[MUSIC]
I want to tell you about three of my friends.
First there is Laura.
She loves astrology.
She's a Scorpio.
>> [LAUGH] >> And
reality TV, especially the show Survivor.
Once when she knew I was sad, she mailed me four pints of my
favorite ice cream across the country, overnight in dry ice.
Then there's Joanna,
a fellow engineer who loves to whine with me about the worst parts of work.
When we went to Arizona together, she became so concerned that I would get
dehydrated that she bribed me to finish my water bottle with a bag of doughnuts.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] And then, there's Arthur,
a late night philosopher who was always the first person to brave the cold in
Boston when we had all been out for a late night of drinking and needed some food.
We all have these people in our lives.
But how do you know who your friends really are?
For me, it was trauma that made the lines in my community really clear.
Two of these people are still among my best friends.
And the third, not someone I choose to interact with any more.
So about that trauma, it was the summer between my sophomore and
junior year of college.
And we were celebrating graduation when a classmate raped me.
But this talk is not really about him or that night.
It's about everyone else and what happened afterwards.
It's about you.
When I first started telling people about what happened, I was scared.
He was friends with everybody.
So why would they believe me?
But I quickly found that actually everybody believed me.
In fact, they were even really surprised.
I got a lot of euphemisms in response like I knew he had had some issues with women.
And one person told me that his freshman year of college,
he had broken his hand twice, punching walls while drinking.
On some level, they all already knew.
We all have these people in our communities as well.
So why do we keep inviting them to parties?
And what did my three friends do in the aftermath once they knew?
Well, a couple years later, I was walking to work, and
I saw an article in a new site online about my college dorm community.
It prominently quoted my rapist talking about how he felt free to be himself
in this culture.
This article was glowingly reposted by many people who knew
including Arthur and Joanna.
I used to tell people I wasn't trying to get them to pick a side, his versus mine.
It felt like the polite fair answer, one that allows for complexity and redemption.
As if this was just a bad breakup and I'm the one who's already moved on.
But it is not that and I know what I really want, for none of
my friends to talk to him ever again or elevate his thoughts on social media.
I don't want to see his company on my college's website.
I want it to be illegal for well-meaning progressives to post diatribes
online decrying a culture that allows Brett Kavanaugh to prosper.
Even as they remain friendly and cordial with the Brett Kavanaughs in
their own community Whenever a rapist is in the news,
whether it's mine or Ben Roethlisberger, I want rape in the headline.
For how long?
Maybe forever.
Maybe just until I stop feeling angry.
Definitely at least a little bit longer.
Arthur deleted his post after I publicly commented on his support of a rapist.
He briefly apologized and then went on to do something very similar,
only a couple months later.
We do not talk anymore.
Joanna deleted her post as well, as I told her how betrayed I felt.
She asked how could she be forgiven for something that felt unforgivable to me?
She would ask again, crying that night in my apartment.
And again a month or two later,
as she told me all the things she loved the most about our friendship.
I didn't really have an answer for her then,
only that I hoped things would be okay again someday.
Not everyone gets a second chance, but then again, so
many people don't even ask for one.
They're not willing to live with the discomfort of
knowing that they hurt someone they cared about long enough to make it right.
Meanwhile, Laura, in true Scorpio fashion, went on what she calls a rampage.
>> [LAUGH] >> She took to Twitter
under her public profile and
real name, not her burner account where she posts her hot takes about Survivor.
>> [LAUGH] >> And shredded the article,
the people reposting it, and the community norms that make it all possible.
Years later, when I'm feeling low, I still look for that tweet
because I want people to pick my side, even when it doesn't come for free.
When I was writing this talk, I wanted to give you a process or a framework.
I'm an engineer and a pilot and I like structure, checklists, fail safes.
A technical fix will keep us safe.
Because the alternative is what?
I tell you how angry I am?
And I ask you to be a little bit braver.
To deal with a little bit of sacrifice and discomfort so that we don't get hurt?
The truth is I can't trust you to do that because
the evidence I've seen in my life so far is that most people will not stand up.
But I can't think of any framework that will protect us if you're not willing
to be brave and have a backbone for your friends.
Do this early and often because it is a muscle that needs to be exercised.
My own journey with this began not long after the rape
when I was a baby engineer in my first real engineering job.
I was sitting at lunch with my coworkers,
eating the same deli sandwich I had every single day.
And we were talking about what we like to do on the weekends.
When my coworker James said, sometimes what we love to do is just drive around
town and yell things out the window at the prostitutes like, hey, you're pretty.
I heard laughter, and the sound of the conversation
moving on as I said nothing and felt anger and shame.
The next day, I sat at lunch, same people, same sandwich, and
waited, tensed for an opening in the conversation.
And when one didn't come, I jumped in swinging anyway.
Does he know what it's like for
a marginalized person to be yelled at by random men in a car?
It was awkward and ugly and way too late and not exactly what I wanted to say.
But still, I felt avenged and
none of them ever said anything like that in front of me again.
I want you to be a Laura or a Joanna.
Speak up, no matter how imperfectly.
Live with the discomfort and complexity.
And make sure the people around you know where you stand.
When I heard my coworker say something that I thought was not right,
I did what had to be done.
The question is, what will you do?
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]