that I was looking at specifically 1 is Jackson Katz and 1 of the things he said that kind of echo that. |
| 03:50.10 | meghantschanz | But you’re saying and what you found is that we live in a rape culture. It’s not like these creatures ah sexual predators are crawling out of the swamp. They’re actually a product of our culture and then I also um, read this article by this woman who is studying rape in india. |
| 04:07.50 | meghantschanz | And she found the same thing is like you know everyone wants to paint rapists as some other thing but this is very much part of our culture and 1 of the questions that Jackson katz asks and his work is you know we always ask what are the stats you know we could tell you the stats of women right? 1 in 3 is. |
| 04:27.11 | meghantschanz | Assaulted between 1 and five and 1 and 6 is raped that we know about and again those are probably underreported. Um, but it makes you ask a question how many perpetrators out there. How often is this? um and it’s really kind of terrifying to think about. Um so I’m glad you’re doing this. |
| 04:36.14 | Nicole | Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is. It’s uncomfortable and you know it’s really interesting the way you bring this up because we’re more comfortable thinking about rapists as completely terrible people that are awful to everyone in their lives. They’re incapable of empathy. They are psychopaths and sociopaths. But. |
| 05:00.73 | Nicole | And that comes up with an idea that you know the only solution to sexual violence is locking these menaces away in prison in reality Sexual violence is a lot more complicated than that and perpetrators are made by our culture. They’re not born that way and they can be unmade in our culture. |
| 05:20.17 | Nicole | And we’re all sort of responsible for that component. But also means it’s It’s a lot more common and it happens in specific Contexts So on college campuses. The best studies we have say that a lot of sexual assault isn’t necessarily perpetrated by these like super serial predators that people are thinking of um, some is but. |
| 05:38.88 | Nicole | A lot of it is perpetrated by men who based off of the social pressures around them in college say on their athletics team or on their fraternity or someplace people don’t think about what were sexual assault is really common as a part of the marching band is 1 of the highest highest risks places on a college campus is marching band. |
| 05:51.78 | meghantschanz | Wow wow. |
| 05:58.60 | Nicole | The pressures in these spaces where there are hierarchies of masculinity where men are in competition with each other and creating these difficult challenges for each other to prove their sexual prowess. These things happen in all of these spaces this hypercomp competitiveiveness in that setting a lot of men will commit excess sexual violence that once they graduate. If they go into healthier settings. They will never do it again and so this isn’t to let them off the hook accountability. Yeah and making sure they don’t create that culture somewhere else right? But when we’re talking about how common this is on college campuses. It’s eleven percent of men commit an active sexual assault before they graduate. |
| 06:19.22 | meghantschanz | Um, right. |
| 06:33.19 | Nicole | Which is probably a lot higher than you expected. That’s 1 in 10 I remember that they learned not. it’s 1 in 10 yeah it’s 1 in 10 so when you think of it in those norms we all after the metoo movement we’re kind of coming to realize that we all know and love survivors. |
| 06:34.63 | meghantschanz | Wow I was always wondering what that number was and you’re the first 1 to give me an answer. |
| 06:52.46 | Nicole | But if you know a hundred men. There’s a pretty good chance. You know a good number of rapists as well and I say this because when I started doing this work I did my first project as an undergrad as my undergraduate honors thesis and I was presenting the findings from my work all across campus. |
| 07:10.29 | Nicole | Um, as just part of like being 1 of those kids that is like doing a lot of that work and a lot of my friends came up to me afterwards and said they told me their survivor stories for the first time ever. This was in two fourteen so well before the meanoo movement people were not talking about this stuff very openly a lot of them hadn’t told anyone before. |
| 07:10.97 | meghantschanz | |
| 07:28.65 | Nicole | But when they told me their stories I identified 3 serial rapists on campus and I was friends with 2 of them I was friends with 2 of them I went to I went to a small liberal arts college we all knew each other right. But that for me was a moment of ok so this is really testing my own values. |
| 07:48.27 | Nicole | And this case who am I going to side with am I going to side with my friend the rapist or the many many women that they have heard and that becomes the difficult component. That’s that’s what my work is on I’m actually working on my own book right now which is called on the wrong side which gives us this idea that you can’t really be like neutral. |
| 08:06.60 | Nicole | And just say I don’t care about the violence. You know I support both people it doesn’t really work that way and so the idea of which side are you going to be on is something I personally been grappling with for a long time. |
| 08:08.77 | meghantschanz | Wow Wow and I think a lot of us I mean I can think of people that I ah just based on certain behaviors. And maybe stories I’ve heard that I can identify that. Okay I think I know someone and that’s heavy and and that’s hard and I think something that I’ve realized um in the work I Do I’ve had a lot of women come forward and tell me. |
| 08:32.21 | Nicole | Yeah, they push some boundaries. Yeah yeah. |
| 08:45.14 | meghantschanz | About their experiences of sexual assault and what I found um is somewhat common as women not being able to name it for a long time. Um, and I remember I was recently um, at a small gathering of women and there was only. 4 of us having a conversation in a car 1 night and I was talking about some of you know the work I do realizing how common and prevalent sexual assault is and as we were talking 2 of the four women hadn’t experienced that for the first time in their wife they were able to call rape. |
| 09:22.99 | Nicole | In here. |
| 09:24.51 | meghantschanz | And both of the stories were very similar guy friend someone that they thought was their friend was um, interested in them for a long time and they kept saying no and no no over and over again and then 1 night. They were blackout drunk. They don’t know if they were drugged or if they just drink too much and they woke up in that person’s bed and for years and years they didn’t know what to do with that. Was that rape I don’t remember it I know that I said no to that that man. Many times like he was my friend and really trying to grapple with the ramifications of that and what does it mean if I was raped is it my responsibility to talk about it which is something I hear a lot is um what if this happens to someone else. What can I do and so can you kind of talk to me about this I think this is a really common and you know much better than than I you’re a researcher. These are just personal conversations I’ve had and they’re like I said they’re so Common. Can you tell me about it. Yeah. |
| 10:20.89 | Nicole | Yeah, ya. |
| 10:31.65 | Nicole | Yeah I mean there are a lot of things that stand out to me from those stories. 1 of them is that because we have this cultural notion that rapists are bad people that we could all pick 1 out in our midst that your spidey senses would go off and that you would say there is a bad man around when sexual violence happens to us. |
| 10:40.40 | meghantschanz | Oh. |
| 10:50.71 | Nicole | It’s most likely to happen from someone you know and trust someone you already have a relationship with and you like and so in that case it can be really hard to identify because you think but he’s not a bad person when in reality I don’t find the dichotomy of good and bad people useful at all and it’s something that I try to throw away. |
| 11:10.22 | Nicole | And to instead focus on individual interactions and say is this interaction causing harm if so it needs to change in the future. It doesn’t matter. You know it doesn’t matter what it means for you know, obviously people care about sense of self and things like that people need to think through that with perhaps a therapist but that’s not a reason to deny the violence. |
| 11:14.18 | meghantschanz | Ah, right. |
| 11:29.70 | Nicole | Say but I’ve seen him be nice to other women so it must have been my fault. That’s not that’s not a useful thought. Um and it can be hurtful to yourself when you’re thinking that way and so it’s better to just focus on the action would be my advice. Um, but it it can be really I mean you’re getting to the depth of how hard it is to be a survivor. |
| 11:49.60 | Nicole | And to decide in our society. We don’t put the burden on the rapist. We don’t and so the burden of survivors saying it is my responsibility to keep him from doing it again. It is my responsibility to come forward. |
| 12:02.23 | Nicole | If I come forward and it hurts him is that my responsibility too if he ends up incarcerated or if he loses a friend That’s what a lot of my research is focused on is people trying to protect rapists from the consequences of their actions and so these are heavy heavy burdens put on survivors. |
| 12:20.20 | Nicole | If you’re looking for advice about how I say to handle it is to recenter it on yourself. What is good for you. What is helpful for you. Will you feel better if you move forward and try to move for some kind of a justice seeking process or telling your friends. Whatever it might be then absolutely do that? Um, but if that’s going to be. |
| 12:38.83 | Nicole | You feel worse. You don’t have a responsibility. You don’t have a responsibility the responsibility for the actions of your rapists still are on the shoulders of your rapist not on yours. Um I know as women and especially as feminist women. We really do want to look out for each other. That’s a value I have. |
| 12:58.44 | Nicole | But also thinking about a time and place of is this healthy for me is the person I’m telling going to take care of me or are they safe to tell I do a lot of research about when people disclose that they’ve been sexually assaulted and someone has a negative reaction to them that hurts them and traumatizes them again. So thinking through your own needs. First. |
| 13:17.60 | Nicole | Would be my best piece of advice about how to handle that and then also I’m trying to find the right way to say what I’m thinking. But 1 thing I’m thinking is like you’re still you right? So there’s this idea that after a sexual assault a victim is a completely different person. She’s broken. She’s ruined she can never get back to the way she was and you will be different. |
| 13:36.92 | Nicole | Sexual assault is 1 of those big life altering events that changes your values gives you new values. A lot of values that you’re probably going to like moving on in the future but you still get to be you and you still are an expert on what makes the most sense for you. |
| 13:49.58 | meghantschanz | Yeah I mean there is seriously Ithe thing I’m finding about having conversations specifically about what we’re talking today I could go off in a million different directions of how this like impact society. It’s like which. |
