Hey, what's up. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes. We are the podcast that goes deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I'm Roy Wood Jr. As always, and today we're talking about a very serious issue, violence against women and why it's up to men to stop it. We'll also be taking a look at a recent segment about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and the harassment that many women face when trying to leave a relationship. Now, before we get started, I just want to just add a quick little disclaimer. Today's conversation might contain some tough subject matter, so I just want everyone to be aware of that and give you an off ramp if you need it. Alright, with that aside, let's roll the clip. For many women, every time they leave the house, it's a risk. And this is not something that men experienced, like when the pandemic hit. Men were like, so just going outside is dangerous now and women a yeah, added to the list because for women, just being out in public means facing a wide array of potential threats from men. The top story at this hour the violence against women and the conversation that it has sparked among women around the world. For many, it can feel like the only way to guarantee your personal safety is to stay at home, lock your doors, and never leave. The World Health Organization says one in three women worldwide have been subjected to physical or sexual violence, and data shows the violence starts alarmingly young. Around the world, six women are killed every hour by men, and for women of color, their cases really in the headlines on social media. The post text me when you get home now going viral, women all over the world sharing their stories. As men, we should be steering those conversations where it belongs, centered on us, because this is our responsibility not to be creeps, right, So let's not make it the one thing that we don't take credit for. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show writer Christiana and back Way, and I'm also joined by journalists and author of the book No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us, Roy, thank you now this topic, Christiana, you know the show first covered the topic after the murder of Sarah ever Art, the young woman who was abducted while walking home from a friend's house. In London, and it sparked a much larger conversation that even something as simple as walking home isn't safe for women. What are some of the ways that women encounter violence on a daily basis? It can be anything. It can be being on the subway and a man sitting a bit too close and intimidating you with his body language and I'm becoming aggressive when you maybe ask him to back off, um, and it can get a lot more gruesome than that. There's an entire spectrum of violence that women have to face and navigate in their daily life. There's a lot of issues on the show Christiana, and you know we we're on Comedy Central, but sometimes and you know, there's times where the comedy has to wait. How do you prioritize which things to inform society? Men? Let's just keep it real. How do you how do you all decide to prioritize? All right, men are dumb? Which things do they need to understand? First? Do you start with the base level stuff? I hear you're laughing, like, how do you all decide which things? Because some of it you can sprinkle a joker two in and you can kind of like you cat calling. We've talked about that on the show in the past, but cat calling is a symptom of a far bigger issue. So how are you all, just you know, in the writer's room, able to figure out and sparse out what people need to know versus what you could possible you try to make funny. I mean, it's particularly that Sarah Everard k switch happened where I'm from South London. I know that park. I've walked through that park many times, um, and thinking about how horrifying it was, it is difficult to find any sort of humor in it because, frankly, the subject matter isn't funny, right, There's nothing funny about a woman being murdered when she's just simply trying to get home. And when I was working on that, I was thinking, from the perspective of a woman, what parts of it are kind of funny in a sick way? Um. And the joke I wrote that didn't make the show is like when you go out with your girls and they're like, text me when you get home, which is a thing that all women do. If you don't text you, then when you get home they get freaked out and you wake up in the morning and you're trending on Twitter. It's like fine, Christiana, because every woman just thinks the worst. Right, Sometimes you just get home, you're a little bit tipsy, you fall asleep, you forget to text your loved ones. And that's happened to me on a few occasions. On my now husband when we was just dating. He would get freaked out if I didn't text him when I got home somewhere, and once he was even going to call his cousin to come to my apartment to check if I was there. Right, it became a big thing. But it's kind of funny that if you don't text when you get home, they're going to send out a search party, even if it was just that you kind of overslept or forgot. And we try and find the funny and those kind of the nuances of it all and how it makes your experience as a woman kind of inconvenient because you're constantly worried about your safety and then reassuring the people that you love that you are indeed safe. To Christiana's point about precautions, right, a woman waking up to being searched for because she didn't charge her phone and she didn't hear the text messages or whatever. Those are jokes amongst men. Those't text me when you get home. Ha ha ha. I remember doing a college show years ago when I was younger, and my younger dad pull off a student loan or a book by that joke. The university would give comedians a swag bag, and the swag bag was really the same stuff they were giving the kids for coming to the show, and there would be a cup and as a little ra ra rack go team towel, and every now and then there would be a rape whistle in the bag. And I could distinctly remember, you know, some of the other male comedians I was on the show, but they were like, take a look at the rape whistle and just throw that back on the type. I don't need one of those. Give me a key ring. As a man, you are oblivious to a lot of that. What are some of the other precautions that women have to take every day when they leave their home that men are just completely oblivious and stupid too. I mean I take precautions in my home. You know, I have an alarm system. I live in a city that has fairly high crime, and I remember about midnight one night, I stay awake really late. I'm a writer where you know where creatures of habit I guess. And this person knocked at my door and I was only like three ft away from the door, and I just like, holy fucking you know, like you're like huh. And and then I went and hid behind like one of my chairs in my living room, which is stupid, like what's that gonna do, Like I'm