Transcriber: Ciara Walsh Reviewer: Eunice Tan
I was not trying to start a debate.
I was trying to eat my fruit salad in peace at a barbecue.
But before I knew it,
he and I,
our debate about women's rights
was the centre of the party.
Now, at the time,
I was in the middle of a graduate degree in women and gender studies.
(Cheering)
Also, I'm a woman.
(Laughter)
So I argued
what I know through scholarship and lived experience to be true.
And he -
a dear friend of mine, a good guy -
disputed every point.
(Laughter)
But then, something happened:
another man interjected,
repeating the exact same points I had just made.
And the first guy,
he turned,
made direct eye contact,
listened -
without interrupting -
and began nodding.
"Yeah," he said.
"Exactly!"
(Laughter)
And then, he turned back to me and said,
"See?"
(Laughter)
I often talk about this story as the beginning of my work.
But the truth is I could tell you a hundred more just like it -
times I got the message that as a woman, my voice was somehow less important.
(Booing)
(Laughs)
(Laughter)
Many of you, clearly, know this experience,
have similar stories of your own.
And there's research reflecting that.
Scholars call this the "gender credibility gap."
It's the phenomenon in which women are perceived to be less credible
than their male counterparts.
Don't believe me?
It's fine.
A man has said the exact same thing.
Damon Young, quote,
"Generally speaking,
we men don't believe things when they're told to us by women.
Do we think women are pathological liars?
No.
But does it generally take longer for us to believe something
if a woman tells it to us
than if a man told us the exact same thing?
Definitely."
Now,
here I am on this TEDx stage.
I have multiple degrees.
I have been thoroughly vetted.
I am wearing dry-cleaned clothes!
(Laughter)
And research suggests that your experience hearing me speak
is vastly different than your experience hearing the two men before me.
If I was a woman of color,
if I was trans,
levels of credibility would be even further deflated.
We are in the middle of a national conversation around gender,
and a lot of us are coming to that conversation
thinking, believing, hoping that we are above it,
and we are not.
Because here's the thing:
this is about sexual assault, yes.
And this is about so much more.
This is about the way we experience women seeking leadership roles
and pitching business ideas.
This is about your wife, girlfriend, roommate
coming home upset about something that happened at work
and you assuming -
objectively, rationally -
she's overreacting.
(Laughter)
This is about the ideas women bring
to the conference table, the classroom, the lab.
This is about whether or not women have equal access
to contribute to collective understanding,
to the pool of resources
(Cheers)
that we all use in order to understand this world, to communicate, to evolve.
This moment,
this national tussle with gender and power -
it ought to be about so much more
than awful, monstrous men doing morally repugnant things to women.
This moment could also be about the good guys -
the guys who stand on this side of some imaginary line,
rebuking Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar
and whoever else is trending right now.
Because here's the thing:
women told people what Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby did to them
for a long time,
and nothing happened.
Women, girls
told people, told their parents
what Larry Nassar did to them,
and nothing happened.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Why?
Because we have a problem.
We don't think women are pathological liars,
and we don't think we're capable of holding
the same sexist beliefs as our creepy uncles.
But we also need a Greyhound Bus worth of survivors,
a viral video,
and Ronan "Damn" Farrow
to do something about the things women tell us are problems.
(Cheers) (Applause)
So,
after this barbecue,
I started to think
if this was going to happen,
if my life was going to be shaped by the gender credibility gap
and good people thinking that they couldn't perpetuate sexism,
because they didn't rape or assault or harass,
I was going to do something about it.
(Whooping)
But
(Laughter)
how do you get people to believe you
about people not believing you
(Laughter)
when people don't believe you?
(Laughter)
But that's when I realized I could use the gender credibility gap.
I could make the gender credibility gap my Trojan horse.
I could trick people into listening to women's truths, ideas, experiences
by emphasizing the credibility gap itself.
(Audience) Get it, baby!
(Laughter)
(Cheering)
Y'all want to know how?
By having them do the talking.
(Laughter) (Whooping)
So I started collecting stories,
stories from women of all ages, backgrounds, bodies,
degrees of gender conformity.
The prompt was broad:
tell us about an experience you had that was based on your gender.
And the stories started rolling in.
Short, long, hilarious, unnerving.
It was almost like women had a lot to say.
(Laughter)
So we set up a live reading and called it "That's What She Said."
Now, at the time,
I was hoping 100 people would show up.
426 came.
(Cheering) (Applause)
It was standing room only.
As the house lights dimmed,
we handed male volunteers envelopes with stories they'd never seen before.
One by one, they walked on stage.
(Applause) (Cheering)
They haven't done anything yet!
(Laughter)
They opened their envelopes and read each woman's words aloud.
It sounded kind of like this:
"One day after class,
my middle-school PE teacher pulled me aside
and told me that people would like me a lot more
if I shaved my legs."
Or this:
"The man who trained me at work
is known for joking around and being generally ridiculous.
One day, about two years into me working there,
he tried some of his 'new material' out on me in front of multiple coworkers.
'You know,' he said, looking me up and down,
'You really bring out the Brock Turner in me.'
(Booing)
Later, when I would bring it up to our boss,
who witnessed the entire situation,
I would be told that it was 'just a joke.'
Jokes are funny."
