Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Violence Against Women: It’s Not Random, It’s Reinforced

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Violence against women is shaped by the systems, language, and narratives we see every day.In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we unpack how normalization happens in plain sight—through headlines that center victims instead of perpetrators, media that desensitize us to harm, and the silence that allows it all to continue. We examine how language shapes accountability, and how easily society shifts responsibility away from the men who violate women’s physical, emotional, and mental safety.This conversation is grounded in the reality of violence against women—stalking, physical violence, sexual assault—and the undercurrent of disbelief, stigma, and fear that keeps so much of it unreported and unspoken. Women are conditioned from childhood to be hypervigilant about our safety—and we carry that reality with us every single day.This isn’t just about awareness—it’s about responsibility.What does it look like to interrupt these patterns? Challenge harmful behavior, rethink the messages we pass down, and refuse to accept systems that were never built with women’s safety in mind. Because change happens in what we say, what we tolerate, and what we’re willing to confront.Because silence doesn’t just protect comfort—it protects the men responsible for this violence.If you’ve been a victim of sexual violence and need someone to talk to, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline.You can also reach out to the National Domestic Violence hotline. Both hotlines are available  24/7.Check out one of the organizations working to change the culture of violence and harassment against women:  Hassl.UKIf you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions and topics you've always been curious about, but you don't always feel comfortable asking about. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, I do want to share that we have partnered with jackandjilladult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And you because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code unzipping 20. So now that I've got that business out of the way, today, we're unzipping an episode, a topic that we have been putting off. Because we thought we'd done it. Partly, partly, I partly. But also because

uh today we're gonna focus on the topic of violence against women um and we've got a couple of of things that we want to say up front about this uh before we do i want to say hey dr sue hey charlie that's for we're finally recording this i know it's been in our parking lot listeners for at least six months um before we end up this topic would you like to give our listeners a little bit about your background i won't i won't do the hey how are you because i know how we are we're kind of good i'm out of the pro the pre-show procrastinating getting record and i don't want people to be like oh i'm gonna tune out this episode it's an important episode even though i don't know what we're gonna say so you

should listen um so i'm dr sue i have a bachelor's and a master's in health education and i i want to make sure i'm saying that because i started this by trying to get in to the world of educating others about things that impact their health including things like violence um so i did the I did stuff and then I decided to, I guess, out of my masochistic desire to hurt myself, I went for a PhD and a PhD in human sexuality education. And so I have been doing the professor thing, but I also do the consulting thing. I do a lot of education and community. I do education basically where everyone anyone asks me to go. If it's a youth group, if it's a religious institution, whatever you ask me, I'll come talk about things.

um but one of the places that like this comes up and i've seen people be like nope we don't talk about that it is in senior facilities where we start talking about violence and they're like no we don't need to cover that i'm like oh yes you do um because violence is it's a lifelong issue so um so yeah so professor professor by day educator by night um but really trying to make sure that we have these conversations about things that we don't have conversations about normally or if we are talking about them changing the way that we're having those conversations which i know is a big push of what we're going to do today um i'm sure there's more that's going to come out but in the meantime like really it's your turn oh boy yeah so tell us about you

i'm charlie i have been friends with dr sue for uh many years and um the opportunity to be a co-host and co creator with her on this podcast has been an incredible gift and journey. But outside of that, I as a person am a I'm genuinely curious about about the things in society, the things that were told the things that were taught from the time that were little to buy into and that some things that we buy into just because it's what we see around us. And really starting I want to say in my early 20s after a communications class, started an awareness of messaging and images and unpacking those and trying to deconstruct certain things that maybe I believed because I had been told them or that's been the conditioning. Pardon me, everyone. If you are

watching, I have a runny nose because it's allergy season. So excuse me, you're going to see that a couple of times today. Um, so just this honest curiosity and willingness, really the willingness to have the conversations with people, um, and, and go into the uncomfortable nooks and crannies of those conversations around a given topic. Um, and so, and, and I also find that it, it enhances how I navigate through my day-to-day and my life and my relationships. So maintaining this genuine curiosity throughout my lifetime has really, I've learned a lot of things. I've read and I'm reading interesting books because of that genuine curiosity and wanting to understand and get as much of a holistic review or not review, a holistic view as I can. I mean, I will

own that there are certain topics that I will avoid. Because, because I don't want to be in that space. Because maybe they are too dark. And so there's a bit of that, that awareness as well that I'm curating my curiosity and, and the and satisfying those questions and those discussions. So there is an ownership piece of that as well that I, I am actively molding what that is, But I try to do it in such a way that pushes my boundaries as comfortable, as much as I'm comfortable doing. So that's me. All right. Here we go.

