Hello, good afternoon and welcome to the Scottish Parliament. I'm Adam Miller, a digital journalist with The Herald. I've been involved in the Don't Be That Guy campaign, which aims to tackle male sexual entitlement in Scotland, and I'd like to welcome you to the 2023 Festival of Politics. This year's event celebrates the festival's 19th year of provoking, inspiring and informing people of all ages and from every walk of life to engage in three days of spirited debate. I look forward to this discussion and hearing everyone's thoughts and views. It's important that everyone is given the opportunity to contribute, even when there may be differences of opinion and that we treat each other respectfully at all times. We're delighted that you can join us today to participate in talking to boys and men about gender-based violence in partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University. Later, I'll be inviting you to get involved with questions and comments. If you're keen to continue to throw your thoughts out there, you can do so using the at VisitScotParl Twitter account or via Instagram. I should also add that the event is being livestreamed today on the Parliament's SPTV channel. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Sandy Brindley, Graham Goulden and Professor Nancy Lombard. Sandy Brindley is the Chief Executive of Rape Crisis Scotland and has been involved in a rape crisis movement in Scotland for more than 25 years. Graham Goulden is a retired Scottish police officer who also worked with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. Graham now works across the UK and in the US supporting the prevention of violence in communities, sports teams, workplaces and universities. Professor Nancy Lombard is a professor in sociology and social policy at Glasgow Caledonian University. Much of her research looks at violence, gender and young people. There will be an opportunity for members of the audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. However, I would like to open by asking a few questions for each of our panellists. I'll put this one out there for all three of you. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described violence against women and girls as being maybe the world's longest, deadliest pandemic. Would you agree with that statement? I'll open that to anyone who wants to take it. I don't mind starting with that just absolutely. I think it is one of the most significant international human rights issue facing us. I think the scale of violence against women and girls is both overwhelming and hidden. But I think if you scratch the surface of any women's life, you will see how it has impacted either directly or indirectly in terms of how women often curtail our lives because of the threat of male violence. And I think it's important to see violence against women as part of a spectrum from rape to domestic abuse. To what's often trivialised or seen as much more minor around street harassment. And I think what's clear is we need to do much more both to protect women and girls and assist women and girls to access justice when they have experienced violence against women, but also crucially in terms of the subject of our talk today to really transform our culture and how it views women and particularly how it views women's sexuality in male attitudes, particularly within heterosexual relationships. Because I think if we don't do that, we are not going to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and girls. And how about yourselves? No, I agree wholeheartedly with everything that Sandy said. And I know that particularly in the research that I've done with primary school children, we know that this is experienced by girls within primary school as well. And often these experiences are normalised so we know that it's an epidemic. We know that it's a systematic based upon gender inequalities throughout societies. But we also know that girls normalise a lot of this behaviour that they experience and then only come to see it as wrong when they're told where it's named as violence against women as well. I think for me it's really important that we're having this conversation about men's violence. And that doesn't exclude men as victims of violence, often by other boys and men as well. But I think it's important to realise that many of the social issues we have in our society, if you think about knife-related violence, other issues, the back story is often things like domestic violence in homes. So there'll never be peace on our streets until we have peace in the home, never peace in the world until we have peace in the home.  So I think it's important for everybody in this room to consider that rather than just looking at this as just one particular issue. Ben, you've been involved in the Don't Be That Guy campaign. How would you suggest people engage the men and boys in their lives in meaningful conversations about gender-based violence? Over the last years my lens has completely transformed. Big help to Nancy and Sandy have really helped sort of all to my lens. But a lot of the views that I have today are not so much my views but the science, the science of prevention. And I think one thing I've really learned is that what doesn't work with boys and men is telling them that bad things will happen to them if you do bad things. Or just stop doing bad things. And we need to have that conversation at times, but what does work for me is helping boys and men better understand what their peers think. Because in the main our sons, our men are healthy individuals, but they just don't realise what their peers are thinking. And I think this destructive influence of their friends can lead to them joining in with certain behaviours or ignoring certain behaviours and walking away. So I think it's important that we start to realise that, get them to listen to each other, learn more about each other. And I'd love to do more around how do we define that word loyalty amongst friendship groups. If you think about the work that I do with policing in the US and policing here in the UK, how do we redefine that term loyalty? What does it mean to be loyal to your friend? So these are big things that I've learned over the years that I think that works when you're working, especially with boys and men. Nancy, do you think young men in 2023 have a greater understanding of and maybe empathy towards women's lived experience of violence than maybe they did have in the past? I think some men do. I think there's been a lot of fantastic campaigns such as the ones that you've worked on yourself and the Scottish rape crisis have done. And I think that's really helped to inform boys and men's understanding of men's violence against women. But I also think there's a lot of really entrenched attitudes that haven't changed the way that men still view women. When I worked in primary schools and talked to boys not only about violence but also about gender, they had very, very fixed ideas of what women were and how women should behave. And those in turn inform their ideas about relationships, about what women should do or shouldn't do within relationships and how women should act. So I think those are still prevalent today. And I think when we talk about men and boys, we've also got to think about that intersectional analysis. So looking at men and boys, not as this homogenous group of people but looking through those lenses of class, ethnicity, disability. So looking at those different aspects of men and boys too. Sandy, several social media creators who are popular online promote very misogynistic attitudes. I'm sure most of us here will be familiar with the likes of Andrew Tate. What effect do you think this has and how can we go about combating it? I think it does have a significant impact. We do our prevention programme in schools, we're speaking with young people about consent and healthy relationships. And on the whole I would say that boys engage very well in these discussions. And really there's a real appetite to talk about what does consent mean, what does the law say that rape is. But we definitely have noticed over recent years an increase in a small number of boys been really quite hostile to those discussions. And absolutely I think it is down to the impact of those kind of social media influencers like really virulent misogynistic. I think we do also see the impact of pornography and how female sexuality and heterosexuality is depicted in pornography.  I think there is absolutely no way that is not going to impact their view of what sexuality actually is. And I think there's a real challenge for us about creating safer spaces for having much more nuanced and realistic discussions about sex and about women's bodies and about women's sexuality than there is currently. And also just to pick up in Graham's point about peer groups. I think this is so important to think about how do we change the norms within peer groups, particularly male peer groups, and enable men to feel more able to challenge other male behaviour. So thinking specifically about my job at rape prices Scotland, we do see men targeting very very drunk women for what they would say for sex. But to me really clearly it would be rape if somebody is too drunk to consent. But that notion of predatory behaviour being tolerated by male peer groups. This is where I think men often, I think there's a real appetite for what can I do to make a difference. And this is the thing that I think men can do, is to stand up and to speak out when they do see other men behaving this way if they feel able to or just not to collude with sexist behaviour. And I think we've seen for example Andy Murray, the tennis player, I think really shown us how to do that well in terms of not colluding with sexism and not laughing it off. And I think we really do need more men to be taking that kind of approach. Graham, I think that ties in with some of the work that you've been doing. How do we get men to have these conversations? How do we get that change within the peer groups? I think going back to what Nancy said very quickly is that we need to make the connection between what Sandy is saying as