E66: Consent, Faith, and Masculinity (ft. Nathaniel Openshaw) - Real Men, Real Conversations

This week’s episode of Aspire is a conversation about consent, faith, and what it means for young men to protect themselves and others. Host Alex Prout is joined by co-host Maria and guest Nathaniel Openshaw, a student at BYU-Idaho who is advocating for better health education, accountability for perpetrators, and healing for survivors.

Thaniel shares how hearing the experiences of friends and people he cared about pushed him to act, and how his own journey led him to recognize faults in society by analyzing his surroundings in his own life. He reflects on the lack of consent education in faith-based spaces and explains why he sees consent as a sacred principle rooted in agency, mutual respect, and ongoing communication. He also talks about how his Christian faith shapes his understanding of manhood, leadership, and the responsibility to protect others.

The conversation also explores how to teach these ideas in ways that resonate with students, especially in religious communities where sex and consent are often left out of the conversation. Thaniel shares the analogy he used in his talk to help others understand victim blaming and the importance of agency, while Alex and Maria reflect on the power of speaking up, listening, learning, and acting. In closing, Thaniel offers a simple but powerful statement: “I have the right to protect myself and others.”

Make sure to follow I Have the Right To and learn more at ihavetherightto.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Aspire, and I have the Right2 podcast, where we amplify voices, share stories, and drive change in the fight against sexual assault. We explore the critical issues surrounding student safety, institutional accountability, and survivor empowerment. In every episode, our goal is to provide insightful conversations with survivors, experts, educators, and advocates, giving you, our listener, valuable information, resources, and actionable steps to create safer environments and cultivate the culture of respect and consent. Welcome back to the Aspire Podcast. I'm Alex Prout, co-founder of I Have the Right To, and I'm here with my co-host, Maria. And Maria is so wonderful to be able to share the microphone with you this week. I'm very grateful for you joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to join this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Aspire was created by the nonprofit I Have the Right To as a space for honest, meaningful conversations about survivor advocacy, prevention, and what it truly takes to create safer communities. If these conversations resonate with you and you're interested in bringing them into your school or community, we would love to connect. I Have the Right To partners with K-12 schools, colleges, and universities to provide age-appropriate programming for students, educators, and parents on consent, healthy relationships, digital safety, leadership, and more, helping turn these conversations into action. You can reach us at takeaction at ihatheright to.org.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

And today we're honored to welcome Nathaniel Openshaw, a student at BOU Idaho and a dedicated advocate for ending sexual violence. Nataling brings a powerful, nuanced perspective into this work, rooted in both his lived experience as a survivor and his commitment to fostering open, healthy conversations about consent, especially with faith-based communities. His approach challenges silence and stigma by creating space for dialogue that is both compassionate and accountable. Through his advocacy, Natalia explores how conversations around consent, respect and personal agency can be meaningful, can be meaningfully integrated into religious and cultural contexts where these topics are often difficult to address. We're grateful to have him here as part of a Real Men Real Conversation series, where we're working to redefine masculinity, encourage emotional honesty, and empower young men to be part of building safer, more respectful communities.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I would like to start by asking you to tell us a bit more about your journey into advocacy and whatever um level of detail feels comfortable to you.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

I'm currently studying social work. Um and I think I I've just had um girls that I've dated and friends that I've talked to that have experienced sexual assault. And the way I say it is that when I hear those stories, it makes me want to beat someone up and run a marathon at the same time. And I hate running. So I just I have all these feelings that kind of bottle up inside when I hear those stories, and I feel like I can't just do nothing. I feel like I have to do something about it to protect people that I care about and people that I don't even know, to help them to to help men to understand the idea of consent and to protect women and protect men as well.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