So this episode, I actually remember where this started. We were talking about something. So here's what usually happens. I say, we should do this. And Charlie goes, we already did that. because i i do i speak in so many places and i write so many places that i often forget what i've done where no offense to anyone i've had a conversation with or presented to um and then we said i said something like oh like violence against women and we've already done

that and charlie you were like we actually haven't yeah yeah um and so we we felt it was time to have this episode um neither of us really want to live in a world where we have to talk about this because we would love to be in a world where it wasn't an issue but that's not reality um this is probably going to be one of the harder ones i think for us to talk about so just bear with us if we're not if we're overly chatty or underly chatty however that goes i i want to start this and this is really important for me i want to start this episode by saying that we are not saying that violence does not happen to people who are not women um whether they're cis women or not. Violence happens against men and boys. Violence happens against trans folks, non-binary

folks. We're not saying that that violence doesn't exist. We are specifically focusing on violence against women for this episode. There may be episodes we do in the future that look at other populations. But I don't want to say something like, well, one in three women go through this and someone in their head's yelling, well, what about the men? Men also suffer from violence in this country we're not denying that we're just not focusing on it right now so i want to make sure we own that and that that that's going to go for the rest of this episode i don't want to have to keep putting that disclaimer out um if there's a specific population you want us to focus on let us know in a comment and i know at the end we'll talk about where to like leave comments

but i'll just throw it out now and there'll be a link in the description if you want to do that so that's just what I wanted to say so I'm done the rest is on you amazing thank you oh okay that's uh I think first what I'd like to start with is is to me a lot of a lot of this outside of outside of it being normalized part of what normalizes it and perpetuates violence against women is language and the messaging that we hear and silence if it's not happening and i uh if it's not happening that or if i don't hear about it then it's not happening kind of that ignorance is i'm not going to say bliss but ignorance is ignorance if if it's not something that i have to grow up being aware of and navigate my day-to-day

being aware of and if i don't know anybody that's been impacted by it um and then and then you layer You're on top different, you know, entertainment like movies and television series and news articles or headlines and the way that reporters or anybody talks about violence against women. And all of those things contribute to a normalization of it. I get things that as simple as a headline that says woman attacked while jogging. that tight, there's something fundamentally wrong with that, that title, that phrase, because, because it's centering the victim. And many of us, many of us go to, well, why was she jogging there? What was she wearing? What was she? So it starts to, we start to deconstruct the victim's actions leading up to their horrific attack, when that thing should be, when that article should

read attacker in park has attacked multiple victims or something along those types you have you have to center the perpetuator in a headline or in the reporting and not the victim yep and we do this for violence in this country because so often the perpetrators are male um and i don't want to say white men but i was thinking it's funny because when you were saying that i was school shootings we've become so numb to the amount of gun violence in this country but they always say shooting at school not male white shooter but you better believe if the shooter was not a white male they'd be that would be front and center um jackson cats does a lot of work around that like naming that it shouldn't be like woman was raped it was man rapes person

and center the man in that statement um but what that does is it gives like you said it it gives us the ability to start picking apart what she did she didn't do anything by the way um or what she did or didn't do and how that could have been prevented um but yeah we we've become so immune in so many ways because violence is such an everyday part of our headlines which is terrifying and it's not i want to clear this up if you've ever been overseas this is not normal for other countries if you've been overseas and you've like turned on the news or old school picked up a newspaper um it like they're they're often shocked by the amount of violence that's happening in the united states against everyone not just women um but against everyone so one of the things we want

to do is just call that out and point out that not only is it is it in the news so often that we're not really hearing anymore but how they put it in the news makes it easier for people to escape responsibility certainly and certainly in this climate as well you know the current american political climate and just social climate um it's it's pretty polarized i'm not going to say some sweeping statement as polarized as ever because i didn't experience the others the past ever so i can't say that but what i can say is that um that again anything from entertainment i mean they're the one of the longest running tv series is about victims i'm thinking law and order svu and granted that and i know you said you don't want to qualify this

um but granted men there are episodes where there are victims that are male or not but i would venture that there is a heavier weight in storylines centered around women um women being attacked in those storylines and then there was you know another like an hbo series where anytime something critical for a female character needed to happen in her story arc the thing that preceded it was she would be raped by some man in power so wouldn't the argument then be that if we are showing this in media that we're not hiding away hiding it and then we're not shying away from it that would be a very simplistic argument in my view because what it's it's especially in fictionalized accounts in my in my opinion

it glorifies it in a way what it does is it normalizes it so much that it almost I hate to I hate I hesitate to say this but it almost creates this idea this implicit idea in society's mind that something devastating and violent needs to happen to a woman for a woman to grow and become self-sufficient powerful etc like we always need to be a survivor of something and normally a survivor of something where we've been violated and that that women are so much more than what happens to us i mean we're we're all human at the end of the day we're all fucking human and so we all like there's other to me other than the kind of the genital difference

there's not a whole lot different between me and another human so so to to normalize and in in essence glorify dramatize these to dramatize violence and then it rarely ever shows the um the attacker being held accountable it it does ish sometimes sometimes um but it focuses i would i would also say um and i this is totally anecdotal i don't have statistics but the amount of screen time on the attack versus the amount of screen time of the the attacker the man being punished or whatever for that attack is probably very disproportionate with more screen time on the attack than more screen time on the punishment of the attacker

