Ideas - The Making and Unmaking of Violent Men | Miglena Todorova

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

What shapes the perpetrators of violence against women? And why haven’t efforts to achieve political and economic equality been enough to stop the violence? As part of our series, IDEAS at Crow’s Theatre, professor Miglena Todorova explores violence against women — and why efforts to enshrine political and economic gender equality have failed.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

And welcome to a live taping of Ideas at Crow's Theatre in Toronto. Coming to you today from Factory Theatre at the corner of Bathurst and Adelaide. You guys are awesome. Thank you. This is the third in our new series. We've invited five stimulating thinkers to give a talk inspired by one of the plays in this year's Crow's Theatre season, and the ideas in plays often reflect some of the same ideas that concern and preoccupy all of us, some of the most pressing questions of our time. The third play in our series is the Crowes Theatre production of Dana H. The play tells the true story of Dana Higginbotham, the chaplain in a psychiatric ward who was abducted by one of her patients and held captive for five months. Lucas Nath created a play about what happened using his mother's own voice dialogue from days of recorded interviews meticulously lip-synced by the actor in the production. The play Dana H.

has been described as a chilling exploration of survival and storytelling, but it also leads to the larger question about why men commit such acts. And beyond the individual motivations that drive any one perpetrator, how do history and culture shape violence against women? To talk about the making and unmaking of violent men, please welcome Meglena Todorova, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education and Director of the Center for Media, Culture and Education at OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Please welcome Meglena.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I really feel privileged and honored that on a Sunday morning, you're here for a conversation we desperately need, yet it's not an easy topic. I appreciate your presence and I'm really humbled by your attention and the fact that you're here. I'm genuinely and truly honored. So I'm Iglana Todorova and I teach graduate courses that are also dedicated to sexual violence, but also racial and transgender violence in higher education and beyond. So I have done quite a bit of research on the topic, but today I want to share with

you also my politics and to invite you actually to what are the everyday political actions of life with passion and with commitment that there are simple things we can do in the world to make it better. So with my glasses now and water, thank you so much. Sexual violence and violence against women, such as harassment, stalking, trafficking for sex, domestic, verbal and physical abuse by an intimate partner, rape, and unwanted sexual touching of any kind is an urgent global issue. For members of racialized, indigenous, and low-income communities,

sexual violence is layered with racial prejudice, homophobia, and economic hardship as well. According to the United Nations global statistics, millions of women across the world are subjected to sexual violence daily and domestic violence. Every year, about 50,000 women and girls worldwide are killed by intimate partners or family members. The statistics in Canada are not better than those in other countries in terms of domestic and sexual assaults. In fact, in the city of Toronto, every evening, over 300 women and children are seeking shelter in the public shelters, trying to remove themselves from a violent domestic situation. Women and girls, however, are not the only people subjected to sexual and domestic violence. Men, boys, queer, transgender, and gender non-binary individuals also experience such violence.

However, and that's very important, most perpetrators of sexual, domestic, and intimate partner violence in the world statistically are men. 95% are the global statistics. The perpetrators are violence. 95% of those are men, although the victims also come from all social groups. But this also does not mean that all men in the world are violent. We also do not have scientific evidence that there is a direct link between male human biology, aggression aggression and violence. In fact, researchers found that in animal species, testosterone levels are linked to male animal aggression, but these findings are not replicated in human males.

In fact, if they were replicated, then every man will be violent by default, right? This means that male sexual violence and violence against women in the world is not a biological phenomenon. In other words, violent men are not born, but they are made. And they are made by social and cultural forces that I would like to name today. Neither are sexual violence and women batter bothering a problem of specific men. Media often depict sexual violence as the result of the perpetrators' poor upbringing, childhood abuse, their trauma,

or mental illness. Because of these depictions, we tend to think of sexual violence as the acts of individual men and their special circumstances. These misrepresentations, however, inhibit our understanding of how the individual circumstances of violent perpetrators are manifestations of deep structures that have organized our societies for centuries. Therefore, an American feminist wrote in the 1970s that slapping a woman or sexually assaulting her is not an individual but a historical and collective act. I want to unpack this notion of male sexual violence as historical and social by mapping the primary structures and forces that are the root causes of violence.

