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Passionate about modern feminist issues? Want to learn more about how today's political, academic, and cultural leaders strive for a future of universal equality and justice?
Join NOW in a podcast dedicated to intersectional feminist discussions in American society with leaders in entertainment, sports, politics, and science. From conversations on constitutional equality, to economic justice and reproductive rights, listeners will find new ways to learn, engage, and get empowered.
Listen for new episodes released every other Wednesday.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (00:02)
So what we see is that among the top three predictors now across seven countries, and then I just stopped looking. That was enough, right? Massive numbers of surveys have shown that either the top predictor or the among the top three predictors of support for political violence and willingness to engage in it is either misogyny or hostile sexism.
Kim Villanueva (00:29)
Hello and welcome to Feminism Now. I'm Kim Villanueva, president of the National Organization for Women. Feminism is about fighting for equality. We aren't trying to keep anyone down. As the meme says, equality isn't pie, there's enough for everyone. But fighting for ourselves often means fighting against people who don't want us to succeed. Often the people who don't want us to succeed are men. Feminists are not man-haters, though. We all have men in our lives who we love, family members and friends. And all of us, men...
Women, non-binary people are harmed by patriarchy. So Rose and I are so excited to talk with Cynthia Miller Idris, Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PAREL, at American University. She's also a columnist for MS Now and author of the new book, Man Up. We'd love to hear what you think. Maybe the men in your life are feminists. Maybe they're not. We'd love to talk to you about it. You can call now at the number in our show notes and send us a voice message.
or email us a voice memo at feminismnow at n-o-w dot o-r-g. We love to put your voice on the show. And now, Rose, take it away.
Rose Brunache (01:36)
Hello, it is Rose again. We're here with Cynthia Miller Idris, professor of American University and author of the new book Man Up. Thanks Cynthia for being here. You say you didn't want to write this book, then why did you write it?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (01:46)
Thanks for having me.
⁓ I mean, I didn't want to write the book for lots of different reasons. I didn't want the book to be necessary, I think, as part of it. I felt like it should already be a self-understood part of my side of the field of violence prevention, which is in the national security space or the preventing mass violence school shooting space. And so I felt like it was a self-evident part of things for all these years so much that, and I didn't want to be.
the woman always bringing it up in mostly male dominated spaces, which I regret now. I wish I had. You know, there were lots of reasons why I didn't want to write it. And I did write it eventually because that's the only way that I can really articulate and understand things. That's I'm a writer and it is. So sitting down and actually just saying, I'm going to really read this data. I'm going to look at what the data says and try to map this out to understand as expansively as I can.
what these tactics look like of misogyny across the board. So not just looking at incels, which the field had started to pay attention to, but also looking at sex trafficking and its use by neo-Nazis, or looking at more ordinary forms of misogyny in game chats and gaming spaces as an incubator. So really trying to say, if we were going to look at the whole thing, what would it look like? And that helps me understand it. And then I try to explain it sort of to the public. And that's why I wrote the book.
Kim Villanueva (03:16)
You mentioned that oftentimes when people write about men and political violence and extremes, they don't make the connection between the intersections between race and gender. Why do you think that is?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (03:27)
think there's a lot of different reasons. think that one, ⁓ we have been, as a society and as a field in the violence prevention side, very reluctant to look at the interpersonal histories of individuals. We just describe those as personality problems or history, private affairs. Domestic violence is always considered kind of like a private affair that's handled by local law enforcement. It's never connected to the national security side of things. And so we have things that are
that are understood to be ideologically motivated, like white supremacy, is an ideological motivation, or at least it used to be in the government's classification system, racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, they called it. But we don't have an ideology for misogyny or gender or sexuality. Those all fit literally in a category called other extremisms. And so it just has been categorically invisible.
to the field to see that gender or misogyny or anti-feminism itself could be a motivation for mass violence. Part of what I argue in the book is like, actually, it's not that we don't know the connection is there about how men exploit women as part of their extremist actions and motivations, but we just only talk about that openly when it comes to international or Islamist forms of terrorism.
