10 years ago – almost to the day – I got a phone call from CNN. Later that day, I got death threats for what I said.
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I was 21 years old and a senior at Southern Methodist University.
They asked me to come in for an interview on CNN Live about my student organization called Men With Integrity.
…men should be the ones who stand up to say let’s stop [sexism and sexual assault]…
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On the air, I said “men should be the ones who stand up to say let’s stop [sexism and sexual assault]. Let’s make a difference. And let’s help these women who we call our mothers, our sisters, our girlfriends, our cousins, our friends. Men have to be the ones who stand up alongside those women… and that they shouldn’t be afraid because there are other men with integrity in every group [of men].”
The interview ended 7 minutes later, and I walked out of the studio on a high. I’d just said my truth out loud, to the biggest audience I could find. Sexism is a men’s issue… and men with integrity can solve it.
The words were brutal, hateful, and they made me fear for my family’s and my loved ones’ lives… oh, and my own.
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I went home, logged in to my email inbox… and sitting there were a few dozen emails from viewers. Most of them were from other men… and those men were angry. They told me I was ruining masculinity. A few told me in no uncertain terms that I would be silenced. They had my address. The words were brutal, hateful, and they made me fear for my family’s and my loved ones’ lives… oh, and my own.
In that moment, confronted with death threats from the dark corners of masculinities, I felt true existential terror… and I started asking myself, “do I believe in this enough to put my life on the line?” My second question was, “What would it take to shift societal awareness enough to be able to really make the change I so naively announced on CNN.”
I imagined a decade ago that real change would take two pre-requisites:
1. We have to make it acceptable – even cool – to talk about masculinity in new terms
2. We have to raise the value our culture places on women
– in actual terms this means we need to address 1. Masculinity in the Media, and we need to bridge the 2. pay equality gap for women.
It’s been a decade since that day.
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It’s been a decade since that day. I’ve spent my life in this work (apart from a two-year period where I did a lot of soul-searching and self-preparation).
Some things have changed.
- My partners and I just convened the Better Man Conference, talking about masculinity to a room full of representatives from Visa, Microsoft, PwC, Chevron and many others, and it was cool. Last year I appeared on Huff Post Live, said the same message as I did in 2006, and came home to an inbox full of support. We’ve made a big leap in awareness.
- We’re here, talking about the pay equality gap and how to fix it… and if you haven’t read McKinsey and Lean In’s recent report on women in the workplace, it makes a compelling case for how our global economy is suffering a $28 trillion opportunity cost while we allow that imbalance… for perspective, that’s 9 US-sized economies, annually, that the world is missing because we are holding women back.
But we have a new problem.
We’re chafing under the bit of an outdated culture and economy.
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For me, and for a large part of the millennial generation, the talk is not enough. We’re impatient. We’re chafing under the bit of an outdated culture and economy. We’re disenfranchised by our employers and we’re quickly disavowing brands that don’t get it.
PwC published a report on Millennials and among their key findings is this:
“Work/life balance and diversity promises are not being kept.
28% said that the work/life balance was worse than they had expected before joining [their company], and over 50% said that while companies talk about diversity, they did not feel that opportunities were equal for all.”
Talking about sexism and gender norms like it’s a new concept – is not working.
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Talking about sexism and gender norms like it’s a new concept – is not working. We’re tired of the disingenuous talk.
It’s time to actually flip the switch.
Companies that flip the switch on gender equality are going to thrive in the new century, and the ones who don’t are going to fail – soon.
So what does it take? What does it take to ACTUALLY do something? What is the solution?
Here’s our system at the Gender Leadership Group…
Steps:
- Recognize the reasons for Gender Partnership (business case, personal case, moral case)
- Male leaders take this seriously and become accountable (get help from outside your bubble to help you find your unconscious biases and then CORRECT them)
- Filter this equality standard in at the grassroots level through ERGs for diversity and equality – let them know they have air cover
- Middle managers need to understand unconscious bias and how it holds back the leadership journey of the disempowered
- Tie it to business imperatives and involve women all along the way
Top down, bottom up, and through the middle.
In the next 10 years, I want to see systemic acceptance and proliferation of this system. I want to see companies treating Gender Partnership like a key performance indicator. I want to see a world where gender equality is expected, not a novel concept. I want to stand on a stage in 10 years and talk about the next step.