| 14:04.91 | meghantschanz | Thing that I want to choose and so I’ll just say 2 things and I’ll drive into but like we haven’t even gotten through the questions that I’ve written down because I’m so intrigued by these other things. But um, 1 of the things I think about is how society specifically where at the contents I come from where a lot of my listeners come from is the evangelical church. They actually raise women to believe that they are responsible for the sexual violence that is and perpetrated against them and so that’s really harmful and I think society also does that as a whole what was she wearing did she drink too much. Did she walk alone at night like the list goes on and on you should have known better. Um, but to to jump right into the Twitter thread that you’re talking about. There’s something you mentioned so we’re going to talk about a guy that you called justin. |
| 14:58.10 | meghantschanz | Um, who is a rapist um and the benefits he got um for being accused of sexual assault and also um I think it was so reflective of even conversations where I’ve had like I had a friend. Whose ex-boyfriend reached out to her to be a character witness when he was accused of sexual assault and I remember saying like “he probably did it’ and women you know are telling the truth and like I told her statistics and she’s like but ‘He was so good to me like he honored my boundaries like he would he never did anything like that to me I Just can’t see him doing that to anyone else’ and so she was really torn with her. You know feminist ideals and also her experience with this guy and so I want to talk about that but we can talk. |
| 15:49.84 | Nicole | Um, yeah, right, they’re connected. Yeah, so before I jump into it I Just want to say. |
| 15:55.19 | meghantschanz | But through your Twitter thread because it looks like this is something that has happened with Justin so he tells about Justin and his experience. |
| 16:05.70 | Nicole | Something that would serve all of us when we’re thinking about how to treat the men in our lives who’ve been accused of sexual assault is to remember that no 1 has the same relationship with everyone. Everyone is a different person based off of who they’re interacting with and it makes me think of a conversation I had with a professor who she had. |
| 16:23.93 | Nicole | In the middle of the metoo movement. There was a list where academics were sharing their stories of sexual assault and harassment anonymously and then they were just published on the internet automatically and there was 1 professor. She’d worked with in the past whose name kept coming up and she said to me I actually got into graduate school to work with him. |
| 16:43.56 | Nicole | And did not go because when I was there I was warned that he sexually assaulted and harassed gretch graduate students and I’ll remind you that my work is on sexual violence. So I got to do this work under someone who committed these acts of violence but I was talking to her about it because she knew that I’d almost come to graduate school to work with him and she said I had no idea. |
| 17:02.20 | Nicole | He was you know maybe a little weird with me sometimes maybe there were a couple of interactions that felt a little off but it never occurred to me that he would treat someone worse and in that moment I was just like you’re a colleague you’re a professor alongside him where you could impact his professional reputation. |
| 17:21.13 | Nicole | Where he might care what you think about him. He might see you differently than his graduate students who work under him and he has power over and so in response to your story about the friend who’s like should I be a character witness or not my reaction would be well. You had a very different relationship with him. |
| 17:37.99 | Nicole | And just because you can’t see him treating you that way. That’s not what this case is about there are people who’ve committed really brutal violent acts towards others that are very very kind to us and Justin is definitely 1 of those he was when I met him? Um, so he was 1 of the participants in my dissertation. |
| 17:57.34 | Nicole | Research which was where I interviewed the victims the perpetrators and the administrators all at 1 school. Yeah yes, yes, um, yes you know. |
| 18:00.90 | meghantschanz | Can I ask a question real quick did Justin like volunteer for this or how did he I’m so confused by that. So he’s coming forward admitting that he rapes someone and yeah, you can and you can interview me I’m a rapist. |
| 18:18.00 | Nicole | Well so that’s not exactly how it worked right? So the way he was recruited to this study was have you been accused of sexual assault and he was really eager to come in and tell an unfiltered version of his story because even to people in his title nine investigation. Which is the investigations that universities use to look into sexual assault complaints. Um, even then he felt like he had to bite his tongue did not get in trouble and I kind of had a gut feeling that I would get some perpetrators like this in the study where they would I got a certificate of confidentiality which meant that under like the law. |
| 18:54.35 | Nicole | I am not allowed to ever tell Anybody who his identity is I’m not allowed to tell enough specific details about his story that people could figure out who he is and so in that setting of confidentiality that you don’t even get from a therapist to be clear because if. |
| 19:10.84 | Nicole | You’re talking about violent acts towards another person they can potentially come forward if he talked about intending to hurt himself or someone else. Potentially it could come forward but um, therapist notes can be subpoenaed in courts of law. But my notes couldn’t be and so for maybe the first time in his life. He would have the opportunity to talk to somebody without any consequences. |
| 19:29.56 | Nicole | And that’s part of why he’s so open in his story with me and I will say that Justin does not identify himself as a rapist but when he describes the actions that he has committed any reasonable person would think they are rape from his mouth. Um, in this case I interviewed a lot of other people involved in his case as well. So I got to hear his story from a lot of different sides I got to view some evidence and in my expert opinion even if he would have denied the violence I would have still considered him to be a rapist based off of the unbelievably obvious evidence I have reviewed but this is something that rapists. |
| 20:05.58 | Nicole | Do a lot. They do not come out and say I never did anything wrong What they’ll do is reframe the violence as something that is okay in our culture as just how men behave. So for example, they might say something like um, let me give you an example outside of this. |
| 20:23.85 | meghantschanz | Um, Donald trump. Okay, yeah, sorry I immediately thought of him. Okay, but continue. |
| 20:25.21 | Nicole | Study because I think it’s a really poignant 1 So there’s a study from that and donald trump is a good. She consented you know all of that. Yes, yeah I mean he comes to mind. Another example that comes to mind for me is the study from the nineteen eighty s where they interviewed. |
| 20:44.13 | Nicole | Incarcerated rapists which we know how hard it is to get a conviction especially in the eighty s this is a difficult time and there was 1 of the participants in the study had kidnapped a woman. He did not know off the street and there was plenty of evidence that it had happened. He had sexually violated her but he insists. |
| 21:01.26 | Nicole | That it was consensual because she made eye contact with him and sometimes made pleasant conversation with him. So when we talk about the way that rapists will reframe their actions as nonviolent they often do not deny what they did. They just say that the victim misinterpreted it or that the victim is lying about what it is now so in Justin’s case he just said. The sex was consensual even though he also told me in his interview that before anything had happened between him and his victim she had asked him to promise that they would not have sex and he promised her that they wouldn’t this came from his interview. But he does not see this as a sexual assault so this is something that when you’re running into sexual assault perpetrators in your own life. You might keep in mind that they might tell you a story and make a really big deal out of 1 particular detail and say it happened but not exactly how she said but they’re actually not denying what happened at all. They’re just trying to get you to reframe it as okay. |
| 21:55.81 | Nicole | And that’s kind of what he did and that’s how we came into the study. Um, the reason that this story really resonates with me so much is because I was sort of prepared to see that rapists. You know there’s this sort of myth that their lives are ruined which we know isn’t true just from looking around in our society Donald trump was not impeached for sexual assault. |
| 22:15.57 | Nicole | He was impeached for other things not sexual assault Brett kavanaugh has not been impeached for sexual assault there is a lot of evidence even senators who voted to confirm him would look at him and say that they believed christine blasey ford but they would also believe that she may be mistaken in her understanding. She was young or you know those sorts of things. Um. But they believe her and he was still confirmed to be a supreme court justice. So this idea that a sexual assault allegation will ruin a life. We can tell by looking around. It’s not true, but what I wasn’t prepared for when I was in a field site where I could watch these happen a little bit more in real time was the benefits. |
| 22:53.75 | Nicole | That perpetrators would get so a lot of people rushing to their defense and the thinking was this idea that well everyone’s going to take the victim’s side and his life could be ruined so I have to be the 1 person who will be there for him. The thing is though nearly everyone took that stance. Nearly everyone rushed to protect him leaving his victim without really any protection and very very little support and it’s something I’ve seen play out over and over and over again in my research there was another study that came out recently that what they did is they did something. It’s called a vignette study which is where they give you a hypothetical situation. |
| 23:31.73 | Nicole | You’re just a random participant on the world and they give you a hypothetical situation and then they ask you how you would handle it if you were the person in control. So for example, in this 1 they had the participant participants pretend they were in charge of hiring decisions and then the story of sexual harassment. So the vignette. |
| 23:51.50 | Nicole | Written piece was saying that there was a woman who had accused a man of sexual harassment and they had some details about what the accusation entailed What the alleged behavior was and then they asked these people are not real right? like it’s all made up and then they asked the participants who would you hire. |
| 24:09.82 | Nicole | If both of them are applying for a job and they picked the perpetrator. Overwhelmingly the preference was for the perpetrator I mean 1 of the things we don’t get from vignette studies is an explanation for why but based off of my research. |
| 24:26.26 | Nicole | And my I’ve heard a lot of people explain why they took a perpetrator side over a victim. That’s been a big part of my work and usually the reason is things like well I don’t think anybody else would ever hire him because it such because there’s a stigma of being accused of sexual assault doesn’t he deserve to work should it ruin his whole life shouldn’t We have forgiveness. And no 1 else is going to give him a chance but everybody’s going to take her side. She’ll have plenty of job offers. She can go somewhere else but he needs my protection I imagine is what a lot of people were thinking in their heads as well as there’s also this other piece of thinking that the women who make sexual assault allegations are difficult. Are maybe threatening to the institution there when you’re thinking in a hiring Context. You probably can imagine people thinking. Well she brings a sexual harassment against someone else in this space that could create a challenging Workplace. You know what? if it’s my friend next or what if it’s me you know, a lot of the participants in this study. |