But we just don't really talk about it when it comes to domestic violent extremism or the mobilization of mass shooters and attackers here, even though some of the same kinds of things are happening among neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
Rose Brunache (05:01)
What is the connection between simple sexism and violent extremism?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (05:06)
that's a great question. So I use the definition of misogyny that Kate Mann has put forward, which is to say that patriarchy itself, which is a system of power distribution, is upheld by two pillars. One is sexism and the other is misogyny. So sexism is a set of attitudes that establishes inferiority and superiority between men and women, generally speaking. And misogyny is the law enforcement arm it polices.
gender norms and expectations. So it's the law enforcement arm of the patriarchy. so misogyny is the action, sexism is the attitudes essentially. And then sexism itself, this becomes sort of like professor-ish, excuse me for a second, gets broken down into two types usually, benevolent and hostile. And hostile sexism is a little bit more like misogyny. It's really like policing. It says, know, hostile sexism is like women are deviant or...
They're manipulative, inherently manipulative. Whereas benevolent sexism is like, know, women shouldn't be allowed to be minors because they have to be protected from these very harsh jobs, right? So like they're protective or they're, you know, not quite smart enough to be in this type of job. But, you know, that's a benevolent, it's a protective and sexist attitude that is not so hostile or angry. So what we see is that among the top three predictors now across
seven countries, and then I just stopped looking, that was enough, Massive numbers of surveys have shown that either the top predictor or the among the top three predictors of support for political violence and willingness to engage in it is either misogyny or hostile sexism, depending on how the researchers define it and measure it. So basically that's very similar, same thing. So we know that hostile sexism or strong beliefs about the inherently unequal
nature of men and women, a biological divide, this strong binary between men and women, and then a hierarchy in which men deserve more power and you should police women for trying to claim it or to step outside of the lines. Those sorts of beliefs and actions are associated with more political violence in terms of willingness to support it or engage in it. That's one trajectory, right? That's just one data point that I talk about. But there's also the fact that 60 % of mass shooters
have a documented history of domestic and intimate partner violence. And that's in a world where more than half of domestic intimate partner violence goes unreported. So you have these personal histories as well among violent extremists and other mass shooters like school shooters who often have a history of harm enacted against partners, against women usually.
And that doesn't even include things like stalking, harassment, sexual assault, right? That's just the criminal domestic intimate partner violence history. So it's pretty egregious when you look at the data. It's just like, I felt like I wrote this and if anyone reads that first chapter, you just can't deny it. I just wanted it to be undeniable. Like this invisible through line is visible and we shouldn't be able to say anymore that it doesn't matter.
which is, feel like, what a lot of the field had been saying for a long time. These are just personality problems among individual men, not that this is like an ideology or a bigger motivation. I try to use a lot of anecdotes to just kind of make it real for people, to kind of help them understand that daily experiences that you might have as a woman and that you collect kind of, think of them as like anecdotes that I have in my pocket at any one time. And so was trying to think about like, how could I make someone understand who doesn't understand what a sexist attitude is?
what it is. And so I was just like, let me pull one of these anecdotes out of my pocket, which is we have a tiny little house that is old and has an old chimney. And at one point there was smoke billowing out of it. And so I called a company that sent out what's called a chimney sweep, somebody who can clean out the chimney and repair it. And it's very modern actually. He had an iPad and he's lying on his back with his iPad taking pictures of the chimney and he scooches out of it and says to me,
I wish your husband was here so I could explain this. I was like, really? So I just said, you know, like, A, I'm the one that first of all, doesn't even know I have a husband. Second of all, like, I'm the one that makes these decisions. I'm the one I'm going to decide how whether we repair this or not. and so I just said, you know, it's like one of those classic things instead of.
getting mad. was like, why don't you try me? Just go ahead. Why don't you try me? See if I can understand what this creosote buildup looks like and how it works. you know, and then here's the irritating thing. I said, I'm not going to hire that guy. And I called out three other companies, all of whom quoted me outrageously different rates for like massive repairs. I ended up having to go with the first company. And so I had to hire him anyway. But it was that kind of frustration around he just didn't think I would be able to understand.
this ⁓ complicated nature of the repair that needed to be done to the chimney. it just didn't even occur to him that that might be an offensive thing to say. was just, I wish your husband was here so I could explain what the problem is.
