TONTS. - Equality Through Empathy with Tarang Chawla

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

This week I talk to Tarang Chawla about the stories that men in particular are told through culture about who they should be. Award winning anti-violence campaigner and writer Tarang is also a trainee lawyer using his background to advocate for social and political change particularly in our approach to mental health and gender equality. Tarang also founded the Not One More Niki movement, Australia’s largest campaign to end violence against women in culturally diverse communities, named after his younger sister Nikita who was murdered in 2015 by her former partner. Tarang is warm and funny and has done what I think the only way through is when it comes to the hardest, most heart breaking moments in our lives. Like a rock under intense heat and pressure becomes a diamond he’s taken his and his family’s pain and turned it into something beautiful and important. For more from Tarang Chawla you can visit his website www.tarangchawla.com Subscribe here for – tontsnewsletterYou can find me on instagram @clairetonti or at www.clairetonti.comYou can email me with suggestions for episode topics and guests to [e-mail]. Feel free to leave me a voice memo to be included in the show.A big thank you to this wonderful team:Editing - RAWCollingsTheme Music - Avocado JunkieGraphic Design - Emma HackettPhotography - Anna RobinsonStyling - Hilary Holmes  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Tarang Chawla, has a bulldog called Habibi. Habibi likes to sleep under his desk and occasionally roll a ball around. And in our episode today, Habibi is snoring just gently and quietly underneath a lot of our conversation. I think a gentle and great reminder that even in the most difficult times, like Melbourne lockdown that we're going through at the moment, there's always going to be someone making you laugh. So I'm Claire Tonti.

Welcome to Tonts. This is a podcast about feeling all of it, about the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we are told about who we are. I want to look at where these stories come from and examine whether they are true and what we can do to unpick some of those messages that I think are holding us back. Tarang Chawla is one impressive person. He's an award-winning anti-violence campaigner and writer. He's also a trainee lawyer. He uses his background to advocate for social and political change, particularly in approaching mental health

and gender equality. He also writes some really excellent tweets all about maths, which is a show in Australia, and I, for one, definitely appreciate his humour. Tarang also founded the Not One More Nikki movement, which is Australia's largest campaign to end violence against women in culturally diverse communities. Now, he started this after his younger sister Nikita was murdered in 2015 by her former partner. But as Tarang says in this episode, Nikki's story is not that ending. Nikki was a choreographer. She was warm and funny and kind. And the way that Tarang talks about her in this episode will warm your heart.

Tarang is also warm and funny and has done what I think the only way through is when it comes to the hardest, most heartbreaking moments in our lives. Like a rock under intense heat and pressure becomes a diamond. He's taken his and his family's pain and turned it into something beautiful and important that I think is making our Australian community a better and safer place to be for all of us, and especially for women. All right, here he is, Tarang Chawla, and occasionally Habibi. Mum's family's from Delhi, Dad's family from just outside Delhi, but if we trace it back, we're technically from like the Pakistan side of the border.

Ah, okay. Yeah. I mean, like we kind of, and mum and dad's family are like from like a similar area in that pre-partition side of India. But a lot of like when direct colonial rule ended in India or that region and then India and Pakistan and Bengal, the Bengal region around Bangladesh, when all of that was formed, like we saw these kinds of lines drawn in the sand. And like, it's like, you're on this side, then you're from, then you're from that country.

If you're on this side, you're on, you're from this country. And so like families are torn apart. There's a lot of bloodshed, a lot of suffering. And like, they're not comparable at all, but we're seeing this weird thing now with like coronavirus restrictions, particularly in Australia, that like you have families who live on either sides of borders. Right. And then we draw like because of the line in the sand that we say that like you can't visit those people, even though you're part of the same family, because you're led by premiers who have different restrictions. And it's never the border communities that have the number of cases. It's always the kind of like city hubs.

So it's this strange kind of parallel where families are separated and it's just, yeah, we're living in a really sad time, I think. I know it is. It's really strange. So let's go back to the 90s because that's less sad. Yes. You were telling me, so you moved here when you were 18 months old and you told me your favourite movie or one of them was American Pie.

That's a 1999 movie. I thought I'd start favorite movie or one of them was American Pie that's a 1999 movie I thought I'd start there yeah why American Pie what was it about that that you love oh god I can't believe I can't I can't believe I admitted to that so freely when you asked me tell me about a movie that you'd uh that you'd seen before from from your past uh I don't know because I haven't watched it in years I don't even know that I'd find it funny anymore but at the time it was it was pretty popular right like I remember thinking about I remember thinking like what what were the movies that stood out and I think it's I was in that year seven at the time and I think it was like the first examples of freedom that I got

you know like being able to go to the cinemas with my friends rather than my parents so it was all like it was a confluence of all of those factors that led to me thinking oh this is incredible let's go watch this at the cinema I don't even think it was my idea to be honest I think like it was would have been like whoever like the ringleader in our group of all boys was yeah and it was just looking back it's very problematic it's so it would never be made now right because the premise is which is so funny because i loved it too when i saw it even though i mean it's pretty gross in a lot of ways so it's high school boys vowing by hook or by crook to lose their virginity before prom and it sort of feels like a game of russian roulette with four bullets in the chamber when you look back at

it now yeah because by their own guidelines it had to be valid consensual sex, nothing to prostitute. But it doesn't really incentivise good behaviour, does it? And that kind of shows throughout the trajectory of the film. Even though it's got this like really lovely line through it that's quite sweet in some ways about friendship and love, I mean amongst really problematic, really highly explicit kind of gross teenage boy stuff, I guess, going on. And now we wouldn't really think about it as a movie that could even be

made without people throwing it up. I just find it so interesting, you know, looking back at movies like that now, we see them in such a different light for you because you work in men's advocacy right so you work and women's empowerment what do you think has changed in the culture since then that makes us look back at that kind of film and go that's problematic yeah right I think well part of it is in in your um your introduction there Claire around the film and, like, the themes of it, right? We're more attuned to themes around representation, you know, and that, you know, can be split across race lines, across gender lines in particular. And so, like, all of the women, the female characters in that film,