So well, thank you so much, Daniel, for that perspective. And of course, welcome and thank you for being on our podcast today. What you just said absolutely and completely resonated with myself. Um, I also hate running. I had when I had the news or when I was informed by my wife about my daughter's sexual assault, I had the immediate same reaction of wanting to go and hurt someone. And the the marathon comment resonates because this experience has given me an endurance to fight and work on this topic that I never knew existed inside myself. As much as I can feel what you just said, could you help uh our audience sort of understand, you know, how you got to that, how your life experiences has shaped the way that you, you know, approach this sort of topic of consent and and also healing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Um, well, I I grew up not really being explicitly taught about what consent is. Um talked so my background, um, I'm Christian, and I think in the spaces that I've been in, we talk a lot about dating and marriage, including at the college that I'm at now at BYU Idaho. But oftentimes we forget to talk about consent. And I think that that needs to be a part of the conversation. I guess how I kind of got to feel what I feel. I don't know that I fully know the answer to that, but I think part of it is just what I've been taught that we should respect one another. Um and I kind of spoke a little bit on this at a talk that I did at BYUI. And I talked about in my perspective, the two biggest gifts that we have from God are our body and our agency, our right to choose. And in the case of sexual assault, both of those precious gifts are violated. And so for me, this is something that I can't just sit back and know that it's happening. I feel like I have to do something about it. As far as healing, I think part of a huge part of it is education. I think a lot of people have experienced sexual assault, but they don't label it as that because they don't even know that that's what happened. For me personally, um, as I was kind of looking into it a little bit more as I was preparing this talk to give, um, because I was just feeling this, my heart was kind of pricked that I needed to speak on it. And I felt a sense of urgency with it. Um, and especially within my context, that we really don't talk too much about consent. And with educating myself, I learned about sexual coercion, which I had never heard about before. And I realized that I had experienced that. And that was something that was really um eye-opening to me, where I had kind of tried to set boundaries with um the girl I was with, and she just kept pushing and pushing. And I kind of blame myself, but I realized that I was I had tried to set boundaries and they weren't respected. And so, and I don't necessarily fault her because I think on her point it was also lack of education. And so I think that unfortunately a lot of the pain simply comes from lack of education. So I really love and support what you're doing with I Have a Right To and not waiting for people to come to you to be educated, but that you're looking for places to go to teach um and to inspire people.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

I think that that's a wonderful answer, and it's unfortunately a very common experience for a lot of us that when we grow up in religious communities and in many types of communities, that consent is not spoken about, it's not discussed other than when talking about the idea of marriage. And I was wondering through the work that you do at your university and what you're doing as an advocate, how do you define consent in a way that resonates with young people, especially in communities where it's just not a topic that is discussed?

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah, that's a great question. I in my kind of talk that I did, it was like a 10-minute talk that I had, and I could have talked for an hour. But what I basically I define consent as a sacred principle. So essentially I break it down into a few different things. Like consent is mutual. Both people want to be there and are happy to be there, and they feel safe to leave uh whenever they would like. And uh also just a yes one time doesn't mean the yes every time, and a yes to one thing doesn't mean the yes to everything. And I talk about how in that way consent is ongoing, it's an ongoing conversation, and consent is sacred, that again, those two gifts that we've been given our body and our right to choose, which directly correlates with the mission of I have the right to, right? So I have the right to use my body and in ways that I would like, right? And so those two things I kind of connect with the idea of consent, of asking another for permission, being very clear on what that person would like and would not like, and that is an ongoing conversation. And so I kind of connect, I think in the religious perspective, that idea of being sacred, I think is something that is really clear. And so I that's kind of what I felt inspired to to connect in that definition.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Well, Thaniel, I'm first of all very sorry for your experience there, but stand in admiration of your desire through that experience to do the work um within your community, in your own relationships. And it is such important work. I'm so impressed with the clarity that you bring to this conversation because it is very clear in seeing your face. Our listeners will not be able to see Daniel's face here as he's speaking to us. But I have the privilege of that. And I can feel the conviction and see it as you speak. So what we're really talking about here is you had, I think, a very interesting perspective on consent, talking about it as a sacred principle. And many times we don't have conversations within a religious context of a st of a discussion to talk about consent. But also as um as a man, I want to just ask you where, you know, I'm gonna use words now that we associate with men in terms of a uh a more confined definition as society defines it, your your bravery, your courage in terms of engaging in these conversations. But, you know, how men manifest that bravery and courage is not typically with topics, you know, like this. Could you maybe answer this question of did you find that your original definition of masculinity um ever got in your way of your thoughts and development and evolution on the topic of of consent?

SPEAKER_03 11:39

I don't think it has for me. I think coming from again a Christian background, the person who I think is the perfect man that I look up to and aspire to be like is Christ. And I think this is exactly what he would do is to protect people who are getting hurt and who are hurting. And for me, I I also don't feel a lot of social pressure. I think I I have a unique context in that way of going to um a church school where I don't necessarily feel that pressure of being this kind of masculine man in the way of being aggressive or being assertive or those being kind of the qualities that are looked for in a man. I think I have somewhat of a unique context in that way.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Well then, if you could you explain to me, because maybe I don't even have to ask the question to you about aspirational masculinity, um, but I will phrase the question, which I wish I could do with more men, is so please, you know, explain to me, dive into how do you view masculinity and how should it manifest itself in our daily life?