well, between words and language and what you were talking about Sandy about rape and sexual violence. That was a whole aim of that guy campaign. But for me we need to invest in conversations. We need to be going to where our boys are, where our men are. Having these important conversations because in my work, I'm quite sure that I asked the men in the room just now, let's do it. Raise your hands guys if you are uncomfortable when you hear your friends maybe saying something inappropriate, something sexist. Let's just remember the words. Are you uncomfortable? So the reality is individually we are. Raise your hands again guys if you would respect another man for challenging another man's behaviour. So there you go, that's just starting to break down norms already. And I think we need to get into these groups, into peer groups, into football teams, anywhere where boys are and have these conversations and start to really help them better identify what their friends are thinking. Because if you look at the men of London's campaign in the last couple of weeks, they make campaign, great campaign. It fails to understand the difficulties that young men have to actually say hey mate. But if they start to know that people in their peer group support them, they're more likely to do it. So that's what we need to be doing, creating these conversations, investing these conversations. Don't lecture our boys and men, they definitely care about these issues. And it's about understanding them better and helping them understand each other. Talking about those spaces, what role does sport play specifically in this? It can be a positive or negative impact we're talking about here. Sports has always been a platform and always will be a platform for social justice. And it's a great opportunity to go into sports. I had a great opportunity a few years ago to work with the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Fantastic opportunity to work with these guys, elite athletes. And we sat down and talked about them as a team, them as individuals. And we developed a set of values, the Cubs way, the courage to do the right thing, the urgency to get it done and the belief they can make a difference. So we then applied that to these issues. Distractions off the field become distractions on the field. And I think it's really important. It's a really empowering way to have a conversation with men in positions of leadership. We need more men in leadership to be taking a stance on these issues. And again, we're not avoiding the conversation with men as victims of violence because I said at the start, men are the victims of most violence in this world at the hands of other boys and men and we can't ignore that. So I think sports is a great platform. I don't think it's used to a great effect in this country. It could be a lot better, but yeah, great platform. Nancy, why do you think boys might be drawn to misogynistic content or beliefs in the first place? I think there's a really great theorist called Rewyn Connell, an Australian scholar who talks about hegemonic masculinity. I think that defines what we're talking about here really well. And she talks about almost like a triangle with hegemonic masculinity at the top and different forms of masculinity within this triangle. And she tries to understand the way that hegemonic masculinity is the most valorised within our society. So it's often white, heterosexual, powerful, rich, sporting men that fit this ideal at the top. But it's also really important to see that actually a lot of men don't fit that ideal and are equally as pressurised and as victimised and disempowered by this ideal of masculinity and always thinking that they need to achieve this form of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity valorises violence. It valorises misogyny. It wants to put other forms of masculinity and women below themselves. And I think that needs to be the starting point, seeing that women are disempowered by patriarchy, but so are men. And so looking at that and I think that needs to be that initial conversation. So rather than pitting and saying, actually boys you need to do this and girls you need to do that. Looking at how all these groups of children or young people are disempowered by the structures within our society to start with. So the work you've been involved in has actively influenced policy change. Can you take us through a bit of that and the impact it's had? Yes, so some of the research that I did was within schools and looking at what young people thought about men's violence against women. And it'll come as no surprise, it was really hard to get into primary schools to talk about these issues. There was a lot of head teachers that said no, we don't want to talk about that. Domestic abuse doesn't happen in these nice leafy suburbs of Glasgow so you can't come in here either. We don't want you to talk to young people about sex. We don't want you to talk to them about violence either. So that was the initial issues that I had trying to almost kind of get across the school gates. But then talking to young people about the way that they understood themselves, understood gender and understood relationships was really significant and then coming to the parliament and that's where I first met Graham. We both came to talk about these issues here. But also talking to local education authorities. So going in, one of the most significant findings that I had was looking at how young people defined violence. And boys would say, sorry, all of the children said that violence involved two men in a public place physically fighting. You were able to see the consequence of this violence. Black eye, broken arm. And someone in authority would come along and say, that's wrong. Stop doing that. So that's what all of young people thought that violence was. And so when girls, the girls of age 10 and 11, talked to me about their experiences and said, well sometimes in a private place a boy will come along and he'll hit me or nip me or ping my bra or say something. But no one else has heard that. So I'll go along to the teacher and say, this is my experience. This is what's happened to me. And the teacher would invalidate that experience by normalising it.  Be quiet. Don't encourage it and it won't happen again. So that invalidation, there was no consequence. That boy wasn't brought to a count. And so the girl then internalised that as, oh this is just something that happens. So then later when it would happen again, there's no point saying anything because my experience won't be validated. And it was that particular example that happened in school after school after school that I went to the councils and said, this is what's happening in your schools. It's not necessarily the fault of individual teachers, but that culture of how the teachers deal with this kind of behaviour. And so from then I was able to go into schools and develop training and also kind of work with organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland and some of the work that Graham did with mentors for violence prevention and develop ways to try and stop this invalidation of girls' experiences and challenging those examples of violence that were happening. Sandy, you've been involved in Rape Crisis movement in Scotland for over 25 years now. Talk us through firstly a bit about the work you've done in conjunction with Nancy that she was just referring to there. Yes, we developed, it must be around 10 years ago we started to develop a prevention programme to do work in schools because we realised there was a real gap there for young people in terms of having a space to talk about relationships to talk about what consent meant. So it started off as a pilot, but we now work with thousands of young people right across Scotland every year. And the experience we have is very much informed by the research by people like Nancy and also very much validates her findings. What we find, what young women and girls say to us is really what their experience is. What I would term sexual assault within schools on a daily basis, but as Graham referred to, it's so normalised that it's not being named as that. So I think there is a really worrying picture there about what our girls are experiencing in schools on a daily basis. I think in terms of a positive, there is some really good work happening. Like my daughter is in primary school and I've been really impressed by what's in the curriculum like what the school are teaching in terms of respect for your boundaries and for your body. And in terms of secondary schools, as well as our prevention programme, we run a project called Equally Safe at Schools which works with partner schools involving young people as leaders within that school to be thinking about what are the elements within this school environment that make it less equal for girls? Or the ways we could make it a safer environment and I think that is the kind of work we really need to build on and we need to make sure that every single young person in Scotland has access to those kind of spaces to talk through these issues including boys and young men because I think it's really important if we're going to bring young men and boys with us which we absolutely need to if we're going to redefine masculinity. I think it is really important that we're open and that we're not making boys feel defensive as part of this conversation otherwise we're just not going to reach them at all. I think part of... Graham feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but I think part of the Don't Be That Guy campaign is about asking men to have those awkward conversations with themselves as much as with their friends and try to recognise some of their own behaviour and how that... In their minds maybe 15, 20 years ago when they were young men they would have thought this is the lads, this is banter but they did not realise the impact that it was having on the women around them how do we get men to confront those? The first part of that guy campaign was... I remember being... I was speaking after the horrible murder of Sarah Everard which we'll all be aware of I remember going on Scottish