they exist purely for the male gaze. They exist purely for men to either ogle them and or objectify them either visually or physically or in some form, right? So they exist as vehicles of pleasure for a very narrow men's experience, right? Like teenage, kind of like this myth or this perception of teenage boys

as being testosterone laden uncontrollable heathens right and it's not isn't it's not true like it's not grounded in reality you know certainly we have issues around um teenage boys acting out if we want to use a very very diplomatic and very like low-key uh descript of the behavior. With that acting out is not a product of differences in like boys' development and psychology. It's a difference in the way boys are reared and nurtured and the way that boys are allowed to behave in certain ways. You know, and I'm conscious of that as a man from particularly

like a South Asian background. There's a lot of behavior that boys in particularly like Indian communities get away with because of ingrained misogyny and sexism. Where it gets complicated for me is this perception that it's somehow worse in certain communities because like growing up here, you know, for instance, if I speak Hindi, I speak Hindi in, you know, when I speak, I speak in an Australian accent, right? So it's not like my relatives there are like, oh, he's just like us. They look at me and they're like, you're definitely Australian.

Like, you don't, you would not survive a day here. And they're right. But it's like this perception that certain men and the community, like not just men, hold in Australia that things are like worse elsewhere. And I've always thought that's such a strange thing. And I think it's something that Australia does particularly well, which we shouldn't do, which is like look at other countries and go, oh, they're that bad or they're worse,

so why does it matter here? And it's like we still have a woman a week being killed by a current or former partner. Here we still have all of the allegations of sexual assault that have surfaced in Parliament, no less. So it's like if we're living in a culture where this is happening here that's a you know that's something that's in our backyard and that's something that we need to not only be mindful of but actually work to change and shift so for me it's sort of like what's changed in the culture since then and now is an awareness that this

exists like we're not even really at the point of tackling the problem, which is where we need to be, because there are people who still find ways to say, for instance, not all men. You know, like when something occurs, like in the case of the murder of my sister, we had people say, like, well, not all men are violent. And it's like, well, no one's saying that all men are violent, but we are living in a society that has continued like a long legacy of patriarchal thinking, where like men are the

figurehead and women exist around that. And that film exists as part of that culture, you know. So now, maybe through the rise of streaming services and more people making content and having it be visible, you know, we're seeing people more adequately represented as part of the richness and diversity of communities. And I think that's, that can only be a good thing, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think you touched on so many things there. Like, for instance, there's a student in the film, Nadia from Slovakia, who is seen doing a striptease and it's kind of published all over the internet and it's seen as quite a funny joke when really it's so problematic and dangerous now really

around that idea of consent and showing nudity of someone you know watching them through a webcam without their knowledge all of those sorts of things and it's done in such a way that exactly right is so flippant and is from a male gaze completely without seeing her as a fully fleshed person yeah with her own you know personality yeah i forgot it i forgot about that webcam thing and that's that's fascinating isn't it because that's i mean that's illegal right like baseline like that's very illegal do not do that uh film anyone without their consent but also i wonder i wonder how it like kind of fits around the timing of when that came out right like 1999 the dot-com boom and we were still using dial-up internet then right like people now have no

concept of what that is right they don't understand the struggle of trying to get content on the internet like even downloading a song like now we stream everything but like downloading a song and then waiting half an hour 45 minutes for one five minute song to download and then listening to it until you hated it because you could only download a couple of songs at a time and then someone in your house needing to use the phone and then you had to stop using the internet all of that right but okay so when it came out around then it's just it's fascinating because i wonder how many uh boys saw that and how many girls saw that and then learned that because that's what they see that's what's acceptable yeah you know and it's we're having these discussions like around consent education in schools right which is so necessary and so important.

And someone asked me, what consent education did you have at school? And I don't think I had any. Like, I don't think they taught us that. I think they taught us a bit about abstinence and they taught us a little bit about like, this is how you put on a condom. And I think that was it.

That was literally the extent of it. Yeah. What is consent for people listening who might not know? Yeah, right. So consent, it's pretty easy to explain. Basically, it involves communication with the other partner or partners around what are the boundaries of acceptable and non-acceptable interaction in any kind of sexual scenario. So like constantly checking in.

And essentially, the best way to look at it is like if it's not an enthusiastic yes, acceptable interaction in any kind of sexual scenario so like constantly checking in and essentially the best way to look at it is like if it's not an enthusiastic yes then it's not consent you know like if there's coercion involved or control involved or forced to get the yes then it's not really you're not really getting consent so it's i think people complicate it you know like we had that national campaign from the federal government, which was around like milkshakes and things. Oh, God, it was so confusing, wasn't it? Yeah.

And then other metaphors are used about like tea and, you know, you can change your mind at certain points. But there's this reluctance to talk to teenagers about sex as though it's a foreign concept to them and I'm like man I remember being a teenager and the concept was not foreign to me then I doubt it's foreign now like yeah yeah yeah fashions have changed but that has not changed yeah yeah and the struggle I mean the the downloading music struggle wasn't even the biggest struggle back then it was the struggle to get pornography right because it was like like if I'm being painfully honest, that's what it was. It was just...