SPEAKER_03 13:01

Yeah, that's something that that I've thought a bit about. And I think I guess like this simple, like the first thing that comes to my mind is that men are leaders, and not to say that women are not, but I think that that's often kind of a theme that I've seen just throughout the world, throughout scripture, that men are looked to to lead. So if you have a good leader, then you're being taught correct principles. If you don't have a good leader, then it's the opposite, right? And we see throughout history and throughout, I mean, even in modern times, where if you have a leader who's teaching incorrect things, and that kind of goes um to those who are following that leader, right? And so I think men have a responsibility to lead in a way that leads to the protection and well-being of people. And I think it's interesting, uh, I brought up that Christ is kind of my idea of what it means to be a man, a true man. But even if you look at the life of Christ, kind of in modern terms, he was he expressed both masculine and feminine qualities, where he was very direct and very assertive at times and also very nurturing, which is seen to be more of a feminine kind of perspective or energy um or role. And so I think even in in using Christ as an example for manhood, I think it's important to recognize that he also expressed kind of feminine qualities, what would be defined today as feminine qualities. So I guess I have kind of a a well-rounded definition of what it means to be a man.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I think that that's such a unique perspective to have, and it's such a mature way of approaching the idea of masculinity, um, because so many people like to focus on one side of it in the assertive, in the dominant. But we were just having a really interesting conversation with Julian Bell and um a survivor, and he was highlighting how it is also so very important to bring the more feminine aspects of it to have a complete definition. I wanted to ask you uh about how you started your path as an advocate. How did you create the space for a conversation within your own school and somewhat what are the biggest barriers to talking about consent um that you've faced?

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Yeah. I I guess I don't know exactly when I started the journey of being an advocate. I just I can look back on specific moments and conversations that I had with friends who had experienced assault, um, sexual assault, and had opened up to me about it. And I can remember how I felt in those moments and realized that I experienced it myself was a big motivator. But that was already kind of when I had started. And I think it might have been that I had heard, I think I had just heard like one too many stories for me to keep doing what I was doing and not being an active advocate. Um, I mean, I've I've had several friends, unfortunately, that I've talked to that have experienced. And again, I I feel very deeply and I connect with people on a deep level. And so hearing those stories, it hurts me when I hear them. Um again, like all those emotions that I talked about. And so um I think that it was kind of a gradual thing. It wasn't like one little thing that it's like, okay, now I'm I'm gonna be an advocate. But I I do remember a conversation I had with my grandma, uh, my late grandma. She I was kind of to figure out what I wanted to study and what I want to do for a career. And she mentioned that um she'd had a speaker. She worked at um VYU and Provo and led different um events and such, and she had a speaker that talked about manhood and being a father. And when she talked about that, it kind of, I think something inside of me clicked, and I'm like, okay, I want to focus on that a little bit more. And so that kind of led me more towards this route, I think. Um I actually switched my major to social work because it aligns more with this work. And I'm currently studying um to receive my master's degree and to be a counselor at a college is my goal, and to specialize in being an advocate for people who have experienced sexual assault, to be a sexual assault counselor and therapist. In talking about it at my school, um, there's essentially an interview process for this event. It's called iTalk. It's like a TED Talk. And I went through this interview process, it actually was in the like top 10, but they only choose five speakers. And so I didn't make it for that first round. But I think it was meant to be because when I did it again, I didn't give up. I went and interviewed again and I got in the second time, and it was actually in the fall semester, which there are a lot more freshmen and a lot more people who come to that that I talk. And so I think it was meant to be for that reason. Um, and my perspective was even if I just help one person, it's worth it. And I actually had um I had someone reach out to me over Instagram um and just said that like, hey, this is super random, but like you gave a i talk and it like changed my life. It gave me the confidence to get out of a relationship that I was in. And so it was that was powerful for me. And I didn't, I mean, I haven't heard anything from anyone else, and I don't need to, but I know that it helped at least one person, right? Um, I did even the first time when I didn't make it, I was like, okay, is this too sensitive of a topic that it didn't go through in this context? And that was the feedback that I received that it was not too sensitive, and I think that it was just a timing thing. And so um I had received very good feedback of we want you to speak, and essentially um I was able to speak that following semester. So I don't know that I experienced too many boundaries within this um within that the kind of I talk setting at my school. I think if I were to address my entire school, that would be a very different conversation. Um I had an audience of about a hundred people that were there.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

So well, Daniel, I had literally had goosebumps when you talked about that Instagram message. And I I can imagine it might be rocket fuel for you in terms of getting that kind of you know feedback. Um, I mean, how did you feel in that moment when you got that kind of approach in terms of like thanking you for being vulnerable and putting that out there and and helping someone?