I also want to address things we need and can do as individuals and society to prevent sexual violence and violence against women from occurring. Along the way, I suggest that despite tremendous resources and efforts by governments, industries, and communities to prevent sexual and gender-based violence, we have failed to recognize and address major gaps in our knowledge and practice that limit the impact of these efforts. Let me now name the root causes of violence. A large body of research by experts in multiple fields shows that male sexual violence is caused by patriarchal structures. Patriarchy refers to a gendered division of labor

in human societies. Historically, because women were engaged in reproduction or giving birth and raising children, women were seen as belonging to the domestic realm where they took care of children and families while men went outside the home and engaged in hunting, food gathering, trading, and traveling, thus defining the public realm. Through these public interactions and activities, men have claimed the power to create the political institutions, participate in the economy and the global markets, determine and write public laws and dominate the judiciary, and make decisions impacting all members of society. Women, in contrast, were not given access to the public economy or politics and did not acquire the right to vote until well into the

20th century. Today, women continue to occupy low-paid jobs related to caring and services, while men command the heights of the global economy and earn higher wages in professions dominated by men. This division of labor and related perceptions about the role of women as domestic workers, who are naturally good at child- child caring and household work, and men as public figures, decision makers, and breadwinners have permeated all structures of modern societies supporting gender inequalities locally and globally. These inequalities produce male violence inflicted to maintain the gender hierarchy and women's inferior social position. Violence against women further keeps all women at bay, disciplining us to know our place in the

hierarchy and accept especially heterosexual men as the rulers of the world. This is called patriarchy. However, women also contribute to violence against other women. Women who are mothers, sisters, mothers-in-law, raise boys and teach young men to behave in ways that assert male authority and privilege. Women arrange their daughters' marriages against their will and demand that younger women submit to the will of husbands and fathers. Women also participate in physical mutilation of female genitalia and punish girls who reject the male-dominated order. Women also reject transgender women, inflicting violence on that social group. violence on that social group. Violent and abusive fathers also provide examples for their sons who grow up and go on to treat women the same way their abusive fathers treated their mothers. Religion, mass culture, educational systems and institutions, the academic disciplines, and political ideologies to the left and the right

act together to normalize the patriarchal social order, it is also a deeply racialized order, by presenting these views of unequal genders, as well as unequal races, as natural or biological rather than social and political. Did you know, for example, that Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sikhism, Judaism, and Hinduism all preach inequality between men and women and interpret sacred texts, mythology, and traditions in ways that maintain male privilege? mythology and traditions in ways that maintain male privilege.

We also consume music, films, books, social media, and other cultural products that depict women as sexual objects and men as physically and intellectually superior. Public education advances similar ideas because students learn natural and social sciences that are overwhelmingly masculine and driven by male imaginations. From geography and anthropology to engineering, astronomy, physics, and medicine, our knowledge of the world and of ourselves is shaped by male views, male ways of thinking, and male needs. Most medical innovations, instruments, and drugs are also tested first and often only on men. For this reason, the CBC published an article a couple of months ago, probably you encountered it, where research in Canada shows that every 22 minutes in Canada, a woman dies

of a heart attack, because basic medical instruments are not designed for taking images of the smaller blood vessels of a woman's body. Gender inequality, embedded deeply in the structures governing our lives, has prompted numerous national and international policy initiatives to address the issue. As a result, 162 countries have implemented policies mandating gender equality, as many have enacted laws against discrimination and violence based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity or religion. And these are great successes. But we do not see much change happening in terms of the rates of violence.