Yeah. So I wanted to ask you now, going from that kind of boy, I guess, who's like, you know, struggling to get music, maybe trying to look for pornography and really into girls, and in some ways, quite innocent, I guess. Do you want to talk us through what has changed for you and your story? I'm so sorry about your sister Nikita as well. I just want to start by saying that. And I know a lot of people listening won't know anything about your story and her story. Are you comfortable talking us through that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So my sister Nikki, there's a photo of her just there actually. She was murdered by her partner in 2015, when she was 23. And a lot of women are killed in the context of separation,

when men's sense of control diminishes over their partner in relationships that were in some way abusive before, whether that's physical violence and abuse or other forms of violence. So Nikki died in similar circumstances to that. And yeah, that sort of spurred me on a path of advocacy and campaigning around women's safety, around prevention of violence against women, and the attitudes, whether they're in the media or in the community, that perpetuate that cycle of abuse and control by men but it didn't sort of start my interest in these issues didn't start there like i i'd always i think from

a young age been fascinated by concepts of gender and gender identity because i didn't feel like i fit into certain molds so it wasn't like an external kind of i saw other things and you know were interested in them it was more like introspection from a from a very young age right like I remember when I was like three or four and I would like put on mum's nail polish and and it was like little stuff like that where other boys weren't interested in the same things and my parents were quite open and like do whatever you want etc and in a way way they like both worked full time. So they were sometimes like not able to be present. So they just didn't have any sense of like being able to say,

do this or don't do this. Right. But then I remember when I was in school and like seeing other boys in school, like the way that behavior is policed around gender binaries and gender lines, like boys do this, girls do that. And so that would lead to things like boys would play um sport in school boys would be the ones who play football they do cross country and girls would be the ones that go play violin or join the choir you know little things like that

we're like oh boys don't sing in the choir like how silly is that and it's so it's so preposterous when you say it out loud because it's like, well, that's absurd, right? Like, what if a girl wants to play football, you know? What if she's really into trucks? You know, so what? Yeah, totally. What was Nikita like? Can you tell me about her?

Oh, annoying. Super annoying. Yeah, she's the most annoying. I mean, this is the thing, right? Like, I can tell you all the positive things about her her but i can also tell you how annoying she was like she we so we lived we grew up in the same house for and and lived side by side for about 16 odd years and our bedrooms were next to each other and she was annoying like i remember one time so i got this amazing speaker set right and it had like five speakers and then the subwoofer surround sound set up and

i set it up in my bedroom and it was epic it was so good and i would like listen to my favorite songs darude sandstorm and others on there and one time i came home and i saw that my speaker set was missing and i went to you know i went to her room and i saw that she had taken it from my room to use for dance practice, but mum had told her that it was okay and it wasn't okay. Like this was my issue was not with my sister. My issue was with the boss, the CEO, mum. And I went to Nikki's room and I saw that it was there and I fluked out.

I cracked out. I was so angry at her. I yelled at her. I probably called her names and was like, you're the worst sister. You're so bad. my god you spoiled brat get away with everything and then i went to mom like this is bullshit like how can she get away with this whatever and about 10 minutes later 20 minutes later i like cooled down i was like that was excessive like that's the speaker said chill out bro like honestly not a big deal but she was sassy right nikki was like she would never

yell back at you but you'd know how she felt about situation because when i went back to apologize and i and i like knocked on the door and i was like hey nick i used to call her nick um short for nikita or nikki and i was like hey nick i'm really sorry and then she's like go away i'm like i'm really sorry and she's like go away and go away. I'm like, I'm really sorry. And she's like, go away. And then I said, you know, I just want to apologize. Please open the door. And then she starts playing. On the speaker set, she stole from my room.

She started playing the One Republic and Timberland song, Apologize. And I just hear, like, it's too late to apologize, like, through the door. And it gets progressively louder until, like like knocking on the door was futile because he wouldn't have heard it and i just how do you even stay mad at that yeah because it's so do you know like it's so clever like yeah it's like i just want to apologize and you just hear like it's too late like in the back yeah too late to apologize yeah oh my god i love it and then timberland in the back like that and it does a lot um but yeah she was she was very sweet and good-natured and just like a genuinely lovely human being and one

of the things that strikes me now six plus years after she's gone is uh that she was quiet and softly spoken but she was someone who had this kind of warmth and like she was fierce on the inside, if that makes sense. Like she wasn't like outgoing fierce. She was like quietly fierce and quietly like confident in her own abilities and someone that would be there for you regardless of what you were going through, you know. Obviously, she made fun and we had like a lot of fun of each other play practical jokes on each other but we were lucky because we

grew up for separated four years in age so the age gap wasn't so big that we didn't we were at completely different life stages so like yeah yeah we were able to connect on a on an intellectual level as well and a meaningful level so yeah she was annoying but tempered with a lot of positive qualities of generosity empathy kindness uh kindness in particular like honestly i can't think of people that i've known that are so consistently kind yeah you know she was really really kind really kind what was your family like through those 16 years? Like what's the dynamic like with your parents and with her and with you? Yeah, right.

So mum and I are the more outgoing types in the family. We're probably a little more extroverted. Mum in particular, like growing up we would have, mum would host like big events. You know, she's very social particularly before Nikki died she's not so much anymore and I think that's a change that's come about through grief and trauma and and loss but growing up I remember having like we would have parties for like 100 people and our house would be like packed I was like a three-bedroom suburban house and and there were like 80 to 100 people like once a month,

once every two months. Like someone would be like, I want to have a birthday party. And mum would be like, yeah, I'll host it for you. And that was seemingly normal. So now when I – and I remember growing up later, like when I would watch MasterChef or something at university and one of the judges would be like, so we're going to do a dinner party and you've got 10 people coming over and you're stressed. i'm like 10 people what that's not stressful like that's easy

like give me 15 minutes notice if that like we're set that's a that's a weeknight yeah that's the standard right and i think that's i think that's true for a lot of migrant families right like i don't think that's unique to mine i think that we look at like gatherings of 10 people and we're like oh yeah like where's everyone else you know or when it's weddings and you hear like oh there's 50 people coming to the wedding and then you're like oh man like where's where's the rest of the family like are you not on speaking terms what's going on and then you know like the big big events were just the norm you know so growing up we had we had a lot of love like within within our

