Stop training. Start talking | Leondra Hanson | TEDxMinneapolis

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, people keep asking attorney and educator Leondra Hanson the same question: “What do we do now?” Drawing from her professional observations and her personal experiences, Hanson argues that we need to change our conversations about sexual harassment and violence. From the corporate training programs in our workplaces to our personal interactions with each other, she urges reimagining how we talk about sexual violence.

Leondra Hanson joined the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts at Hamline University in 2008 where she now teaches courses across the legal curriculum and chairs the legal studies department. Hanson’s scholarly and professional work focuses on women and law, sexual assault and harassment, and legal education. Before Professor Hanson taught law, she practiced, working on cases involving sexual assault, discrimination, and real estate – a wide array. Hanson loved the counseling and advocacy work of representing clients on both sides. Her specialty was in simplifying the complex and making people comfortable with the litigation process, a skill she has, no doubt, carried over into academia. Hanson earned her BA from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN and her JD from the University of Minnesota. She has provided counsel, risk prevention, and training to professionals in human resources, legal, advocacy, and real estate fields. Professor Hanson is a former board member of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault and served on the Minnesota State Bar Association Alternative Legal Models Task Force.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

When #MeToo went viral last year,

it pulled back the curtain
to reveal a problem

that had really been hiding
in plain sight.

We weren't shocked or surprised
to learn that information -

these were not new statistics.

What it really exposed was
our lack of action,

our inadequacy at responding.

#MeToo collected the stories,
it gave them faces and names,

and it brought them forward
and it put them in front of us

and it begged a new question.

It said, Are we going to do
something about this?

Which is why, I think,
as a lawyer, educator and trainer,

the question I've been asked the most
often in the last several months is,

"So what do we do now?"

What do we do now?

Now, in all of my heads, I should be able
to rattle off a whole list of ideas,

but the first time somebody
posed that question to me,

I didn't give any great policy insights.

The first time somebody asked
the question, I gave my gut reaction,

the first thing that popped
into my head, and I said,

"I think we need
to keep talking about it."

And I kind of looked back
on that answer, and I thought,

"Isn't that a little overly simplistic?"

Over the last several months, though,
I've had a lot of conversations

in a variety of contexts,
formal and informal,

with all kinds of people,

and I'm sensing that people
are really uncomfortable.

I keep getting the same comments,
hearing the same kinds of questions.

People are saying things like,
What about hugs? Are hugs okay?

Should I open my office door?
Is it bad to have closed-door meetings?

I get nervous when I give
a coworker a compliment.

And everybody wants to talk
about the spectrum.

Because it's a spectrum, right?

Some conduct is worse than others.

It has led me to the conclusion

that #MeToo has presented us
an opportunity for a reckoning,

but we seem really anxious
to get to some kind of reconciliation.

Is there some new set of rules
we can apply here so we can just move on?

I think we can get
from reckoning to reconciliation,

but not until we change this conversation.

Luckily, as any good TED speaker should,

I have come equipped with five steps
to changing the conversation.

(Laughter)

So, step one, we are going
to stop training and start talking.

Yes, I came to advocate that we stop
doing sexual harassment training.

And yes, I still feel like the lawyers
and the HR people in the room

are a little nervous about that.

In order to get us all on the same page,

I decided that we should do just a quick
sexual harassment training in 30 seconds.

In order to do that, I dusted off
an old PowerPoint presentation

that I gave probably 15 years ago
about this topic.

And here we go.

Sexual harassment training in 30 seconds.

There are two types.

It takes a lot of words
to explain those two types,

especially the second type.

Even the courts
aren't entirely sure what it is -

they just know that bullying,
that's not enough.

But don't worry,
this is just about what's illegal.

Your employer can set a much higher bar -

cue an inappropriate,
awkwardly acted video

about a weird back rub in the copy room,

(Laughter)

a reminder that you should call HR
if you have any questions.

Don't forget supervisors
can be individually liable -

don't be creepy and seen.

(Applause)(Screaming)

Sexual harassment training
hasn't changed a lot

in the last several decades.

Now you can do it all online
without ever seeing another person.

(Laughter)

There have been some strives to change it,

but the problem
with sexual harassment training

is that it is rooted in risk prevention.

Sexual harassment training exists
because the courts said,

"Hey employers, if you do this thing,
you can avoid liability if it happens."

Thus, sexual harassment training
was born of litigation,

and it has been raised by lawyers.

Now hopefully, for the sake
of my three children,

being raised by lawers
is not the worst possible unbringing.

(Laughter)

Nevertheless, it is time
for sexual harassment training

to move on out of the house of compliance

because conversation is risky.