and that's that those are the subtle ways that this gets normalized in our society the other way is through the absolute like ignorance of not ignorance but the not talking about it and so i know we were talking about the number of women who have protective orders or restraining orders whatever your area calls it who have protective or restraining orders against someone and then are hurt or killed by that person those don't make the news nearly as often as they happen the number of indigenous women who have gone missing and then their bodies are found later it doesn't make the news it's not in the press we're not having those conversations so it's like when we talk about it which may not happen all the time but when we talk about it

we're not talking about it in a way that really centers the person who's doing the violence and part of me is like well we should center the the victim right we should we should do what we can to help them we should do what we can to support them but that's not what happens what we do it's not what happens yeah um i would like to say that in the perfect well in the perfect world there wouldn't be any violence but um in the world that you and i are creating at least in the space of this show we just want to make sure that we are saying that for the victims who are out there we'll have some links in the in the description for where you can go for help but we want you to know that you can get past this um and there are resources out there that you are not

alone um but that's like the the thought right well oh if we're if we're running articles about this happened then we're centering in their experience and we're not we're we're setting them up to be blamed we're setting them up to somehow knock them down and so we have be scrutinized yeah so we have these two it's like the yes this happened but here's why she was at fault or hey we're just going to ignore it completely neither of which really served to do anything better and i think that was one of the things that we were talking about before we came on the show is what did we want from this? Because we're both angry. I think that's an accurate statement. Yes. And I, of course, want to live in that anger and leave us completely

because that's the pessimist that I am. And we are going to come back to why this is important that we do this. But we also want to acknowledge that that anger is real, especially for those of you who've been through this either personally or with friends and family. And so I just want talk about the numbers that i do have really quickly and also talk about the language so i was doing a present i had done a presentation in my class and i brought in a guest speaker to talk um and this was for a women's health class and the woman who was speaking insisted on using the term intimate partner violence and one of my students said can we broaden that out to domestic violence and the speaker was like no i'm only speaking about ipv and what that judge so for

people who don't know the difference because they're not the same term um for people who don't know the difference ipv intimate partner violence is when you are when there is violence with your partner whether it's married or live in or whatever it may be domestic violence is when it's violence from any and all family members so this is going to include things like child abuse this is going to include things like elder abuse. This is going to include things like intimate partner violence. But the speaker, and they had come from an agency, so I don't know if they were told they had to use that word. I don't really understand why this woman was so set on, no, no, no, we will use IPV, because what it does is it dismisses all the other type of violence. And so when we did the

next class, when we were processing everything, there was so much anger at the fact that we couldn't even agree on the language how do we move forward as a as a culture if we get if we are getting stuck in the language how do we move forward and i think that's a valid concern um and then we look at the same thing like when we talk about sexual assault or sexual violence so i want to i'm going to throw out some numbers and i don't usually like to give data um because the data changes so quickly also right now i'm not really confident in the that the data i get from the government is actually data that's accurate but it also goes back to we live in a culture right now where women were victims of all genders are seeing

very clearly that they will not be believed if they come forward and that the person or people responsible will not be held accountable and and even i mean we people have known that for decades So when I tell you numbers, I want you to keep in mind that, A, if it doesn't match the technical definition of how that reporting agency was grabbing that information, it's not going to be accounted for. And the second is that we have always known that these numbers are inaccurate because people are afraid to come forward. So I'm just going to throw some of those out there. So what we're seeing is about one in eight women in a lifetime will be stalked, and that number does not include digital stalking. which is fascinating and upsetting and people can hear the sarcastic anger in my voice like the fact that our definition that where i got this this from um that this definition does not

include digital stalking when that is one of the ways that people can feel unsafe even in their own home like yeah um one in three women at some point will face uh physical partner violence which does not include emotional violence so again the language piece um we estimate that about one in five women will be raped but about one in two or one in three depending on where you get your source um will be the victims of sexual violence and people assume that that means rape and it does but it also includes things like unwanted sexual contact um it can it also includes attempted sexual assault not just actually committed sexual assault but again that language is really confusing and i've had students who have been victims and i get them to support

you know support systems and the support system is like well what you did doesn't meet the definition of this and they're like then what the fuck was it like what happened to me so again it's this focus on the number and then the last one i want to throw out there and again it's it's one and two or one and three depending on who you're talking to uh women will face sexual violence in the workplace that doesn't include sexual violence on the streets it doesn't include cat calling it doesn't include intimidation in in small spaces in public and none of these numbers are capturing that and there is when you are living in this world as a woman you you know these numbers even if you don't know the numbers like if i stop a woman you know them because you've lived one of

them. Yeah. If I stop on the street, can you tell me the percentage of women who have gone through blah, blah, blah? They'll be like, no, but here's what I do now. And here's how I walk down the street. And here's how I cross the street when I see a group of men or a man on his own. Or here's why I walk with my earphones in, but no music playing. So I can look like I'm preoccupied, but I am very aware of everything that happens around me. One of the things we want to try to communicate to people who live through this is that we see you and we know what you're going through and there is a level of stress that comes with that that is impacting everything from your mental well-being to your relationships for the those of you who do not identify as female um