own family and a lot of love within the community and love was shown in ways where it wasn't always like you'd never say like i love you but like when i'm studying my mom would just like cut up fruit and bring it to me and just give it to me and like i didn't ask for fruit but i was hungry right but she would just cut it up and like give it to me and my dad does that now like he does it like i can't remember the last time my dad said i love you but like he cut out fruit yesterday and he just brought it to me he's like here he says that with the fruit yeah and it's like and i reckon people from you know non-anglo migrant backgrounds will relate to it because it's just i don't know what it is

but it's just like it's the way it happens yeah and then there's other there's other things where i've seen in families like dynamics between sons and fathers where they'll have like i've had this conversation with a male friend of mine and he was like my he's like i know my dad loves me but i don't think he respects me because like i don't know i don't know any of the things that he knows you know and his dad is very like hands-on you know he's a mechanic he's like i don't know how to do anything with my hands like i don't know how to change the car tire i don't know how to do anything like i just know how to call uh racv or whatever i just know who to call if something happens but i don't know how to actually fix it he's like so my dad loves me but he doesn't respect me because i'm not his vision of a man um and it's a strange thing where like I think there's extra challenges and pressures on men

from migrant backgrounds to fit into certain stereotypes because there's a lack of understanding across generations of the shifting nature of masculinity and definitions of what being a man actually means and what it includes. Yeah, totally. How did your dad and your mom and you, I guess, cope with that grief of losing Nikita? Was it different for each of you? Yeah, definitely. So mom is quite a spiritually minded person. So she, and I think she, I mean, last conversation,

I think she believes in a god or gods or something. And so she prays quite a lot, but not in any way that like, and I don't know why I feel the need to qualify this. I think it's because like, I think people assume praying in like a Judeo-Christian sense, but it's not like that. She's Hindu. And so it's a bit different, but like, you know, when there's like lunar calendar events on,

like she'll pray in her little temple and she'll have her girlfriends over who also share similar beliefs. And it's quite, it's around, like, the social aspect of it more than anything, you know, like being together. And obviously a lot of food is, almost always food is involved when it comes to my family. So mum kind of coped in a way around spirituality, meditation,

also doing a lot of community work mum has done. So, like, the strange thing is that, like, I've been recognised for a lot of the things that I've done in the community, which, I mean, I'm very humbled by it and grateful to receive that acknowledgement. But the reality is that my parents, particularly my mum, is behind a lot of that like she you know if i've ever written something and i've needed someone to cast an eye over it i've asked my mom

you know because she knew nikki better than anyone she gave birth to nikki there is a certain bond there that a parent shares with their child particularly mothers you know the mother's loss is so profound having grown that child in their body and then giving birth to that child there's a certain spirituality around that experience right so that kind of that connection it endures and so mum mum's grief is something that it's not as visible now you know like she doesn't visibly cry or she doesn't look upset but it's there like and dad's is similar but dad grieved in a different way to mom an example of that claire is when so nikki was murdered on the 9th of january 2015 her funeral was on wednesday the 21st

of january 2015 and then the following week after the 26th of January public holiday, dad went to work. And so his daughter, his second child and only daughter, had been murdered three weeks prior. And dad was back at work. And I remember saying to mum, this is fucking insane. What is dad doing? Why is he going to work?

And my mum was just like like this is this is what's right for him like he needs to do that because he needs something for his mind to be occupied otherwise he'll spiral and i didn't get it because i couldn't i remember going back to work and i remember sitting in like a work in progress meeting or something like on a monday morning and you know the team director's there and everyone's talking about things and I just remember thinking what the fuck like wow but I also felt the same in work situations when Robin Williams died I remember sitting in a similar meeting and everyone was just like talking about like whatever and I was just like are we fucking serious Robin Williams just died like we should all go home and pack up our like we should all go home and or put the movie on the tv

in the meeting room here and like watch good morning vietnam or mr dole you know i just i don't know i think like i think that way when certain legends of any kind of industry died it's like wow like we lived in the same time as them. Like we were the beneficiaries of their art and their creativity. But I remember like when Nikki died, it was like, yeah, I couldn't go back to work. My dad did. Mum grieved in her way around meditation, spirituality, and I mean she still keeps that up.

For me, advocacy and campaigning, and I've come to learn this now in more recent years with the benefit of hindsight Claire that was its own uh form of handling grief it was similar to my dad I think that my dad needed something to occupy him and so for me it was like regular work didn't cut it anymore you know and there was a period of like probably two or three years of campaigning and advocacy where I did that like 18 to 20 hours a day like I didn't sleep much at all I mean I still don't sleep probably a healthy amount right and so there's a bit of like do as I say not as I do when it comes to that aspect of self-care because it's like it's like I could benefit from probably sleeping more than five to six hours a night.

But the thing is, for me, that's what it was. It was like I need to do something. I need to feel like I'm occupying myself. And so it started with no plan in mind because it was so raw and so new. I didn't work in social justice or anything before. I didn't work in those sectors. So I had no concept of it. It was just this terrible thing has happened. What do I do?

And so I just started doing what I thought was right. And one thing led to another, really. And so three years was just like consistently on. And then I realized that, hang on, this is not sustainable. This is not useful to other people let alone myself i need to manage it better i need to be able to manage my emotions look after myself and also a realization that my sister would have wanted me to be happy you know that like i i can't you can't you know it's a cliche that you can't pour from an empty cup and it's true like you can't you can't so

it was kind of taking a step back and being like how am i going to look after myself more throughout that process but we all as a family we all handled it so differently and we continue to this day and i think one of the things about grief is that it doesn't follow a linear timeline you know we talk about like the five stages of grief they're not a timeline they i mean there's probably a sixth one which is just hating everyone and everything including yourself right but we don't talk about that like we don't talk about the sorts of ways that grief manifests which is just like i mean the anger stage can be you know so profound and so strong and for me like when you lose someone to murder murder is a very profound way for someone to die.