not here, I'm not here. And I just remember feeling this like you know, of course I called the police and whatever, but there's this feeling I get. I don't know if it's the same for you, Christiana, where it feels like it doesn't matter what prep preparations I have. I mean, I'm I'm a journalist who's covered war zones and natural disasters, and you know, I took a class for journalists and hostile environment and all these things that are supposed to like give me the some advantage that other women don't have. But at the end of the day, I don't. I don't feel those advantage. Isn't any tactile where I still feel vulnerable. It really is something I open and you know, even something that I try to do is not what too fair, So I make my presence known if I'm coming up behind you, you make a car for your scuff your feet, like you just want to be present of other people's space as well. Yeah, you know, to the point you made there, sometimes feels like a futility to all of these precautions, because the implication is the women that do suffer from violence is that they weren't cautious enough. But of course we know there's not that's not true. There's kind of this randomness to it all. And I mean, for me, I have all of these measures. I tend not to go out too late by myself, you know. Um, someone always knows where I am and where I'm expected when I'm expected to be to be back. Some of that is just growing up African. Your parents are strip. Yeah, I'm very used to you know. You don't want to be called like a Roman ambassador because you're always in the streets. So I feel like I'm always trying to be accountable to someone. So that's probably just like immigrant trauma. Really, but my parents are like, are you still here? Come on ye? So it's just kind of just always just these little things. Um, I would rarely order maybe uber eats when it's just me and my son in the house, because I'm concerned about if a man sees me alone. You know, it's very You're very vulnerable as a woman when a man knows you're alone. You know. So oftentimes I'll send my husband to the door, or even if we have a handyman come to the house, I won't come downstairs because it's just like, there's a there's a man I don't know in this house. Reme And have you ever done that thing where you like shout as if someone's there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. People I live in a house on a part, I'm a people who come and do surveys and stuff like that. I'm just like, hold on, my husband needs me, Like I'm not married. You know, it's just just that that apt You learn to pretend quickly and use it as some sort of shield because from experience, I have learned that men will defer to men, and you know, a woman will tell you from a man comes up to you and ask for your phone number. If you say, oh, I have a husband or I have a boyfriend, they will respect that invisible man far more than the woman they see in front of them. So you just learned to do all of these things, and far more than a woman saying no, I don't interested. You know that that's not enough. He would rather respect this mythical creature, this mythical boyfriend or husband. Um, then respect your consent in wanting to engage. So how do we get to this place where like, why why is the burden on women to stay safe than on men to change their behavior? Oh? Yeah, question. I don't want to make it seem like I walk around every moment of every day with this um like hyper vigilance, Like I don't. In general, I feel safe in my life and in the life i've carved out. UM sometimes going to unfamiliar places, my you know, I have my spidy senses are a little heightened. I think that to answer that question, the simplest answer to me, why has there been this entitlement is because they can and because all of the systems of our world, you know, from the judiciary to law enforcement, to all these major systems education, they all started you know, by men with men in mind. You know, I'm talking more specifically about this country, but I think it's true of other countries as well, that like men write the rules, men make the rules. Men you know, um in many countries still today control the the literal behavior of the women around them, all the women around them. And so I think it feels to me like we're going through a growth period even just having this conversation. And we didn't have these conversations when I was like in college, you know, a zillion years ago or whatever. So I do think it's growth. Well, let's backtrack for a second. First, before the next question I have for you, let's talk about the different types of violence against women, because so far we're talking about you know, home invasion or someone kidnapping. But if you could, Rachel breakdown you know, some of the other ways that men can abuse or create some sort of domestic discomfort of that terrorism. I'm going used to work create a little domestic terrorism on people that doesn't necessarily involve physical violence or physical harm. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean there's a reason that my book is called No Visible Bruises, Right, It's like, so, you know, there's emotional abuse, their psychological abuse, and there's coercive behavior. For example, I covered the Orlando Pulse child that Omar Matine killed nightclub shooting and his um He had been married twice, so he was it was his second marriage when the shooting happened, and with both women he had been incredibly controlling. So with his second wife, he moved her three thousand miles across the country where she had no one. She was from California and he moved her to Florida. She didn't drive, and he wouldn't let her drive, so she was really isolated. She didn't have her name on the bank accounts, and he would give her money to spend for her and her son every week. None of these are physical violence, and in fact, none of them are against the law. It's just a way of coercing and controlling somebody. Now, he did actually strangle both women, non fatal, non fatally obviously um and in in in Florida. In fact, in most states, if you're convicted of non fatal strangulation strangulation it can carry a ten year prison sentence. But he was never convicted. I mean, he could have should have been in prison when that Orlando pulse shooting happened, but he was never charged and never convicted. So you know, that's two types of violence, one physical, one not. But there's a lot of way I mean, there's another there's another guy in my book who um went out into the countryside. They lived in Montana, went out into the countryside and got a rattlesnake and brought it home and he kept it in a cage um and told his wife that he was going to put it in bed with her or put it in the shower with her if she did anything that pissed him off. You don't have to physically be violent to control somebody. And there's no there's only two states with laws against coercive control right now, and they're both brand new and really haven't been tested. And you know, especially