television and pleading with people to make the connection between words and language and other forms of violence and abuse in society and that was the birth of the first iteration of the film starting off these behaviours and how it can lead to other things happening and that was exactly that it was to get people to men to self reflect we weren't speaking to them directly we were getting them to think about their own behaviours their own attitudes and seeing the impact then the second part of the campaign was really using that science of prevention which I talked about earlier on about four ordinary guys not celebrities just ordinary men speaking about how they felt as individuals and then thinking about that sense of loyalty they have to their friends I'm not being a good friend if I don't say something to them we do it on the field if someone behaves wrong they'll say something to them but why can't we do it in the pub why can't we do it in the street the two films really followed the work of one of my friends Alan Burkowitz in the States who talks about giving men the tools to do what's right not just saying do this and making it okay so I said before it's about just going to these spaces and having these conversations because I think men and boys deeply care about this stuff but unless we have these conversations they're left thinking well I care but does my friend care other people around me care so we need to really open that up What advice then would you give young men to say they're in that social setting and they're experiencing as we mentioned earlier that kind of discomfort from something that their friend has maybe said or done do you then advise them to have those conversations it's a really hard conversation for me to say to boys individually I know Alan Bissett who contributed to the campaign as well he's written a good book, it's called Lads and it's designed for young men to have the conversation and Alan gives them some really good tools in that book but have you got the courage to actually have that conversation in the bus or out with your friend but it's just about for me it's about just bringing it up in conversation do you have to speak to your friend in front of everybody else and say hey that was wrong no maybe just change the subject and have a conversation with them on their own that one to one that's safer for you to do so so for me it's we need to give young boys the tools to be able to have these conversations but to do it safely and that might sound really like I'm excusing I'm not excusing the behaviours here at all but we're dealing with we're trying to unpick thousands of years of patriarchy and you can't do this overnight so it's about giving them the more tools and giving them the confidence but I think any adults who are working with young boys and men create the space to make it easier when they are out in the bus or in the sports team because if we can create the space where it becomes easier and they start to listen to each other they might then be able to say hey can you help me out here can you give me a hand because when they start to better understand what their friends think they don't have to do it on their own they can get allies, engaging allies is a tool for any bystander I think part of the campaign is recognising as well that what starts as what we would consider an innocuous banter it's almost like a it can be in many cases a pathway it's that first step towards dehumanising women and then once you have once someone is dehumanising your eyes then they just feel like an object to you and then that would then ultimately lead to more serious events sexual assault and rape is that something that in your work with Rape Crisis Scotland do you see that pathway yeah absolutely and I think that is why we really want to encourage men and boys to interrogate their own attitudes but also how willing they are or how much they feel able to challenge when they do interact with people who are making sexist jokes or engaging in sexist behaviour I think one thing that both depressed me and also gave me some hope was the recent just last year the signing by race of David Goodwillie who was found as you know to be a rapist in the civil courts and what was really depressing was here's yet another club signing somebody who is a rapist but the community response this time round was so strong because it's a community football club there was one really lovely man in particular that set up a fundraiser for us in response to it and I thought there was really something significant about the response to the signing just last year compared to when he sighed for Clyde a number of years ago where I think it was just maybe awesome one other people that spoke out about it and what I took from that like hopefully not just being too optimistic here was it maybe there is a bit of a shift I think there was a real sense of shock after Sarah Everett's murder then there was Sabina Nessa and a whole number of women that really were raped and murdered and that demonstrated just really the overwhelming scale of violence against women and I remember a lot of those conversations at the time were about what can men do and I do hope that there has been at least a little bit of a shift in the past couple of years to people maybe being a little bit more willing to speak up and to challenge behaviour that really goes against women's fundamental human rights in the way that they might know of a few years ago I think the example of David Goodwill I mean for better or worse spend a lot of my time involved in football and I remember when that happened to where some people saying well you didn't say anything when he was at Clyde but rather than seeing that as hypocritical or I actually thought that was a positive I thought like you said that kind of illustrated the conversation has shifted in those few years since I took from it also we don't want people to feel that because they haven't spoken out before it invalidates their ability to speak out now it is never too late I think to step up and to challenge this type of condoning of violence against women Nancy research from Amnesty International found that in the lead up to the 2017 general election minority ethnic female MPs received 35% more abuse on Twitter than their white counterparts we touched on earlier the idea of intersectionality how is violence against women affected by other forms of discrimination such as racism I mean it is I think that's when we look at violence through that intersectional lens we know that women from different classes from different ethnic minority backgrounds disabled women experienced violence disproportionately but also that access to help and the opportunity for help is disproportionate as well so we could look at that further victimisation because of their their backgrounds so no it's really important and the Twitter examples are ones that I use with my students to try and illustrate that point so we look at in the Parliament we look at the abuse from MSPs we know that several female MSPs have resigned because of the abuse that they get within the media on social media in particular and it's really important to look at the disproportion because of different aspects that they might have in terms of intersectionality You've written about women's lived experience of the criminal justice system in what ways are women negatively affected by men in that area and how do we go about addressing that? In lots of ways I don't know so one of the pieces of research that I did was looking at women's experiences of the criminal justice system when they reported domestic abuse or stalking and we looked at it right the way through from the police all the way through to court is any surprise to the people here to know that we didn't get many women that had reached the court process so the majority of examples were looking at women's experiences from the police initially and we had some fantastic examples of brilliant police officers really supportive listening to women and women feeling like they were hurt which was important to them so not only telling their story but feeling that they were listened to and something would happen on the back of that but we also had examples of police officers in quite high up positions of power who invalidated those experiences who said to women that talked about the rape from their husbands maybe you just don't like sex so we had examples of women who we know that women who have experienced violence might never go to the police we know that those who do really take a long time to be supported and to go through that process so then to be faced with police officers or support that didn't support them through that and invalidated that experience meant that sometimes women didn't take that any further they didn't want to go to the courts and often before they could even get to that point as well the case was withdrawn or there was fine to be, not enough evidence What work has been done you've talked there about the kind of attitudes the old fashioned attitude of some of the men towards women in the criminal justice system what work has been done that could be on a smaller bigger scale in the UK to try and change those attitudes that you're familiar with I mean there is a lot of work and one of the discussions that Graham and I often have had is that it's so desperate and it's that need for joined up thinking and I think that's one of the things that we're all really excited about in terms of equally safe because that was the Scottish Government's way of saying there's all these great organisations that do all this fantastic work so let's bring it together let's create this umbrella for education to educate within schools within organisations about gender based violence and I think I am really proud to live and to work in Scotland because the work that we do here is phenomenal it's not solved all the problems by any stretch but when you look at the rest of the UK we are light years ahead and I think we need to acknowledge that so in terms of bringing together really good practice I think that's something that we are good at but we also need the money the funds to be able