we want you to be aware of the hyper vigilance that women have to live with in this culture and actually timothy who had been on our show talking a few episodes ago had talked about this idea of hyper vigilance but there is a when when it's one in eight women have been stalked when it's one in five women who have this the one in two women who have been in this women in this country live in this hyper attentive space yes that if you have never been a targeted group you can never understand and we want to help you begin to think about it and understand it in in some on some level um and to maybe inspire some kind of empathy because if you've never lived with it then you can it's easy to be dismissive or to see to categorize it as dramatic or

you're you're making something out of nothing when it's for women it is never nothing I I can I can recall a time I think I've told this story before um in an episode when I landed in DC um I had called for a lift and my phone had been discoverable and I hadn't changed my phone um so it said my name and said charlie's iphone um and the person there was someone in like parked in the ride share area for pickups and he got out of his car he he got out of his car and yelled my name as i saw my actual lift pulling up because that here's one of the things we always do um we verify the license plate number and the make and the model of the car before we ask them who they're looking for instead of saying are you so-and-so yeah

um so i i said nope this is actually my lift and i got in my lift but that's the fact that my mind went there and the um i shared it with a guy friend of mine and he made some off-handed chauvinistic joke about oh don't worry you would have been you would have started talking and they would have kicked you out within minutes or whatever and my immediate response to him was one i'm now i know he's someone that i can never go to and now he's good he doesn't get a fully um interactive like emotional emotionally vulnerable friend anymore but my my immediate response to him was oh i get it as a 6-4 football college football player you've never had to think like a victim and that's exactly what it that's the hyper vigilance that dr sue is talking about

we grow up because these stories are in there and and the way that we internalize these headlines of woman attacked woman blah blah blah which drunk woman it's never centering the attacker so that also puts uh a way that we internalize it of like okay if i go through this checklist of things that happened over here in this instance then hopefully i'm less likely when really it's never a checklist of things if if a man wants to attack or get what he wants he's gonna do it yeah it doesn't matter what I wear. It doesn't matter if I smile at him or not. It doesn't matter if I'm walking with my keys in my fingers or not. There is, there is, uh, there is an entitlement to, um, that exists within these men who feel, who, who perpetuate these, these attacks or

these psychological abuses and emotional abuses, et cetera. But again, we don't center that we center the victim in in a way that puts them under intense scrutiny when they're already trying to process their trauma yep and there are there have been a couple things that were happening in the popular press that i think one of these may have been the thing that i was like oh we should talk about violence but we've already done this it was and i want to see i'm even i'm playing the language game like i don't want to say attack because i don't know if it meets the clinical definition of attack um but there are a couple famous people who were grabbed in public with security around them like or had things thrown on them like congresswoman ilan i always mispronounce

her name and i apologize ilan omar um she had a fluid like thrown on her and she had security standing right there billy eilish was grabbed by a fan um with security around her ariana grande was grabbed by a fan with security around her uh the president of mexico i can't remember her name i'm so sorry um hold on i have this somewhere claudia shan i apologize for that um was was physically grabbed and and the thing that made me hesitate to say it was an attack was they like they walked away and they were okay but they were still grabbed in a way that was inappropriate they were still grabbed without consent and they were surrounded in some of these situations surrounded by by security and so if it can happen to these women

who are walking around with bodyguards i need for folks to think about what is happening to the average everyday woman and i just i want to point something out and uh this isn't a criticism but you said fan and not man yes because that's how it was built in the that's how it was put out in the um and that but that's the power of the language that i'm talking about because when people hear fan um when someone's a fan of somebody we have this immediate connotation of they're benevolent they just appreciate they just blah blah blah these were all men who did this to billy eilish ariana grande claudia president um what's her shinebaum shinebaum and representative Omar.

All men. And I know that the one that attacked Ariana Grande, he did that for content. Oh, did he? I didn't know that part. And he has a history of doing that. Running up on stage

and do it to female and maybe he's done it to others, but um but he he has done it for tiktok content and then they banned him um but in and then your hesitation right and just kind of picking apart the the like our conditioning because that's how pervasive this is that we're all conditioned this way um that you hesitated to use the word attack because they walked away physically okay and that doesn't talk about this that you know and I know you are aware of this because they know you but I want to call this out for our listeners they were physically okay but the violation of that of your personal space

in the ways that these um that these men perpetuated leaves leaves a scar constant scars so many of the women in your life have some kind of scar Yeah. It's interesting. I got to tell you where I get that language part of that language from not to not to take any way any responsibility for what I said. There is a woman who they did like a CBS store like one of these movies like life before Lifetime existed because this was before cable. um the mini series event yeah it was it was about her husband who had beat her and she actually i knew her um or i knew people who knew her so i was introduced and she came in to talk to my class and she said he only hit me like seven times or what it was and and i and i heard her say it like in that way and i'm like yes but one of the one of those times that he only hit you one of seven And he shattered your eardrum and threatened the pregnancy you had.