in this digital age, there's so many ways where you and terrorize a woman without even physically seeing her or touching her. You can leak her nudes, you can threaten to leak any intimate videos or photos you've taken. You can create you know, fake Instagram and Twitter accounts and follow her every move and whether it's a snatchat you know, there's women that say he was following me on Snapchat and turning up to where I was because if you know, like geo locations now, right, it's very easy to find where people are. Do sing there are just so many ways that if a man wants to make a woman's life incredibly difficult but still be within the limits of the law, he can do so. And it's quite terrified for both of you. Then what are social media companies? Because on the other side of the break, I want to talk about um oh, Kanye and Kim and my friend Pete Davidson, But what are what are you all in your arts, the two of you? What do you think social media companies are doing right now to try and regulate that type of behavior? Is enough happening in that regard, because it feels like if I can get a rattlesnake, or I can intimidate you, I can drive by your job, that's more individual, one on one. But social media is a space. It's regulated. There are moderators, at least they claim that there's moderates who are supposed to be monitoring and policing and regulating that type of behavior. Are social media companies doing enough? I'm not an expert on that. In any ways, I think we know that they're kind of failing in a lot of areas in terms of racial harassment abuse. Um, A lot of women do not feel safe on Twitter or YouTube or even streaming on Twitch because of what they'll see in the comments section. I know Instagram has a feature now that if you block someone, you can also put the option to block any other accounts they create. But for some of these men or sometimes women who are incredibly obsessive in the term and that type of safe measures is simply not enough. But I think even if we resolve some of the social media piece and make tech companies ensure that everyone that has, say a Twitter account, is someone who's not anonymous and they have to be a real human being and etcetera, etcetera, it's such a wider societal problem. It just doesn't get to the root and the heart of the issue. And I think that's that's the big problem. I think part of the problem is they're not regulated right, we as as society are relying on them to, you know, have our best interests at art, Like like there's a group of twenty people reading every post on Facebook, Like it's just it's it's an algorithm, and sometimes it catches it, sometimes it doesn't. Lately, I've been getting um these emails that go through I have a website, and I have a I have someone else who gets that email for me, it doesn't come directly to me, and they keep sending the same thing, like Rachel Snyder has a lot to answer for with pictures of me pull from all over the web and that's it. There's no threat, there's no um direct question about what it is. I have something to answer for, and you know, I, um, yeah, it makes me nervous. I have a kid, I you know, live where I live. I've alerted campus security where I'm a professor. So but what can you do? None of it is against the law, and none of it is like specific. You know, yeah, it's a very great area. Well, after the break, I want to talk a little bit about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and how Christian and the Daily Show writers almost got Trevor no W into a fight with the West. And I want you to explain yourself almost time. It was a real fine he might have came up here. You never know. It was during a hiatus week, so Kanye couldn't come fight is beyond the scenes. Will be right back. Before the break, we were talking a little bit about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and everything that Kanye has been doing against her, and we did a segment on that on the show. Well, Trevor did, I want to say, we in kains Kanye come up here and trying to find Trevor. Trevor did. But that's probably one of the most high profile examples of harassment that we have right now. You know, Johnny Depp and Amber heard as well. But Christiana, we spoke on Kim and Kanye on the show. How did you all decide how to tackle this topic? Because this isn't a typical daily show piece. You know, what told the night before, what's going to be on the show the next day, and sometimes so we can just read that more on the stories or just you know what's happening. And when I saw in Slack that we were doing Kim and Kanye, I was like, oh, that's surprising. When anything in involved a Kardashians immediately becomes tabloid, and we historically don't touch tabloid stories. So there was this just the very natural reluctance that comes with us, like why are we doing this very tabloid story? And then there was some trepidation because it involves miners. You know, they have children and there's something icky about discussing such a public dispute when there are children at the center of the center of it, and even though these are children that are on reality TV a lot, this just feels a lot more sensitive and like there are so many land mines, for lack of a better word, about how we could weave it and do it well. And again, remember where a comedy show, so we're going to be making jokes, right, So it's the task is incredibly difficult. But the feeling was from Trevor when Trevor and myself spoke about it that even though this was quote unquote being viewed as a tabloid story, it was really a microcosm of so many themes that happen in society in general, and there were bigger lessons to learn from it, and Kim in a despite her vast wealth and resources, was kind of emblematic of what so many women are going through right now, and they're not being believed and people treating it like a joke, and everyone is standing by watching this escalating behavior and not spotting them as red flags. Um. So I think that being our entry point made what was a very difficult and tricky process, made it m a lot easier. And then you know, from the comedy side side, what I found funny and it was a joke that did make the segment, was just like, you know, Kim, in her effort to kind of rebrand, has gone down this social justice route and she's training, she's trying to do the bar or whatever, and in her spare time, she frees black men from jail. Right, That's that's what kind of hobbies right now, black women to black women too, So what are the optics of you like free and black men from jail in your spare time and then calling the police and the black man who happens to be your ex husband harassing you? Like she she's kind of in this real branding, real life conundrum, which isn't funny, but it's also funny, right, And and we're just talking about that, like there are many reasons why she can't call the police, but there is probably on her part, like this looks hypocritical. I'm supposed to be like this abolitionist. So we were just teasing through