So it certainly stirs up a lot of emotions of anger, but it requires a degree of introspection and thinking about what's happened to come to peace with it. Have you come to a place of forgiveness? Is that even possible in that kind of situation? Yeah, it's possible i mean i've heard of of people who have forgiven i've heard of people who've forgiven and like spoken to the perpetrator the person that yeah the perpetrator or the person that killed a loved one and actually said you know to their face, I forgive you. Thing is, what happened with my sister's murder is that the man who killed her didn't think that he was in any way morally responsible for what happened.

Like, he still blamed her after the fact, blamed my parents, to a lesser extent blamed me, but he wasn't one to blame himself. You know, like, he didn't really show much remorse throughout the process, you know, the didn't really show much remorse about the process that you know the criminal trial process all of that he entered a guilty plea because there was no question as to whether or not he did it and so for me um forgiveness comes down to two things you can forgive someone when they apologize to you but more than that you forgive someone through

your actions and things so i don't think of it as like i forgive him for what he did i think of it more as i don't focus on what he did because it does not serve me in my life you know and so i just try to focus on doing what i think is good and i don't to be frank like i don't think about him other than when we're like having this conversation i don't think about him in a day we're like having this conversation i don't think about him in a day-to-day basis i think about my sister a lot um and this is one of the things right like when we talk about what people will say like nikki's story it's it's fascinating to me because what they're often referring to is nikki's death but she was a performing artist

and a choreographer and so to me her story is the art that she was creating or that she wanted to create the good that she brought into my life and the lives of others and her aspirations that's her story when some people refer to her story they're talking about the act of her being killed really and the you know what preceded that that's his story really that's not her story she's she's like a supporting actress in that. He's the main person that decided to do that. And I think when we look at it like that, I think it's part of a fundamental shift which would centre perpetrators at the heart of the crime,

that it's their choice to commit this action and they do it on someone who is innocent and defenceless. And I think if we thought of it that way, we would actually see a shift in victim-blam it's like, it's not their story at all. They're just wrapped up in it through no choice of their own. And Nikki was the same. Yeah. It's like those headlines that are focused on the victim rather than focused on the perpetrator or worded in a way that don't kind of point the finger to the, yeah, it being the man's story. Like, oh, you know, perfect dad murders his family or something.

You know, like there's some really difficult things around the way that we talk about perpetrators. Or it'll be less, it'll be like less direct even, Claire, I think, than that. Like it'll say like, in my view, it'll say like in my in my view say something like perfect dad pushed to the brink something like that and then and then you know comma tragedy follows yeah right and it's just like and then it's like oh and then and then it'll go through a father of three killed his children before taking his own life and then he'll have a neighbor

saying oh he was such a great man i never would have expected it and it's just like who are we providing a eulogy for here like we're providing it for the man that killed his you know and and let's use a real life example this happened with hannah clark's murderer and the killer of her three children uh rowan baxter took their lives and the way that he was framed after the the killing like in the media the way that he was framed was so astounding because it was like you would think that this was a person that was the victim of tragedy themselves but in actual fact they committed you know quadruple homicide killed four people and then took their own life right like that's that's fucked right yeah we yeah but we talked about it the media originally talked about it like what a sad day this former

footballer you know has been driven to this point we had a police commissioner at the time i don't recall his name but he was saying like we don't know the circumstances of what drove him to that and it was just like what do you mean like what are the circumstances of what drove him to that. And it was just like, what do you mean? Like, what are the circumstances? And it was like circumstances around his family life and the separation. And I just think, well, in its own way, Hannah Clark for not wanting to be with him was proven right because when she was free, finally, he killed her. Similarly with Nikki, you know, people were like,

well, why does she want to leave him? And I'm like, well, why do you think look what he did yeah so the parallels with women who find themselves as uh as victims as homicide victims of intimate partner violence are so eerie because they're so they're so similar you know that like the control and abuse escalates and escalates and escalates and then eventually it culminates in murder. And so for me, it's so important to get to the roots of that around entitlement and boys' behavior and get to the prevention side of things. Because I think it's so much easier to fix something at that stage before it's happened, when we're dealing with families that are torn apart. It's very difficult to fix something after the fact.

Yeah. I was going to say, what can we do then in terms of prevention? You were speaking about how we get to that point. Well, before we get to that point where someone is murdered or violence is committed what are some of the things that you've seen work or that you think could work in circuit breaking I guess this kind of pattern of violence that we're seeing across our country what a fascinating question I think that it comes down to people particularly male role models with

influence modeling the kinds of behaviour, you know, and accepting their influence and using it for good. So, for example, when we saw Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister talk about how not all disrespect ends in violence, but all violence begins with disrespect. What a powerful statement from a Prime Minister, you know, leader of a nation standing there in no uncertain terms talking about the need to be respectful of women. And if we contrast the current prime minister, Prime Minister Morrison, against his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, and we look at how on International Women's Day, Prime Minister Morrison got up and said, we want women to rise, but not at the expense of others. And it's such a strange, it's such a strange statement to make, because it's like, we want women to rise but not at the expense of others and it's such a strange it's such a strange statement to make because it's like we want women to rise that that's it that should just that's full stop that's the sentence that we want women because women aren't rising to positions of

power at the rate that is that is having them in you know represented in equal terms yeah exactly i think it's like 13 or something of women in this country as CEOs or something like that. Yeah, the statistics are, yeah. And it's lower for women of colour, women from migrant backgrounds or those with gender diverse identities. Like that's talking primarily around, you know, if we, and that's why I'm such a strong advocate

