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For the past few years,f
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we've been calling men out.
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It had to be done.
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(Applause)
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But lately I've been thinking,
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we need to do something even harder.
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We need, as my good friend
Tony Porter says,
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to find a way to call men in.
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My father began to sexually abuse me
when I was five years old.
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He would come into my room
in the middle of the night.
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He appeared to be in a trance.
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The abuse continued until I was 10.
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When I tried to resist him,
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when I was finally able to say no,
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he began to beat me.
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He called me stupid.
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He said I was a liar.
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The sexual abuse ended when I was 10,
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but actually it never ended.
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It changed who I was.
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I was filled with anxiety and guilt
and shame all the time,
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and I didn't know why.
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I hated my body, I hated myself,
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I got sick a lot,
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I couldn't think,
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I couldn't remember things.
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I was drawn to dangerous men and women
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who I allowed, actually I invited
to treat me badly,
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because that is what my father
taught me love was.
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I waited my whole life
for my father to apologize to me.
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He didn't.
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He wouldn't.
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And then, with the recent
scandals of famous men
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as one after another was exposed,
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I realized something:
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I have never heard a man
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who has committed rape
or physical violence
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ever publicly apologize to his victim.
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I began to wonder,
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what would an authentic,
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deep apology be like?
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So, something strange began to happen.
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I began to write,
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and my father's voice
began to come through me.
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He began to tell me what he had done
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and why.
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He began to apologize.
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My father is dead almost 31 years,
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and yet in this apology,
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the one I had to write for him,
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I discovered the power of an apology
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and how it actually might be
the way to move forward
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in the crisis we now face
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with men and all the women they abuse.
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Apology is a sacred commitment.
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It requires complete honesty.
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It demands deep
self-interrogation and time.
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It cannot be rushed.
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I discovered an apology has four steps,
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and, if you would,
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I'd like to take you through them.
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The first is you have to say
what, in detail, you did.
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Your accounting cannot be vague.
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"I'm sorry if I hurt you,"
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or, "I'm sorry if I sexually abused you"
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doesn't cut it.
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You have to say what actually happened.
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"I came into the room
in the middle of the night
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and I pulled your underpants down."
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"I belittled you because
I was jealous of you
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and I wanted you to feel less."
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The liberation is in the details.
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An apology is a remembering.
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It connects the past with the present.
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It says that what occurred
actually did occur.
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The second step is
you have to ask yourself why.
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Survivors are haunted by the why.
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Why? Why would my father want
to sexually abuse his eldest daughter?
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Why would he take my head
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and smash it against a wall?
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In my father's case,
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he was a child born long after
the other children.
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He was an accident
that became "the miracle."
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He was adored and treated
as the golden boy.
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But adoration, it turns out, is not love.
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Adoration is a projection
of someone's need
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for you to be perfect onto you.
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My father had to live up
to this impossible ideal,
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and so he was never allowed to be himself.
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He was never allowed
to express tenderness
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or vulnerability, curiosity,
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doubt.
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He was never allowed to cry.
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And so he was forced to push
all those feelings underground
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and they eventually metastasized.
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Those suppressed feelings
later became shadowman,
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and he was out of control
and he eventually unleashed
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his torrent on me.
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The third step is you have
to open your heart and feel
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what your victim felt
as you were abusing her.
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You have to let your heart break.
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You have to feel the horror and betrayal
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and the long-term impacts
of your abuse on your victim.
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You have to sit with
the suffering you have caused.
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And, of course, the fourth step
is taking responsibility
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for what you have done
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and making amends.
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So, why would anyone want to go through
such a grueling and humbling process?
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Why would you want to rip yourself open?
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Because it is the only thing
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that will set yourself free.
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It is the only thing
that will set your victim free.
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You didn't just destroy your victim.
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You destroyed yourself.
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There is no one who enacts
violence on another person
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who doesn't suffer
from the effects themselves.
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It creates an incredibly dark
and contaminating spirit
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and it spreads throughout
your entire life.
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The apology I wrote, I learned something
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about a different lens
we have to look through
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to understand the problem
of men's violence
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that I and one billion
other women have survived.
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We often turn to punishment first.
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Its our first instinct, but actually,
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although punishment
sometimes is effective,
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on its own it is not enough.
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My father punished me.
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I was shut down
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and I was broken.
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I think punishment hardens us,
but it doesn't teach us.
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Humiliation is not revelation.
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We actually need to create a process
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that may involve punishment
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whereby we open a doorway
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where men can actually become
something and someone else.
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For so many years, I hated my father.
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I wanted him dead. I wanted him in prison.
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But actually, that rage kept me
connected to my father's story.
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What I really wanted wasn't just
for my father to be stopped.
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I wanted him to change.
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I wanted him to apologize.
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That's what we want.
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We don't want men to be destroyed.
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We don't want them to only be punished.
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We want them to see us,
the victims that they have harmed,
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and we want them to repent
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and change.
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And I actually believe this is possible.
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And I really believe it's our way forward.
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But we need men to join us.
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We need men now to be brave
and be part of this transformation.
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I have spent most of my life
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calling men out,
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and I am here now,
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right now,
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to call you in.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)