the comedy in the complications of it all, but still trying to convey the gravitas of the situation and our belief that Kim could be in grave danger. Even even someone like me. I was like so tuned in to these issues. And it's like when I heard that monologue from him, I was like, yes, of course, even I had been had this casual celebrity relationship to her like I do, okay all that because a lot of people go like Kim Kardashian, she loves publicity, she loves celebrity, she loves all of this. She does the kardash Is this is her life, this is her thing. Yeah, and I get it. But there's also an element of a woman saying to her ex, hey, please leave me alone. You know what I mean, Please leave me alone, because I'll be honest with you. What I see from this situation. I see a woman who wants to live her life without being harassed by an ex boyfriend or an ex husband, or an ex anything. What she's going through is terrifying to watch, and it shines a spotlight on what so many women go through when they choose to leave. You know, people always say that phrase two women. They go like, why didn't you leave? Oh, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you leave? Yeah, because a lot of women women realize when they do leave the guy will get even crazier. And when I say crazy, I don't mean mental health crazy. I'm like, it's you understand what I mean. You know what I mean. The point is that Kim Kardashian and countless other women, they find themselves in a terrible position, you know, because asking kind of to stop clearly isn't helping. If Kim cannot escape this, Kim kardash and if she cannot escape this, in what chance the normal women have? Roy will tell you Trevor and I have a very interesting dynamic and relationship. We kind of like butt heads a lot, and that's I think how we produce some really good stuff. We don't always agree, but there's a deep respect there. And it was just one of these things that I had been on sabbatical and I've been talking a lot about it on my Instagram and Trevor follows me on Instagram, so he was seeing a lot of what I was saying about this particular case. And then he was like, you wanted to do on the show, but he didn't know I was back off sabbatical, and then he reached I was like, Christian, and I'm doing Kim k tomorrow. It's gonna be weird because you're not here, and I'm like, no, I'm back, And we kind of just brainstormed it and did a lot of talking and I just gave him my whole spieled about it. And then the next day it did like a smaller meeting with the other producers and our show runner and then yeah, it really it really came together. And I think we were like buzzing for about a week afterwards because of the conversation it generated that felt so important. Trevor said that he was biking down Hudson Highway and some dude was jogging and then ran after him and said, I want to say thank you to you for what you said about Kim Kardashian. I never saw it that way, but now I'm different. It was like, look at you making allies I know were like, I don't know those Kardashians, but wow, this is horrible, like the way people really switched. And you know, Kim's kind of unlikable to a lot of people, and I don't think you should be likable to be a victim, but it says a lot that if you can get people to be like, oh, you know what if it's not it's not right. So it felt like important. It felt important, you know, totally, and coming from him. It's the you know, if I said it, I'd get like, we can't come. It can't come from a woman. That's why I prating that to him. I don't look tever. The reason it's resonating so much. It's a bit like racism when when white people say this is racist, everyone's like, oh wow, this must really be racist. So if a man comes out and says this is virus is yeah, let me show you, and everyone kind of steps back and says, well if because the bath men have for violence is different, they always feel that women are being hysterical. So for trying to be like, hey, guys, I'm not saying he's going to do anything, but we may need to just step back. So then, Rachel, to that point, what are some of the examples that you've seen in Kanye's behavior that our textbook examples of this of the harassment and abuse that women deal with when trying to leave a relationship. Yeah, that's a good question, because my guess is that what we're seeing on the outside is just at the tip of the iceberg. You know, there have been the text there's been the manipulation of his social media, right, so he has this kind of like hidden army behind him. There's been um the children used as average, right, like, oh, you know I was not allowed to go to the birthday part. I wasn't told with that. You know, there's that kind of stuff and the video, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but it's the collective of that that is concerning to me, and not just the collective, but the escalation of it, where it's like he's upping the antie. And I should mention that he apparently a week or two ago there recently said he's going to get help and whatever, and you know, I hope that's true and that he does get help. Um, but it's it's the escalation, which I think the most extreme is the video, right, Like it all kind of leads up to that video. We'll talk about the Pete Davidson where he threatened Pete Davidson in a music Yeah. Yeah, I know that he hides behind his art, right he says, I'm an artist, this is just art, but really, um, you could then choose anybody, right, like you you actually have Pete Davidson's name in your song so it's not art when when it's a threat, like I don't I think foy in a house across the street from your from your soon to be ex wife is exactly art, right, kind of a jerk move. Yeah, it's this stock. It's the stocking that's harassment. You know. She's been very good about not making too many public statements, but she's made a few, and even that I feel like fuels him. Um fuels the type of person that he is to like up the game to him. Christiana. The thing that I found very interesting about Trevor's Peace is that you're looking at an abusive dynamic between him and Kanye. And for the people who have read Trevor's book and no Trevor's history, Trevor is a child that grew up in an abusive home, so he's seen a lot of the stuff that is starting to mirror itself. Now, how much of a decision was there for Trevor to put his own emotions into into the segment, because I felt like somewhere underneath all of that there was still a piece of compassion for Kanye and wanting Kanye to get it didn't seem like a full blown Villa like a duck on him, like you weren't dark, you know, as much as it was acknowledging the behavior, acknowledging how corrosive it is, and trying to find solutions, we were very keen not to villainize anybody in this piece, right, because I think that's the instinct of that the public lean towards. You know, we need to have a villain in this story. You need to have a hero in this story, you need to have a perfect victim in this story. And it's really