It's not going down. In fact, under the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence of sexual and domestic violence skyrocketed around the world, Incidents of sexual and domestic violence skyrocketed around the world, prompting governments to take emergency measures to curb it. There is also a direct correlation between the economic status of men and the rates of violence. So in Alberta, by the way, statistically, when the economy, the local economy crashed around the oil sands and the oil fields, the economy, the local economy crashed around the oil sands and the oil fields, and there were these national debates about the future of Alberta, many men lost their jobs, and many of those men had traveled from the East Coast and other parts of Canada, right, to work in Alberta. So as the economic hardships kind of escalating, so was violence against women. Very often, where a man cannot assert particular kind of privilege and authority in one space, the desire to assert that authority in another space is instantly manifesting itself.

And so the lack of not having, you know, the income they desire, and then through the income they can also claim, you know, material privilege and material power, showcasing power, right? When they're robbed of that economic privilege, then violence against women, against nature, against children, abusive children, as well as, by the way, animals, escalates. Again, however, this doesn't mean that all men are violent. That's very important. I will come back to it. Again, however, this doesn't mean that all men are violent. That's very important. I will come back to it.

So we don't see the violence going down. I believe that one reason is also the logic of commonly enacted state policies, whose focus is on equal representation and participation of men and women in political bodies, industries and cultural and educational institutions. But this attention to gender parity is deeply short-sighted in my view, and failing to take seriously the experiences of former socialist countries where gender parity was a central political and ideological issue. From the teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, to policies in countries ranging from Poland and Hungary in Eastern Europe, to Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia in the Balkans, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the Soviet parts of Central Asia,

socialist state governments dealt with the logic and effects of patriarchy by inviting women in the public economy, letting women take all kinds of jobs, providing free state services supporting child care and domestic needs, and opening the doors of universities and the sciences to women. In socialist Bulgaria, where I grew up in the 60s and the 70s, over 90% of women had jobs outside the home. Practically, I grew up not knowing a single woman who was not having a public job, not a single woman. And the concept of a home take care was literally strange and unknown to us and to me. So even under socialism, you know, these policies allowed women to earn their own wages and gave them a degree of independence from men. So dependence on men is also a reason for violence.

However, violence against women under state socialism did not stop. Gender inequalities continued in families and private homes, so they're purged from the public realm, but they escalate in the private realm. Employers continue to privilege men despite laws and social policies. Socialist culture, art and education continue to depict women and men in ways that extended notions of women's inferiority. Key decisions and key decision-making in the socialist society also remained in the hands of men. So patriarchy went underground and we could pretend that we were equal. We were equal in many ways, but not in terms of gender. Socialist states purposefully did not collect statistics on sexual violence, intimate partner, and domestic violence because gathering and publicizing such information would have exposed the inability of socialism and the entire ideology to resolve the so-called woman's question defined by Marxist, socialist, and communist the world over.

socialists and communists the world over. Research and archival work after the collapse of socialist states and the millions of women like me who were raised in socialist countries and witnessed or experienced the violence have become the living memory of it. That history provides a major lesson about gender inequalities that we have not learned. That is, fostering and maintaining gender parity in the structures of the economy, the educational system, the professions, and politics does not and will not stop violence against women from occurring because populating oppressive structures and patriarchal structures or racialized structures with women and others who are marginalized does not alter the structures themselves. It's not working. The same lesson is evident by data from the northern European social democratic countries collected by state

and international political organizations. According to this data, Nordic countries are the highest-ranking states in terms of gender equality. Iceland and Norway are number one and number two countries in the world where an equal and, in some cases, a higher number of women participate in running the government, managing the banks, and serving as CEOs of public and private companies. More women in these countries also have higher education and hold highly paying jobs in the economy. Similar gender equality is achieved in Sweden and Finland, which rank number three and four in the world. Yet, the rates of

sexual violence and intimate partner violence experienced by women in these countries over their lifespan is similar to the rates of the United States, which ranks 44th in the world in terms of gender inequality or gender parity or gender equality. Right. So they're really, really low. Canada ranks 17th. So we have achieved a lot, but we have ways to go. So from former socialist countries and contemporary social democracies practicing welfare, distribution of wealth, and gender equality, we learned that opening the economy, politics, and education to women and men equally has not resulted in significant reduction of