for intersectional feminism. You know, any feminism that not only thinks across gender lines, but also includes all human beings based on the intersection of factors that disproportionately impact them in addition to gender. So, for example, Aboriginal women have some of the worst health and economic outcomes of women anywhere in the world and it's like to me that's unacceptable you know but if we only if we only advocate for like kind of a corporate boardroom feminism we're not going to help those women so we need to we need to have like whole of community approaches to to feminist thought and feminist practice and i mean that's that's where i sit but unfortunately we've got a i mean we've got a leader who is finding it difficult to grasp the extent of women's experiences you know he needed his for instance he needed his uh his wife to clarify for him and he needed his you know to

have an extension he needed to have women in his life that he could understand the issue of violence towards women or disrespect or harassment towards women in reference to. Like he needed to think that his daughters were in Brittany Higgins position or in Grace Tame's position. And I just think as long as we have men in positions of power who need to view women as an extension to themselves or an extension of a man, we're not going to make the progress that we need. Exactly. Because I think at the heart of that, about what he said, at the heart of that was that women are not people and human beings. Women are women, a subset of men to be in service of men,

to be, I don't know, idolized or whatever it is, married, girlfriend, mother, but they're not a person with autonomy, with feelings, with wants, with desires, worthy of respect, just as a man is. And I know we talked briefly when we first met about this idea that it starts in locker rooms and as teenage boys and men talking about women from that male gaze right not talking about them as someone who has their own voice and needs and desires even from a sexual perspective and I think that's for me anyway I see where the danger starts before even we get to the point where their men are even in relationships when they see women as a goal to achieve, you know, to get, like in American Pie,

to get that girl to sleep with them rather than to understand who she is and for them to be on a more equal intellectual footing. Yeah. You know, and I think it's really sad's really sad, too, that we can kind of perpetuate that idea that women are, you know, just objects. Yeah, it's terrible. And like, it's, it's so, it's so depressing as well, because it limits the extent of the male experience. It has, and this is what I was trying to explain earlier, is it obviously has effects on women,

but it also has effects on men, you know? So, but I just don't think that the effects on men are the reason that we should be trying to tackle it. You know, I think that's what's sort of messed up a little bit now is that like, we're still in a point where like, men require centering everything upon themselves in order to think that it's

worth doing, you know? And I think that we need to be able to learn to flex that empathy muscle as boys and men to think beyond ourselves, to go outside of our own experience, our own lived experience and go, wow, there is 50% of the population that is immediately experiencing the world in a somewhat different way to the way that men experience, right? And then going beyond that to actually understand more. And it's a process, like it's not something that for me, it's not something that is a site of blame. It's not like we're blaming men collectively or individually for the actions of others. We're actually inviting

men into a space to say, reflect on your own experience, reflect on the experiences of others. We're actually inviting men into a space to say, reflect on your own experience, reflect on the experiences of others. And I think that this poses certain problems for us culturally because we live in a culture that is quite individualistic and quite oriented around individual goals and individual success. And if we contrast to Aboriginal cultures and First Nations cultures or certain migrant cultures, you know, which are arguably more community-centred and community-oriented,

it makes for situations and places where change can actually occur probably quicker in those communities because they think about the collective. You know, they have the collective family structure. They think about the collective, you know, they have the collective family structure, they think about things a little bit differently. And I think we could do to learn from each other, you know, we can learn from the way things are done in other countries to go, oh, how do they view certain family units? How do they view the role of women? There are certain cultures around the world, you know, in African nations and elsewhere, that are not led by men, they're not patriarchal led, they're matriarchs, you know, in African nations and elsewhere that are not led by men. They're not

patriarchal led. They're matriarchs. You know, the woman is the figurehead of the family or the community. And they have within them lower rates of violence towards women. They have greater acceptance of women's autonomy over reproductive choices. They have greater decision making afforded to women. And I think that when we have those situations in place, we all collectively benefit. You know, if we look at countries led by women during this pandemic, Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Angela Merkel as, you know, Chancellor in Germany,

we're seeing the way that they're managing the situation and they're doing a fantastic job. They're doing a phenomenal job. You know, and even the men who are doing a good job globally are the men who outwardly espouse gender equality views. Completely. You know, because they're probably taking into account the views of women in their teams you know like brett sutton as the chief health officer in victoria

you know and he speaks openly about the need to get more women working in science and medicine in those fields and i just think that if they're the views that that person holds publicly then that would factor into their decision making so that So that if a woman, for instance, you know, a young junior female colleague of his comes up with a suggestion that he will actively consider it. He won't go, oh, no, this is a young girl. What is she going to know? You know, because a good decision comes from a good idea and a good idea can come from anywhere.

Totally. And I think, I mean, it's backed up by the research, right, that workplaces and companies that have greater diversity in terms of people of colour but also women from a gender perspective just do better. They make more money. They function better as a collective. And then also I was looking a little bit into some

of the research around Melinda Gates and her kind of looking at poverty and communities in developing nations and even climate change and one of the big markers is educating women which seems you sort of think well how is that going to help climate change but once women are empowered within their communities the research shows that they are then the ones who are bringing their children into the world with better education they work in this collective way and obviously you know we're making big stereotypes but if you look at you know massive you know millions and millions of cohorts of people the research is there it makes sense

that women think in a more collective way maybe for our own survival, maybe from hundreds, thousands of years ago when we were living on the land in that way. Yeah, it does. It does factor in. And, like, there's a state in the southern part of India, Karnataka, and they have one of the highest rates of literacy and numeracy for young women. And then that leads to younger women later in life having fewer children. So they'll have one or two children rather than having eight or 10 or 12,

as is customary in other parts of developing nations. And that is linked to literacy and numeracy levels. So the role of women shifts from being simply those who bring children into the world to being those who do whatever they want to do you know though and and so they have it's strange like if you visit that part of india it doesn't look like other parts of india with like rural settings and agriculture of the land and things like that. It looks like a modern metropolitan city. And it's strange for people to grasp because if you go there, it's like, wow, this is progress is what occurs when we empower women to the fundamental right to education, you know. And so it's so, to me, it's so crucial because it's like we all, it's a no brainer because we all

benefit. So why wouldn't we, why wouldn's a no-brainer because we all benefit. So why wouldn't we do the things that result in all of us benefiting? You know, this is not a zero-sum game where, like, there's a finite amount of pie and, like, if we give it to a certain number of people, that's it, it runs out. Like, this actually continues to grow the more that we actually nurture and empower a greater number of people. Completely.