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Also by Dale Thomas Vaughn
28 Trillion Reasons Why Gender Equality Should Be Our Top Priority | Should Men Be Chivalrous Anymore? | 10 Skills Every Man Should Learn | 20 Lessons From My Men’s Group That Have Improved My Life |
I do wish y’all social justice warriors would take more than a Sesame Street level course for statistics, economics and history. Maybe, just maybe then you would understand that a sample survey of feels is not viable logical economic data.
To get rid of the pay gap you would have to get rid of salaries. Award wage jobs shouldn’t have any pay-gap hour by hour. The other issue of the pay gap is women taking time off to raise the kids and being behind in their workplace but there’s a complex issue to solve since there is a huge sexism against men who dare ask for time off for kids, and many women still don’t want their man to be the one at home with the kids. Is there any group that hasn’t had death threats against them? Feminists and… Read more »
I think you’re making several other assumptions too. 1. Women want to be involved with every aspect of the job. Feminists tend to only fight for the top or good jobs. They’ll demand that 50% of people making the decision to go to war be women, but are quite content with 98% of those having to fight it being men. Not necessarily disagreeing. Just pointing something out. 2. You’re assuming that men are already involved in every aspect, but there are departments like marketing and human resources that are dominated by or exclusively women. I’d be more likely to agree… Read more »
1. There are women in the armed forces and they need our support as well. 2. Great point. 3. Money for formula or money for nutrition + pump room… Or maybe adequate childcare facilities so that parents don’t have to be so far from their kids in order to keep working. Definitely more support for male parents is needed! 4. (Even though you didn’t number it:) Men need to be given social supports as well, especially to be fathers who are involved with their children rather than being “absent wallet” parents. Opportunity costs are still much higher for women –… Read more »
Men are trying to stand up against sexism, but are still being shut out because they are addressing the sexism that exists against them as well. They are speaking on father’s rights, domestic violence against men, education, healthcare and on down the line. Many are already frustrated that society, special interest, anti-male groups such as feminist are granted air time so as to promulgate their extremism and dogma into social consciousness, painting them as either the privileged, or perpetrator, rather than addressing their own sexism, oppression as a matter of social justice, such frustration will rise. When they see straw… Read more »
Only women get death threats on the internet, at least that is what I keep hearing.
I would agree that sexism is a men’s issue, if misandry were an issue being tackled in any serious way. As it stands, only one half of all sexism is addressed. As such, I prefer to leave women’s issues to the strong, independent women. Fish, bicycles, etc.
“On the air, I said “men should be the ones who stand up to say let’s stop [sexism and sexual assault]. ”
There are a lot of men who have been raped by women who view those words as cruel and hateful. It sound to many as victim blaming and is the exact opposite of challenging masculinity *and femininity for that matter)y. That’s all I’ll say on it as you say we should challenge out biases. I say sure, do so.
We’re here, talking about the pay equality gap and how to fix it… and if you haven’t read McKinsey and Lean In’s recent report on women in the workplace, it makes a compelling case for how our global economy is suffering a $28 trillion opportunity cost while we allow that imbalance… for perspective, that’s 9 US-sized economies, annually, that the world is missing because we are holding women back. How to begin when the lie goes so deep that we still seek to oppress men, blame men for something that is reversed. These are people in finance…and they don’t know… Read more »
@ DJ Those are definitely problems, but to get to the author’s points. I think the biggest issue is how do you make women succeed? I don’t mean that in a derogatory way either. Lat time I heard most of the U.S. wealth was controlled by women. Women are more educated and have control of the majority of wealth. They’re the largest voting block. You would expect women to be the captains of industry, but they’re not. They’ll be a few successful women, but for the most part the economic driver is men creating wealth. I’m not saying that to… Read more »
I think the biggest issue is how do you make women succeed? Considering that equal opportunity has basically been deemed as not being a sufficient indication of equality there is really only one course of action left. Force equality of outcome. This is why despite claims of only wanting equality advocates for women’s rights seem to have no issue with (and sometimes will support) quotas that force boards to have a certain percentage of women and why some of them will still say things like, “When women make up 50% of Congress then I’ll acknowledge that men have issues.”. And… Read more »