sexual and intimate partner violence against women. Sexual violence prevention policies and approaching seeking gender parity alone cannot and will not resolve the issue because they fail to foster new cultural, educational and spiritual environments that change people's minds and consciousness. The economy is not the solution. These policies have resulted in more women serving as members of parliament, foreign ministers and even prime ministers, but these increased numbers have not changed the masculine political ideologies governing geopolitics in our countries. Wars, devastation of the planet, and interpersonal violence continue to rage. We also see more women teachers and educators,

but in these roles, women teach and thus perpetuate the same male-dominated sciences that are root causes of gender inequality. Some of these sciences were also the vehicles, that are root causes of gender inequality. Some of these sciences were also the vehicles, like anthropology, of racial imaginations, of colonization, and of imperial projects that devastated communities around the world and are the root cause for the kind of problematic social relations we have today. Another important gap in our policies is the lack of impactful sexual violence prevention education across elementary, secondary and higher education. Because of the efforts of political leaders such as former Ontario Prime Minister Kathleen Wayne, all colleges and universities in Ontario now have sexual violence policies and somewhat good sexual violence prevention programs.

and somewhat good prevention, sexual violence prevention programs. But these programs cannot be starting when individuals come to study in universities as young adults. Learning about sexuality, gender, and non-violent intimate relations must begin much earlier to have the intended impact. However, efforts to implement gender and sexuality-related education in elementary, middle and high schools in Ontario and other provinces mobilized protests, resisting it because it undermines parental authority and the preservation of the cultures and traditions of communities. Culture and tradition, however, are not an excuse for violence against other human beings because they are female, queer, or from a different race and ethnicity. Culture is not a justification for violence.

Resisting sexuality and gender-related education in Canadian public schools in the name of culture, religion, or traditions serves to perpetuate the social order, our inequalities and the violence. Our inability to recognize that we can be oppressed and oppressors at the same time also perpetuates gender and sexual inequalities and the violence they produce.

For example, we have become very good at relating to each other from a place of pain and as people who have been victimized. Upon encountering others, we instantly present ourselves as individuals who have suffered from some form of oppression or injustice. But we are not as good in relating to each other from a place of strength, positivity, or recognition of others as different from us, but our social and cultural equals and political equals. Therefore, activism against sexuality education and much like activism around other social issues,

such as racism, the treatment of ethnic, racial and religious minorities, often proceeds from the position of how the community has suffered historically, but also with a refusal to address how women, men and queer people within the same community are unequal. how women, men and queer people within the same community are unequal. You cannot mobilize a community to resist and to struggle with external oppression without also tackling internal oppression. That's not community. We also refuse to admit publicly that from the perspective of a woman, or a queer person, or a transgender person, violence against us has been committed by all kinds of men. White, Black, Asian, European, Christian, Muslim, rich and poor.

So, can we unmake violent men? Examples and approaches in other parts of the world show that we can change these realities by reducing and even preventing sexual and gender violence from occurring using simple steps. We can tackle the issue by beginning a dialogue within our families. For me, one of the most inspiring examples of family-based self-education about sexual and domestic violence comes from Rwanda, a country in Central Africa. In the rural areas of Rwanda, males are socialized to believe that they are entitled to sex. of Rwanda, males are socialized to believe that they're entitled to sex. Therefore, sexual coercion is a problem among married and cohabitating couples. But a community and family-based program was able to address the issue. In the program, married couples from six villages spent evenings together with an especially trained facilitator from the community, talking about

the meaning of sexual consent within the family and outside the family, as well as gender relations and women and men relations in general. The participating spouses were given homework. After each meeting, they were asked to continue the conversation about their sexual and intimate relations, their needs, and how they felt in these relations in the privacy of their home for the duration of five months. Just these open conversations changed male perceptions about sex in the marriage significantly in the villages, leading to reduced experiences of sexual coercion in the communities that were in the program. In addition to this kind of family-based self-education, we need to support school programs that teach boys and men how to form positive and