So it is. And it goes back to what you were saying before. Like, it's part of our origin story. Like, we overcome this trauma. And so maybe it wasn't as bad because we survived it. And so, yeah, it's just that language is so important. And I've heard people do it. And then I just repeated it.

But, yeah, that language is super important when it comes to this. Because it doesn't matter if it meets the definition. And I say this with rape all the time. I don't care if it meets the technical definition if you feel like it was rape then in my mind that's all that matters because you're the one who's living with the fallout yeah and so and so many times as well and when when someone a woman decides to come forward that that the the negotiation the internal negotiation she's done with herself because she's already calculated how she's not going to be believed, how she's going to have to be in a room with somebody with the with her

attacker, to relive constantly relive the trauma to say, this, this man did something to me. I mean, I, I know, I've shared this story before, but I have been a victim of stalking. and my when I reached out to law enforcement in my area my social worker said well we can do this but you will have to you will both have to go into a courtroom and my calculus was he wants to be in a room with me so that gives him exactly what he wants so it's it's these constant negotiations that women go through when they're a victim of any one of these perpetrations when we are attacked when our personal safety is attacked our personal space our mental space our emotional safety our physical our bodies we can't we are constantly negotiating and that talks

that you know i highlight that again because dr sue um pointed that out earlier is like the it's a it's a constant current of stress and your tolerance of it modulates based on experiences you're having. And that's my thing. Like as, as a health educator and a sex educator, my thing is little quick, little audio glitch. Sometimes one of us will knock out a cable to our, Because I'm using my hands to talk and I'm trying not to do it on screen. That's how charged up we are about this episode. I mean, it's also how I communicate, but like, it's true. I've been trying to more and more to keep my hands out of sight and I just flick the

cords. I apologize about that. And I also, oh, so as an educator, health educator, sex educator, I don't really care what we're calling it. My whole thing is like, while I would like to change the world, I would also like to help people on the daily level because that that living in that space of being a victim that um the stress and the toll that it takes on you like i can help you modulate that and i can help you move forward through that we do need to look at the bigger scheme and we're going to do that in

a second but i want to there was something i was just writing down which also may have been when i knocked out the damn cord you really have to figure out something else to do about this one One of the things I talk to my students about is the idea of systemic racism and that it is systemic in that folks of color were not part of the process when it was being built. So it is built into the system. I want a word like that for women, that systemic patriarchy. I want to say misogyny. Misogyny is a tool of patriarchy. Yeah, because I need people to think about the fact that women were not present when these systems were built. If women were present when the systems were built, we wouldn't always, yes, you have a right to face your accuser, but we wouldn't do it in a way that women were going to be victimized for being in that space to make that accusation. If women were part of the process when we were creating the system, it wouldn't move so goddamn slowly that allows people to, oh, well, you know, it's already been a couple of years. And, you know, he and it's just the whole I think we need to keep that in mind.

the whole system was built by men and it was designed to protect other men and we see that all the time and so when you try to go through the only option you legally have which is the system and the system is designed to stop you from coming forward i need you to realize it's not in your head because that's that's what i've had with some of the the folks i've worked with in college age they're like i don't understand like i'm doing all the things i'm supposed to do I reported it I this I this I this and they almost feel like they're losing their mind because they're they're following the rules and I don't at that point I'm not going to be like well let me explain why the rules weren't written for you because they don't need that they need support yeah but we need

to have that conversation that that that as much as the systemic racism that exists because people of color were not involved in the processes in the decision making it's true for women as well we weren't part of the process and we weren't part of the decision making and so if you feel like you're losing your mind because you're doing what you're supposed to do and the system is failing you over and over for the women who file the protection the the restraining orders and people blow right through them they're doing what they were told to do and it's not serving them so i i do need to recognize that if you feel like you were doing what you were told to do and it's not working it's because it wasn't designed to protect you and that's a problem but that's not

a problem we're going to solve today we're going to start the conversation and continue the conversation that will hopefully start to make change yeah this is about chipping away at some of those those things just those those inherent things that you know language um i know we're focusing on that a lot um but but it is difficult to to see how we can chip away and change these things um just one moment i was gonna sneeze and i stopped it um um but it's difficult to believe that that the needle can be moved when we see things like the epstein files that nothing's happening to those men the person that's been held accountable is in jail and she's a woman

and that's not to take away from the monster that she is no but that that's that's fucking patriarchy right there if i ever saw it she her even her proximity to the men the patriarchal powers and motivations didn't protect and she shouldn't have been protected so let me let me let me own say that she should not have been protected she's exactly where she deserves to be um but the fact that she's she's the one being held to account and all of these perpetrators named in these files not one goddamn thing is happening at least not legally we're starting to see the power of the people when we're seeing names associated with companies and those companies are getting boycotted super quick and those people