complicated. Um. Kanye has also been very open about his mental health struggles over the years, and they've been courageous and been candid about the difficulties he had. And not to use his mental illness as a route to justify any of this this behavior, because that's not the case. But that was really important context for us, that there are their times when Kanye's and well this time when he's we said, you know, he's a very complicated man, but none of that justified what was happening. So we were very keen to say, Okay, what Kanye is doing is terrible, it's harassment, but we're not here to beat Kanye up or beat men like Kanye U. We didn't think there was a productive way to frame things um because it just wouldn't land. It would have gone over the heads of a lot of people who interesting enough, so many people were team Kanye that that that was where the public discourse was at that point, and anyone that came up against Kanye in a specific way and we're like, Kanye is a villain, they weren't hearing it. So we were like, Okay, Kanye is doing a really bad thing, and we need to get people who don't see that to see that. We also need really need to make it clear about what Kim is going through. And we also knew that there was an audience that was unsympathetic because she's incredibly wealthy. She has this reality she's seen as a low brow celebrity who has no talent, even though I think her talent is like making man, do you think? Yeah? Exactly. The appropriation pieces, the har phobia, and the fact that this empire was kind of built on a sex tape. There are so many things that mean that people do not want to receive it when they hear that Kim Kardashi and a woman like Kim Kardashian is being harassed and stalked. They just don't get it. So we were conscious of all the nuances of the piece going into it and just trying to cover each part of the argument. And of course you heard Trevor say a lot. I'm not saying that Kanye is going to kill him or God forbid that happens, but he was just saying the warning signals are here, and he was able to spot those signals, I think because of his personal experience. But I will say that you know, when you work with Trevor on a headline, he's not something He's quite journalistic in the sense that he doesn't necessarily want to insert himself in the story. That's not his impulse. His impulse is actually to kind of be like um, impartial observer in times and then at the end will kind of give his take. I feel he was a bit reluctant to tell the personal side of his story, not because he's not courageous enough to do that. He's been really open about his life, but there was a feeling that perhaps that would color the entire piece. But in my view, Trevor's personal story was perhaps one of the most powerful parts of that segment because he has been a witness to that type of violence and intimidation and harassment, and he was saying, guys, this is also coming from a very personal connection, um and I feel the audience found that compelling as kind of end note to this entire monologue that he did. He built a really strong case, and then he brought himself into the story. I grew up my whole life in an abusive household, right, most of mine, let's say, from the age of nine to whatever, sixteen. One of the things I found most interesting was how often people told my mom that she was overreacting. What I found interesting was how many times people told my mom to calm down. People told my family to calme to everyone, you know, and everyone had different reasons. Oh. I remember once we went to the police station and they said to my mom, oh, but did you talk back? Is that why you're here? You know? You know? Oh, but but what did you say to it? It's all these questions, all these questions. I remember seeing this as a child. By the way, you see this as a child, you know, and you see a world where women are questioned for what is happening to them, as opposed to people questioning what is happening to them. And for years people said this ship, ah, no, this are you know this? This, this happens, This happened, that happened. There's everyone, police, some family, stranger, whatever it was, whatever it was, And I'll never forget. One day I got a call from my saying, hey, mom has just been shot in the head. She's in the hospital now. She's just been shot. And I'm not saying it to make it about me. I'm just saying, maybe that's why I look at the story differently. To be honest with you, is I go, it seems like nothing. And again I'm not saying Kanye will, please, I'm not saying he will, not saying that, but you see it in all these stories where people say we saw it but we didn't we whether it's the people around him, whether it's the people in their lives, whether it's us as society condoning or not condoning. And I know it's nuanced. I know I'm not saying Kinde is just a bad guy, please, but just as society and we have to ask ourselves questions, do we wish to stand by and watch your car crash when we thought we saw it coming or do we at least want to say, hey, slow down, let's put let's all put our hazards on because there's a storm right now and some ship might go down. Let's just let's just put our hands. If it doesn't happen, Hey, the worst thing we did was we all had our hazards on like idiots. I'm I'll be fine to say I was an idiot. Nothing happened. I'd rather be in that situation than to be in one way. I say, Man, I wish we didn't think the whole thing it wasn't worth looking at. It was beautiful and it was I love what you said about not um essentially not taking away Kanye's humanity, because that's that's how we don't solve problems, is by flattening the other person, right. I spent a lot I've spent a lot of time with abusers, and UM they're interesting because you know, they're they're sort of simultaneously out of control and in control at the same time, you know, and they're usually filled with shame about their behavior too. It's not like they're doing this and they feel good about it. They feel As one researcher said to me, I've never met a happy abuser. Ever, I mean they're not happy either. Trevor in a ridiculously long Instagram post about Kanye and really, to Kanye, I don't know. This must be like some special celebrity Instagram This man, it's like paragraphs, but one part of it that really really stuck out and touched me, you know, he said, it breaks my heart to see you like this. I don't care if you support Trump. I don't care if you roast Pete. I do, however, care when I see you on a path that's dangerously close to peril and pain. I've woken up too many times and red headlines about men who have killed their excess, their kids, and then themselves. I never want to read that about you. If you're just joking about it all, then I'm an idiot for caring, and so be it. But I'd rather be the idiot who spoke up and said something to you in life, then the cool guy who said nothing and then mourned you in prison or the grave. Yeah, he should write a book. I got goose bumps, you know. And