| 25:23.22 | Nicole | I’m sure have committed acts of sexual aggression. We don’t remove people who’ve committed acts of sexual aggression from the study because they’re everywhere. They’re actually in society and that’s something we don’t think about either as that sometimes the people who are making policies around how we should handle these cases are themselves rapists. |
| 25:40.20 | Nicole | Who are writing policies that would advantage them if they were ever accused and that’s something that I heard a lot in my research actually from administrators or even from victims of sexual assault saying well if I was ever accused I would want this protection so he should be allowed to have it. Ah. |
| 25:57.53 | Nicole | But the reality is we would want people to be writing from the perspective of the victim if I was the 1 that something bad happened to I would want protection as a victim I would want justice I would want accountability I would want to live in a society where there are consequences for sexual assault. But that’s not the way people think about it. They really empathize with the choose there is a concept. |
| 26:15.93 | Nicole | Um, developed by a philosopher named kate manne called himpathy which is really on display here and so himpathy is essentially just giving excessive empathy to men in places where they are actually the 1 who’s done something wrong and where the empathy should really lie with someone else and sexual assault is 1 of the places where this. |
| 26:35.60 | Nicole | Plays out the most is the idea of brock turner’s whole life is ahead of him right? What about his swimming career look at all of the things that he’s losing out on and that’s where the thinking comes from is just empathy for these men, especially when they are white. |
| 26:48.57 | meghantschanz | Um, so it’s particularly in Justin’s story I’m gonna try and recap it but you’ll probably do a better job from the Twitter thread. He’s been accused of sexual assault he comes forward. He volunteers himself to be interviewed. Um, he says that he has suffered. |
| 27:06.63 | meghantschanz | Under this accusation but at the same time The victims roommates came to his defense. He had his grades his bad grades wiped um and administrators continually protected him meanwhile the victim was. Ignored did not have any of these benefits lost friendships and I guess think continually disparaged. Can you talk to me about this. |
| 27:32.87 | Nicole | Yeah, yeah, so the basic thing that happens is that through the sexual assault investigation process which we know to be traumatizing for victims and it’s why a lot of victims will very sensibly and self-protectively choose not to come forward. |
| 27:52.13 | Nicole | Because it hurts them I have never met a victim who was not hurt by the process of coming forward, especially in a university setting or a criminal justice setting. But in this case, there are a lot of protections that were built into the structure to help him and so while Justin said to me when I said how has this affected you he said oh it’s ruined my life and then I just. |
| 28:11.76 | Nicole | Asked the question of how what is the impact been and the way that he answered was by saying well I guess so there’s a university program that allows both victims and perpetrators to remove poor grades from their transcript In victims case, there are no rules about how that’s done because we know that. If you say we can only do it in the future and we know the victims can take a while to come forward that this trauma can affect them in a lot of ways and victims don’t abuse this resource So when victims are told you can remove poor grades from your transcript even from before you reported anything having to do with the sexual assault is fair game. Um, a lot of them. |
| 28:48.22 | Nicole | Actually decline to use it because they want to be strong. They want to not take up any resources depending on their political or religious ideologies. They might think that this is like part of going through it and they don’t want to take those consequences away. Um, but under the Trump administration there was a requirement that any resources that were offered to victims. |
| 29:07.38 | Nicole | Then Also offered to perpetrators on college campuses. So this system that was made very sensibly for women because and for victims in particular. But the reason that it existed is because sexual assault hurts your Gpa it hurts your Gpa a lot if you can’t sleep That’s going to impair your ability to focus in class or even make it. |
| 29:26.74 | Nicole | If you’re afraid of running into your perpetrator in the hallway you might skip class altogether to avoid triggers to avoid flashbacks and so there are studies that find that a history of sexual assault is 1 of the best known predictors of women’s gpa and so that’s where this comes from it comes from a really good place. |
| 29:45.62 | Nicole | But the trump administration said you have to give it to perpetrators too and so the way that the university I was at decided to implement this kind of loose regulation was to just give victims and perpetrators the exact same treatment. So as part of being accused of sexual assault Justin was able to remove. Every poor grade he wanted from his transcript and get his tuition back and so it’s a benefit. It’s a benefit. |
| 30:04.59 | meghantschanz | That that’s disgusting right? It’s just what do you know? why? the Trump administration said to do that I mean I don’t have any good feelings towards them I Just how did they get that passed right. |
| 30:20.51 | Nicole | It’s wild right? So the way that they snuck it in was a couple of different ways. So the trump administration worked very closely with ah multiple groups of men’s rights activists they got to write a lot of this policy without any editing so that’s part of how it came through. And these men’s rights groups on that on its face. Men’s rights doesn’t sound too. Bad. It sounds like oh like men have unique problems like a higher rate of suicide and things like that. Um, but and this is them trying to advocate for addressing those problems. That’s not what men’s rights are men’s rights groups are actually just misogynist groups that have co-opted the framing of feminism. |
| 30:54.16 | Nicole | To make it sound like you have your side on your rights. We have our side but a lot of the time What they’re really looking for is to hurt women in different ways and so men’s rights activists What they’re really looking for is for there to be no consequences for rape in our society and they bring it under the guise of due process. |
| 31:13.80 | Nicole | And fairness and equality and so the way that this happened is 2 lines that were in the regulation. 1 said that universities could not use any kind of gender stereotypes in sexual assault prevention and response materials which means for example that technically. Under the Trump administration and these laws are still in effect right now these regulations are still in effect right Now. Um, technically it would be kind of illegal for me to say that men commit most acts of sexual violence in our society because that would be technically a gender stereotype. |
| 31:50.87 | meghantschanz | It’s a fact. |
| 31:51.98 | Nicole | It’s a fact. It’s effect and so there’s been a lot of distortion of that and then the other thing that they said was that any resources offered to 1 party in a sexual assault complaint should be offered to both and it was just that straightforward that the university should take a neutral stance. On a sexual assault complaint which at the time sounded wild. This all came out for the first time in two seventeen and people thought like wait but victims and perpetrators 1 of them created harm and the other 1 dealing with the aftermath of it. They don’t need the same thing but then using these ideas of himpathy. |
| 32:30.13 | Nicole | A lot of people rushed to the perpetrators and said but it would be scary to be accused imagine there are probably sleepless nights from wondering what will happen and so the idea that there would be any consequences being this same as being sexually assaulted. But by the time I left the field. So i. Did this work during the 2018 school year and by the time I left the field. Um the administrators who at the beginning had thought like I don’t know if our if the they call them respondents but I don’t know if the respondents the men accused of sexual assault I don’t know if they need all of these resources I don’t know if it makes sense to give them all of them. |
| 33:04.60 | Nicole | Um, this feels a little weird to have like for example, victims can have a victim advocate the idea of having a perpetrator advocate feels pretty gross but by the time I left the field. Everyone said well it just makes sense that both people have someone to represent their interests. You know that seems fine and so there was a lot of movement into more. |
| 33:23.60 | Nicole | Conservative traditional patriarchal thinking around this issue and so that’s part of what Justin really benefited from was this idea of neutrality we will treat victims and perpetrators exactly the same but the impact is not going to be the same. |
| 33:34.17 | meghantschanz | Um, right, which is just kind of mind blowing to me because if you took this out of something that was gendered right? if it wasn’t sexual assault. Let’s say burglary are um, you can’t do murder because 1 party is dead but that you know. |
| 33:53.10 | meghantschanz | Ah, carjacking or any other type of violent crime which of course sexual assault is you put it in that scenario and all of this is insane like this is it’s it doesn’t make sense. |
| 34:01.22 | Nicole | Ah, right? It’s wild. No and I will say that on your point I as I was leaving the field I sat down and asked some questions about how the university I studied handled other types of student disciplinary processes and specifically I was interested in violence. Between 2 men who did not have a romantic or sexual relationship. So like 2 men in a fraternity house if they get into a fist fight. What happens. Do you have the same kind of empathy for the perpetrator and the answer is no then 1 person is clearly in the wrong and 1 person clearly needs redress 1 person clearly needs resources. |
| 34:39.90 | Nicole | For example, maybe you’re not comfortable beaming around somebody who violently attacked you so you might want to move to a different dorm on campus instead of living in the fraternity house then all of these issues that they said were so complicated in the context of sexual assault they didn’t seem to have any moral reservations or for example in the same case, a man who’s acting violently and who’s punching. |
| 34:59.76 | Nicole | Other men say in a fraternity house in the face. They’d be like this is getting in the way of those other men’s educations and so we will expel you. You need to maybe grow up a little go somewhere else and more importantly I see the role of expulsions in these cases is not so much about the individual person but in a more generational way. |
| 35:19.19 | Nicole | Which is when it comes to sexual harassment and sexual assault the best predictor that it won’t happen in a space is just that it’s not tolerated and so if you hold that stance of if you commit an act of sexual violence. We will not tolerate it. You must leave our community and if you hold that stance for a few years it will cease to be a problem in your community. |