to carry on doing things like that as well Graeme, tell us a bit about your work in the violence reduction unit that was a big part of my career the best nine years of my policing service actually I came to the violence reduction unit is that Hangham, Jailham type police officer and I remember John Carrack and my boss basically saying take your police heart off son son but really what he was getting me to think about was just think differently about an ageal issue of violence and Nancy is alluding to it we often look for short term responses to issues in the violence reduction it was about a long term strategy since 2004 our homicide rate has reduced from 160 odd murders to like 57 something like that in the last we're not jumping up and down and celebrating and saying hey we've solved it there's still people losing their lives and families affected but we need to be hopeful that we are thinking differently about how we address violence so I really started to think long and hard about one what violence is so going on what Nancy talked about your research taught me to look wider than just a physical act and start to sweat the small stuff and I'm not saying verbal is small but society's got a habit of what's that phrase don't sweat the small stuff we've all heard that before there's bigger things to deal with in the small things when it comes to violence we need to address things like verbal abuse, emotional coercive control all these types of behaviours which society as tend to minimise not people here but generalise we tend to minimise and especially if it's online it's minimise even further but that's what we need to be focusing on focusing on these types of that so the violence reduction made me think differently about how we define the term violence and then also there was some research done in America in the 80s which suggested that third parties witness the build up to the situations the incidents themselves and also the aftermath so that's hence why I started looking at bystander approaches to talk about violence imagine a Scotland where we equipped society with the tools to notice things not just at the time of an incident like sexual assault but words and language and your ears pricked up when you saw that as a harm and that's the time to intervene because psychology suggests that violence and abuse will evolve and continue unless we see interruption and that's that's where the bystander, that active bystander comes in, we all have the potential to stop things from moving along but also all of the potential to say to our victim hey that wasn't your fault simple thing that all of us can do so we started to introduce that into our high schools but I left the VRU and I was tired from the VRU in 2017 and it's just given me a passion to take it into different places and I tend to let Scotland do its one thing now because there's some great work going on here and I don't want to stand on people's toes to do that but I still from time to time do these types of events and it's nice to speak about it but there's some great work going on in Scotland which we should be proud of very proud of but we all have a collective responsibility to address issues here Sandy I just want to ask what's the one thing that you would like boys and men to be thinking more about that? That is quite a big question I think it would be helpful to I think to find a way to step back from all the cultural assumptions particularly about female sexuality and to create a space where we can have much more healthy conversations about sex and about gender stereotypes I think that is one of the most important things we can do but it's how we can create those spaces exactly as Graeme was saying about conversations, how we can create the spaces for young people to have those conversations to start to really change our culture I do think our law, our criminal justice system has a role here to play as well I mean there's many documented feelings in terms of how approaches rape cases and totally fails to act as an effective deterrent but one thing that I think is going to be really interesting is the government are going to legislate in misogyny to introduce a misogynistic harassment offence which I think could be really interesting but also I think what we need to think about is about really supporting any legislation with some real proper community engagement work to be working with communities around what is misogyny I think until girls in particular but girls and women are able to name misogyny any legislation is going to be useless until the priests are willing to recognise it and to respond effectively the legislation is not going to be effective but also I think it gives us a real opportunity to work with boys and young men around misogyny and what misogyny misogyny is and what it looks like and also what role they individually but also collectively can play in challenging it Nancy you've all over the course of this discussion so far at various points you've talked about the work that each other has done in this field and I know you're all familiar with each other's work Nancy how important is that idea of collaborating, of bringing your shared experience together Oh it's really important I mean one of the things that I love about working where I work I love working at a university I love working with students that come in and want to learn about these issues but I really value the fact that I can do research but I've got lots of different organisations to then work with to do something with those findings you know I'm not the kind of academic that wants to do some research write it in a big book put it in a library and nobody ever reads you know for me it's really significant that there are so many organisations who want to work with that evidence base you know that want to be able to say this is what we're doing and this is the proof and this is the reason why we're doing that because the research highlights highlights that and I think within Scotland there is that real transparency between academic findings between policy makers support agencies that all work together with the parliament as well with the government sorry and bringing those findings and actually doing something with them that to me is the most significant part of the job that I do What's the most common objection that you come up against in your work and how do you counter that? I suppose the main one which I wrote a paper called what about the men is the question that I always get asked at events like this not like this but at events and in the work that I do I always get asked what about the men because we know from the research and from you know the statistics of the organisations that work that we are working with a gendered issue so we know that women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse but men are more likely to be victims of abuse from other men as Graham has mentioned several times as well and I think the answer to that is we need to look at gender so it's not about what about the men we're not interested in men's victimisations but I think it's when people try and turn it on its head and look at men's victimisation by women so we know that there are instances where women are perpetrators but often women are perpetrators because of the experiences of violence that they've had perpetrated against them so one of the first pieces of work that I did when this was the Scottish Executive not the Scottish Government was to inform the gender definition of domestic abuse that Scotland now uses and we went back to all the men who had said that there were victims of domestic abuse and interviewed them about those experiences and we found I think there was 35 men or 30 men and of those against very quite significant violence from a female partner but the rest were perpetrators of violence against women and so we need to when we look at domestic abuse we need to focus on those gendered aspects of it so whether that's women as victims or how we valorise forms of gender and forms of masculinity in terms of violence so gender is really significant so when we ask what about the men what we should really be asking is what is it about gender inequality that makes this such a massive issue Sandy, I'll put that question to you as well what is the most common objection that you come up against and how do you respond to it? I think there is always the accusation that we're demonising men by naming the problem as men's violence against women but I think that is untrue but it also as I said earlier is something we need to be really careful to avoid in terms of not making men feel too defensive or too under attack to engage with us in these conversations but also I think it is totally legitimate to be talking primarily about women's experience here because this is very very much a issue in terms of women's everyday experience of violence against women So we've got one more question before we turn things over to the audience and I want to ask all three of you this one so we'll start with yourself Sandy you mentioned earlier the misogyny harassment offence what kind of other legislation or initiatives would you most like to see brought in? I think the misogyny legislation would be really important there was one case that really highlighted for me the need for it people might remember a case somebody called Addie A game who was what's called a pick-up artist who would harass young women on the street he was eventually arrested, convicted and he had his conviction overturned in appeal and part of the reasoning for that the judge said in his judgement compliments are not a threat and I thought that was quite extraordinary but also what that gave to me was this idea that the law is neutral and that offences are neutral the way our criminal offences are written just now, particularly breach of the peace type offences are very much written for men and a traditionally male pattern of how threats are experienced and takes no context of the reality of women's life any woman would know just how frightening that could be to be in your own isolated sport being consistently targeted by a guy and I think there is such a gap in our criminal on