Kim Villanueva (10:13)
He didn't pat you on the head though.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (10:15)
He didn't. He didn't. After I explained it, I understood. But it was a very... But that was this kind of like, you know, again, this type of stuff happens all the time, right? You just have this interaction where you're like, my gosh, I can't believe that this person actually just doesn't think I can understand this. And that is the nature of sexism. It's an inherent belief in the unequal capabilities of women.
in this case, compared to men, right? And that was basically what that was. It was just a good classic explanation of something simple that happened that wasn't actually harmful, but just, you know, I get this all the time, especially when I was younger, like, you don't look like a professor, right? These kinds of like assumptions about who you are and what your capabilities are, of course, which are even worse for women of color.
Kim Villanueva (11:02)
Absolutely.
Rose Brunache (11:03)
Do you think there's hesitancy in talking about male violence out of fear or specifically talking about how violence is primarily male?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (11:12)
I think there's definitely hesitancy to talk about it. And it's so common and so assumed. Nobody ever talks about the fact that these are men. It's a characteristic. But the maleness, the dominance, the aggression, the readiness to be violent that become kind of such hallmarks in our culture in particular of how boys are socialized, I think, is a huge part of it. So why don't we want to talk about it? I would say the hesitancy is in part because in
the side of the field that I work on in the national security side, which I came to relatively late. One, because it's invisible. it's, you know, it's just hard for people to see it and notice it. Two, because it's so, we're all complicit in it, right? So we all have to look hard at our own relationships to patriarchy, I think, sometimes to, in order to disrupt this. And in the space where if you have mostly traditionally masculine,
occupations like in the military law enforcement, then coming into these spaces and thinking of solutions, masculinity is not going to be at the top of the list.
Rose Brunache (12:14)
How does patriarchy harm men, if at all?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (12:16)
I
think it's very clear that men have not thrived under patriarchy in general, right? Although they have more power and it's not a zero sum game, right? So I think it's important that whenever we talk about the harms that men face under patriarchy to say like women are also suffering, of course, more of the violence, the lack of pay equity, lack of leadership roles. I mean, all the different kinds of reasons why women suffer. But men are suffering in particular because patriarchal norms and expectations
cause a lot of men, most men, to slice off parts of themselves in order to survive the gender norms and expectations that happen during adolescence. In particular, often they describe it to me as being afraid of being called gay, the homophobic bullying that happens. So they lose a lot of their intimate friendships, as we know from researchers like Naomi Wei. We know that they stop becoming as close to their friends in intimate ways, and they become more stoic.
they have a pressure to be dominant, aggressive. Those pressures have produced shorter lifespans because there's an unwillingness to go to the doctor or ask for help, isolation, more suicides, right? Three quarters of the deaths of despair among men, are suicides, overdoses, and alcohol-fueled deaths. So it hasn't really worked out that well for them to be so isolated and stoic and unwilling to ask for help and reject intimate friendships with others.
And so I think there's lots of ways that patriarchy has hurt them, even as they benefit from it. Right. So there's lots of benefits from it, of course, for men in terms of more power and automatic status that is much easier to achieve or given to them. And in a lot of ways, of course, also that's racialized and and it's ableist. Right. Like there's lots of different components that intersect here around who gets that automatic status and power and who doesn't. It's not all men, but.
Certainly that hierarchy within patriarchy distributes it unevenly in ways that benefit most men.
Kim Villanueva (14:17)
I wanted to call back to your description of hostile versus beneficial or sexism, the language of protect and provide calls that too. So what do you think is the link between that connection?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (14:21)
Benevolent,
Ultimately, the link is inequality, right? Is seeing women as unequal to men. And really, the difference between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism is why. So benevolent sexism would say that women just aren't capable. They're not as intelligent, not as strong, not as able to perform these certain kinds of tasks. So...
That's why you would be not allowed in certain countries, including Russia, for example, where there's still like at least 100 occupations women aren't allowed to do, like be a firefighter. Right? So why you would have someone like the secretary of defense say, we need male standards in the military, or why you would have Zuckerberg say we need masculine energy in the corporate sector, right? These ideas that that's somehow superior, right? That that's so superior that it doesn't even need to be explained. It's just the standard, right?