| 35:38.59 | Nicole | Or if it comes up occasionally, it’ll be easy to handle because instead of everyone covering it up or taking sides. It will be clear 1 person heard another. We do not tolerate that. How do we move forward and there are a lot of ways to show intolerance to that right? So It could be something like removal from the space. Deplatforming or you know expulsion would be that version in an academic setting could be loss of a job. It could also be an educational measure. Although we don’t actually have any educational measures that have been demonstrated to change men’s violent Behavior. We don’t have any and so as much as I might want that in the future I don’t. |
| 36:17.50 | Nicole | Want to write now the educational measures that we tend to use are just reading them the definition of sexual assaults and saying please don’t do it again and it’s not effective so that cannot be where we’re focused right now even if in the future. We’d like to develop something. |
| 36:23.74 | meghantschanz | Um, but wow. Ok, so obviously that benefit for Justin getting his grades wiped because I just have so again. |
| 36:41.67 | meghantschanz | Is that so enraging to me and I’m sure it was enraging to you doing this research but like and for those who aren’t going to. You know her Twitter thread but just talking about it again isn’t is this or it’s infuriating and there’s and there’s so many things I want to say about that and about but I mean try and stay on focus another benefit that Justin had is he actually told |
| 37:17.79 | meghantschanz | Women he was dating that he had been accused and it was like a pickup line. Can you talk to me about that. Ok yeah. |
| 37:21.11 | Nicole | I was hoping this was what you’re going to bring up next because I do want to talk about this 1 so 1 of the things where Justin said that being accused of sexual assault had ruined his life was that he felt compelled to bring up in his mind the accusation on first dates. |
| 37:39.58 | Nicole | And he said I have to bring it up every time I am getting with a new woman I have to say like I just want you to know I’ve been accused in the past and I say well how do they react to that and he said pretty well actually it’s never not gone well and he explained that he had never failed to get a second date because the women who he was telling. About this saw it as a vulnerability and they believed him when they when he said he was falsely accused. They were like well I’m having a nice date with him. You can just imagine it right? They were like I’m having a nice state with him and also I don’t want to feel those feelings of unsafety and fear. So I’m going to choose to believe it because it’s more comfortable right. |
| 38:17.79 | Nicole | And he’s telling me it’s false. He’s nice to me. Wow he’s opening up. He didn’t have to share this and you know you sort of get into your head of like we don’t have a template for how is like a good way to handle this so you can just really empathize with women that would say well I mean is it better if he didn’t tell me this feels like a step in the right direction that he let me know. But yeah. |
| 38:37.21 | Nicole | Ah, it. It turned into a dating strategy for him and it also I Want to say that not only was that benefit for him but he would name his victim so it was actually a way of smearing her reputation among people she knew on campus at the same time and so that was really painful for her as you can Imagine. This is a good time to bring up. There’s something in the research we call it the just world hypothesis and when it comes to sexual violence the way that it plays a role is that in a jury trial for a sexual assault you would expect that if you are the prosecution trying to convict a rapist. You would want a jury box full of women. |
| 39:14.55 | Nicole | Because they would be empathetic to what has happened to the victims. But in fact, women are less likely to convict men of sexual assault because they want to believe it won’t happen to them. They want to believe the world is just and fair and that there’s a greater force looking out for them and so as a result. |
| 39:33.92 | Nicole | Will nit pick the victim’s behavior to say well she did this or she misunderstood. It’s not his fault because it’s less scary to think that sexual violence can happen more or less randomly and I would say it doesn’t happen randomly it follows patterns but whether or not it will happen to you. None of us can say I know for sure I will never be sexually assaulted and that’s a really scary place to be in and so and that’s probably what the victims and the future victims of Justin are doing when he is using this false allegation as a pickup line right? and it’s not a false allegation I put that in quotes you can’t see but. |
| 40:10.52 | Nicole | He’s saying that he was falsely accused and this is a reason you should trust me Um, it was amazing. The benefits that he got and from friends as well. He did not have to tell anyone he had been sexually assaulted and this is something I always find confusing and we started the podcast talking about this right saying why would he want to talk to you about this isn’t he ashamed doesn’t he want to hide from it. |
| 40:30.17 | Nicole | Had told hundreds of people that he had been accused of sexual assault because of the benefits that it offered him because of the way it made it helped make him friends. It helped him date. It helped him get sympathy from Professors. It helped him get better grades. It helped him build relationships. With the title nine staff which meant that when he was accused again and he was multiple times he was accused again of sexual assault the university administrators didn’t move his case forward because they thought and ah literally 1 of them I have a quote of her saying I just don’t believe he would do it. He seems like such a nice guy. |
| 41:03.99 | meghantschanz | And this is from a title nine person. Is it like it. This is so this is a this is a person that’s supposed to be there for victims is that my understanding and she’s choosing. |
| 41:09.70 | Nicole | Yeah, in the broader Title Nine system. Yeah. Yeah, that is well yes I will say that if you ask a title nine someone in the title nine system If Their role is to be there for victims. They will tell you that they are neutral and that they do not take a stance. |
| 41:33.40 | Nicole | Um, so something that you would hear a lot is like this is not an office for victims. This is an office for students and so I should be able to take both sides I have a paper about this coming up. But so the way that a lot of survivors and a lot of women and a lot of broader society come to think of the title nine office as something that exists for victims. A place where when victims have been sexually Assaulted. This is where you go to get Justice. They would say we don’t do Justice We don’t support Victims. We are neutral. |
| 41:59.81 | meghantschanz | Wait But what what resources are available for victims. Then if if this is supposedly a neutral place to get Justice at. |
| 42:05.31 | Nicole | All Yeah yeah, a lot of campuses not all, especially so when I’m talking about this I’m thinking of like large universities like small liberal arts colleges or religious institutions are less likely to have this resource in those spaces. The answer is none. |
| 42:24.12 | Nicole | There is nothing ah but at large universities that have the resources. There is often a victim advocate or 2 so 1 or 2 people to serve 1 in 5 women who’ve been sexually assaulted while they’re in College. So. It’s just not very many and we’re not even getting to men. Trans and gender queer people who have been sexually assaulted as well. It’s it’s a huge population being served by often just a handful of staff. Um, that don’t really have any power. So if you go to a victim advocate on a college campus. They still work for the institution so they’re not allowed to advocate for things like if the institution has harmed. Ah, victims legal rights. They’re not allowed to say you should sue the school that would be a reason for them to lose their job in some states. They’re trying to change this and trying to make it so victim advocates cannot so they don’t work for the university and so they have a little bit more independent so california has a policy that they’re trying to get through on this. Um. |
| 43:20.66 | Nicole | But all the victim advocates can do because they are still working in the benefit of the university is provide some emotional support recognize some other resources, especially off-campus resources. They might say you can go to a counselor they can help victims access benefits like being able to get out of a class that your perpetrator is in or changing dorms. Sometimes they might have a little bit of money to help offset costs if you have to like change your locks or if you have to move or stay in a hotel for a while things like that. So victim advocates are useful for helping survivors be okay and get access to the resources that they need to heal and to thrive in the future but they have no control over the perpetrator. And so they have no control over if a perpetrator is continuing to Harass a victim or spread rumors about them to hurt their reputation um or anything like that victim advocates cannot remove a perpetrator from campus. They can’t interact with a perpetrator or intervene on their behavior. There is no 1 on campus. Who is trying to protect victims from their perpetrator. |
| 44:21.18 | meghantschanz | And strong and it’s yeah, it’s wrong and I kind of want to go back to the point because if we’re looking at this system you know we’ve heard we’re talking about the system specifically specifically in universities that you talked about this concept of Himpathy. You’ve talked about how women and. On a jury trial are more likely to let perpetrators go can we talk about there seems to be so much empathy for men and no empathy for survivors and I’ve encountered this myself I’m not a survivor of rape I am a survivor of sexual assault from. |
| 45:00.93 | meghantschanz | Strangers and also people I thought I trusted and I know how devastating each 1 of those interactions has been for me like absolutely completely devastating see a therapist like recover. |
| 45:19.12 | meghantschanz | Like not good and I see this so much in the faith community. But apparently this is you know much larger. We see it in universities right? and I mean and society is large I mean ifro looking that even at our criminal Justice system Brock turner was an excellent case. |
| 45:35.49 | meghantschanz | You guys are listening and you haven’t read know my name by challe miller. Highly recommend it. But yeah, it’s so good I think it’s probably 1 of the best books I’ve ever read in my life. Um, it’s so powerful. But I think i. |
| 45:38.56 | Nicole | I do too. It’s so good I agree. |
| 45:51.80 | meghantschanz | I think I mean obviously this is this is a product of patriarchy of a patriarchal society that women don’t get empathy but it it still blows my mind that such a violent act women are people in general are more likely to empathize. |
| 46:09.53 | meghantschanz | With the perpetrator then the woman who has just survived extreme violence. Can you talk to me about this. What do the survivors have to live through. |
| 46:12.76 | Nicole | Yeah, yeah I mean I think that this is a patriarchal issue Absolutely and it’s worth noting that we’ve talked a little bit about the policies that have made this happen on a federal level. So when I’m talking about men’s rights activists. |
| 46:30.48 | Nicole | You would expect in your head that I’m talking about a bunch of men right? but actually a lot of the groups that are most involved in advancing men’s rights on campus in particular are the mothers of sons accused of sexual assault and there was an article about these women. |