I mean, it goes right back to what Scott Morrison was saying about that ridiculous notion that by women rising, we have to make sure that other people don't lose out, which is really what he's saying there is that men will lose out if women rise. You know, we're worried about men losing a piece of the pie when really it's women rising all ships rise yeah 100 and maybe you know our way our workplaces will look and the way

men's lives and women's lives will look will be different yeah but really the research shows better yeah and and that's the thing right like we have this thing where certain organizations will still have things like maternity leave or paternity leave rather than like parental leave, right? And it's like, create situations where those who are in parenting relationships can raise their children in what way suits them, you know, and that may mean that the woman continues to work or returns to work earlier and the man takes on a nurturing function with the children, you know, and is more actively involved day to day. And allow them to do so without judgment. You know, like this is not like the woman is choosing her career over her children.

Right. But this is what works for the family. Because we still see that play out in popular culture and the media around the narratives that happen. You know, like when women, I remember mum and I having this conversation when she went for job interviews in the early 1990s here, they would ask her, do you have children? Do you plan to have children? And how old are your children? My dad was never asked that kind of stuff, you know, and my mum,

my mum was so new to Australia at the time. Like she didn't even know, like she just answered them honestly. And then she she's like I'd go for job interview and job interview after job interview and I would just tell them I go you know she'd say I have a beautiful young son and he has asthma and I love him a lot or something like that and then she'd never hear back and she was over qualified for the role she'd interview for and you piece it together now and it's like she she'll say now, she'll be like, they weren't asking me because they cared. They were asking me because they wanted to know how much time

I'd need out of the office. Yeah, exactly. And she didn't realise that then. She was like, you know, she was like back then, like her friends are like, you know, they'll say about her, Nilou, you're so like innocent and lovely and sweet. Like you didn't even realise that they were asking you because they were like data her nilu you're so like innocent and lovely and sweet like you didn't even realize that they were asking you because they were like data mining information about you to

see like is she the right candidate for us yeah yeah no way i just thought they were being nice you know because i would ask like do you have children because i'm interested in people's personal lives and that's who my mom is right and i'm a little bit the same like if i'm like do you have children i'm not like there's no adverse judgment. I'm like, wow, you have a family. That's great. Like, tell me about your kids, you know? Yeah, yeah. And so my mum innocently thought that's what it was all about.

And it clearly wasn't. And then eventually, like, she got into certain jobs later. But, like, yeah, it was all because of this stigma around women and the role of women in society. And I think it's so important for me, like, growing up in Australia, this stigma around women and the role of women in society. And I think it's so important for me, like, growing up in Australia, although I come from, like, a migrant background and I'm Indian Australian, it's so important. Like, this is where I live.

This is my home. This is where I will continue to live. And if vaccination rates stay the way they are, this is where I'll live forever. Like, I will never leave. We will never leave. I will never leave, right? leave right but if i mean if that's like to me it's like well that's where that's where i live why wouldn't i want things

to be better here you know and because i can sometimes log on to social media and there'll be some someone writing like fuck off where you came from or you know probably typing on their phone they're like get fucked you know you don't belong here or if it's so shit here why don't you leave and i'm like man i don't think it's shit here i just i say this stuff because i want us to be better you know like yeah yeah completely right i have two questions yeah to ask you yeah i know we'll be talking about ages and i've so valued this conversation my first question is how do you deal with that feedback because you get a lot of feedback right positive negative people giving you stories because of the work that you do and the incredible work that you do

i um if i feel low about myself i just post a picture where my eyelashes are clearly visible and i get like a whole lot of praise and you know look at my eyelashes look check that out oh wow oh man i'd kill for those eyelashes. Look at that. Look at that. Those are beautiful. I thought, yeah, the worst part is I'm probably serious about what I just said. So embarrassing.

No, it doesn't, it's a lie to say it doesn't faze me. Of course it affects me, but it doesn't faze me that much, right? Because, like, people write the dumbest things on the internet. They write the most, like, ridiculous statements on the internet because they think they can get away with it, right? And I, like, well, we forget, for instance, that Facebook was set up by a guy who wanted to rape women in his cohort at Harvard.

I know. We forget the very thing that there's so many of us use now to stay connected to friends and family around the world and we use it in a completely different way. It was literally like a way for college-aged men in the United States to rank and objectify other women and have these locker room type discussions around them, right? And so like people take that on board.

They look at the internet as being like distinct from real life. The way I think of it though is that like the internet is an extension of real life. Like people in the community actually harbor those views. They just know that there are real life consequences to saying that and they don't do it, right? So if someone said you know someone said something racially motivated like a discriminatory statement against me or anyone else in public there would be meaningful hopefully meaningful consequences in real life people hide behind a degree of anonymity on the internet but they still have those views those views don't just exist

in digital platforms you know so like not that we can go now but like if i'm in a large shopping center space like chad stern or anywhere like that if you look around it's like there's some racists here there's some homophobes there's some transphobes there'll be all kinds of people here just doing their shopping going about their lives um and there'll be like open-minded people there'll be closed-minded all kinds of people right and then when they get on the internet they're just like oh yeah and so for me i look at it like the people who are trying to do any good in the world or creating something and putting it out there have a different energy they have a different vibe they're not they're

not critical of other people right because they know how hard it is right like it's such a pleasure to sit on this podcast with you and talk to you, right? Because it's like, you're so amazing. And you put all this stuff out there. And I'll listen to like other episodes. And it's like, it's like, fuck, man, this is cool. Like, this is a different energy. Like, there's a different energy around people who are creative and trying to do good. And so I just like, I'm like, if I, if I'm going to come to that person for advice in real life, and they have a criticism of me, then it's probably going to be well-worded or it's probably going to be like with my best interests at heart. But if someone is just like sounding off, then, I mean, go on.