We will not get from reckoning
to reconciliation

unless we are willing
to cross a path of risk.

So, step two, we need to take some risks.

Conversation is risky.

One of the risks we need to take

is we need to be willing
to admit our past mistakes.

We haven't always engaged
exactly right in this conversation,

and we've got to be willing to own that.

In organizations,
if leaders can step up and say,

"You know, I used
to think about this this way,

but now I think about it differently."

That opens the door
for other people to do the same.

But talking about things
we've gotten wrong is scary,

so I'll go first.

This is me.

I am the curly-haired one in the back.

The much younger, much cuter,
much blonder girl is my little sister,

and this is our horse -
his name is Jim.

I loved my Montana upbringing,
and I loved that girl -

she was strong and independent -

but there were a lot of things
that she did not know.

One of them

is that if you would've asked me then
or for years afterwards,

if I was a feminist,

I would've probably told you "No," right?

But then I listened and I lived
and I learned, and my perspective shifted.

I recognized that there was room
at the equality table for all of us,

even those of us
who could drive a stick shift

and saddle a horse and slap a pig.

(Laughter)

We are all on a journey,

and we have to be willing
to own our mistakes.

The flip side of that, of course,

is that we have to be open
to other people's journeys too,

to letting them make mistakes.

If every time in this conversation

we think someone
is getting something wrong,

our reaction is to gather
our swarm of little blue birdies

and come peck them
to death on the Internet,

we're not going to invite people
into the conversation;

we're going to push them away.

(Applause)

Step three, we've made some time,
we've decided to take some risks,

What do we talk about instead?

We need to be talking about power,
permission, and interruption.

When we think about
the news stories that we've seen

with examples of sexual harassment
and sexual violence,

the power is easy to spot.

The people in the news
are wealthy politicians.

They're media moguls
who have control and power,

not only of their own contexts,

but of the law and culture
that the rest of the consume.

But you don't have to be a media mogul
or a wealthy politician to have power.

Power can exist in a community -

it can be simply based on having
information somebody doesn't have,

control over someone's pay;

it can be speaking a language.

We need to start identifying the power
in our contexts and who holds it,

and whether we hold some and of what kind.

Because sexual violence thrives

when bad intentions
meet power, opportunity,

and a low risk of accountability.

We need to identify and talk about power.

Instead, our conversations
always seem to go to this place

of romance gone wrong -

it's an unhappy accident,
a mistaken communication.

I think there's something
more sinister going on

in almost all of the stories we hear.

But even if sometimes
the issue is miscommunication,

then why aren't we talking
about permission?

We're not talking about permission
in sex education with our kids,

and we're not talking about it
in training in our workplaces.

And here in stoic Minnesota,

I'm not sure we're talking about it
with each other either.

We need to talk about permission.

When should we be asking for it?

How do we ask for it?

And how do we deny it?

(Applause)

We also need to talk about interruption -

it does not take long to find a bystander

who didn't know what to do or what to say

or simply chose not to.

Why is it so much easier
when our colleague says,

"You know, Bob makes me
feel really uncomfortable,"

that our go-to response
is always "That's just Bob."

Why is it so hard to say,
"How so?" "Are you OK?"

"Is there anything I can do?"

We need to talk about power,
permission, and interruption.

And then we need people, step four,
to show up for the conversation.

I give a lot of talks
about these kinds of things,

and I often find myself staring out
at a sea of women's faces.

I did a little what we call "lawyer math"

over the last couple
of presentations I've given

to just kind of see
what the statistics were,

and I counted up that less than 10%

of the people coming to a talk with #MeToo
or sexual harassment in the title

were men.

Yet at the same time,
I kept getting this question,

usually from women at the talks:

"What about all the really
good men in my office?

I work with some really good men,
and they want to do something.

They feel awkward.
How can I help them?"

My answer is pretty simple:

participate.

Men, we need you to show up
for this conversation.

You know what? Scratch that.

You need you to show up
for this conversation.

Three percent of men will experience
a rape or attempted rape -

that's just the ones who are reported.

Many of us in this room
may never experience sexual violence;

most of us will never
commit sexual violence.

But it is going to impact all of us.

It's impacting us all right now and every
conversation we have in the workplace.

So, my challenge, my hope,
is that when men are talking

about whether they should open the door
of their offices to be safe,

go ahead and open the door.

But can you also open your eyes
and hearts and minds

to the stories that #MeToo is telling us
and the reality of those stories?

Step five: we have got
to retire this spectrum.

Because we're talking
about this all the time,

on one hand, here's the stuff
that's not a big deal,

you should probably get over it;

down here is the stuff
that's really horrifying -

it's pretty awful.