| 46:49.54 | Nicole | In um, in the new york times and 1 of the questions that they asked in this article was do you think that your son did what he was accused of and she basically said yes, but that she didn’t think it should be wrong. It was a situation where in her view both the victim and perpetrator had been drinking so it should be blameless. The problem is people drinking too much It’s not that her son is a predator and I want to say that like this is part of where this empathy comes from is that it isn’t that it just comes out of nowhere right? Like if you read a story about a rapist in the news you’re probably not reading it and thinking like how I feel so bad for him. What’s going to happen. Is he going to lose his job like that’s probably not your reaction. It’s because these. People we already know and love and so 1 of our patriarchal values around motherhood is that you defend your child no matter what you love them no matter what and it doesn’t matter what they’ve done. You come to their defense but obviously that isn’t helpful in this situation where if you love your. |
| 47:43.82 | Nicole | Child and want them to do well in the future holding them accountable for their actions is a piece of it. So It’s not just saying my son can do no Wrong. He is my golden child but rather saying well did you do this and why did you think that was okay and is this the way that you want to treat women in the future and having a conversation about that. Um, I just had someone reach out to me for advice because their son it was a friend of a friend rather the friend of a friend. Ah the the son involved is a child still um in elementary School. He threw himself like intentionally fell. |
| 48:23.37 | Nicole | Which is not in dispute but he intentionally fell into a group of students and he grabbed a little girl’s butt and she obviously this was probably unfortunately the first violation of her bodily autonomy. She’s ever experienced and she made a big deal out of it because. |
| 48:42.89 | Nicole | Of course you would you know if you haven’t been trained and socialized to think that this is normal of course this is going to be what are you doing I didn’t consent for you to do that I don’t like you to touch me this way. Um, and so the parents of the son are their reaction was to protect their little boy and to say he’s a good guy. |
| 49:01.14 | Nicole | Even though he’s he’s a child. You know it’s still unclear who he’s going to be as he grows up right? This is an important moment and they were really focused on we are going to come for the school. We’re thinking about suing the school. They didn’t follow their title nine process just perfectly. But no 1 is disputing what happened and so my response my advice in the situation was like hang on a second take a step back. Let’s stop. Thinking in the immediate moment of what would make your life your son’s life a little bit more convenient. He wasn’t facing expulsion. He was maybe gonna have detention over this and say don’t you want him to have detention and have time to think about why this was wrong. Don’t you want to teach him that this is this is an important learning moment. |
| 49:40.93 | Nicole | With a child to say it is really really important that as you get older. You think more and more about what it means to touch people’s bodies in ways they don’t want you need to recognize that you know if you don’t want to be touched that way or even if you do some people might not want to be touched. That way and they might not want to be touched by you like this could be a really really important learning moment but the parent’s reaction is I got to protect him I got to protect my son and so these are those patriarchal values around motherhood in particular and you know it’s interesting because we are talking a lot about the actions of women because. |
| 50:15.12 | Nicole | In my field site 80 percent of the administrators acting this way were women which I think surprises people a lot to find out that almost all of the people I’m talking about who hold these attitudes are women and this is something that I think is important for us to think about is when it’s a man that I know when it’s a man that I’m close to how will I act a little bit I like a lot. |
| 50:35.18 | Nicole | Differently just like running to the defense of these men. Um, and what does it mean to hold someone accountable in a compassionate and kind way. Um, it’s so baked into Patriarchy. It’s so baked into patriarchy and that’s 1 of the weird things that you see in patriarchy on a regular basis. Is that men often. Don’t have to do the dirty work women have been socialized to do it for Them. We will step right out front of them and make it easy for them to hurt us and to hurt the other women that we love. |
| 51:04.50 | meghantschanz | And we’ve been socialized to do this even if we’re the victim right? Where yeah we’re saying you know maybe he didn’t kid it maybe I was flu too f fertatious like I can maybe it was something I was wearing I can think of all of these things where my first reaction because of the way I’ve been socialized. |
| 51:24.36 | meghantschanz | What did I do to deserve this or to make myself more of a victim and I think that’s a common experience as we ask well because we’ve been socialized our whole life. We think it must be my fault instead of putting the responsibility on the perpetrators which is the next thing I want to talk about. Um, so we talked about earlier eleven percent of men on college campuses are perpetrators. Um I have no idea about society as a large but maybe similar numbers. Um, and I’m wondering because this is a conversation I think about a lot because. I’ve been doing some reading and and understanding the and particularly when it comes to racial justice. The abolition of ah prison and policing and and I get really uncomfortable when I think about. Perpetrators of sexual violence. Maybe because there’s so little consequences as is I read an an article and several years ago but it I so I can’t forget it. Um a cop raped a handcuffed woman in his custody and he got 3 months in prison. |
| 52:35.99 | Nicole | And I would say the thing that’s strange about that was that he got any time in prison Sexual violence perpetrated by police is incredibly common, especially targeting women of color. |
| 52:49.29 | meghantschanz | It’s for me like that’s this is where I really struggle I want to know I want them to be held accountable for their actions I want them to stop that I want them to be consequences severe consequences as a survivor so that never happens to anyone again. And you spoke earlier like Mate I don’t remember you said something that made me think oh like what? what is the consequences. What does that look like is the answer to throw them in jail and I mean clearly if you look at our justice system now I think there’s this statistic and. I don’t know if it’s still relevant. But I know when I was doing research on my book rain. Ah the um organization for rape and incest I forgot what the I n stands for something network. Um, there was a statistic that only 6 in 1000 ah, perpetrator rapist face jail time. Um, and I don’t know if that’s still accurate and of course that makes me angry. Um, but I don’t know what to do like I don’t I don’t know the answer like what is the consequences what will make this stop. What. |
| 54:01.59 | meghantschanz | If it’s like guys that we know are what do we do with that. |
| 54:04.64 | Nicole | Yeah I think this is 1 of the big problems we have in our society right now is that the current criminal justice system is not working for survivors in a lot of ways most obviously rapists who’ve committed very real crimes are almost never convicted. |
| 54:22.77 | Nicole | So that’s 1 big issue but then we also have issues that the people you’re supposed to turn to for help are committing a lot of the acts of violence. Um police officers are 1 of the greatest concentrations of offenders of intimate partner violence that we know of and the percentage of police officers who abuse their partners is. |
| 54:41.77 | Nicole | Really really high and so if you’re in an abusive relationship with a police officer. How are you supposed to call the police to help you. They’re not going to. They’re going to close ranks and protect their friend and they might actually violate you in other ways those stories are common too or especially for women of color. But if you’ve. |
| 55:01.96 | Nicole | Experienced an act of sexual assault I know of cases where someone who experienced a sexual assault called the police for help and then got sexually assaulted again by the police officer and so the criminal Justice system as it stands there’s a lot of distrust and for really good reasons I personally would not. Necessarily advocate that a survivor comes forward without understanding at least the risks to their own bodily autonomy to begin with but in that we have a vacuum where right now there are no really legitimate social consequences for sexual assault and so thinking about what they should be personally. |
| 55:38.98 | Nicole | When I think about this 1 1 struggle that I have with the abolition movement which I find very compelling in general but a place where I want to see more thinking is that for a lot of crimes. The reason why abolition will work is because they are crimes of poverty and. |
| 55:57.60 | Nicole | When you incarcerate someone because they have stolen something or you incarcerate someone because they have an addiction. You’re actually exacerbating the problem which means the crime will continue and so a better solution is to provide resources is to live in a more equal society to live in a society where people have access. |
| 56:15.78 | Nicole | What they need so they don’t have to steal from someone else that makes perfect sense to me, but the thing that makes sexual assault different is that sexual assault is a crime of power. It’s people who are in power who are seeking more and so something like ending poverty is not going to end sexual violence. |
| 56:35.75 | Nicole | And so we need specific solutions for sexual violence that don’t require someone to want to change their behavior because a lot of perpetrators don’t they’re benefited by sexual violence and so there are a few things we can do 1 of them is we can remove our social benefits for sexual assault instead of giving cookies and kudos. Ever people commit acts of sexual violence instead of thinking that that’s cool and you should be elected President. We can make that something that hurts you and we can make that something that is disqualifying for holding the most powerful office in the land right? and we have had a lot of presidents especially in recent history who we know. Have committed acts of sexual violence on both sides of and so that should be disqualifying especially from position power and so by removing the benefits fewer men will choose to do this and that’s a good thing but the other thing I really feel firmly about is just about centering survivors. |
| 57:31.56 | Nicole | And what survivors need in making this decision thinking less about what is good or bad for the perpetrator and instead thinking about what is good or bad for the victims in society including future potential victims and so in a lot of the metoo cases something that comes across really clearly is that many of the men who are in the most you know. In the New York Times sort of the splashy stories of sexual violence. They held positions of power that brought victims straight to them and so 1 thing I feel pretty strongly about is that if you have perpetrated acts of sexual assault. You shouldn’t be able to hold that kind of powerful position over others that being able to be in that power disparity is an issue so we’re thinking about this on a college campus or in a workplace that means. Yeah, if there’s a professor who we know sexually assaults Undergraduate students. They can’t be a professor. It can find a job and to cover their bills. |