being able to reflect or respond to the reality of women's life or girls' life so I think the misogyny bill will be important but as important as I say as the legislation is the work we do to support it there is no point legislating without doing awareness campaigns to make sure people know that that's an offence in the community engagement work and similarly there's a bill going through parliament just now looking at reforming how we respond to rape in Scotland like most jurisdictions we really really struggle to respond effectively to rape most cases don't get to court, the ones that do it's the lowest conviction rate of any crime type so I've got a bill going through parliament just now that I think could really transform how Scotland responds to rape and I think that is so important because I think at the heart of so many of these conversations is sexual violence I think it's intrinsically linked with how we view masculinity, how we view sex or particularly heterosexual sex so I think this bill is really important and supported by the conversations that we're having today Nancy, how about yourself what kind of legislation or initiatives would you like to see? I agree with everything that Sandy said and I think just to kind of add to that for me it's the naming of those experiences and the naming of those experiences is wrong that's really important so women when they've experienced that it's someone else saying you're right, that behaviour is not acceptable what you experienced isn't right and I think those laws can act to validate those experiences for women and young girls so for me the misogyny law would be able to do that to say actually those experiences that you had aren't right and this is what we're going to do about that because I think for so long women's experiences aren't invalidated and they're not named as wrong and I think that's significant How about yourself Grim? It's a shame isn't it we have to have a law to protect half the population from the other half the population and that makes me feel really uncomfortable as a man but we have to have it it's there but what I'd like to see is something that I think Youth Link Scotland did this a few months ago where they did a survey wide Scotland for young men's attitudes I'd like to see something where we involve all men, not just young men all men a really proactive positive conversation about masculinity in Scotland I think that would be a really useful tool not just to address the issues we're talking about today but to issues of men's violence against men and another form of violence against men that is not that is talked about to the extent is men's suicide men's suicide is violence self-directed violence and I think that type of survey that type of conversation that we would have in Scotland would be a really powerful honest, frank conversation that would start to because when Youth Link Scotland did this survey they came up with some really positive positives about young men's attitudes really positives so that's a great starting point for all the stuff that we've been talking about today so I'd like to do something like that Great, now I'd like to at this point invite the audience to participate in the discussion, we've already got some hands going up if you would like to ask a question please raise your hand and keep it raised until the microphone is passed to you, it would be helpful if you could keep your questions and points brief to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to participate so we'll start in the front row down here except first hand I noticed my questions for the whole panel do you think there's a core lip between parents who have physically disciplined their children and gender-based violence and particularly a man imagining someone who's grown up being told if you do something wrong you deserve a smack and then when they're in a relationship with another adult and they've perceived their partner to have done something wrong they think oh they deserve a smack I remember in the VRU we were discussing that idea of violence gets results and the earlier we teach that so we live in a place in Scotland where we've criminalised do you criminalise it? yes do you criminalise it? so I think it is important that if we're teaching violence gets results early on that is going to continue for those with the exact words the young people that I spoke to in school used she did something wrong so she got told off for it so it was kind of replicating that relationship between a man and a woman and a parent and a child so yeah I agree hope sorry if you've got a follow up on that follow up um does any of your research or organisations work in collaboration with like parent advocacy groups and gender-based violence groups since there does definitely seem to be a link like you can't fight this battle without working together I guess I think because Scotland's decriminalised it there were a lot of issues and a lot of debates at the time I think we'll probably need to speak to England about that because they're a lot more reluctant to engage with those kind of debates but yeah okay we'll take one from the front row on the other side so my name's Bryce and I've got a autistic and I've got a neurodivergent neurodivergent and I'm basically I was in during my schooling I was basically legally discriminated against I was actually removed from sex and relationships education because it was told I wouldn't understand it basically and I've had to really learn a lot as an adult of what sex and relationship education is and I think this comes down to the core and I'm going to be quite bold and quite courageous what I'm up to see here I think I'm seeing this with some anger in me because I've also been a victim and a survivor of domestic violence from my father I am just so it makes me feel angry inside that through education through schooling and through to where you just get sex and relationship sex and relationship with education consent based on education when you go into university when you go to colleges and universities they are not made as mandatory to go to or to private sector private sector training like for example like in for example football under you know football teams who are training centres it's not made as a mandatory subject to study and the problem which I'm seeing right now is that and I'm going to be I hope I understand this has come from a place of love is that we see religious organisations who are coming into this debate asking people asking for parents to have the right to opt out from this education to write to opt out from this because basically it's because of religious reasons and that I believe we need to come to a secular point of this we need to allow everyone to be educated and we need to get this made mandatory because the thing is this this comes back down to education about what people learn and we need to have this in place because right now I myself have been excluded I wanted to be trained I wanted education I wanted to be a good person in society but I was repeatedly excluded because I was told I wouldn't be able to understand and that is something that really makes me angry it makes me frustrated and I just want to be I want to be a good person and when we see universities who we are now having to see now a petition which has been courageously been put forward by Ellie Wilson who is on social media about ending sexual sexual harassment and assault in universities petitions we are seeing safe spaces being set up now on Instagram through the safe spaces that was on recent on television it was just fantastic for women and girls for that but we need to bring the education back into this we need compulsory education we need to build this and we need that because that is where the loss needs to go to we don't need to because the criminalisation of all these things could be resolved but the thing is that we cannot get this here because of course we are going to say all that is going to be we can't do this, we can't do that because basically all the churches will say or any other religious organisations will say no we need to have an opt out we need to have an opt out we need to have a compulsory base education where everything is taught about misogyny, everyday sexism and all these cultural issues we need to teach them at school and we need the pupils to be there I'm sorry for being authoritarian but I'm just simply passionate about this and I'm sorry if I've overtaken this time here I'm just feeling I just feel that I want to be a better person I want to take education, I want to unlearn I want to be a good man but how can I be a good man Can I respond to that I think it's important what you've said there is it's a reality when I started working with schools in 2010 I came up against head teachers who didn't want to talk about violence in the schools and I remember thinking how do I influence them to think differently about engaging on these subjects and I remember watching a TED talk by a wonderful American teacher called Rita Pearson and she talks about every child needing a champion it's a fantastic TED talk and she quoted an American educationalist James Coma no significant learning will take place without a significant relationship and when I started to go into schools and talk about the need to talk about the issues that you guys talk about all the time because sexual harassment, sexual violence impacts, not just as a victim but impacts on learning impacts on the ability of a young person's ability to learn in school and universities I worked with the University of Edinburgh for the last six years and I'm only going to do this if you make this compulsory for your sports leaders to be part of this work so we need to have these you're right, we need to have these brave conversations because at university gender-based violence is affecting the student experience it's leading to students leaving suicides a whole range of things as well so I think all of us would agree we'd love to make this and thankfully we're starting to turn that tide now I think in Scotland we're asking to have that conversation but we need to have an act of Parliament mandating that