#yesallwomen A Response to Male Shooter Blaming Women
BALDWIN: The killings in Santa Barbara led to an instant and curious reaction on Twitter. Of course, there were condolences to loved ones but also real anger, not just at the senseless deaths but at Elliot Rodger's hate-filled rant against women. Women acknowledge that not all men are dangerous but that is not actually the point. And, yes, all women have a difficult, at times, place in the world. This hash tag that has now been trending for days, #yesallwomen, trending since Saturday, with more than 1.2 million tweets. One woman summed it up this way. She tweeted, "Not all men practice violence against women but, #yesallwomen live with the threat of male violence every single day all over the world." Here is another tweet. "#Yesallwomen. Because 'I have a boyfriend' is more likely to get a guy to back off than no because they respect other men more than women." Another tweet, "If you think, #yesallwomen is an attack on men, you're not listening to women, which is kind of a problem. Rachel Sklar is the founder of TheLi.st; and Olivia Nuzzi is a reporter with "The Daily Beast." They are joining me now. Ladies, welcome. Olivia, let me begin with you, because you can really take time and read the tweets. I read your piece on the daily beast. What do you think this campaign is about?</s>OLIVIA NUZZI, REPORTER, THE DAILY BEAST: The broader issue is women face sexism everyday, in everyday exchanges, and it's not always big enough to make a big deal about it. With this hash tag, women feel more comfortable sharing their stories. Strength in numbers. When you see a woman talking about facing sexism, you feel more comfortable facing those experiences.</s>BALDWIN: Rachel, when I was looking through them, there are all kinds of themes from an unwanted look on the street to stories of attempted assault. This has gone way beyond the mass shooting in Santa Barbara. And it seems like this is obviously coming from somewhere. Is this just an outlet for women?</s>RACHEL SKLAR, FOUNDER, THELI.ST: I think what you saw happening has been just a collective trigger for women. We have an example here in Elliot Rodger. There is absolutely no excuse. He was clearly anti- woman. He clearly felt that women. He felt women owed him something. That he was being denied his due. And the hate that he spewed was specifically targeted at women using sexist, degrading language. And it manifested itself in violence and actual murder. I think there was a familiarity in that language that hit home for a lot of women who live with this implicit threat of danger. Someone said #yesallwomen because I always text my friends after we go out to make sure they got home safely. There is an extra layer of danger that comes with being a woman that this early taps into.</s>BALDWIN: I was reading a bunch of different articles, getting different takes on this hash tag. I read this article on Salon.com. Let me quote part of what Katie wrote. She said, Just as we examine our culture of guns, once again, in the wake of yet another mass shooting, we must also examine our culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity, which devalues both women's and men's lives, and work and inflict real and daily harm. We must exam the dangerous values that treat women less than human and make them, according to Elliot Rodger, deserving of death. Rachel, when she talks about this culture, in a sense, I mean, whether you are walking through a grocery store or you flip on the TV or a magazine, are we all contributing to this culture?</s>SKLAR: I think that the culture minimizes women who push back and who complain and who call out sexism. There's a sense of just take a joke or, hey, baby it's a compliment, or what's up, Sugar, why don't you give me a little smile. There is a sense that women are on display, that their purpose is gratification, that the most important emotion is that which is experienced by men. Even on this hash tag, initially I tweeted, "It's an important hash tag to read. Don't protest. Just take it in." The push back I got back from men was, oh, we're not allowed to say anything? What about us?</s>BALDWIN: Olivia, what has the pushback been from men?</s>NUZZI: I think a lot of men are failing to understand how we can look at this senseless violence and take from it a broader social issue. I think a lot of men think it's wrong to paint with a broad brush and they don't want to be associated with this lunatic who did this mass killing. But this is a big issue. This boy was a product of this culture. To talk about the culture is not wrong. And I think we do need to talk about it. If we want to know how to end this kind of violence, we need to address the culture that created the violence.</s>BALDWIN: Now we're having an actual conversation, which is important. Now we're having a national conversation, Rachel Sklar. Now what?</s>SKLAR: We keep having this conversation and I think that making the issues explicit, forcing people to examine their attitudes, all of this is part of moving towards the elimination of rape culture, the recognition of real bias and real sexism that woman experience. And the more this happens, this is one of the conversations that has been about the fact that 98 percent of these mass shootings are perpetrated by young white men.</s>BALDWIN: Young men.</s>SKLAR: The last time I was on this show with you, we were talking about Mark Cuban's comments about crossing the street when he saw a black kid in a hoodie. We have to move away from that default assumption of danger. The cops that came to interview Elliot Rodger, they said they found a perfectly nice polite boy. Would they have reacted the same way if they had gotten a tip about a black man in a hoodie? We need to redistribute our assumptions.</s>BALDWIN: Let's check ourselves. Rachel Sklar and Olivia Nuzzi, thank you both very, very much.</s>BALDWIN: Coming up, a lot of people flipping those burgers on this Memorial Day, but with this massive beef recall because of E. coli, you are probably wondering which beef to buy, which not to buy. Not exactly crystal clear. That's the issue. Elizabeth Cohen joins me after the break to explain what we should not be eating.