| 58:23.68 | Nicole | Does not require them to have power that they can abuse there are a lot of jobs where you’re not going to have enough power to perpetrate that kind of abuse on such an easy scale right? So I think that’s 1 component is deplatforming removal of power. Um in the future. I would like to see some work on the front end to prevent sexual violence. So I said that we don’t have a good way to intervene on people once they’ve committed acts of sexual assault once someone is already a perpetrator. We don’t have like a ten week course that we put you in and then afterwards you come out and you’ll never commit a rape again. We just we don’t have that. |
| 58:59.54 | Nicole | But what we do have that’s working really well thinking about generational progress is we have new consent trainings and comprehensive sex education programs that can teach not just I mean we think about this a lot from teaching children. How to resist sexual abuse teaching them. You know Like. Nobody has a right to touch you in this place if someone is touching you here if it’s a family member or a family friend or whatever this is who you would talk to but we also need to be training students from a very young age to respect each other’s autonomy and. |
| 59:33.89 | Nicole | To learn these lessons from the very beginning so instead of 1 thing that’s really strange about the college environment and campus sexual assault part of why it’s so controversial is we don’t care as much about high school sexual assault which happens pretty much as often as far as we can tell it’s it’s about similarly common and so. |
| 59:52.43 | Nicole | It’s weird to start Upstream so far to say oh we were in this place where there are a lot of people committing acts of violence. But what if we started in high school What if we started in elementary school when it’s still low level enough that it’s not traumatic. So the idea of saying you need to make sure before you touch someone. |
| 01:00:11.40 | Nicole | They’re okay with it. Just ask can I give you a hug. It’s not weird. It’s not strange um, being able to do things like that actually go really really long way and there is some evidence that it reduces the sexual assault rate. So I think the prevention piece is really important. |
| 01:00:27.45 | Nicole | And then I think for the accountability piece that loss of the power that enables future abuse is really important and then the other thing I’ll say is making space for survivors needs to be met that survivors when we’re talking about expulsions on college campuses if you think about it from the perspective of a perpetrator. It’s oh it’s punishment. It’s someone trying to get me in trouble but from the perspective. Victims most victims come forward because their perpetrator is still acting violently towards them at least that was my experience in my research and that they’re concerned about them being violent towards someone else. Maybe they’ve seen that happening or they know it will happen in the future or in the case of Justin he was going around spreading rumors. |
| 01:01:06.38 | Nicole | And hurting his victim for the rest of the time they were on campus together. It affected the rest of her education which affects not only her grades but her ability to network to have contacts for when she’s looking for employment after Graduation. You know this is a really big Deal. He’s interfering on her well-being and that’s why. She wanted him removed not because she thought he needed to be punished but because she needed her autonomy and that’s what I think we should really center is saying if the survivor needs space here’s the thing about the men that were there were very few. That were expelled or faced series consequences very very very few a study came out that found that the average University Expels only 1 perpetrator for sexual assault every 2 years. It’s very rare but there were men that had became perpetrators in the study like that that just transferred from somewhere else right? And so. |
| 01:02:02.42 | Nicole | It’s not that once even if they face the most serious consequence of being expelled. They’re not without the possibility of an education. It hasn’t been stripped from them entirely and if we’ve reframe it as saying this is something you need to stop engaging in before you get the privilege of a college education. |
| 01:02:20.58 | Nicole | We’re already so empathetic I don’t think our concern needs to be going too far in that direction. There’s no shortage of people willing to give second chances to men who’ve committed acts of violence what we need to focus on is making sure that they’re not interfering in survivors often single chance. |
| 01:02:37.66 | meghantschanz | Right? And I mean I feel like I could talk about this for much longer. But we’re coming to the end of our time and I’ve been taking notes for things you’ve been saying um that I kind of want to end again with this. I Remember um during the kavanaugh hearings I wrote a blog specifically I don’t know if you remember the evangelical trumpers really jumped on kavanaugh’s team ah to a really high degree and I wrote. |
| 01:03:15.60 | meghantschanz | Being someone never trump or but someone who was part of the evangelical community I wrote a blog saying I Believe Dr. ford ah, which shouldn’t be surprising to people I’ve worked with um survivors of. Sexual violence for a long time I am a survivor of sexual violence I’m going to believe um her and also her testimony was very believable so many different reasons right? So I came forward saying I believed her and. |
| 01:03:49.20 | meghantschanz | The backlash I got from the evangelical community from people who I thought like loved me and believed in me and understood my perspective was extraordinarydre. It. It was actually mind blowing to me. Women. Both of them were women who had been very close with me who knew about my care for women who supported my work for women lost all sympathy, all empathy for women when it came to protecting him and their political agenda and I remember a dear friend. Ah, Former Dear friend said to me I think that if Dr Ford is lying and I think she is she should be in Jail for the rest of her life and I remember wanting to ask her if he did that would you say the same thing about Kavanaugh No and it. |
| 01:04:36.32 | Nicole | Yeah. Absolutely not. |
| 01:04:44.25 | meghantschanz | Absolutely not but she because she came forward about an assault and clearly it’s so clear Why people don’t come forward and the reaction of that Even someone coming in support of her is viscerally attacked specifically and I’ll talk about in my evangelical context it was it was. I Knew to be a little bit prepared I wasn’t prepared for the extent of hatred and misogyny that came forward after that. Um and I just want to know is there any thing to do to reach these women who have been so trained to hate themselves. Hey other survivors who come forward because I’m interested in that like like we can talk about like what causes it but the phenomena of women turning against women of condemning other women for telling the truth is something that is. |
| 01:05:28.30 | Nicole | Yeah. |
| 01:05:41.98 | meghantschanz | Completely mind blogging to me and I want to know what we can do with that. |
| 01:05:43.49 | Nicole | Yeah, oh that that is familiar to me I had another Twitter thread about the kavanaugh hearing go viral and I’ve experienced very similar comments that was that was a week I will never forget I will never forget and it. |
| 01:06:02.10 | Nicole | For exactly what you’re saying but I remember just looking around and watching this national conversation play out and just being surprised by how many people were on what I thought was so unambiguously the wrong side and I think 1 of the things that’s really difficult is that sometimes I wish people would just come out and say. |
| 01:06:13.30 | meghantschanz | Right. |
| 01:06:21.24 | Nicole | Instead of having to have a reason let me back up when we’re having these conversations about sexual assault very often. People are not thinking about victim or perpetrator too much. They’re often thinking about their own self image as whether or not they are a good person and so in the story you tell I can imagine an alternative universe that I would still. |
| 01:06:41.20 | Nicole | Like but I’d like a little bit more where they just come out and say I know he did a bad thing I believe her and politically he’s useful to me and so I am going to say that I support his confirmation Anyway, which is probably what they really think right. |
| 01:06:59.28 | Nicole | At Least if they listened to Christine Blasey for it at least if they had a moment because even the senators in the room that confirmed him a lot of them did say I believe you to her right? I think but we’re not comfortable with that. We’re not. We know it’s wrong to take the side of a rapist because he’s nice to us or because he offers us some benefit. And so instead what we tend to do is say oh well here are a lot of holes I have to poke in her story here. All the reasons I’m not going to believe her and here’s all the reasons why I think she deserves punishment and it’s all about just not wanting to feel guilty about the fact that you are doing in a moral thing. By hurting a victim and hurting a lot of other women in the case of Kavanaugh in particular in the context of you know, just getting something politically that you find useful like it’s dirty. It’s gross and it feels bad and we don’t like to think of ourselves that way and I think those are the kinds of hard Conversations. We have to have with ourselves is. |
| 01:07:56.85 | Nicole | Is to really look at yourself and say why am I getting defensive this for me just interpersonally has been the most useful tool is in general I Assume when I’m getting defensive I’ve done something wrong and the reason I feel like I need to defend my morality. My worldview. Whatever it is. |
| 01:08:14.69 | Nicole | Is not because I know it’s right? but because I’m convincing myself more than I’m convincing the other person. It’s right? and so I think that can be useful for us to think about is like when do you feel that defensiveness prickle up where you’re like oh reading this I mean this is a response I get to my research a lot from other academics. A lot of people. |
| 01:08:33.62 | Nicole | Say that the research is is strange or there’s something about it. They don’t like but they can’t put their finger on it and so it gets rejected from academic publications and stuff like that for really no reason attached and I know it’s because it made him prickle a little bit. The first time that happened to me it was with an academic who identified as a feminist who had been really supportive of my work for a while. But then she shifted and all of a sudden just didn’t think it was quite good enough and she never really said why and I found out from another student that her son had been accused of sexual assault and that was the thing that had changed was she wanted to be able to defend him but liking my work. You know, created attention and so to think about personally like is this even about what’s going on. |
| 01:09:12.49 | Nicole | About me I think is a good place to start but then also just intentionally building empathy to combat that himpathy to combat that inequality in the amount of empathy we have for men and women to be able to build empathy for women and to think about how hard it was. |