Like, sure. And the thing that's cool though right now, and like this blows my mind. Someone will write something on the internet, negative, right, or discriminatory, and it used to be that if I didn't respond to them, they would just keep going or they would just say it once and shut up. Now other people that I don't know, strangers, will be like, hey, you shouldn't say that. That's not okay.

And I'm like, whoa, this is wild. There are people that I don't know, but we're on the same team. Incredible. Yeah, and that's the energy that you're putting out into the world, I think, because you model behaviour that you want to see, right? I try to. Yeah. I try.

Yeah, I try. And, like, yeah, I mean, like, it's the internet. Like, don't take it too seriously. Like, it can be dangerous, you know, certainly. It can be, and it can be used as a tool to facilitate abuse and things. But the idea that it only exists in the internet and because of the internet, I think that's what I don't necessarily agree with. The idea that it's just, like, it occurs more on the internet, arguably,

because people can hide behind certain things, you know. And so so for me it's about stamping out the attitudes in the first place as much as it is about protection on the internet it's the same as like you know preventing violence against women you have prevention on one end and then you have criminal justice system response on the other by the time it gets to the response end lives have been ruined So I would rather work to instill safe behaviours online that are around what you say and believe and think and put out there rather than just particularly, and it's always on groups

who are already marginalised. Like it's always on, say, the LGBTQI plus community to go, how do you protect yourselves online? And it shouldn't be like that. It should be like don't write homophobic things on the internet don't think them like be accepting yeah yeah so here's my last question sure listeners to this show we have a lot of blokes that listen and women and people from all different places all over the world if they want to be an ally in this space yeah what are the things they can do?

Okay, let's say to create a more, and we can put anything like gender, race, sexuality, to create a more equal world in any of those spaces or places, I would say start listening. Start listening to and seeking out, and the internet's amazing for this, whether it's Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, right? start listening to and seeking out and the internet's amazing for this whether it's instagram twitter facebook tiktok right there are so many creators who are putting out amazing content feels like the wrong word because it's not just content it's like an education the things that one can learn in those spaces because the means of production lie with these creators now that they can just they've got a phone in their hand and they can put something out there and the more we listen and then reflect before we

speak the more that we grow as people you know this is this is actually a an exercise in self respect and self-growth and personal development that has flow-on effects for the rest of society so for me what i try to do is I try to seek out content from people that are different to me, that aren't just affirming the same identity that I have. So I will look beyond my own experience to go, oh, what is the experience of trans people? What is the experience of women who are refugees?

What is the experience of, in my case, men who occupy positions of power in boardrooms? What is their experience? And listen to the whole gamut of things, you know, but particularly for people who want to be allies to women is listen, listening to women and allowing women to have space that for a very long time they haven't had. You know, I think where men are in a position now, particularly men in positions of power, where they're patting themselves on the back like aren't we doing so great we have 40 of women on our boards now or we're you know we're at this point and it's like no man like we just we're just starting like we're really just starting and it's only been like 18 months or something like it's it's the space of one annual report where things are looking

different on paper but the actual meaningful change is going to take time. And so for me, that's my advice. It's pretty straightforward. Listen, like really listen and hear, and then be okay with the discomfort, you know, that you're not under attack. So for instance, something that I say to men a lot is that if a woman says that she finds something sexist hear her out listen to what she has to say don't take it as an immediate opportunity for yourself to respond don't think you're under attack it's not an attack against you as a human it is a statement of her experience validate that experience listen to that hear it and then reflect on what it is about yourself

others men in your life society at large that has created a space where that experience that she's detailed to you is statistically so common among so many women you know and then that opens and then that's that's empathy right that's empathy in action. You know, it's actually trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Like we're at a point now we're probably having sympathy towards women. We're like, oh, that's awful that happened. Or it's awful that, you know, you're a subject of discrimination or sexism. But we're not actually at a point of empathy of going, you know, what's leading to that? What can we do? And how awful must it feel to feel ostracized,

to feel alone, to feel unsafe in any space, whether it's in the home or outside? We're not at a point where collectively, particularly around gender, men are having empathy for the experience of women. And so I think having that and nurturing that is a process that leads to better outcomes for everyone. Very well said. Thank you so much, Tarang. That was just brilliant. And there's just so many pearls of wisdom in there as well. So I could talk to you all day actually.

Yeah, I love talking to you. I love talking to you. Yeah, it's so fun. We'll have to do another episode maybe down the track. Yeah, I'd love to hear. It's so fun. We'll have to do another episode maybe down the track. Yeah, I'd love to. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with Tarang Chawla. For more from Tarang, you can head to his website, tarangchawla.com,

and there's a link just below in the show notes. You can also follow him over there on Instagram where you can go and find a beautiful picture of her baby, his gorgeous dog. Okay, I'm Claire Tonti and I tell stories sometimes over on Instagram at Claire Tonti or you can find all of my podcasts at my website, clairetonti.com. I also have another podcast called Suggestible where I make fun of my husband once a week and give you recommendations for books and recipes and Netflix and TV shows and films and all kinds of things. And that comes out every Thursday.

So you can head on over there. And as always, thank you so much to Royal Collings for editing this week's episode. If you love the show, I would so love you to subscribe, rate and review just over there in app. It really makes a massive difference. And just share it with someone. If you love this episode, text it to a friend, share it with someone over Facebook. It would just make so much difference to me and allows this show to be discovered and for me to keep making it.

All right. And that is it from me this week. Sending you all lots and lots of love and hope you're doing all right out there in whatever situation you are doing. You are in. You are doing. In whatever situation you are in.

Till next week. Bye. I'm out.