non-violent relations. That work requires male leaders who act as role models and educators of other men. It is not the job of women only. We further require women supportive of educational programs focused on men. We need funding and support not only for women studies departments and programs in our universities, but also for the emerging men and masculinity studies. Currently, only a handful of universities in Canada offer academic courses dedicated to male identities, emotions and experiences, mostly in the realms of sports and culture. But we lack male studies that explore and target men's violence explicitly. Our students are not involved in this kind of conversations. We also need political leaders and policymakers who have the courage to make education about

sexuality, identities, and male violence mandatory and common. Let me share more examples of the role of political leadership in sexual violence prevention and gender policy. So one example comes from Cuba, a socialist country indeed, but also an exception to my prior statements about socialist countries. country indeed, but also an exception to my prior statements about socialist countries. So Vilma Castro Espín was the sister-in-law of the Cuban main revolutionary and communist leader Fidel Castro. Espín was committed to gender equality in Cuba and used her influence in the Cuban Communist Party to initiate major educational programs against violence in the

1960s and 1970s. Espín and her collaborators used popular magazines and mass media to disseminate knowledge about sexual and gender inequalities and violence. Using stories, images, books, and artifacts, the Cuban Federation of Women, led by Espín, sustained a large and decades-long campaign to educate the public about sexual violence and gender. So this was not like a one-time intervention and moving on. This was sustained over decades. Because of these educational efforts, Cuba is a leader in the world today in sexual and gender-based violence education in the world. Just a few years ago, the United Nations identified Cuba as the country that has progressed the most in Latin America and even globally in terms of sexuality and gender education. It took one woman and three decades.

And the support, of course, of men who were in charge of the country, right? But she was smart and would use it. Here is another example that I encountered just a couple of days ago on CNN. So maybe you read that fascinating article. There is an ongoing program in the city of Bogota, the capital of Colombia. And it involves educational sessions for men that are public and on wheels. The program is called Care is Learned, and it was started by the elected queer female mayor of the city. She's currently the mayor. The program is based on research conducted by staff in Bogota City Hall after receiving numerous calls from men during the COVID-19 pandemic who didn't know how to care for their family members who contracted

COVID. The mayor and her staff also wanted to address the machismo culture and violence against women in Colombia in general. So, in special events, we train community members, mostly women. These facilitators go to football stadiums, auto shops, and other places that are frequented by men. They do it today. The program facilitators are training the men in basing household skills, but also talking to the men about the incredible importance of their participation in taking care of at least half of the burden of household chores, thus alleviating women from the countless hours they spent not only working in the public economy for wages, but also coming home and doing household work.

So women never stop. The program facilitators also reached out to the city bus drivers last month because they noticed high rates of accidents and aggression on city roads. Bus drivers who work for the city and were unionized, so in also collaboration with the unions, the bus drivers came to these special sessions where facilitators, again, other men, made space for the drivers to talk about their feelings, anger and frustration on the road,

but also how to manage these emotions and stay safe and how to understand also the social causes for these emotions that is performing masculinity. The program started in 2021, the entire program, but a survey from 2024 showed significant change in the distribution of household work between men and women in the city in two and a half years. called Work Between Men and Women in the City, in two and a half years. The survey also showed changing gender perceptions and notions of masculinity. They may not be that dramatic. I'm not talking here about, and we wake up tomorrow and we have completely different men, but small changes are important. Political leaders like the women and the men who initiated these transformative programs in Cuba and Colombia are expressions of our collective will and imagination.

Such imagining or ability to create visions in the mind of things that do not exist in our environments is key to creating better and peaceful societies. environments is key to creating better and peaceful societies. Imagining is often dismissed, however, as fantasizing we associate with children and lack of maturity. But that is such a limited perception. Fantasies shared by a group of people are the stuff of social revolutions, because the shared fantasy of a different world moves us collectively, thus producing incredible political energies that are transformative. Imagine now, for a moment, what the world would look like and feel like if men's violence and patriarchy are no longer forces defining our societies. are no longer forces defining our societies.