to all organisations actually having a piece of legislation saying you must teach that you must teach that because the thing is this was as a man here I would like to know how I can be how I can be an ally how I can be an accomplice how can I be a feminist how can I be that way how can I be able to do that in a way and I'm I'm a bit homeless in that because I'm struggling I'm always trying my best to do something and the thing is this I don't want anybody to go through the violence and the destruction I've seen my father caused me and my mother in my life it destroyed my relationship on that and I just don't want to see what happening anytime at all and I don't want to see it happen to anybody anybody at all thank you Cymru'n gwneud Cymfaltary versus no before we move on to our next question I'm really sorry that was your experience I don't think MD should be excluded from sex education or education health relationships we sort of debated ourselves at rape prices Scotland should it be compulsory in schools for example at the moment the biggest issue for us is not school to persuade or force schools to do it as capacity there is more demand from schools than we can meet so there is death and appetite there from schools to engage in this work and to bring this in with young people it just needs to be resourced further and I also do share your concerns about religious impact of organised religion but we have also worked in Catholic schools as part of our prevention work and actually had a really positive engaging experience so I think there are real positives that we can build on if work is resourced properly I think you're demonstrating that you are an ally by the very fact that you are here that you're seeking out this information on social media and you're wanting to make a difference and all of those factors are really important there's an organisation called White Ribbon which I'm sure you've heard of with men that work to advance against women so maybe that's someone that you could look if you haven't heard of them already but I'd say having that passion and that anger because of your own experiences but also wanting to make those changes is really significant so thank you for asking your question Bryce, talk there about being an ally, wanting to be an ally wanting to be a feminist is that something that you've found in your work that a lot of men are unsure as to how to go about that in their lives? Definitely even with a lot of the I think we're aware of so much that goes on and it is examples like Sarah Everard where it brings it into the public eye for right or wrong reasoning and people would say well it's because of she was white, she was middle class for these reasons but I see it as anything that can bring that attention and generate that anger and that desire for change and I think from on the back of that I mean I've got four sons and two of them are teenagers and off the back of that we're asking me what could they do they know the field they're working but I think sometimes it's something that triggers that need, that desire to want to change things that's important and I think we need to harness that and support men who do want to make those changes OK, we'll take some more questions OK, second row So my name is Erin and I'm part of the advisory panel for Young Women Young Women's Movement in Scotland and I was also part of the panel earlier today on activism and I did my dissertation on Femicide in the US so this is a very relevant topic to me but one question that popped up in the panel later on was about violence against women on social media and if it should be regulated do you have any thoughts on that because my personal opinion is that yes it should be regulated but there is and there should be consequences but there's a fine line on identifying and using full wide age purely because of intersectionality reasons but I just wanted to ask your opinion on it because we talked about it in the panel earlier Deal with online harassment to a degree because we know the left like online harassment that women experience is overwhelming particularly black women or women of colour proportionally experience harassment and we also know from the amnesty research that was mentioned earlier just for a chilling impact that can happen women's participation in online life which can be a huge part of people's professional and personal lives these days so I think there is definitely room for further regulation part of the bill is also going to look at the promotion for example of rape online which definitely is used to chill women's or limit women's activity online in a different space so I think we should legislate but I think we do need to be really thoughtful about how we do that to make it as effective as possible One of my PhD students Erin Rennie she's doing her PhD on women's experiences of online violence and she put together a questionnaire she only wanted 50 responses and she got over 300 so I think that kind of demonstrates the depth of the problem but if you'd maybe email me I could put you in touch with her I think my perspective you know taking aside from what the last two people have spoken about is if the role that we all have to challenge our friends if we see them behaving inappropriately I think that to me is something that would reduce the impact on legislation but send out a very powerful message within peer groups so yeah ok we'll have one over there yep hi first I want to say thank you this panel was excellent I really enjoyed listening to it my name is Catherine and I'm currently writing my PhD thesis on how adverse childhood experiences and self-esteem affect and Smith partner violence perpetration and I'm doing it at a US university so Graham I wanted to ask you were there any surprises in either the similarities or differences between talking to boys and men in the US versus the UK or Scotland specifically I can ask that question a lot um no you know I think the challenges maybe some of the language is different but I think the challenges that young boys face in the US very similar challenges that young boys and men face here you know in America they talk about the brocode they talk about that unwritten rule about not challenging your mates and in this country we call it the cock block syndrome or something like that we don't say anything to our friends in certain situations so some of the terminology is different but I think these mandates of masculinity that we have are something that are yeah US I work with US police and they'll say to me yeah we have different issues in policing but the challenges we have as human beings is to challenge our friends is exactly the same so yeah it's exactly the same an equivalent of you know the don't be that guy campaign is there a US equivalent of that there is actually I was contacted after we did that guy by futures without violence and they've actually made that guy America that guy US really well actually I'm sure Joe Biden has supported it so it's pretty cool actually it's pretty cool to have it so if you saw in the futures without violence I thought they might change it to that dude or something but they kept the same and they've actually people in this panel have indirectly influenced Joe Biden and they've actually kept they've kept the same script more or less great okay I think we had a question in the third roll I think you had your hand up before didn't you thank you my name is Rosalind Harday until the end of March was working in London long term and I certainly agree that the political landscape in terms of just naming it as men's violence is significantly in advance in Scotland however a specific question I have is about the impact of lockdown in terms of the socialisation of men and boys and to what extent that's ramped up some of the pressures of loneliness, confusion and vulnerability to misogynistic messages I was working in community development in south east London at the time that Sabina Nessa a local teacher was murdered and some of the worst impacted boys and young men in the school mourning their teacher were the young men who had recently been child witnesses of domestic violence which as we know had escalated during lockdown and we did all sorts of things like tree planting that the boys were involved in and sort of the ways of collectively mourning through arts etc I think I was very concerned about teenage boys in particular spending a lot of their time in the house exposed to pornography online abuse, the Andrew Tates we've already talked about porn and also the times at which boys are traditionally 16, 17, 18 you know that's the time when you're finding yourself you're going out with your pals etc that level of isolation is a much harder time and I'm interested I completely agree that lockdown was necessary in terms of the global pandemic but I think there are still long-term impacts, I'd be interested in the panel's views on those Anyone who wants to take that one? I would say that I wouldn't feel comfortable answering in terms of the long-term consequences because I think we're still doing the research into that I think in terms of domestic abuse we know that it was a lot harder for women to escape I'm always reluctant to correlate examples like that to say that that increased domestic abuse because I think whilst it might have increased we need to think that that's maybe because men and women were in the house together not because of the pressures of lockdown which I know that there's been blame so I suppose just to clarify that but in terms of of young men and boys I mean in terms of everybody I think it was a really difficult time and we know in terms of mental health and you know Graham's touched upon that in terms of mental health and suicide among boys so I think there's definitely research going on into mental health in that way but I think that's a really interesting point that you've brought up in terms of more research needed there I think you know I remember at the start of lockdown speaking to my friend Ross Ducar who's a criminology professor Glasgow and we both agreed that you know I think when we all went into lockdown I think we played into the stereotypes