| 01:09:31.81 | Nicole | Dr. Ford to come forward to look at how she is still getting death threats for her Testimony and there are some people who will stalk in her us her for the rest of her life and to not lose sight of that and to meaningfully empathize with it and then yeah to continue to ask ourselves am I treating men better than I’m treating women. |
| 01:09:50.99 | Nicole | And I think regardless of your political views regardless of your background. We’ve all done that at some point we grew up in a society that taught us to do that and hopefully knowing that we’ve all done it and that we all have work to do regardless of how far along you are can make it a little bit easier to cut yourself a break. When you catch yourself doing something that makes you feel guilty or shameful and to think just all right in the case that you gave the story. You told that question of would I if he had committed a rape if he committed a sexual assault would I think he should be in prison forever. Obviously the answer is no obviously there’s an inequality there. |
| 01:10:28.80 | Nicole | Um, I think the other thing that’s difficult is we live in a society now where we like to pretend that everybody’s okay with equality and everybody thinks men and women should be equal. We hear that when anti-feminist people say they have a problem with feminism they say well I don’t want women to have more power than men men and women are already equal is what we usually hear. Um, but it’s worth. |
| 01:10:47.38 | Nicole | Noting that it’s dishonest that they are not being honest about thinking men and women are equal and that a lot of people do want men and women to be equal and so 1 of the things that can be difficult is recognizing that regardless of what somebody says to your face. You know they do think that. |
| 01:11:04.50 | Nicole | Men deserve more protection than women that men’s reputations matter more than women’s safety. These are just the realities of where we’re living but 1 of the things that makes it so hard is you know, just how do you talk about it when people are in denial sharing personal experiences is the thing that seems to get through. Um, letting people share stories of survivors experiences seems to be the thing that gets through there is a New York Times Opinion Writer who wrote a horrific article about title nine being a witch Hunt. It was completely baseless I cannot believe the New York Times ran it. |
| 01:11:36.72 | Nicole | Because it suggested that campus sexual assault wasn’t a real problem and that is an empirical falsehood. It was a lie in the pages of the new york times and he is 1 of the more conservative people at the times and a woman he knew who was a college student at the time a conservative woman. |
| 01:11:54.84 | Nicole | Conservative religious woman reached out to him to say I’m really bothered that this is your experience of this and this is your take on this because I’ve experienced sexual assault and she wrote him a letter about how she was really disappointed in conservative pundits. |
| 01:12:12.39 | Nicole | Taking the stance they do. She was like there’s space for a conservative movement that like values women and thinks that sexual assault is wrong and doesn’t dismiss this problem. It’s so frustrating that there’s no space for survivors like me and he ended up running it in the New York Times unedited. He’d never retracted his piece. |
| 01:12:31.50 | Nicole | He never apologized for it. But he’s been a little a little bit better about some of those issues since hearing from a survivor he knew is really powerful but you know as we’ve discussed that power seems to be limited as soon as you name a perpetrator and that’s something I just want to acknowledge out front is that the himpathy will kick in. |
| 01:12:48.94 | Nicole | If they know who the perpetrator is especially if it’s someone They also know and so the tricky part is that we have a lot of empathy for women and we can use it as a tool. We just can’t remind them along the way that they would prefer to have more empathy for men so you know it’s like optimistic but also really deeply sad and. |
| 01:13:07.51 | Nicole | It’s we have a lot of work to do. |
| 01:13:07.98 | meghantschanz | Yeah, and it makes me like also frustrated that a woman would you know in this story have to kind of open her self up to be retraumatized ah to retell her story for someone to listen and then I can think of. Instances where I have told story of my sexual assault to kind of move the needle like hey this is who you’re talking to and then also be victim blamed and have that turned. |
| 01:13:38.44 | Nicole | Yeah, it’s not always safe. Yeah. |
| 01:13:42.60 | meghantschanz | Yeah, to turn to that turned against you. So it’s like sometimes it might change someone’s mind or they might just tell you it was your fault. Yeah, yeah. |
| 01:13:47.63 | Nicole | And it requires a lot of vulnerability you know and sometimes when we get vulnerable we are rewarded and sometimes we are not and you have no control over that and so I would never ever ever ever ever advocate that someone tells their story to change a political opinion because it’s just it’s too. |
| 01:13:59.80 | meghantschanz | Right? right? right. |
| 01:14:04.93 | Nicole | Painful and it’s not fair, but there are some other things we can do to help out with building empathy for survivors that doesn’t have to be quite so personal and so what I would love to do is just list off what we know are the impacts of campus sexual violence on women. Um. |
| 01:14:21.52 | Nicole | Because we all know rape is wrong, but that actually is the extent of most people’s knowledge about sexual assault they don’t know the way it impacts survivors So can I give you this list and for anyone listening this will probably be the hardest part of the podcast to listen to which is why I hope you keep listening. But. |
| 01:14:41.50 | Nicole | Women who have been sexually assaulted in college are the part you probably know are likely to experience psychological symptoms including anxiety depression ptsd as well as difficulties with sleep and sex in the future. They’re very likely to experience suicidal ideation. Survivors are among 1 of the groups that is most likely to attempt suicide. That’s the part you probably know in addition to that being a survivor of sexual assault has been connected to a lot of chronic physical illnesses from the stress and the difficulty of it including. Gastrointestinal disorders chronic migraines and chronic backachches I personally know a survivor who her gi disorders following her sexual assault were so severe they made her vomit a lot that in her twenty s she now has precancerous lesions in her throat and she will have throat cancer. As the result of her body’s reaction to her trauma we don’t have enough research on that to know how common it is in education survivors are more likely to drop out and never return to school than other women. This can also hurt survivors. |
| 01:16:00.31 | Nicole | Future financial prospects especially if they have student loans that they would then need to pay back before they can ever return to school if a survivor drops out because their trauma is too much to bear for many of them. They cannot come back. Survivors I mentioned this earlier have lower gpas than other women. Whether or not you are a survivor as a woman. Is a better predictor of your gpa than your sat scores or your high school grades beyond that I have a pet theory just based off of my interviews survivors are likely to change their majors to places that are less hostile as a way to seek safety. |
| 01:16:39.73 | Nicole | And so I have a gut feeling that 1 of the reasons that we have such disparities of how many women are in stem fields. How many women are engineers. How many women are becoming this type of scientist is in part as the women I interviewed said that they were too uncomfortable being surrounded by men in a university that didn’t support them. |
| 01:16:57.13 | Nicole | Stay in that major or maybe because of their trauma they failed out of a weed out class like organic chemistry and so they had to change their major to something else that now they do like very much but will not pay as much and might make them dependent on men for their salaries in the future. And then the final risk that I really want to bring up is that women who have been sexually assaulted or abused are at a 6 time higher risk of being sexually assaulted or abused again and there is sort of as presumption when I started this work among scientists that that was because of. Things that women were doing wrong that they were engaging in high risk behavior but in my work I have found that it’s not because women are engaging in high risk behavior but because once women have been sexually assaulted once when they try to raise red flags in the future when a situation is coming out of their control. They’re gaslit and they’re told it’s just a trigger with. |
| 01:17:50.89 | Nicole | Needs them to stay in unsafe situations and blame themselves as well as there are structural inequalities that make some people more likely to experience sexual assault. For example when I was working as a victim advocate some of the clients we saw the most often were homeless and if you don’t have a safe place to sleep. |
| 01:18:09.17 | Nicole | You cannot guarantee your safety while you’re sleeping I want to just tell a quick story from a survivor This is like a lot of you know this is all the stuff that I’ve said that feels a little bit abstract so I want to talk about how this affected a survivor who has given me her consent to share this story. She was sexually assaulted. |
| 01:18:27.76 | Nicole | Her freshman year of college in sort of the traditional and typical way that we hear about at a party but when she barely knew that she’d met earlier that day it shaped her career in college so deeply because in the period following that. |
| 01:18:44.50 | Nicole | As a way and I forgot to mention this 1 but survivors are more likely to develop substance abuse disorders especially around alcohol and drugs as a way to self-medicate and cope and that was her coping strategy was that she started drinking and partying a lot in part because that was where her assault had happened and it made her feel in control to be there and to be drunk. |
| 01:19:03.91 | Nicole | And to not have it happen again. But we’ll note that that might actually put her at high risk of sexual assault in the future too. It didn’t happen to her but it’s scary. It’s very scary perpetrators can take advantage of that she because of her partying is what she says her grades fell so low. |
| 01:19:23.73 | Nicole | That she had no hope of her dream of becoming a lawyer and so when she told me this she said that she was really stressed because she needed basically a perfect lsat to be able to get to like a decent law school and sent that period of time she abandoned that dream altogether. |
| 01:19:43.42 | Nicole | She works in a completely different field and she’s thriving in a lot of ways. 1 thing I Want to say for the survivors listening to this is all of these symptoms can go away all of this stuff in a society that values survivors and treats them well and allows them to heal can go Away. You can heal healing is possible but when those resources something like title nine that you think is going to be there for you hurts you again. Your risk of all of these things. It’s about the same in studies as if you’d been sexually assaulted twice and then you were trying to Heal. It’s something called institutional betrayal. |
| 01:20:21.69 | Nicole | If you were betrayed by an institution that you thought was going to help you. It is about the same psychologically as being sexually assaulted a second time and so I just I tell this story 1 survivor’ experience of something is small that we would never think about as being impacted by sexual assaults as studying for the lstat. |