are being laid off probably with really nice severance packages right but because they voluntarily step down but it is a sign of the power of people and and if the system is going to protect us i think we need to rely on the power of people i i there's two thoughts going in my head one is the idea of how we raise awareness and the other is the idea of examples where things are changing do you have a preference would you like door number one or door number two or secret secret curtain number three i want them all okay um i want to start by talking about moving the needle and because i can see where someone right now if they were assaulted or raped watching everything happening with the epstein files watching everything happening with um if they're

on a campus where they have seen this happen before like the number of times we have seen on various college campuses where an athlete has been accused and the athlete is protected and the female victim is run off, those stories get repeated. And so if something's happened and you're talking to your friends or your sorority sisters or your teammates and you have been warned not to come forward, that can be really powerful. But I want to talk about some of the ways we are moving the needle. And the one that comes to mind for me is the woman in France who was raped by her husband and countless other men.

And I apologize if I mispronounce her name. it's just do you know how to pronounce her last name it's Giselle Pellicote and I'm I'm sure that's it I think there's a French yeah probably Pellicote yeah she waved her right not to have her face or her name released she showed up every day that courtroom name released face face and full of you because her answer was it's not my shame and that if you don't know her story you really should go check it out it was in the last couple of years so so we are people seeing people who are trying to take back the narrative and who are trying to make sure that the blame is being put where it is um i know there's a lot of feelings about taylor swift and and it's funny

because my students will mention her and for me i don't really know a lot about her music i know she did like i know she's a mega superstar and she has dictated like rewriting the rules but i don't know if people remember when she was being sued for destroying that dj's career because she was talking about do you remember this uh scooter braun was it the producer no no there was there was a dj who at an event grabbed groped her uh and she said something and he got fired and she see this is the thing like i i don't know what's happened sorry about that folks um she see and like i love that she's owning the power that she has because she's incredibly powerful woman but i this story is the piece that gets lost and i kind of want everyone to know it

she was groped at a at a at a photo thing for an event um he either reached under her i think he reached under her skirt and grabbed her ass and she she said something he got fired and she she he sued her for him getting fired and she countersued and she won and she countersued basically not even for the money but for the for the fact that women had the right to be heard and believed and I it it was such a powerful moment I knew nothing about her at the time I still don't really know that much about her but the fact that she was willing to use that power and that voice I wish that story was front and center again. Not that I want her to relive that experience, but it was such a powerful moment where women were going, no, that was not okay. And I'm reclaiming it. We are seeing these stories of people doing this. We are seeing organizations. And I know that there's one that you want to talk about specifically, but there are organizations that are trying to make change. What we need to do is start amplifying those. We need to start sharing those stories. If you feel like you can follow people who talk about this thing on your social media, please do. But also, I understand if it feels like it's being in, like, we don't want to see that all the time. Like, I can understand, but there are people who are trying to change the narrative. There are people who are trying to get the voice where it needs to be. So I don't know if you want to talk about that organization.

yeah this i i happened across this organization scrolling through instagram um they're based in the uk and it's uh they're called hassle h-a-s-s-l and their judgment or not their judgment but their mission is to change the culture and their tagline on their website is change the culture not women And their work is focused on inviting everyone in to address this culture of harassment and violence against women, specifically men. Because also what we find is when men speak up about this, and this is a little bit of what Dr. Sue and I talked about before we hit record, was we need we need people men especially who uh who don't have to live with this hypervigilance when you acknowledge it and you speak out about it and you try that's that's a very huge impact because because then it can't be minimized as much and then there's another creator who um

on instagram who puts out um videos almost daily definitely weekly um he was a model for abercrombie and fitch and so he speaks out a lot about and he was trafficked by the ceo of Abercrombie and Fitch um but he will he also highlights uh the violence against women and the Epstein files and how these systems continue to perpetuate these crimes and protect the perpetuators and not necessarily the victims um but his content is really good as well I don't want to I don't want to necessarily out him I haven't reached out to him yet um but but he's he's an incredibly powerful voice as well and he always wraps up his video with um you know join my love army because like that's his mission it's it's to daylight so that these things can't live

in the shadow these not these things but these attacks this um systemic violence uh can't live in the shadows anymore um so those but hassle uh really impacted me when I first I think I mentioned it to Dr. Sue several times, like we should reach out to them. Because because their mission is to, to change the culture, especially highlighting getting men involved in changing the culture of harassment and violence against women. Happens to people. Ah, what is good? Okay. Dr. Sue has not gone in a tunnel. She's still here with us. That was so animated today. um i was gonna say if there's anyone from hassle listening we'd love to have you on the show yeah um yeah so i have a whole i have four arrows in what i want to say you added a curtain

i added 10 um can can i hop over to the how we make the change yeah okay so we have to figure out how to make men aware without putting them in the same space where a lot of women feel which is that we can't change anything because if we if we're trying to educate a group and they're like well it's hopeless they're not going to help make change um there is an exercise i do in my class in my human sexuality classes um where i divide the groups up by gender however many genders i have in my classroom they are allowed to self identify um and essentially it's they get a worksheet they go into different rooms it's great and it's like because I am my gender what what am I expected to do what can I get away with