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah, I was honestly surprised at first. I wasn't expecting to hear anything. And I think it definitely was an affirmation for me that this is helping people, even if it was a 10-minute quick talk where I tried to touch on as much as I could in 10 minutes. But obviously, this is a topic that requires more than 10 minutes to adequately cover. But I think that even that that just showed me that even a small effort can make a huge difference in someone's life.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Well, you know, at our org, one message that we always leave to um students is the power of using your voice. And, you know, um we just met um for the sake of our audience, but excuse me. Um we just met for the sake of our audience, but I already have, and I'm also a deep feeling and instinct-driven person, you know, Thaniel. And I have the distinct hard impression in my in my gut that you are gonna be helping not singular people, but you're gonna be helping thousands of people, you know, going forward, because the clarity and the conviction that you bring is extremely needed out in the universe. Um, so I just wanted to, you know, say that to you.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

So I have a couple questions, but I I wanted to start with spoke about going to the iTalk and And it was a very brief conversation, but I also know that you reached out to uh what they don't say and Shannon and Ray to ask about pointers and how to have these conversations because you're currently also doing other talks. Um what is the framework that you use uh in practice to explain these subjects? I know that we spoke about talking about the gifts and intersecting with the grace that comes with following the path of a godly man, but what is the practical way that you teach these subjects?