What will be our role, or rather, what will be your role, each one of us, in making that fantasy a reality? Politics is the pathway to making the fantasy a reality, not the fantasy alone. I leave you with these questions this morning, hoping for better and just societies and non-violent futures where we meet and live as equals. Thank you very much. Thank you, you're very kind. Thank you, that was very enlightening. Really appreciate it. Thank you, You're very kind. Thank you. That was very enlightening. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Maglena.

The brewery's all mine. On Ideas, you've been listening to the making and unmaking of violent men with Maglena Todorova from Factory Theatre in Toronto. You can hear Ideas wherever you get your podcasts and on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on US Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear us on the CBC Listen app. I'm Nala Ayyad.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and, most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app.

This is the third in a new series we've developed with Crow's Theatre in Toronto, an opportunity to explore some of the ideas that animate great theatre. Lucas Nath's play, Dana H., based on a horrifying experience of his mother's, takes us inside the mind of a woman abducted and assaulted by one of her patients in a psychiatric ward. Contemplating what happens is a challenging experience for a theater goer. Asking the questions of why violence against women happens is a challenge we must all face. Our thanks to Meglena Todorova for starting the exploration of this very important question.

I'll have a few questions for you now, Meglena, and then we're going to throw it to you, the audience. And as I mentioned, if you have questions, write it down in one of the cards, and one of the ushers will come by and pick it up from you. Again, Meglena, thank you so much. The pleasure is mine. I have a few questions for you,

but the first one really relates to something you said several times, and more about your experience as someone who explores this very difficult terrain. The several times in which you kept underlining not all men are violent. I mean, I think it's something we all intrinsically know, but there's a reason you keep repeating it. How do people react to your interaction with this topic and what kind of reaction do you get? It is not easy. Courses that are dedicated to patriarchy, to exploration of violence, and even, you know, to equity, social justice education are not really frequented by male students. And the reason also is that qualitative research shows that male students feel constantly blamed and marginalized in these

conversations in ways that they feel they don't know how to participate in these conversations. Because they're instantly treated as people who have done something wrong, but educators and those of us who engage them fail to engage their kindness and goodness as well. They are not whole people in that space, but perceived as violent people. That turns students away. And actually, where we want them in these courses, they do not come. and we have failed as educators to also enact pedagogies and deep understanding of how better to reach out and engage men and women in this kind of in this kind of work men feel the same way thank you i i was wondering whether you'd had any firsthand experiences in that. Of course, of course you have. course. I also noticed that slowly the numbers of male students who come to the course is increasing

very slowly. This is telling you that, and I also had two requests this past academic year of graduate male students and doctoral applicants who want to pursue this as they're calling. What does that tell you? This tells me that there is so much actually male kindness out there. We just don't know how to foster it, how to harvest the good energies that are also out there. And I think that education is a key in not only having this conversation, but positioning both male, female, and anything between the polarity of these genders, all kinds of, you know, human genres and kinds of people, right, to come to this conversation from a place of strength and

genuinely to talk to each other. I got quite a few questions here for you. It looks like almost everyone here has asked a question, which is great. But I do want to ask you this, because again, it was something that struck me. It's a very simple question. You went to great lengths at the start of your lecture to talk about how, despite the fact that we think we're equal, we're not equal, and about this sort of pretense that went on in Bulgaria where you grew up. Are we also pretending here now?

That's a great question. Are we pretending? What do you think? Do you think we are pretending? I'm very serious. So what I think is irrelevant actually in this context again, right? Pretending probably is not the right word. We are not pretending. We desperately want to hold on to minuscule but meaningful victories in our way of seeking better and just societies. It's not quite pretense. It's not quite pretense.