We're actually not going to talk
about the horrifying stuff

pretty much ever;

we're going to really focus
on this get-over-it side,

especially at work and in our training.

We may not even be
on the get-over-it side,

because when we're talking
about hugs and compliments,

I don't even think
they're on the spectrum.

I love hugs and compliments.
They're great.

The problem with hugs and compliments
is only when they're misused,

when they're used to demean
instead of to lift up.

But we spend so much time
on that end of the spectrum

that we don't have time
to dig into what's really going on,

and we don't want to believe
in the horrifying end, anyway.

We want to peel everything out of that
and categorize it over here.

So, here's the thing.
It's not a spectrum.

It's a system.

And until we start getting comfortable
with the idea that it might be messy

to talk about its interconnectivity,
about its intricacies,

then we will not dismantle it,

and we need to dismantle the system.

In education, we have a concept
we talk about sometimes,

called "the compelling why."

The idea is that if we know
why we're doing something,

we'll be better at it,
we'll learn it better,

we'll understand it more.

We need to change
why we're having this conversation.

We can't be having it
to avoid getting sued;

we've got to have a better reason.

And trying to come up with better reasons,

we've come up with things like,
"It's better for a bottom line.

There's a business case for it -

if we really make the workplace
safer and better,

we'll have a better workforce,
we'll produce more work."

And that's a better reason,

but I still don't think it's "the" reason.

I want to tell you my reason for talking
about sexual assault and harassment -

my compelling why.

I have a #MeToo story to tell you.

My #MeToo story doesn't belong to me.

This is Suzie.

I met Suzie when I fell in love
with her big brother,

and we became family
when I married him.

By the time I'd joined the Hanson family,

Suzie had already been sexually assaulted.

I never really talked to her
about it very much;

I didn't know a lot about what happened.

What I did know will sound
very familiar to you:

she was sexually assaulted
at work, at her part-time job,

by someone with authority.

There were people who could
intervene and interrupt - who didn't.

Mostly, everyone wanted her
to get over it and move on.

There was a lawsuit, and she couldn't
really talk about it, anyway.

So, we never really talked about it.

I did notice that Suzie was trying
really hard to do all of those things,

to get over it and move on,

but even in her happiest time,

she would carry with her a cloud
of shame and fear and anger.

I would learn later
that what was in that cloud

were the symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Suzie and I would have one conversation
that I recall so clearly about it.

I knew she was in therapy, finally,

it was the summer of 2000,
and I asked her, "How's it going?"

And she said, "It's going pretty well."
She said, "It's kind of hard, though."

And I said, "Why?"

And she said,

"My therapist wants me to tell
the whole story of what happened to me.

I've never told the whole story."

I got kind of scared and nervous.

I wasn't sure I wanted
to hear the whole story -

we don't want to hear
the horrifying things.

And I said, "Why not?"

And she said, "I'm just so scared."

I would never hear Suzie's story.

I would never talk to her about it.

She would reveal more horrifying details
to her therapist and to her parents,

and then she would die by suicide.

We would lose her
to her post-traumatic stress disorder.

We would never talk about it.

Suzie's death was
a defining moment in my life,

not just for my own grief

but also because it gave me
the front-row seat

for the devastation of some of the people
I loved the most in the world.

What I've learned as the years have past
is that that one act of violence,

it spread the consequences
over so many people.

This is not just about perpetrators
and victims of sexual violence;

it is about all of us.

The impacts were huge.

There were even consequences
for my children,

and they weren't even born yet.

It's been 18 years,

and our lives are full
of laughter and life and fun,

but I have heard her voice
and seen her story

in the voices of clients
and students and #MeToo,

and I've often wondered
why the cycle never changes.

It's been kind of depressing
that I see the same thing,

the same circle of shame
and silence, again and again.

And then, last year,

I got kind of optimistic.

It seems sort of strange to think

that #MeToo might have made
anyone optimistic,

but it did.

And I realized that the reason
that was making me optimistic

is because when the movement
gathered these stories together

and it set them out there in front of us

and it said, "Are you going
to do anything about this?"

we said, "Yes!"

We said, "Time's up!"

We said, "Enough is enough."

We started asking people like me,
"What do we do now?"

And the energy of people I talked to,

even though they know
they're not getting it right

and even though they know it's messy,

the energy of the people I talk to is
"Let's do something about this;

it is impacting all of us."

So, my charge to you is,
"Yeah, let's keep going."

Let's change this conversation:

Show up. Listen up. Step up.

And do what my gut said
that we should be doing all along:

let's keep talking about it.

Thank you.

(Applause)