that boys will be okay but actually deep down boys were struggling as much as anybody else so I think that and then obviously exposure to all the stuff you talked about online pornography the men's rights messages that were coming at 300 and you take another wolves and sheep's clothing as I call them really really made a confusing landscape for young boys and again if you're sitting on your own getting all these messages then individually you're thinking this but your friends are thinking exactly the same they're grappling, I think our young men are grappling with lots of things just now and that's why I go back to what we said at the start it's about creating conversations to have meaningful discussions on some of this stuff how are you really feeling about it? Graham, Andrew Tates come up a couple of times he's obviously the most high profile example of Tates influencers and he's got a huge profile how do you tackle that in the young men and boys who are susceptible to those messages? A lot of people have been saying don't listen down your tea don't do that I think that's the wrong way when you work with young people it's about you're shutting down their autonomy to make decisions for me it's about focusing on the bits that we are all passionate about the victim blaming all the misogyne creating space around that and then allowing young men to make better informed decisions because I'm a big believer in media literacy helping people to be critical of what they're learning online from pornography or whatever that messaging that's going to be so I think with Andrew Tates I remember a few months ago one of my wife's daughters had about five or six friends over and all young men actually in the room and there's other people joining us and I sat and had a chat with them and said what do you make of Andrew Tates? he's an asshole that's what they said to me you know I think most young men are getting it they get it but we can't just rely on that we've got to create the space for conversations okay we'll take some more questions anyone else? okay I can see a hand there about just in the middle there yep there you go I'm Katie I'm the policy officer for children and young people at Zero Tolerance which is Scotland's primary prevention organisation obviously my role's focused mostly on children and young people so it makes a lot of sense to me that we've talked a lot about boys and young men today but we know for prevention young people learn most from the behaviour and attitudes of adults around them not from what we tell them directly so I was wondering about the panel's views about how we change the attitudes and behaviour of adult men already now rather than focusing all of our energy on young men and hoping that that future proofs us for violence against women I think he came out to a really valid point it's so easy when we're talking about prevention to talk only about young people and totally ignore adults and particularly as adults we can play in role modelling what equality can look like I think there is so much needs done in terms of looking at change and the cultural attitudes towards women's sexuality in particular within the adult population it is the adult population who is sitting juries in rape trials for example and often what we see being played out over the course of rape trials very much has sexist notions about women's behaviour and women's sexual behaviour there is a lot more I think we could be doing in terms of changing those cultural attitudes amongst the population as a whole I think we need a sustained approach to campaigns you know at rape crisis that we've run a number of public awareness campaigns so this is a temptation to rape me to challenge victim blaming we also ran a campaign to raise awareness about content truth responses to rape they know everybody screams or it fights back straight away and it's always difficult to measure I think definitively the impact of public awareness campaigns because there's so many factors that can influence attitudes but definitely the valuations were really positive and I think what we need is a sustained approach to public awareness campaigns but I think we also need to invest in community education work I mentioned that in relation to the misogyny legislation I think we need to do much much more investing much more in community building approaches and raising awareness and increasing skills giving people tools and I think only by an approach that includes legislation so like the law actually acting as a deterrent I think we need a community building community engagement approach and also I think we need to continue this work and this conversation with adult men around how they can challenge other adult men's behaviour and also examine their own attitudes Do you see examples in your line of work where men maybe have had these entrenched attitudes and they're now receptive to the idea of change and you know having a more modern outlook Yes I mean I think there's an assumption that women blaming attitudes are misogynistic attitudes and a generational issue but we do see it as much I think with young adults that's definitely what the research seems to show is it's not only older people that hold these attitudes I think it is possible for people to shift their attitude towards these issues but I think there's a lot of research out there about at which point it's somebody's views so entrenched that it's very difficult to change them and put us the best place to put your efforts and your energy into people who are open to change so I think it can be really really mixed I think there are some people who's used are so entrenched that it can be very difficult to reach them whereas other people are much more open to engaging I think sometimes as well it's easy to say I've got this captive audience within a school let's get them you know let's go in and do that but for me person one of the reasons I came to Scotland to do this work was the Pyranian work of zero tolerance I cannot explain looking at those black and white adverts the impact that they had on me and still continue to have today and I think that campaign was so unbelievably significant and using it within football grounds you know these were places that we'd never talked about men's fans against women before so I think you know it is significant to have those public awareness campaigns and even if they just you know kind of a few people kind of get that message but again it's the money the time of the money and investing within those as well as the other aspects that Sandis said Young people don't grow up in a vacuum do they they grow up in a world of adults who abuse who bully, who drink alcohol, who do whatever and I think even within our politics we need to be mindful of the tones we're setting and that's something I see a lot online of people, adults who should know better you know getting involved in tittle tattle which just keeps its way down to you know young people's that sense of permission to do something you know what you promote you permit but we can flip that differently can't we you know it could be a negative but it could also be a positive and everybody in this room has the ability to you know be kind every single day to show respect every single day little things like that can really start to make a difference and I think in Scotland in relation to a small country we can do things really quickly and I think if we build a sense of unity you know that's a massive persuader you know that common purpose who doesn't want to save Scotland who doesn't want to save workplace who doesn't want to save school you know if we start to build that we can start to hopefully try and you know and pick some of the issues that we're here today to deal with one thing I can really set us back in Scotland in terms of our discussion on the case we're treated just a couple of years ago when it felt like it was open season when we had people writing online basically trying to hunt them down and find out their identities and I think that does speak to what Graham was talking about there just about how we behave as adults like any time you're speaking any time you're in the room there is going to be a sexual assault survivor in that room and how you conduct yourself much will have a bearing in whether or not they feel able to ever speak out or to tell you or anyone else about their experience and I thought that whole episode including quite a number of politicians how they behaved in relation to that was absolutely shameful and really did set us back quite a bit in terms of our conversation in Scotland around rape and sexual assault really what we need to do is create a culture where people can report sexual violence they feel able to name it and feel able to report it they may not get the outcome they want but they certainly shouldn't be howded in the way that we saw in that case Part of the Don't Be That Guy campaign my involvement in it centred around sport and what I found quite a bit in terms of high profile rape and sexual assault allegations was that people were viewing these things through the prism of the football team that they support far more serious issues than football but their first thought was how does this reflect or the team I don't like and I think I don't know if you'd agree that with Alex Salmond and certainly other cases as well there's been that kind of for a lot of people, a lot of adults seeing this through the prism of their own political allegiances rather than taking a step back Absolutely, in terms of being an ally in terms of violence against women I think what it can really test you is if the person being accused is somebody that you revere or you care about I think that is the real test about whether or not you're an ally in terms of how you behave in those circumstances I've got a question at the back there Sorry, there's actually quite a few So I just wanted to you kind of keep picking up on misogyny but we're not actually understanding that for a lot of people, for example in the Muslim community they do not understand what misogyny means and their version of misogyny is completely different to what society in general version