at the time where so many people can just ride the wave of the way the media is set this up. It's Kanye crazy, Kim tripping man, Let that man see his kids? Like, what role does the media play in shaping the one sidedness of it all? Because no one can find the nuance in the middle. And I know that the media plays a role in it. So you journalists, what did you do wrong? Um? Yeah, I mean what I would say, I have. I have a lot to say about this, So sit back. How does the media help shape this narrative that keeps people. We've we've we've minimized the problems, the problems of wealthy, famous people. We we put them on a pedestal. Right, So so that's a particular problem with Kim and Kanye that you know, we don't feel for her because how could she have problems when she's when she's rich, or she's beautiful, or she has this you know, perfect butt or whatever. But I think there's a bigger problem with the media in minimizing domestic violence as a as a whole. I mean, if I could take the phrase domestic dispute and like blow it off the landscape of media forever, I would, because we're talking about crime, and there's no other crime I can think of where we downplay it and call it a dispute, like like Omar Mateen non fatally strangling. Strangling his first wife for a second wife is not a domestic dispute. It's attempted murder, and we need to call it what it is. To me, it also just feels like sexism, right, No one cares about the pain of women. People don't take it seriously, right, it's it's it's not seen as valid pain. And my anger at the media narrative about Kim and Kanye at before We've done that segment was that everyone was treating it like a joke. There was this he Kanye put a truck full of rosy is outside of Kim's house. He like all people's it was funny and I was looking at like this is scary. Love makes you crazy? Yeah, yeah, it was just it was seen as a funny, kind of tabloid spat rather than a really insidious de domestic. I always tell my daughter, like, if if a man hires an orchestra to come play on your lawn, like that's not romantic running run as fast as you can. It's kind of like grand justice. I mean, it's you so much. Now. I kind of hate the phrase, but love bombing, you know, all of this stuff he was doing, and I was looking at it and I thought, I'm scared for this woman and the only other people I saw saying that other women. But the media coverage, just the way the story was framed, was not frames as this is a mother and a wife, um who is in danger, in some sort of peril. It was like Kim k you know, doesn't want Kanye's flowers, ha ha. He's doing his best. It was weird. And even if it goes south, it's just called a crime of passion. Like it's still like, well, you know, you love, you'd be tripping sometimes. He's still a good person. But how do how do women who don't have the resources and the the high level of celebrity that Kim Kardashian have, How do we get the media to even look at these stories? Because there's a million Kim Kardashian's happening on a regular basis in this country, especially women of color. How do we get the media to start turning their eyes towards those those types of stories. I have no idea, And I think the distressing thing about all of this is if a woman with Kim Kardashian's resources and visibility, tea and wealth. Is this vulnerable and the world kind of just looks on and laughs. What does it mean for the woman who's undocumented and is afraid to go into the police station because there's a language barrier and she's afraid of getting deported, and her abuser uses that against her and her community are using that against her. What does that say about a woman who's being financially abused and doesn't have access to her bank account and has no idea about an escape route. Because the reason we didn't want to villainize Kanye is because abuses are very complicated people. There are so many men that people he would never beat his wife. He's the nicest guy ever, right, you know, They're really charismatic and charming, and we wanted to make it clear that the men that are doing this to women in your everyday life are often like Kanye in the sense that you're enamored with a part of them. You really like them to make you feel good. But there's also side to them that's much darker. And I don't know how we make that change where people are actually really concerned by the about the underprivileged and under resourced women, or and us even learning that super wealthy women who perhaps becomes stay at home moms and relied on their husband for income for the last fifty to twenty years, they're vulnerable too. It's it's a really hard thing because I don't think most people understand how difficult it is for one woman to escape, especially um the lower on the socio economic ladders she is. There is research done by a woman named Joan Meyer at George Washington University. She did research on custody cases where there were custody disputes and found that of the cases where abuse was alleged by a woman, they lost the kids. They lost the women lost the kids. So, you know, abusers used that I'm going to have your kids taken away from you, and it works. That works, right. There's a there's you know, there's a guy that I spoke with years ago, a researcher who talked about how abusers, just like you said, Christiana, are they're charming. That's how they get victims in the first place. They're often very very quick courtships. I'm completely skeptical of fast courtships now I have to admit, and they mess up victims lives because we want our victims to be a certain way, right, we all have. I mean, I think even if you weren't a child of the eighties like I was, you still have an image of like the burning bed, right, like that, that's your that's your image, and the fact is like that, that's not realistic. You know, people can't leave. Women can't leave because bureaucracy holds you in place. You can't, you know, get the name of your husband off your checking account without his permission, interacting with him. You can't sign your kids up for another school. I did a story on a woman who had been to shelter in and out of shelters for twenty years. She tried to leave. They had two girls, and he got really smart. The last time she tried to leave, she went to a shelter in Maine. She lived in Massachusetts, and he wrote a letter to the school system saying, you know, such and such has taken off. She's unstable, she's bipolar. I'm afraid that she's going to do something with with the kids, So don't let her register the kids out of school without my permission, right and he he's he and he ended up killing her you know, and killed himself, so they know that our systems lock victims in place every bit as much as our own sort of social responsibility to not minimize this and not marginalize victims. Well, after the break, I want to talk about solutions to these issues, and I want to talk about the phrase toxic masculine. That's that's that's what I just saw you shifting your stay. Talk about that