It's not quite pretense. And we have to also recognize that political changes happen in small increments. Revolutions, you know, are these dramatic ruptures. But actually what led to the revolution is the real change. And what happens after the revolution, it's not the violence on the street and the bloodshed. So we need to hold on to that. But somehow, to be comfortable in contemporary societies, and especially with this conversation,

well, what do women want? Well, guess what? Right? Of course, there is an incredible deal of inequality and purging the inequality or harassment and violence in public places or at work only hides the issue within families. is terribly important because domestic violence breeds more violence and more violence because the people who are caught up and arrested in a domestic violence situation are people who are struggling with everyday life, but they also are traumatized individuals who are prone to commit more violence. And the violence is so normalized in their lives that they have lost even perception of moral, what is moral and what is ethical. So it's terribly important.

Okay. So we'll try to get through as many of these as we can. Some of them are hard to read, so I'll do my best here. How do we address, I think, patriarchal structures within religious structures that serve to uphold male privilege of entitlement. That sounds like another lecture. But just a quick answer to that, if you can. It's a great question. Because I was curious about that same issue, I went and collected some research data. And so there is overwhelming evidence that theological schools in the United States and in Canada, in modern universities,

overwhelmingly admit male students who continue to interpret the sacred texts in a way that maintain privilege, and they also graduate and go on to become community leaders, to become church leaders, to become our religious pastors and the people we look up to. church leaders, to become, you know, our religious pastors and the people we look up to. So one way to address that is to allow more women to interpret sacred texts and to publish these interpretations. So it is a way to give women the voice. However, It is a way to give women the voice. However, Christianity is also terribly violent. Terribly, terribly violent.

One way is also to recognize that violence. And again, I have to go back to what I proposed. We need to start the discussion domestically, within the family. But we also are responsible for a conversation within our community. And we have to demand that our religious leaders and those who are our spiritual guides address inequality and violence against women and sexual violence. We have to demand it. In the final analysis, the greatest political act is also to withdraw. I personally do not pay donations, do not support causes of organized religion because it doesn't address a basic fundamental issues of humanity. And I'm not attracted to this kind of spiritual leading where the violence that comes

at me is not even acknowledged. Okay. Can you comment on whether there has been progress made at all on reducing violence looking back over the last century or so? Absolutely. A great deal of progress has been made. That's the thing with us, with humanity. We change, but the changes are so slow that by the time we arrive where we need to be, we will lose the planet. That's the thing. Likewise with violence. So, so, so slow. Because there is also a great deal of resistance you see even psychologically and socially the classes that hold power are not gonna give up that power easily and they resist and they will continue to resist we saw it under socialism we saw it under capitalism they will

resist so it's not gonna happen but a great deal of progress. Even the fact that most countries in the world now have laws against violence, you know, and this is a step forward. One of the most incredible things, by the way, in international politics in the last decade is a Canadian prime minister who publicly called himself a feminist. The uproar around the world and the power, the sheer power of that statement was so enormous that I was receiving phone calls from Bulgaria. Are you for real a prime minister who is a feminist? This is such a big deal. And whether you are to the left or the right politically is irrelevant here. But you have to absolutely appreciate the courage of a single man from that position of power to get out and to say, I'm feminist.

And you know what makes him feminist? Not the colors he wears. Right? I'm feminist. And you know what makes him feminist? Not the colors he wears, right? Or this kind of simplified notions of what is a feminist man. A feminist man is a man who believes that men and women are equal. This is it. That's a feminist man. And he said it publicly. Absolute uproar. absolute uproar. So much scholarship and so many new scavengers of Trudeau has kind of, you know, come out of these kinds of statements. And this is also the meaning of leadership and the role of men. Something else shifted. The Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, which is the major funding body for social scientific and other research in Canada and beyond, right? So we compete as scholars with research projects for funding, right?