| 01:20:38.89 | Nicole | But having a huge influence over the trajectory of her life and of course it had to do with her sexual assault I use that to just make it a little bit more tangible and then again I want to reiterate for survivors listening. These are not things that have to happen a big part of my research is finding that our response to sexual assault is what makes it so painful. |
| 01:20:58.25 | Nicole | Not that the trauma is not necessarily inevitable and we can certainly lessen a lot of the harm by responding better as a society and so this is what’s at Stake this is what survivors need our help with and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. |
| 01:21:09.92 | meghantschanz | Yeah, so much that I still want to talk about but like we don’t have time. Um I just want I have 1 more passing thought and I we keep we might do this forever I have 1 more thing 1 more thing. Um so have are you. |
| 01:21:18.70 | Nicole | Yeah I know yeah. |
| 01:21:29.74 | meghantschanz | So you’re with the equal rights amendment are that the ok so something I’m an e advocate I’m I have an internship so I am definitely not at the high level There’s a lot of complicated lawyery legal ease things happening with it but something that we advocate for for the equal rights amendment. Is it would strengthen title nine it would strengthen I mean it would strengthen a lot of things because currently our constitution does not protect women. Um and we’re 1 of the few countries that don’t have women protected in our constitution. Can you talk to me about that. Are you familiar. If we pass the era which we’re close to would that be helpful in terms of accountability for sexual violence. Okay. |
| 01:22:15.16 | Nicole | I think it would because the reality is all this stuff. We’re talking about in title nine right now. Title nine is a single sentence as part of the educational amendments act of 19 seventy 2 and it just says it’s it’s gender Neutral actually it’s not about protecting women. It says. |
| 01:22:25.71 | meghantschanz | Um, right? yeah. |
| 01:22:33.54 | Nicole | That there should be no discrimination on the basis of sex and so without that without naming women. Specifically the result is that men’s rights groups can say well being accused is hard too and so if you don’t offer equal resources that’s discrimination and that’s exactly what happened and for the most part, the courts have not agreed. |
| 01:22:52.84 | Nicole | With that stance but schools have and because all of these regulations you hear about title nine that schools have to do this or that for sexual assault that’s not actually the law. That’s the interpretation by think back to your high school government class and that’s the interpretation by the executive branch or the president’s office and so that can change. |
| 01:23:11.60 | Nicole | With every presidential office which is why title nine has changed so much over the past decade from something where people said oh you know victims are getting an unfair advantage which I don’t think was ever true I don’t think even anything Obama was doing was nearly enough for survivors to then the trump administration saying we’re going to use title nine specifically to protect men accused. |
| 01:23:20.37 | meghantschanz | Ah. |
| 01:23:29.66 | meghantschanz | Right. |
| 01:23:30.99 | Nicole | Which we know most of them almost all of them are rapists and so it turned a law that was intended to protect women because it’s so gender Neutral ended up protecting men and I argue is now being used in a way that’s a form of gender discrimination itself that the way title nine is invoked by universities. |
| 01:23:38.73 | meghantschanz | Okay. |
| 01:23:49.28 | Nicole | Should be a title nine violation and so yeah, something calling out specifically where gender Inequality lies that it isn’t a neutral issue is really really important. |
| 01:23:58.12 | meghantschanz | Yeah, and there is I read a book about the era called equal means equal and there’s several There’s a lot of examples of what you mentioned and there was a story of another university where um. Ah, she wasn’t able to even prosecute her rapists because they were protected um under this like gender neutral thing and then um, a lot of the inequities beyond what we see with sexual violence. For example, Pregnancy discrimination. We have a lot of cases of pregnancy discrimination because they say. Ok equality at what the courts are saying who are upholding this inequity they’re saying well the law says like um equality between the sexes that means I treat a pregnant woman. How I would treat you know a young man and so a lot of women are being forced. It’s which is terrible. Pregnant women have been forced to be. You know, carrying fifty pound boxes even though they have um, something that’s specifically to them is women and so and there’s also stories of when it comes to pay discrimination and pay inequity. Um, that. |
| 01:25:03.10 | Nicole | Right. |
| 01:25:12.96 | meghantschanz | The way the courts have read this and so a lot of this comes from the fourteenth amendment um where we’re trying to push it but the way that it has been interpreted by courts is people are saying you know pay discrimination doesn’t exist and there’s 1 case where in Walmart actually. A bunch of women could prove that they’re getting paid less that they’re getting promoted less. They had a ah title 1 woman who was like the main um woman suing but she had like thousands of women behind her but had examples and she even had examples of ah her her employers her bosses saying. Sex discrimination things and she lost her case these women lost their case because they couldn’t prove that the sex discrimination that the pay discrimination was intentional that the managers intentionally did it and another way that companies get around the law on this is. Um, they will set their salaries based on the woman’s previous salary. They say oh I’m not basing this off of her gender I’m doing it because she was paid less at her previous job and we set our salaries based off their previous salaries. But the reason she was paid at her less was because of sex. |
| 01:26:24.60 | Nicole | Gender right. |
| 01:26:27.29 | meghantschanz | And so we see all of these things that aren’t actually things that are blatantly unfair and to women that aren’t actually getting addressed because we don’t have an equal rights and men men women are not protected and there’s a lot of issues like that and so I just wanted to bring that up I think um and the work that you’re doing getting the equal rights and amendment admit. Past is really important. So everyone listening go check out the yeah uracoition dot org I think it’s really important and of course check check out. Nicole’s work Nicole tell us where can people learn more about your work. You say you have a book coming out I’d love to have you whenever that comes out I’d love to promote it where but tell us where where can they. |
| 01:27:00.19 | Nicole | Absolutely absolutely for anyone who wants to just see what I’m working on or just see my my thoughts about sexual violence I Almost always weigh in when sexual violence is. |
| 01:27:05.64 | meghantschanz | And more. |
| 01:27:13.17 | meghantschanz | Yeah. |
| 01:27:15.93 | Nicole | Something big in the news that everyone is talking about I almost always put some thread together or something like that. Um, Twitter Twitter is where you should follow me. It’s just at end bedera that’s b e d e r a and would love to have you there and it’s going to be a lot of content about sexual violence. So know that but also it’s. |
| 01:27:30.96 | meghantschanz | Oh. |
| 01:27:35.92 | Nicole | It’s much more I’ll say that for anybody who’s a little bit nervous and saying ooh I don’t know if I can deal with that much content about sexual violence on a regular basis. Um I can promise you that 1 of the reasons sexual violence can be so hard to talk about and think about is because victim blaming is sort of in the conversation. So often it’s often a new trauma. Not so much a trigger but someone who said something that’s hurtful. |
| 01:27:55.78 | Nicole | That’s not what you’re going to find in myspace everything is going to be survivors centered and focused on taking care of survivors and I don’t do things like graphic descriptions of sexual assaults. So just know that and hope to see some of you there. |
| 01:28:06.45 | meghantschanz | Yeah, and when it so when it you’re working on your book when is it do Okay, okay. |
| 01:28:10.26 | Nicole | So I it’s with editors right now I’m still choosing 1 so we’re at the early end of the process. But I’m hoping to get it out as soon as possible because the title nine debate is happening right now and so I don’t want to miss it. So hopefully it’ll be soon. |
| 01:28:24.46 | meghantschanz | Wow. Ah, okay, so much we need to do to make this world better and mainly we just need to dismantle the patriarchy. It’s so Harmful. All of this is a result of a society that values men over women and this is just a million 1 of many different ways for women suffer under this. And um, something we need to do? Okay so the last question I ask all my guests is what is a quote Mantra verse something that keeps you going in hard times. |
| 01:28:50.81 | Nicole | I saw this question on the question guide and was so delighted by it I love it for me I I don’t know where this originally comes from I like googled it once and it’s from a lot of different a lot of different places like a lot of musicians have used it. But the first time I heard it was in the Brandy carlyle song caroline and it’s the phrase. |
| 01:29:10.29 | Nicole | There is beauty in the struggle and I write it. It’s always up somewhere in my office I write on my research notes all the time. The idea that even though this fight for gender equality is probably a long generational 1 and we just get to see a piece of it. There is still beauty and being in the muck together. |
| 01:29:23.20 | meghantschanz | Um, yeah, yeah and I will say like this fight is exhausting absolutely and unfair and we could talk about that all day. But I really relate with that is like a way that I. |
| 01:29:28.49 | Nicole | And that makes me feel really good. |
| 01:29:42.17 | meghantschanz | Find strength is to know I’m not ah alone and there’s something empowering about knowing that I’m not alone in this fight. So again, you’re 1 of those people like yeah yeah. |
| 01:29:48.30 | Nicole | Yeah I always tell people yes and I always tell people you know it always feels good to be fighting the good fight in good company and that’s the first thing I felt when I moved into my first space. The first time I was working at a rape crisis center I just looked around I was like wow the other people here are amazing and I feel really. Didn’t sort of relaxed and joyful to be in this space with them even though we’re doing such hard work. The priorities on joy that you see in these spaces I think is beautiful and unlike anything I’ve encountered anywhere else. |
| 01:30:17.85 | meghantschanz | Yeah, well I’m encouraged by your work reminds me that we’re not alone. We’re all not all of us but a lot of us are trying to take down this system together from different angles and I think there is all of these angles. You know you’re doing the University I’m doing like the faith space specifically christianity and so it’s just. |
| 01:30:25.22 | Nicole | Um, yeah. |
| 01:30:37.47 | meghantschanz | So needed. So thank you? Thank you? Thank you? Um, and I will definitely please keep me in the loop about your book I will definitely have you back on. |
| 01:30:43.17 | Nicole | I Will I would love to be here. Thank you so much for having me. |