right back. You know, we talk about these events of violence, but we usually only talk about them after something terrible has happened. On the prevention side, ladies, what can we do to keep these crimes from happening in the first place. That's a good question. I will say that other countries are doing some interesting things. There's UM in the UK, for example, there's a there's a violence prevention hotline that anybody men or women, although it is men who call, can call and get help if they are in a moment. That is UM problematic, I'll say problematic. And you know it's not a solution in that it's gonna, you know, solve violence against women forever and ever, but it is what you're trying to do do. What you're trying to do is disrupt a moment of violence or potential violence, and so I think it's a useful tool. In the States, we just UH signed reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act UM. It had been sort of stagnant for roughly and for the first time ever they have earmarked funds to UM figure out what works in anti violence prevention programs, and so I think to me, that's a really positive step that UM we're sort of talking about not just UM how to stop the violence before it happens, but how to keep victims in their community and in their families. Because you know, we haven't talked about this and we probably don't have a lot of time, but shelter is not a very good UM response to like, take you know, a whole family out of everything familiar, allow them to suitcases, stick them in one room, you know. So I do think there's a lot of solutions out there, and I don't think that they are necessarily law enforcement solutions. I think that law enforcement often may a terrible situation much much worse, and that we need to like in certain cities in UM San Diego, in UM, I think Baltimore. Here in Washington, d C. We have UM programs where and I think Denver has went where the domestic violence advocates will will go on calls with police officers. And I think that's really really important because just the police as a presence, with all of their gear and their tactical stuff, like their giant they're almost like machines and they walk into a room, they're intimidating, right, so they're perceived to make the situation worse. And to Rachel's point about you know, police not being the solution, I'll say that the subculture, for lack of about a word, I grew up in in South London was predominantly made up of West African and West Indian immigrants, right, and if I speak from the vantage point of that particular subculture. Civic institutions have a lot of power, they'd say, so, whether that's the church um or whether those are like community groups that are linked to your tribe or your clan, whether those the mosques, local community centers. These civil institutions and the people that run them, so pastors and inman's and the deacons, etcetera, have a huge amount of authority over what people do. Right. You know, if you're having medical issues, you go to your pastor, you're like you know, I'm just talking about the way immigrants, subcultures, and subcultures in ten tend to work. And from my perspective, I think that a lot of community based training needs to happen in a lot of civic institutions about understanding what abuses and understanding who are victim is, and understanding that every man can't be her rehabilitated, and that women need to be protected and children need to be protected. And when a woman comes forward, she shouldn't be ostracized, she shouldn't be told to stay, but we also need to give her the means to escape. That means she remains within the community, because it's actually the isolation that means a lot of women return with their children, because when you leave the man, you leave the community. And for people I would say, especially of like minority descent, if you're of African or Asian extent, where being community it's more about the collective than the individual. That is incredibly devastating because you lose your cousins, you lose your you lose so much. I think a big part of the solution is going into all of these subcultures, all of these communities are specifically looking at like, Okay, how do we work with these local synagogues about spotting abuse and how they can help their women, because those are really those civic institutions have so much power that they can use for good, but oftentimes they're ill equipped, right, you know, they think, oh, okay, if you just pray, it'll go away. Keep praying for him, keep praying for him, and next thing you know, it's a funeral. You're burying that woman. So we need to really work through these civic institutions, in my mind, and with various community leaders and helping men being able to support women and men, because women aren't the only ones being abused, UM that need to leave these upper situations. Rachel, where are we with the legislation? And you know, is there a way to make restraining orders tougher? Like? Like, where are we on the I guess on the legal side of things, we have really good legislation, we just don't enforce it. We have, you know, a ban on convicted felons owning guns. But if you have a misdemeanor domestic violence charge and you live in um, you know, Mississippi, no one's going to take your gun. You know, you live in Michigan. No one's going to take your gun. So I think that it's a matter of enforcing the legislation that we do have. Now, there are a couple of states that have passed UM coercive control laws where you can't you can't you know, coerce someone into, you know, doing what you want them to do or whatever. California has passed a course of control off Connecticut, and then there's a few other states looking at them. I'm not sure where they're at right now. I know Maryland and New York were looking at them, and then the other the other piece of it is offering parole to victims who essentially killed their way out of UM a violent relationship. It was a killer killed kind of situation. And so there's a lot of states now looking at their parole and probation boards and seeing if there's alterations they can make. New York passed one a few years ago California. Wasn't there a woman in Florida who was taking in for simply firing warning shots? Yeah, the same time, the same time Trayvon Martin was killed. She was sentenced to twenty years. She's out now. But you know that that's it that. It's an interesting example because that's one of the states that has stand your ground laws, and stand your ground laws were meant to kind of address the shortcomings of self defense, like, you know what if it wasn't somebody breaking into your house, but it was somebody threatening you out on the streets. So all these states have stand your ground laws, which is does seem to be like a growing movement, and yet stand your ground laws women almost can never use stand your ground laws, almost never. So a lot of the problem isn't with the legislation itself. It's with the gender discrimination and the bias when