and then because I need people to understand the power that they have and the expectations they have and there's other parts of it but the very last thing is if you could be another gender for one day what's the one thing you would do and the men if when the men get to it they they usually say they would masturbate or play with their boobs if they were women for a day that is by far the number one answer and for women it depends on their mood like if they're in a jokey mood they always want to know what it's like to pee standing up or write their name in the snow as they pee that was a big thing that was a big thing in certain parts of the country not so much when i was in the south

because they didn't know what snow was but right um and then what's happened over the years so we're doing this whole thing right and they literally sit in different corners of the room and it's it's a conversation like i back out i'm like switzerland i back out and i let them talk to each other because they very rarely have these opportunities to do it and there was this one actually it's happened more than once but i remember the first time it happened i said okay ladies if you were if you were a man for one day what's the one thing you would do and the person picked up the piece of paper and she put it down she looked at them and she said we'd walk around without fear and you could have heard a pin drop yeah and and and i want to give it up for the men

they didn't make a joke about it they didn't try to lessen the impact of it like you could i'm getting goosebumps now talking about it like there was this moment and i i don't know if it changed anyone's life long term but i'd like to think that the men were thinking about it in a way they hadn't before and i see these kinds of experiences right now i see them on social media there was this thing about like okay men if you're going out at night what are you doing and they're like I'm figuring out if I've got my phone and my wallet and the women are like I'm not walking alone I have my keys between my finger I have my pepper spray I have this I have this I have this I have this and the men are just like why why why 20 steps and sometimes we can have those spaces

but it's hard to create those spaces um the other so that's that's just if you can figure out a way to do that yeah what do you got i just i i want to add to that one of the things that i'm seeing um more and more and it's just it's also one of those ahas um for men some many men many dads um when they have daughters warn them about men and many times those are the same men that two female um counterparts or women friends or whomever social media will say not all men and then tell their daughters all men yeah and and i don't know how to get to those guys i don't know how to have that and honestly i would like to think that i can talk to anyone about anything but i really think it would have to come from a guy because it would i'm not an authority and for

them in that space but that's also to point out like the things that we live with men and women women and men we are taught from the time that we are little as girls to watch out and there is some level of acknowledgement in all men that it may not be you necessarily because you haven't done something so specific but you're aware that many men do yeah and just and then and unpack that and if you're listening if you're a man and you're listening and you're having kind of this natural need to feel defensive if you're having a defensive reaction sit with that and try to understand why yeah so okay go ahead no now i have to reverse the order did i jump ahead i'm sorry it's okay so let me finish there where it is guys what i need you

to do is call it out call it out if someone makes a really sexist joke if someone makes a joke about i need to figure out how to say this without giving away information about the location where i was working hold on i gotta think this through okay okay i was at an event i was at a school sanctioned event and when i say school i mean college or university not like k through 12 i was at a college university sanctioned event and a group of members from the dance team came out and a male professor behind us i was sitting with a group of from my department said oh the strippers are here what the fuck and a group of us turned around but we were just women so it was easy for them to be like you weren't just women you were women yes

thank you but we thank you we were women so it was easy for them to discount what we were saying i needed the guy sitting next to them that had the horrified look on his face to say something we need to have men calling this shit out when someone makes a comment that's inappropriate we need to have men call that out and be like oh are you okay like why why make that comment yeah um so that was that all right so i want to follow up with that ladies if you can call it out i would like you to but i also understand that you may not feel safe doing that one of the number one reasons why women do not come forward for sexual to to report sexual harassment is they're afraid they're going to get fired you need to eat we live in a capitalist world you need money i get that

if you feel like you can call it out call it out if you can't call it out publicly we need the sisterhood to come into action and i we were having this conversation before we we started this the idea that women will protect women they do not know in public when they see things happening and yeah i don't want to put the onus on women to do this but we need we outnumber men we need the sisterhood um we need to be able to to lean on our to lean on the women we know and the women we don't know we're in a situation where we need support yeah i can i share the story? I was trying to cue you up. Yeah. Cause it's a, yeah. Yeah. So, um, Dr. Sue and I went to grab a quick bite to eat, um, at a, at a sandwich shop. And, um, it was Dr. Sue, myself,

the woman, uh, cashier and sandwich sandwich maker behind the counter. Um, and this guy had walked in um and I knew him uh because I we had exchanged numbers months before but I stopped interacting with him because there were just things that were concerning to me in our interactions um via just via text um well he he coincidentally I do believe it was coincidental showed up to the the same sandwich shop at the same time and dr sue and i sat down to have our dinner and he came over before even ordering anything he saw us through the window and came back in yeah yeah um and was trying to get me to go outside to talk with him that wasn't happening even if i had said yes dr sue i'm i'm certain would have stood outside with