The Social Sciences and Humanities Council has dedicated so much efforts and funding for research on gender, transgender and racial equality in the past few years that Canada is an absolute leader in the world. Someone's asking how can we address this topic in the justice system where those who are called to provide protection fail us? Yes that's a great question and so the justice system includes from the police to the judges who would release a perpetrator. So in Canada, this also happens quite frequently. Somebody, you know, who is jailed and serves a sentence for a vicious rape and murdering all of a sudden gets out

in three and a half years, right? But you see, we are back to the idea of structures. Whatever you do to the judges is not changing the structure. So the very ways in which the justice system is built and composed, and the laws that are undergirding the system itself, is the root cause of violence. The judges are the manifestations. They're the carriers.

Addressing the judges will not change the system. So we need a political conversation about changing laws, which is very different from tweaking the justice system itself. Because we also see that female judges pass on sentences that are lenient and would not take even violence against another woman very seriously and would dismiss it. And as we were talking this morning, do you know Madeleine Albright had something to say to women like this?

Remember, she was the former Secretary of state of the united states in the 1990s and she's from eastern europe so i wasn't surprised by that statement and she said there is a special place in hell for every woman who will inflict violence on another woman or who will just sit there while violence to another woman is taking place. There is a special place in hell. She was talking precisely about those political leaders, those female educators and those female judges who would not take the system seriously and turn it upside down. But instead, right, they see their role as, I'm just, you know, here performing the service.

I have one last question for you. You issued an invitation at the end of your lecture to all of us to imagine what our role is in changing this reality. How do you see your role? I'm 59 years old. Frankly, something has always driven me, but I wasn't aware of what. I come from an outspoken culture and culturally I'm from Bulgaria, from the Balkans. We engage with each other in a very direct way. This is very difficult, however, way to communicate and to be in Western countries or polite countries

such as Canada, right? God forbid you say something and somebody such as Canada, right? God forbid you say something and somebody will be offended, right? And you constantly apologize. For the longest, I would disapprove of myself because somehow I didn't know even how to have these conversations or I will do it in a way that will be offending somebody here over there. And so, and I would try to change myself, right? Or I even shifted my focus to other research topics because I kept asking myself, am I

the right person for that? In the final analysis, however, I've come to believe that there is a reason I'm on this earth. I may not completely love myself, but I also do not disapprove of myself at that age. I am who I am. There is work to be done, and I'm unafraid, and I'm going to go all the way. I lived through extraordinary political changes. Extraordinary. The country I come from, in less than a century, saw Ottomanism, colonialism. You know, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans for four centuries, followed by a European style of a monarchy. There was a czar. Followed by World War II,

followed by capitalism, followed by communism, followed by globalization and neoliberalism in the span of 70 years, what I learned from that space is don't ever, ever give up. Change is not only possible, but we have to. And if we breeze through life in content, or if we selfishly indulge in our own well-being, but refuse to see the social condition, is it worth living? For me, no.

So I keep doing what I'm doing. Am I always happy? Not really. These topics are so, so difficult. Not to mention how much I struggle to be a white woman in these conversations. I'm so aware of my own privileges. However, I choose to use that privilege where I can make a tiny difference. And if I moved you today, even a tiniest bit, if you go home and remember two things I said, and if you have a conversation

with the people you love about these topics, I've done my job. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're so generous. And I'm quite certain that we will remember more than a few words. Thank you so much. The pleasure is all mine. And I'm so grateful for your presence.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. And thanks to all of you for being here. here and thanks to all of you for being here. On Ideas, you've been listening to The Making and Unmaking of Violent Men, the third in a series of talks inspired by great plays produced in association with Crow's Theatre in Toronto. Today's program was recorded at Factory Theatre in Toronto, where the Crow's Theatre production of Dana H. is playing. Ideas at Crow's Theatre is produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth. Special thanks to Paolo Santaluccia, Chris Abraham, Carrie Sagar,

and the entire Crow's Theatre team here. For Ideas, technical production by Danielle Duval, the web producer is Lisa Ayuso, acting senior producer Lisa Godfrey. Greg Kelly is the executive producer

of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyadj. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you.