of misogyny is and on top of that we talk about gender-based violence and we talk about the physical and the coercion and all this kind of stuff but actually and I met with the solicitor general last week actually about this is we need to see in Scotland because we're the only one in the UK that doesn't have this at the moment but we need to see in Scotland that the definition of gender-based violence and domestic abuse which currently has an intimate partner down we need to extend that to extended family abuse because that's how honour killings happen this isn't just limited to men that are intimate partners this is also men that are within the family unit and if you are an Islamic girl you are likely to be sitting in that house with that family so there's a multiple sort of complexes to this and if I just quickly pick up on the current issue in regards to Police Scotland we've got the chief officer to sit and tell on us that the Police Scotland is misogynistic now what we don't have is an action plan against that so we're going oh yeah by the way drop the bombshell which fair enough nobody was expecting but currently Police Scotland's system is not set up to recognise gender-based violence by their officers as perpetrators and we can see that just now because there's a police officer that's just recently gone to prison and when the recognition from the sheriff has been said that there was extended issues at play what he went to prison for was an attempt to prefer the course of justice not what he attempted to pervert in the first place so the whole system is constructed in a way that is only going to create this inability or this this perception that women can't speak up Graham do you want to take this? That's a lot of questions there I think Ian Livingston's statement a few weeks ago was a very courageous statement and a statement which I agree with and was I part of that system as a young cop? Yes I was I have to say that was part of the policing and for me it's about how do we create a system where we talk about the good cops how do we create a system where these people do speak up and they do act and they do a lot of stuff that we've talked about today and that's a lot of the work that I'm doing just now is trying to get back to policing some of the skills that I have to create cultures where people do speak up, do act, do things early on rather than wait for the big things to happen so I think what comes next for the new chief coming in in the next couple of months is how do we respond to that if I was to be honest with you I think some of the responses I'm hearing about are not sufficient there's a lot of reliance I believe on online training which I don't think is going to cut it is not going to really make the difference at all again you're not breaking down the groups the peer groups, you're not giving cops the chance to speak to each other and I think there's too much focus on leadership as in senior leaders of course leaders in policing set the tone but every police office is a guardian of culture we're all guardians of culture whether we're in policing or whatever organisation you come from I want to see more top down bottom up ground up approach inside outside so we inform what we're doing to the communities and the communities then start to direct what we're doing inside the organisation I see a very still a top down approach in my old organisation which is just going to shut people down in the lower ranks that's what I see and I've been taught that through my work with US police in the last couple of years and now piloting my own work with English police forces I've got a meeting next week with some Scottish counterparts but we'll see but yeah it's a lot of work to be done a lot of unpicking to be done but I think Ian Livingstone has started that conversation I don't know if I've answered much of your questions but there's a lot there I think you're right to link to two things I think misogynyne sexism within an institution that is naive to think that will not impact on how that officer then responds to somebody reporting rape certainly one of the biggest issues that we have seen survivors of rape telling us about their response from the police is from their mate, we're a culture of disbelief I think there's been really big improvements in police responses to rape and sexual crime over the past decade although there's obviously still some room for improvement in terms of the acknowledgement of misogyny I think the important thing is that it starts with an acknowledgement doesn't it? I think the acknowledgement in itself can only be the beginning and what has to come then as you say is a really clear action plan and I think there's similar issues about the misogyny bill that if you've got misogyny within Police Scotland if it's recognised as being an institutional misogynist it can be assessed how will that same police force then effectively implement a misogynistic harassment offence that we need to link the two things together I think we need to link the efforts within Police Scotland to address misogyny within the force and link that to making sure that women reporting crimes of gender based violence are not being faced with a response that's informed by misogyny so to me the two things go hand in hand I think the Chief Constable was right to acknowledge it but I think what we need to see now is the action plan about what they're going to do about it Okay so that's all the time we've got for questions I want to thank everyone who asked questions today I also want to before we close give each of our panellists one minute to sum up our discussion today on talking to boys and men about gender based violence so we'll start with yourself Sandy I think what's clear from the three of us but also from many of your contributions in the audience is that there's a real consensus here that this is a significant violence against women it's a significant issue and that if we don't engage boys and men as part of the work to challenge violence against women we're not going to be successful and the key themes for me that have come out of our discussions and the really useful contributions from you all is about the need for it to be resourced the need for it to be intersectional to make sure we're bringing people with us and we're acknowledging and identifying the specific issues facing different communities across Scotland but also the need for it to be in long term and sustainable because there is no point in doing for example one campaign, one year then you don't do something for another five years we need a long term sustainable action plan that we're bringing men and boys with us in a way that doesn't in any way compromise the human rights approach we're taking to violence against women and girls OK and how about yourself Nancy I think for me it's really heartening to see men in the audience I think with the conversations like this I've so often talked to groups of women so for me it's talking about men and boys to men and boys and not just leaving it all to women which has often been the case especially with this particular subject for me with the research that I've done yes working with children and young people is significant but as Katie said from Zero Tolerance we need to look at everybody it's not just how can we change the attitudes of young people it's changing those societal attitudes changing those structures that gender inequality and that starts with all of us so for me it's really heartening to see a big group a big audience coming to listen to listen to something like this but also wanting to engage and start to make those changes so thank you I thought about that question when you asked me at the start you're going to end with this one minute and I want to relate it to what I call my moral rebel checklist in society we have moral rebels people who do speak up men women whoever I'm speaking up for anybody who's working with young men with young boys in this field in wider fields as well create space where they feel supported intervening in situations is normalised it's part of being a friend friends don't let friends drive drunk with the campaign in the United States friends don't let friends get arrested friends don't let friends be victim something like that I think also as well help them believe that they can make a difference many young men think I can't make a difference everybody in this room has the power to make a difference so create space to practice what would you do, what would you say if you came across a situation in the future and lastly something we've talked today about character helping young men develop their character their presence, their values their core values in the world because all the evidence says that when you do that as early as possible you motivate people to act be good friends avoid harmful situations as well so that's my moral rebel checklist which comes from lots of research over the years but I think the belief that you can make a difference is a big thing for me help our young boys believe they can actually make a difference OK, well I'd like to thank you all very much for coming along today and for making such a big contribution thanks again for your excellent questions I'd also like to thank our panel today Sandy Brindley Graham Golden Arthur Nancy Lombard for their insightful discussion and I'd also like to thank our partners at Glasgow Caledonian University can remind everyone to fill in the survey that you'll receive automatically if you've booked via Eventbrite we also have a few paper copies of the survey at the back and we very much appreciate your thoughts on how to improve the festival may I also take this opportunity to remind you that there are many more festival events taking place today including a discussion on the future of Scotland's arts and culture at 5pm and a discussion on radical uses for Scotland's land at 5.30pm we also have a full day of events tomorrow including discussions on navigating migration and Scotland's poverty problem I do hope you'll be able to join us for some of those thank you very much for coming along today


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