After this story was read live,
a man in the audience came up to me, and he said,
"I don't think I could ever say anything that stupid or awful to a woman,
but if I'm being honest,
I can see myself doing what that boss did."
And herein lies one of the main lessons of "That's What She Said."
Sexism isn't black and white.
We all fall somewhere along this continuum.
And just because we aren't overtly sexist
doesn't mean that we aren't unknowingly perpetuating sexist behaviors.
We've received hundreds of stories,
many of them dealing with
subtle and not-so-subtle gender discrimination at work.
Here's another:
"Construction sites are dangerous.
Lots of things can go wrong.
So when I'm on them, I'm careful, I take my time.
But this coworker of mine, when he goes out,
he climbs on foundation forms like they're a wall at his climbing gym.
He walks scaffolding with no railings.
He gives shit to the construction crews
in pidgin Spanish,
and they laugh good-naturedly at him for it.
When I complain to him
that I'm tired of the field guys saying 'Careful! Careful!'
every time I step onto a ladder,
he says,
'Don't make this about gender.'
'I don't,' I told him.
And because he is, at heart, a lover, not a fighter,
he shrugged and turned back to his computer screen,
which made me mad.
But of course, not enough to say anything.
You know how it is -
I don't want to sound defensive or combative.
But I wanted to tell him,
'Every step I have ever taken has been about gender
even though I never wanted it to be.'
When I told my high school calc teacher that I was going to study engineering
and he responded,
'Really? Are you sure?'
When I told my boss I had good news and he replied despairingly,
'You're pregnant?'
and I had to correct him -
'No, I passed my licensure exam.'
When I was out on-site and crewmen said,
'Are you the engineer's daughter?'
and, 'You know, all the guys out here have a crush on you, right?'
The truth is that I'm one of the lucky ones.
I work at a company
where 66% of the leadership celebrates me for the engineer that I am,
without an asterisk.
But let's not be naive.
I'm going to receive professional emails addressed to 'Mr. Casius'
until the day I die.
New voices at the other end of the office lines
are always going to take a beat
when they ask to speak with 'Casey the Engineer,'
and I reply, 'Speaking.'
But I love my job.
I'm good at it.
And I'm going to be great at it.
Because as long as they're out there,
making this about my gender,
you can be damn sure I'm going to be too."
(Applause)
Despite her experiences,
despite her qualifications,
this author was persistently doubted at work,
even in her ability to comprehend her own experiences.
But as I said earlier,
this isn't just something that men do to women.
"When I was 24,
I met with three lenders to see if I qualified for buying a house.
I did.
So I contacted a real estate agent.
She asked me a load of questions and eventually said,
'I really want to show you this condo that just came on the market.'
I had no doubt that I wrote 'house' in my original email,
and I said 'house' at the beginning of the conversation.
But I figured, maybe it was an honest miscommunication.
'I actually want a house,
like a single family house,' I said.
'A detached dwelling.'
There was a pause.
'Oh, okay.
Sure.
Yeah, so we'll just look at houses then.'
The first day,
we saw three houses before she said,
'You know, I know you said you really wanted a house,
but there are condos not far from here,
within walking distance of an outdoor mall.
(Laughter)
Why don't we just look?'
A couple of months later,
I was working with another agent, Anne.
After seeing a few no-gos, she said,
'Maybe as a single, young woman, a condo is the best option for you.'
I wish I could tell you that I said, 'Hell no, Mama Anne.'
(Laughter)
But I was tired.
Tired of being asked questions about why it had to be a house.
Tired of the way people said, 'Are you sure?'
Tired of being questioned for doing things
that millions upon millions of men had done before me.
So we walked through the open house of this condo -
which should actually be called an 'open condo,' but whatever.
(Laughter)
And the listing agent asked, 'What do we think?'
'It's nice,' I said.
'Just not what I'm looking for.'
'Mm,' she nodded, appraising me.
'And just you?
No husband?
Boyfriend?'
I just need to remind you this is 2014.
Women had been allowed to own property
for more than like, I don't know, 10 minutes.
(Laughter)
'Yup,' I acknowledged.
'Well, I have houses for sale right now too,
but I'd feel reluctant even showing you.
Houses are a lot of work.
(Laughter)
The mowing and the shoveling -
do you really want to do all of that?'
That was five years ago.
Today, I shoveled every concrete inch surrounding my house -
my detached dwelling -
by myself
in seven-degree weather,
all before 9 AM.
And I have a corner property.
(Laughter)
Ta-da!"
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Women.
Those were women questioning what a woman could, should do.
That's how ingrained this is in all of us.
None of us are good guys or bad guys,
feminists or sexists,
the problem or the solution.
We are, in different moments, all of those things.
So that's terrifying.
(Laughter)
But it's also hopeful, right?
Because it means that in any given moment,
we have the ability to choose -
to choose between inadvertently following our unconscious thoughts
or recognizing and stepping in front of them.
I love "That's What She Said" because people hear women's stories -
hear them in a way that helps them realize
perhaps we have never heard women's stories.
Not the way we ought to.
Perhaps the gender credibility gap
has always stood between listening and understanding.
Something like "That's What She Said" is one of many steps
in a long process of dismantling our quick judgments and quiet assumptions.
Because we don't even know what's possible
when we start listening to, hearing, believing,
learning from women.
But I bet we'll be amazed.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)