That is benevolent sexism right there. ⁓ Hostile sexism is also about inequality, it's like, it really is positioning women as like, it's more like the witch, the devious snake, right? The serpent, the idea that women are inherently transactional. And so you have to, and the dating market, right? For example, women are inherently transactional. And so the only way to achieve that is to play that game and manipulate and seize control of women and even
Influencers like Andrew Tate, for example, will just advocate for their physical abuse, right? And so that's hostile sexism, but they're both about inequality. They're both about inherent biological inferiority of women compared to men.
Rose Brunache (16:03)
you
talked about how men are negatively affected by patriarchy. If patriarchy harms men so much, why do they want it?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (16:10)
Yeah, they want to, it's a good question. I mean, I think one, I don't even think people see patriarchy, right? It's like the water we are, it's like as if we were fish and we swim in it. Like I didn't see it for a long time. I love Roxanne Gay's book, Bad Feminist, because I'm like, that's exactly how I feel. Like I was a late feminist. when I, I mean, not like I wasn't a feminist, but I just didn't think of myself that way because I was so busy doing other things. And I regret that very much that I wasn't an activist earlier. And I was so...
relieved when I first spoke to a group of feminists about this book and I said that and one of them said, well, welcome now, basically, right? Join us now. Like was so inclusive and I was so relieved to not feel so quite as insecure as I had felt about that. so I think when you look at men, so I think one is hard for a lot of us to see it. I think some people come to activism and it's more visible earlier than others for lots of reasons.
A lot of us just grow up in it, know, religious traditions or the way we're raised from family. You don't even see it as just so used to patriarchy as the norm, the same way that you're so used to capitalism. It's hard to like think of another system that could exist, I think. And so that's part of it. And then I just men benefit from it. It's not just men, it's certain kinds of men benefit especially, right? Like we've never had a president I think under six foot, right? It's not since the television era anyway, right? And so like the...
There is a kind of height and a cis macho male quality that also benefits men who adhere to certain kinds of masculine norms who are more likely to be leaders in the C-suite too. The interesting thing is I just read a statistic that 94 % of women in the C-suite were college athletes all the way through college, right? And so there is also these ways that like learning certain kinds of skills benefit women in ways that also
might help in the gender equity space, including in, so more equity in women's sports might lead to more gender equity in other ways. So there's lots of different ways that these components interrelate, but I think the simplest explanation is men benefit from it. And so it's hard to challenge something that you benefit from, even if it's hurting you. And I also think we have to see that it can be a little bit invisible for those of us who have grown up in more traditional communities, families.
religious backgrounds, ⁓ it can be hard to see it as problematic if that's the norm.
Rose Brunache (18:37)
We're going to take a short break to talk about our chapters.
Diane Post (18:42)
you
Hi, my name is Diane Post and I'm the founding chapter president of Central Phoenix, Inez Castellano now since 2016. Our chapter is most proud of what we have accomplished in two, well, many, many different areas, but two particular areas is our PAC and also the constitutional abortion amendment that was passed last year. On that issue, we were very active in ensuring that we got enough signatures for that abortion amendment to pass.
to do publicity for it, all of that. And so now we have abortion in our state constitution, which was absolutely fantastic given we are a quite red conservative state, shall we say. And the second thing we're very proud of is our PAC. We have had a PAC for quite a few years and each year we get better and more sophisticated. So the last year we not only chose the people and gave the endorsements to those who passed our test,
but we also raise money. So we were able to raise money for people. And when you're working with people in rural areas or small races, city council, school board, that kind of thing, a little bit of money can mean a lot. So we're very happy and people were thrilled that we were able to help them in that way. The issues that are most important to our chapter is really hard to cut down because there were so many things going on right now, as I'm sure we all know. But of course, to be effective, you do have to narrow down.
Immigration is a big one because we are a border state. so that is one of the big issues that we work on. Gun control is another big one, even though that's not particularly on the list, but it is a safety of women issue. And we have a wide open NRA, shoot them first and ask questions later state. And that's just a horrible thing for women's ⁓ safety. And then, of course, the environment as well, because we are the number one place for heat, the increased heat.