SPEAKER_03 22:33

Yeah, you're asking like the way that I personally approached it during that talk.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah, because it's I think that it's such a specific thing that every single person approaches in a in a in a different way. And it is always really interesting to see how other people decide to teach these subjects.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Yeah, having a kind of TED Talk um kind of atmosphere to it, I I chose to do a slideshow essentially to um have slides in the background. And I kind of started with a hook to get people's attention and then kind of continued from there and just kept it really simple. But um I think a lot of people aren't aware that this is happening within the context, the church school that I'm in, I think just in general, right? In the world, but especially within the context that I'm in, we have what's called the honor code, which is um something that we agree to when we come to the school here. And in that, we essentially commit to not having sexual relationships. And so, um, obviously, if we're not married, right? And so I think that there's kind of this idea that and kind of within just my church culture is that like we don't have sex before marriage, and so we don't have to talk about sex before marriage, but things still happen, and I think that people don't have that awareness to a larger scale, and so I really felt like I wanted to kind of bring that awareness, like, hey, this is actually happening here. Um, and a lot of people I think are naive to that. Um, and there's actually a study, there hasn't been any studies done in Idaho where I'm at, but there was study done in at BYU and Provo in Utah. And the result was that one in 21 students had experienced unwanted sexual contact within the last 12 months, um, according to the survey. And that's just within the last 12 months, right? So that kind of is aligned with other statistics that I've seen. But I kind of made it real like that's there's a hundred people, right? So that's five people in that room, or that's one person in in your social circle, like it's happened to someone, right? And it's kind of humanizing the like survivors and really like helping people realize like, oh wow, I probably know someone that has experienced this. Um, and then I did talk about like those two most precious gifts. Um, and then I actually created an analogy that I can that I can share. But essentially, uh there's a talk given at BYU um and it was called, it was kind of connected to the atonement of Jesus Christ, so kind of the healing and enabling power of Jesus Christ, and connected to application of sexual assault. Um, it was Benjamin Ogles who gave the talk, and he talked about um in there, he talked about an analogy, and I think the analogy is helpful for understanding kind of the victim blaming, but it doesn't come close to any like describing the experience of assault. And so the analogy is that he moves to a small town. I guess it's an actual story for him. This one, he moves to a small town, he leaves his wallet on the dashboard of his truck because he thinks, oh, it's a safe, you know, small town, no one's gonna take it. And he comes out the next morning and his wallet is gone. Someone had stolen it. And he blames himself. He's like, Man, I should have locked my truck, I shouldn't have left my wallet for anyone to see it. Um he starts blaming himself. Like, I shouldn't have been so naive that this is a safe place. And I think you can kind of see where I'm going with this, that that we can easily apply that to cases of sexual assault. Like, I shouldn't have been there, um, I shouldn't have been wearing that, I shouldn't have been doing that. And I think that it's obvious he makes this connection, he's like, let me be clear, like you were not the one who stole the wallet, like the crime was committed against you, you're not at fault, right? And I thought that was awesome. But I said, in my mind as I'm listening to the talk, I kind of thought, I'm like, well, that that's great. I think that's great for the victim blaming, but I think it's more experiencing sexual assault is more like you're in a car and someone in the passenger seat grabs the wheel and pulls it, and you get in a car crash. And so I actually kind of rolled with that, um no pun intended, to create an analogy to help people understand just consent as a principle. So not exact not just talking about sexual consent, but talking about um I kind of apply different principles, so like grooming and accommodation of like saying, like, sure, like okay, but it's not like an enthusiastic yes or a necessarily permission. It's just so that the pressure stops. And I kind of define a bunch of different things within the story where there's these two characters and kind of progresses where he asks her about her car. It's I call him Samantha and Matt, just random names, where Matt is like this kind of reckless guy. Samantha is very safe, she always uses her blinker, she drives very safe and kind of gets teased for it. But Matt is keeps asking her, Hey, like what kind of car do you drive? Like, hey, you should take me home. You should take me home. Like, I need a ride. And then eventually one day they're both they're the only two people left after an event. And Matt's like, You're my only ride home. Like, I need a ride. And so she says, Okay, sure, I'll give you a ride. And on this ride, they're going down the road, and Matt sees a shortcut. He's like, Hey, we should go this way. And Samantha was nervous, she'd never taken that road before, so she's like, No, like I don't really want to. And Matt grabs a steering wheel and pulls it to the right, and Samantha freezes, and the car ends up rolling and they get in a crash, right? And so I talk about from this analogy, I talk about that Samantha, even though she was alive and after kind of the scars and the physical wounds had healed, she still felt broken on the inside in ways that she couldn't see. And eventually she's able to start driving again. Sometimes she has to white knuckle it and just grip the steering wheel. Sometimes she cries, she has to pull over on the side of the road, but eventually she starts to drive again and be in control. And so I kind of I removed it from the sexual assault and the sexual context to bring it into that principle of respecting one's agency to choose, right? Um, I kind of explained that analogy in a roundabout way, but that's kind of the analogy that I focus on to help people understand what this is like for people who experience assault.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

I love it. I love it. It is very important to peep take people outside of the context because I think that's a very clever way to get people focused on the the concept of respect, the concept of safety. You know, at our organization, our our motto is safety starts with respect. And, you know, and this goes through every aspect of your life. So I I love the way that you frame that. So when you're out, you know, speaking now as an advocate, we I think mirrored um the evolution of our organization based on I think the experience of our own family and and our naivety and lack of awareness and knowledge about the epidemic of sexual violence. So we we call it internally listen, learn, and act. And, you know, when we first learned of the assault, my wife and I had to do a lot of listening. We had to absorb a lot of information in order to equip ourselves and to learn about how to be better parents to support the healing process of our daughter. And once we learned the action, there was an intent or purpose to that learning because there was a conviction to turn it into action. And I think there's been so much good work done in our society and and progress over the decades. But when it comes to the topic of sexual violence, I think there's been a lot more awareness raised. I hope there's been some learning, but that conversion to action, especially when it comes to men, you know, um, many men don't think sexual violence is a men's issue. And the reality is, um, from a victim perspective, it impacts both men and women. And from a perpetrator perspective, the overwhelming percentage of perpetrators are men. So when we look at this topic, it really is a men's issue, yet most men keep their head buried in the sand and say, this isn't, this isn't me. I'm not the one who's perpetrating necessarily, um, and it's not impacting me. So why should I care? And what do you think is are are you encouraged in your work looking at the ability to convert things into action and change? Or are you still in the oh my gosh, there's a lot of work to do and and we need to, you know, this is going to be a long-term, you know, effort.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Yeah, I think kind of the realization that I came to is that I can devote my the rest of my life and career to helping survivors of sexual assault, but I can't prevent every instance, unfortunately, as much as I'd love to. So kind of the the closure or the acceptance that I've come to is there's only so much I can do, but there's still so much I can do. And so I'm just gonna keep doing what I can to to help people around me. I'd love to continue to speak on this and to travel or kind of one thought is to be a counselor as kind of my f my main job and then to kind of travel on the side and to go speak in different places about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

So I was wondering now that you are aware of the issue and that you're taking steps to educate other people, what advice would you give to young men who want to align their work, their values, their faith? What can they do to to help and to have relationships and to support survivors in a in a healthy way?