me um but I said no he he asked I said no that was the first time and he kept pushing and I said no no I'm not gonna do it no I'm not he turned to Dr. Sue and asked for her permission to let to let me go outside and talk with him and this went on enough and presumably loud enough that the cashier came out from behind because there was no longer a line um and that's and that's the thing the women are aware of when this is happening yeah she was ready to call 9-1-1 if she was yeah she was and when he finally left she she even checked in on me to make sure that I was okay and um and she you know she she said I thought I was gonna have to come out behind from behind the counter and so that that's also to point out that women are aware and I'm I'm not confident

had a man been in there would he have stepped in i don't i'm certainly not confident in that yeah yeah so be that guy be that guy that if you were there you would have stepped in that's that's what we're asking you to do um and i'm sorry go ahead the other thing i want to point out for our male allies is that simply not being a perpetrator that's beautiful please don't be a perpetrator that's not that's not enough because i and because it's passive and if you're not and I'm grateful that you are safe for the women in your life but if you're in a situation if you were in that sandwich shop think about as I was telling that story what was your immediate reaction would you have stepped in or would you have just minded

your own business and be honest with yourself I don't need the answer that's how you start to figure out how you can show up for the women in your life that you know and that you come across day to day yep thank you for sharing that yeah thanks for teaming up yeah do you need a minute we can pause no no i'm okay this is what carol yeah i appreciate it all right so men we need you to call the shit out ladies we need you to continue doing the great things you do to support the sisterhood the women you know the women you don't know um we need to find these moments of being able to make people aware if they've never lived in that hyper vigilance we need to figure out a way to do it so that's where we've gone so far as the teacher and me summing things up

yes for parents and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and all the terms i don't have right know i need you to call the shit out for children yep because it starts young yep if you have ever found yourself saying the words boys will be boys i need you to kind of smack yourself in the face and be like whoa because that they're learning and first of all they're learning it from somewhere but also this is where they're they're starting to mold their identity so i need you to call out that kind of thing early that's that's your job as a parent I need you to do that for all the kids that are yours and all the kids that aren't um and I don't know if you have anything to say about that before I move on yeah no no I have one last I because I see that like I've seen I've seen

I saw a boy basically being a dick to his sister and we were in a large group and I was waiting for someone to call him out I'm like hey yo not okay not my kid but if you're doing it in front of me it's my responsibility to call them out and then it was like an afterthought of like oh oh yeah you know little johnny don't do that but you need to be on that especially if the sister's living in that that situation she's getting that all the time all right and this is for everybody male female non-binary humans humans all the humans parents not parents i need people to get better about educating yourself about about this issue um i my big thing and i know i've said this in a thousand different places on this show. I always say, if you can't spend the time doing

a podcast, I mean, great that you've made it all the way through. Hopefully you're still with us. We're just talking up in there. I don't need you to read every book written on the subject. I don't need you to listen to every podcast episode because it will be overwhelming. If you can do small doses, find the people like Hassel that have an Instagram account. Yes. Follow them. So maybe once a day you're getting something in your feed that's changing your algorithm. just just try to get these bits and pieces where you can so it's a thought for you but i i don't want you drowning in in the feeling of overwhelmed there are things that we can do it's going to be changed that's going to happen slowly but we need you to not give up and one of the things we need

you to do is just kind of keep it in that in in your mind so when you see these things happening you can call them out yeah that's the end of curtain number 10 i'm now careful with your hands i know i'm trying so hard it's just this is not roll your shoulders back and do it back here oh we did it dr sue we did by the way there there are times there are times we've done episodes and they have not made it to air i'm like we'll just do it again and i i called it before this i'm like this is a one and done if we don't get it in the shot we're not doing it um not because it's not important but the emotional toll it has taken on us for the weeks we have been planning months months months we've

been planning this and putting it off and the procrastination that happened in our pre-show today um yeah so we thank those of you stayed with us and we're gonna have some resources for you if if you have been the victim or you know someone who's been the victim we'll put some resources out there but yeah we did it we did it go us all right well i'm gonna have a cocktail but charlie it's eight in the morning it's not eight in the morning i'm kidding scotch um if you're old enough to get that thank you or a fan of classic movies thank you all right well everyone i really do want to thank you for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos we hope today's our goal i'm not even going to

say this. Our goal with today's episode was to spark new thoughts and thinking around violence against women, and that it will open up conversations worth having internal and with people in your life. Please remember that the key to this change is your curiosity. Being your curious co-host, I will highlight that. But really, the key to the steady beat of drum of change is your curiosity so we can unpack the things and decondition ourselves with the things that we thought always would be and will be. And breaking down those barriers, embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships and the people that we interact with. If you enjoyed, if you, if this show resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with

someone who you think might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or topic you want us to unzip, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. Okay, a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting Unzipping Taboos. Don't forget, you can get 20% off of your order with code UNZIPPING20. I want to give a very special shout out to best friend of the show, Allie O'Brien, for our incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos and everyone, please take care.