And Phoenix, actually, and the desert is one of the top places in the U.S. that is heating up the fastest. 2026, we are tackling the cost of being a woman by a variety of things, obviously, as everybody is. one of the things we will be doing is our legislative committee is very active and very, ⁓ well, I won't say influential, but let's just say active. How's that? And we already have bills introduced to cut SNAP benefits, to cut child care.
what little bit there is, there's already a waiting list of 10,000, but we're gonna be working on making sure those are defeated, that they don't get passed, and that instead our local and state resources be increased to meet the need that the feds are no longer doing. People can find out more about our chapter at our website, which is Central Phoenix, Inez Casiano Now, and also we're on Facebook under the same name.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (21:34)
you
Rose Brunache (21:39)
This is Rose and we are back. We want to welcome again Cynthia Miller Idris. She is the author of Man Up. We are just talking about why patriarchy harms men and why they want to keep it. I guess my next question is, is misogyny women's or men's problems to fix?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (21:56)
I think that misogyny is all of our problem to fix. I would like to see men take a much bigger role in leading the charge on that. think it's never going to work if it's just a problem that's raised and talked about solutions only talked about from women. And when I turned the book in, the two groups I was most insecure about, one were sort of who I think of as like traditional feminist activists who had been waving this flag for such a long time. I was worried about stepping on territory. And so I reached out to a bunch of
women who are activists and really happy to be giving a talk and have done some work with Ms. Magazine, for example, on getting excerpts of the book out and Q &A with Jackson Katz and giving a talk out there in February at their offices. So, you really trying to integrate this into groups and issues I should have been a bigger part of earlier. And also, I feel like I reached out on purpose to a lot of men in the men's wellness world who are running kind of
groups that are trying to advocate for a different type of more expansive version of masculinity and also calling for more vocal opposition to some of these influencers that are shaping a younger generation of boys. And so I've been in a lot of conversations with Mark Green and Ted Bunch and Zach Seidler, who runs Movember's Global Men's Health Work. So there's a lot of new organizations that are forging these types of efforts.
And I'm happy to say that they've been really big champions of it because it was really important to me that this not just be something that only women were talking about, but that men also could take a leadership role in championing and having me on their podcasts and having this in conversations where the audiences are mostly men. And yet I will say that, you know, I've gave 25 book events this fall and I would say maybe.
15 % of the audiences, 20 % at best were men. And so you still have fewer men showing up for these conversations than women, and that's just a reality.
Kim Villanueva (23:56)
You do have some strategies at the end on how we can fight back against misogyny. Do you want to share those?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (24:01)
I think the first thing is I really advocate for conversations as early and often. I run a lab that does prevention of, you know, preventative tools for kids directly in short form videos where we teach about manipulative tactics. It's called pre-bunking.
One, there's a lot of digital and media literacy that can be done to prevent people from being persuaded by manipulative actors who are basically profiteers trying to get you to sign up for something, subscribe to something, or buy a product, like to make your jawline stronger or supposedly lengthening your shins. mean, false pseudoscience claims about things as well. I think having conversations between parents and kids is important, teaching kids how to recognize and reject manipulative content.
And then one of my favorite stories since I turned in the book is I spend a lot of time in high schools talking to kids about algorithms and how algorithms deliver gendered content to them and also violent content to them. And afterward, a bunch of kids surrounded the podium at a high school in March and a boy asked me, 16, and he asked me sort of what I didn't think people knew about boys and men based on what I had learned from interviews. And so I turned it back to him after we talked for a minute and I said, well, what do you think that
people don't know about what it is to be a boy your age. And he said, I don't think people understand what it's like to suddenly realize the world sees you as dangerous. And then the girl right next to him, it was the most remarkable thing, said, well, I don't think boys understand what it's like to suddenly realize the world sees you as a sexual object. And I said, I think the two of you should be having this conversation. And they said, can we start a club?
It was like the most remarkable sequence of events. And I said, if you start a club, I'll come back to the school and visit you. And so I'm going back there in March, and I'm actually going with Mark Green, who runs as part of the Good Men project. So we're going to spend a day with the school and talk about the things that they've been talking about. But I think it's a perfect example of how hungry kids are to actually have these conversations. In another interview with a young man about all of these sorts of issues over the summer.
At the end of it, was two hours long, and at the end of it, he thanked me. I was like, you're doing me a favor. And he said, no one's ever asked me these questions before. And it was really helpful to think about them. And I asked him something like, when did you know you were a man and not a boy? And how did you know that? Because I was told, right? A lot of women are like, well, you're a woman now, right? The second you start menstruating, right? We're absolutely told you can get pregnant. That marks your transition into being a woman.