it's implemented. And to speak to the legislation part, I think for black women, especially, engaging with the justice system comes with a lot of historical baggage. Um, it starts with do you feel comfortable quality the police? Are the police going to shoot you when they arrive? Right? These are the questions going through a black woman who's being abused. Mind, if I have a teenage son at home, are they going to miss misidentify my teenage son as a suspect not my abuser? Like that, there are a lot of subterranean issues here that we need to unpack. Access to legal advice because we can. We can have great policy and great legislation, but what happens when you can't afford a lawyer? You know, I think there's a really significant population of women who are at greater risk of domestic abuse, who, even when we put the right legislation in place, will still not be able to access it and the law really work on their favor in the way it needs to write. And do you want to put someone in prison who is from your own marginalized community, which a lot of people don't want, right And you know, I think the abolitionist have really kind of brought this conversation to the four about like prison not necessarily being the solution, especially if that man is going to be out at some point. And you know, we've we've seen so many cases of men going to prison for domestic abuse, doing their stint, coming out killing another woman. Right, So we're kind of putting this problem away for a certain amount of time. So we look at the idea of restorative justice and what that looks like in some communities that may need to be the model that's prioritized because those women don't want their abuser in jail, they want their abuser to stop abusing them and abusing other people. But they're not going to engage with the justice, the justice system all or enforcement. So we need to figure out, so how do we help and protect them? Okay, so then let's end with this men garbage as terrible as men? What role can men play in ending the culture of misogyny and violence against women? Because we talk about the phrase toxic masculinity and I pulled this up because I want to make sure that I'm defining it properly. Toxic masculinity refers to the notion that some people's idea of manliness perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression. So my last question to both of you, what are the ways that men can help change the culture on this issue? You know, that's such a great question. And when I'm talking about this with the men in my life and how I intend to talk to my son about this, is that toxic masculinity, patriarchy, all of these constructs, this big academic language. It harms men to right. It doesn't allow you to experience the fullness of your humanity. You're not allowed to be empathetic, You're not allowed to cry when you need to. You're not allowed to express the range of your emotions, so you curtail the human experience. You're not being yourself because you're so conscious of the perception of not being man enough. So don't think this only harms me as a woman or harms the children that look up to you. It's harming you because you become a prisoner of this construct. So that's where I always start the conversation. I'm like, this is bad for you because if you you know, humans are kind of selfish, right, So if you if you frame it as this is bad for women, and I well, fucking I'm not a woman, you know, that's how people think about it. But if you're like, now, this is really bad for you. This is why you're depressed and you can't say it. This is why you're going through and you can't even share it with your your home is that you're with all the time. So if you start from that place of like, okay, so this is what toxic masculinity does two men, and how it makes you harm your self, and then you say, this is what toxic masculinity does to the people around you, like the women that you love, and unfortunately it's kind of sad that we have to use the women that men are connected to as an entry point, because you should just care of a woman irrespective if she's romantically or biologically or community eyes attached to you. But for a lot of men, they're not going to care unless that's their daughter, their mother, their sister. So you have to explain how like the behavior you perpetuate, how it affects the women in your orbit. And then you say you need to check your friends. That's what I always say, you need to check your boys because I can't do it. Like there are men that everyone knows that guy is an abusa and you still have him around. Why is that you should be ashamed? Like I'm a shame people. I don't care. I'd be like why is he around? Why do you roll with him? I don't want to hang with you because you hang with him? Is you kind of using that language? Like why are you allowing this man still to have social access even though you know he gives women drinks, he gives them a bit too many drinks so he can fondle them, even though he shouts at his girlfriend, even though he's controlling, and you turn a blind eye because he's not doing it to you, but you're actually one of the few people that can check him right. And that's kind of like my three step way of unpacking this idea of toxic masculinity and then giving them something they can I get action on. And my whole thing is, and this is how my group of friends work. We see ourselves as a community and a family, and we have to be able to be radically honest with each other. If you have that type of dynamic with a man, and he's a man that you know has influence, you should be able to have those conversations. I mean, that's kind of how I approach it. Yeah, I mean, I just think there's all kinds of ways that we can slightly reframe so many of the conversations that that we're having. And I have to say, like, I know more good men than bad, and I've been in a lot of prisons, so I know a lot of bad men. Yeah, I completely agree. It's just like I I think I can have this optimism about having conversations about toxic masculinity because my father, my husband, my cousins, like my friends, I'm surrounded bout like really remarkable men who are equally grieved by what men are doing to other women. So yeah, we want to emphasize there are good men, more good men than bad men, but more of those good meny to speak up. Yeah, well, I wish that we have more time, but we are out of time. This has been an amazing conversation. Christiana has always thank you for being back on the show. It's best, Send the best to the husband and that child of yours with all of that wonderful hand. And Rachel Louis Snyder the book is No Visible Bruises. Thank you so much for all that you do on the journalistic side of this issue as well. Thank you both for going beyond the scenes with us today. Thank thanks Roy. For further resources and support, visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at www. The Hotline dot org. The Hotline dot org See you next week. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.