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's a process that you're gonna you're gonna keep learning things that help you and you're gonna keep running into obstacles that you get to learn how to overcome. And I think just don't give up. Just keep if this is something that you're p truly passionate about and you want to help other men or help women to protect them and to help them understand this issue, I think just hold on to that passion that you have. Um and no matter what obstacles come up, just keep pushing forward. Um I think that again, I think I'm in somewhat of a unique context that I don't have any negative pressure that I personally feel um that would be holding me back from pursuing this. Um I have a lot of in my experience support in pursuing this. I think I've had people question like why I care so much about it or or what if it's the right context to be talking about it, I think there's certainly still questions, but I don't know that there's too many obstacles that I've experienced. So to anyone who might be experiencing those obstacles, I would just say just hold on to that passion and just keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

So if I may have a follow-up to that, because I know that you um have explained that you haven't had that many obstacles, but one of the bigger issues that we sometimes face when we're trying to bring our programming to schools that have a religious focus is that some environments believe that if you don't have these conversations with people, you're encouraging them in some sort of weird way to have relationships outside marriage, to just stray from the path that they believe is the correct one. So what would you say to those people that think us, uh Alex, that this is not an issue that we should discuss, this is not something that affects me, or on the other hand, we shouldn't even be talking about this because relationships only happen in the context of a marriage and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Yeah, I think again, it's just that awareness of yes, we have made commitments to not have sex outside of marriage and to help people understand that this still happens, that either people are uneducated and they make mistakes, or people are deliberately choosing to harm other people, right? And to use their their power or um whatever it might be to to hurt other people. And so I think that acknowledging that this happens doesn't in any way diminish the commitments that we've made. It just I think that it strengthens strengthens them that hey, this is happening, let's make sure that we are staying to the commitments that we've made and also protecting and caring for people who have been hurt.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

So very well said. And you know, when when we talk about you know consent and we talk about most of our programming, we ultimately find remarkable alignment with um any faith-based institution. And I think once that is sort of understood, you know, this this goes to the concept of of just human relationships and community. And and again, going back to our saying of safety starts with respect, I think all communities want to make sure we have that foundation. And even on, you know, consent, consent broken down into its Latin roots means to feel with someone. And I think it's a beautiful way to refocus the lens on relationships versus concepts like conquest or getting a notch on your belt or gaining an experience. And in many times we those situations are not relational, right? They are um about conquest, they're about how treating someone like an object. And I did receive a Jesuit education in university, and the concept of men for others um, I think is a beautiful concept if we try to think about this concept, you know, holistically. And, you know, Thaniel, I I I am going to make a factual statement is we need more men like you out there speaking to other boys and young men because um with our work on the road, we know young people today are struggling with this, and they're trying to offset what they know is their inherent persona, their their inherent goodness, their what exists in their um spirit, and um how to offset that versus what they are absorbing in social media through um peer pressure, you know, etc. And how do you maintain the that strength to be the person that you know you are in everyday situations um that come out? Um so we we are reaching the end um of our time together, Daniel, but I wanted to do it with a question that we ask every one of our guests is to finish your own I have the right to statement. So I don't want to put you on the spot, but um would love you to say I have the right to and then finish that sentence for us.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

I have the right to protect myself and other people.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Beautiful and what a simple yet uh strong statement that could change the world if we could get people to think about what that actually means and how they can put that into practice, you know, each day. Um I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet Daniel, and I have a feeling we are going to develop a friendship over the course of time because I do want to spend more time with you and learn about what you're doing and and how we as an organization can help and support um your work because I think it's critically important, and I admire the courage and bravery um of your conviction to go out there and um do this work. I think it's a beautiful thing that um we want to lift up to others. Um so thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

And I just want to say that having these sort of conversations with people like you brings me so much hope that we're moving in the right direction, and the fact that we were connected in such an organic way just brings me a lot of pride, and I love the analogy that you gave. I think that it's such a simple and powerful way of explaining such a deeply misunderstood topic, and I just I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you so so much.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

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