And I think men, it happens much more gradual and some of it is associated with thinking that the world sees you as harmful or that you're violent or that you're dangerous, particularly black boys. know this and the kinds of conversations that parents have to have. But I think all boys to some extent have had this realization that they are seen as a threat and that they don't have a place to talk about that. And so when you talk about that, then you go online and talk about it and hear influencers talk about it. And the answer to that is to embrace it.
That's much harder, I think, than having those conversations in facilitated ways. So I'm a big fan of conversations rather than just banning of content. You know, we'll hear a lot about bell-to-bell bans as a solution. And I think less time online is good, but not if you'd use that as an excuse not to have the conversations with teenagers about what they're experiencing. So we have a lot of tools in the lab for parents, downloadable tools that are free, which you can put in show notes if you want. We have a guide called Not Just a Joke.
understanding and preventing gender and sexuality based bigotry that helps adults understand the worlds their kids inhabit. And so I think staying informed and trying to be curious are my two biggest pieces of advice for family members.
Rose Brunache (27:44)
You talk about healthy masculinity. Could you give examples of it and how we can promote it?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (27:49)
I've come to think of this as like, there's a group in Canada called Next Gen Men that talks about this as rather than healthy or unhealthy is using the phrase expansive versus like constricted or something like that. And I like this idea of expansive, which is, and I think that's the way that healthy or healthy masculinities is the way that I would use it is in contrast to what's been called toxic masculinity, which is this more man box. So if you have this man box culture that says,
know, boys in men shouldn't ask for help. They're supposed to be dominant and aggressive and ready to be violent and stoic and not cry and not be emotive, not be caregivers, not be empathetic, right? All of those things can create outcomes later that are incredible isolation and poor health outcomes as well because they don't ask for help or don't go to the doctor.
And so healthier or more expansive ideas of masculinity are really just a way of embracing like the fuller range of humanity in all of its capacities and saying, it's okay to be a caregiver, it's okay to be a nurse, it's okay to ask for help and to cry that you are an emotional person and that doesn't make you less of a man. You can be vulnerable, you can be, and this is where some of this gets reinforced sometimes, young men will say in interviews that,
They feel very much stuck in a catch-22 where they're expected to be now more vulnerable or express this broader range of masculinities. But then sometimes they get policed by that in the dating market if they're too vulnerable because they're still seen by women as not manly enough, right? That you're too, that, that, they feel kind of still very much caught. So this is a whole dialogue. Healthy masculinities doesn't work or more expansive masculinities if you still have also young women on the dating market or
in relationships or moms or whomever might also still police those things because they're supporting patriarchy in some way too and can have some internalized misogyny or gender policing going on. it's not just that men have to do the work. It's a cultural shift, I think, that allows for a bigger range so that when you have a movie, I can't even remember the name of the movie now, but there was a movie several years ago where part of the punchline was that Ben Stiller, the character, was a male nurse, right? And so they like...
The fact that you even had that phrase, a male nurse. Right? Meet the parents. And so it was like, you failed out of med school, or you couldn't be a doctor. That there's somehow something so funny about a man being a nurse. That's one of the best paid occupations you can have right now as a growth industry. And so that's the kind of idea of healthier or more expansive ideas and masculinities.
Kim Villanueva (30:26)
A lot of the strategies for fighting back against misogyny are long-term and they're society-based, as you said. The things that we can do are
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (30:34)
One of the things that I try to emphasize in the book is if we see misogyny as omnipresent, right, as part of the air we breathe, as these containment strategies that happen so easily, right, and often in a way that should also be an optimistic take. It's not just a negative take because it means that all of us have a role to play. So I do think that having conversations
over the dinner table or if you're a soccer coach with your team, right, or wherever you are in a carpool with kids about the content they receive online, how often is it harmful or gendered? This is one of the most awkward things I often talk about with parents and with kids, usually in college, not high school, is violent porn and the impact of violent porn on what we know about consent and pleasure and confusion and...
The fact that 85 % of 18 to 24 year olds say that's where they learn about how to have sex, right? And it's extraordinarily violent. So, you know, having conversations about that content, about the content that comes across and how it might impact behavior or assumptions or norms and trying to do it in as curious a way as possible. So I often suggest to parents that they try to put a kid in the expert box, like basically say, I don't really understand how Instagram works. I don't understand.
how to use it effectively and I'm supposed to be doing it for my job. So can you explain this to me or what makes a good video? What makes you want to watch that? And then you can start to have a conversation about how often do you see stuff that makes you uncomfortable? That's something I always ask kids. Tell me about a time when you saw something online that made you uncomfortable. And then did you tell your parents or did you tell an adult? And in all the time I've talked to kids, I've only had two kids ever say they told an adult. And we're talking about like extraordinarily.
Livestream suicides they've seen, murders, child abuse, animal abuse, like bestiality, just awful things that they will say they've seen, they saw by accident at age 11, stuff showing up on their feeds. Only twice they've ever said they told an adult and in both cases they lost their phone. And that's what they're afraid is going to happen. They don't tell their parents because they're afraid they're going to lose their phone. And so I think if parents can try to have these conversations in a way that doesn't lead to an outcome where they lose their phone, it keeps the dialogue open. And that's something that we can all be a part of.
Rose Brunache (32:52)
The topic of political extremism is a bit of a downer. What gives you hope? What should give us hope?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (32:57)
I have now 30 people in this applied research lab that I run who, you know, we spend part of our days, meaning, you know, weeks at a year analyzing the bad stuff like this, you know, that I had to do for this book. We do that so that we can create tools which are then free to the public. So we get funding from different philanthropic organizations, foundations, others who, individual donors to offset the cost of creating these tools.
And then we test them to see if they work. And so what really gives me hope is that, one, we know that it's preventable, that people can be prevented from believing harmful content, whether that's scientific racism or that's conspiracy theories or that's misogynistic ideas about inequality, right? That they can be prevented if you get to them before they believe it, right? So helping them understand manipulative tactics of propaganda, of conspiracy theories works, digital media literacy works, and
also just the people I work with, right? The fact that this is how these people spend their time. They're much younger than I am mostly, students, former students, and young people who just are so tech savvy and know how to create short videos that will produce outcomes. And then the data shows it really works. We just had a 24%, a video that produced a 24 % increase in people standing up and saying something, their willingness to say something if they heard something offensive.
related to the topic of that video, right? Like you can, and it was 5,000 people we tested it with. And so once that we knew it worked, we got it out over social media with influencers and advertisements. You kind of get that stuff out in the world. And in that case, it was targeting antisemitism, but we've done it for all kinds of other harmful content. And we're testing that right now with misogynistic influencers as well. So I get a lot of hope from the evidence. I mean, I am a kind of a data nerd and from the people who are trying to change these things, including men.
in my lab who are really committed to making this be a different space.
Rose Brunache (34:52)
Well, thank you, Cynthia, for being here.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (34:54)
Thanks for having me.
Kim Villanueva (35:00)
This is Kim, and I'm here for our Grab Bag segment with a word from me, the National President of Now. We all have to live online just as we have to live in real life. But the online space carries risks for bullying and harassment. Last year, we collaborated with Incogni, a data privacy company, to find out how online harassment affects women. I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about the results of that survey. First of all, 84 % of American women think their personal data, including financial or health data, might be used by hackers.
And they're probably right. Most Americans have at this point, add some of their data exposed through hacks on health systems, financial systems, or large retailers. I have, and possibly you have too. Younger women are also at higher risk. This online harassment can have real effects. It can silence women and increase power imbalances, pushing women out of spaces like online gaming. Now is committed to protecting women, online and off. And that means that now is committed to demanding federal data privacy laws.
as well as laws against doxing, and those to prevent harassment by increasingly realistic AI deepfakes. We hope that you'll join us in this mission, and you can learn more about it at Now.org.
Thank you so much for joining Rose and I this week as we talk with Cynthia Miller Idris about men. Maybe this conversation hit a nerve for you or made you think of things a little differently. If it did, we'd love for you to share the show. Word of mouth is how our podcast grows. And we'd love to hear what you think, either of the show or of this episode. Our number is in the show notes. You can call and record a voice message or email us a voice memo at feminismnow at n o w dot o r g and keep an ear out for your voice in a future episode.
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for our next episode in two weeks.