Anne Wintemute - CEO at Aimee Says

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom podcast. We have Anne Wintermute with us today. She is CEO at AmySays.com, the technology response to the global crisis of relationship abuse, so domestic abuse, right? Anne is a tackler of complex problems, lover of puzzles, and an urban homesteader. Well, we're gonna deconstruct that, uh, in Denver, Colorado. So Anne, welcome to podcast. Tell us a bit a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Thank you so much for having me, Charles. Yes, the reason you have me here is because of my role at Amy Says. We are using technology to change the landscape of support and services that people experiencing relational harm have. And like you mentioned, when I'm not doing that, I'm milking goats and making sourdough bread and tanning hides like a real urban homesteader would.

Milking goats. Um, uh, yeah, that's— I don't know what to say about that. Uh, I, I just know that I'll have my ranch in a couple years from now, and I'll probably have someone milk goats. I'll probably milk goats myself once. But I, I think there's like a therapeutic aspect to that, right? Like seeing the milk come through. Um, other than that, like, how did you get into all of this? And if you could quantify the problem of domestic abuse and give us a timeline. I feel it has gotten worse since COVID right?

Well, yes, COVID has increased stresses, uh, or kind of continued, uh, you know, financial challenges continue to increase those stresses, and stress does increase the rates of domestic violence, uh, victimization and perpetration. So my background is in using private business models to attempt to to solve really complex public health issues, especially as they, um, especially within systems that fail the most vulnerable. So, so that has taken me from evidence-based maternity care— we have a terrible perinatal mortality and morbidity rate in the United States— to early childhood education, specifically the elementary education space. And, and then I became really passionate about the ways that women were or were not believed, especially in the context of gender-based violence. And working directly with survivors in that space. There was never enough of me to go around talking about the, the kind of the statistics and the pervasiveness of this issue in the United States. This year, 10 million people will be victimized by like overt forms of domestic violence, physical, sexual violence and abuse. Compare that to 4 million women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer globally. This year. I mean, this is, you know, this is no shade on, on breast cancer. Obviously it's affecting so many people, but it's just to give us a little anchor point to this invisible, intractable public health issue that we just don't talk about enough. So we don't realize how pervasive it really is.

Right. And violence, generally speaking, has it been like more on one side rather than the other? Has it been more men rather than female? I don't know, I've been watching like some— my wife's been showing me some humorous TikToks, right? And there was like women hitting men in these, and that seems like it's okay, right? Like, isn't violence on both sides nowadays? It's just like stress on both sides. I mean, men are stronger than women and can be way more destructive, I feel, right? Generally speaking. So what's your take on that?

So my take is that both men and women can have unhealthy power dynamics in their relationships. When we look at it from a gendered perspective, if we look, for example, at domestic violence fatalities, it is overwhelmingly men killing women. I, I— and when we see the inverse, it is more likely that the female perpetrator of the domestic violence homicide was actually the victim of ongoing domestic violence in the relationship, felt she had no options. So when we look at the most kind of severe outcomes— we'll use fatality obviously as the most severe outcomes there is very clear gendered dynamic in that space. When we look at rates of kind of prosecution of criminal, like forms of violence that reach criminal levels, again, we're going to be looking at a very gendered dynamic. When we get kind of more into the granular aspects, there are lots of unhealthy women out there who use, you know, gaslighting and forms of psychological or emotional manipulation to maintain privilege in the relationship to get their needs met. No doubt that there is a— as we get away from the more severe forms of relationship abuse, that we see more of an equalizing of the genders in there. But they don't come to equal. They are— they don't come to equal at any particular type of abuse. And that is partly because their abuse, relationship abuse, is rooted in a sense of entitlement. And men have historically just had more privileges in society and within relationships than women have.

How does technology help solve that problem? I'm also a data guy and technologist. I believe that the data and technology can pretty much fix, uh, like 80-90% of our ills. Um, how— what are you building and how is it making the, the, this— the problem obvious enough for a solution to take place?

I, I love this. So, so one of the challenges, uh, in identifying at the individual level that there's relationship abuse going on, um, that is that, uh, issue of perception. So blame shifting is really common in these. So, you know, well, like, yeah, he got really mad at me, or she got really mad at me, but, you know, it's probably my fault because I did this thing. You know, there's a lot of blame shifting that goes on. Also, it's really hard to believe that the person that you're intimate with, the person that you love, would willfully and intentionally cause harm in order to get their own needs met. So there's a lack of clarity within that relationship. Well, you can use AI and, you know, if you think about it as a, in terms of infrastructure and data architecture, AI in a large language model context can take people's messy lived experiences, that weird thing that happened last night, an ongoing pattern over time, and turn that into clear structured data. It has a time, it has a place, there are tactics that are present. I can relate those to other pieces of information. So when we have the opportunity to get really granular about all of the kinds of things going on in a relationship, we can turn it into data that's pretty darn clear. And the clarity that we see at that individual level helps that individual take a step, right? Maybe I want to end this relationship. Maybe I need to protect my kiddos in this relationship. When we look at a population level and are able to look longitudinally over survivor-provided data, it's really kind of fascinating opportunities to see what the long tail kind of precipitation of events are in order to better inform our early intervention and prevention measures. So those are, say, two ways in which taking a data architecture approach to this public health issue is really transformative.

And you talk about this weird thing that happened last night, right? Like, when should a woman see yellow lights vs. red lights. And yeah, isn't, isn't this like the full complexity of the thing? Like, you're not sure, like, if you should walk away. You're not sure if this is like an actual red light, if you should forgive. Or I guess there's other steps before, like firing your husband, right? Like maybe try therapy or, um Talk it out, right? What do you have to say about yellow lights vs. green, uh, vs. red lights?

So the behavior itself, so like the weird thing that happened, um, I will use something kind of subtle and benign. And I came home after spending an evening out with my girlfriends last night, and, you know, my partner was really cold with me. And, you know, I tried to snuggle up to him and I was like, you know, what's going on? And he was like, oh well, You know, we both know you were out there looking for sperm donors tonight. Take that as a, as a, okay, that was the weird thing that happened last night. You know, now the woman is feeling like, gosh, no, I feel falsely accused. I got to defend myself. No, honey, I love you so much. You know, I was just out with my girlfriends. You know that I was. Well, you know, well, I don't really know. And when you're out like that, so there's a whole bunch of different things and power dynamics that just happened in that one example that I gave. It's isolating, right? She's going to be less likely to go out with friends. False accusations of infidelity are intended to make the person appear more committed, more doting, to give up more to show you that you are their priority, right? And I, you know, now somehow she is responsible for his coldness. So the blame has shifted. It was her behaviors that actually caused this. So in that one example, there's a variety of things that are going on. Now, if that were the only incident in that relationship, of that kind, that's something that couples get over. Maybe it was a bad night, he watched a movie, he's feeling extra insecure, you know, who knows. But if she comes and says, hey, I want to talk about that weird thing that happened last night because I really felt falsely accused and it felt unfair and I want you to feel secure in this relationship, right? His response is what, in that moment, is what reveals the entitlement and whether or not he sees this relationship and communication as an exchange in honesty, as an effort to seek kind of equal ground and understanding, or if his goal is that domination, is to isolate her, is to make her feel responsible for, for his feelings. That— so one was the red flag, the other is the investigation, and is this a relationship that can be healthy? Or is this a relationship that will continue to be toxic? Is this actually the beginning of, or the middle, or even the end of an abusive and controlling relationship? The response to establishing the boundary, the response to attempting to, um, I, uh, take up space, have self-worth, get to have your own perspective and opinion, uh, is really what is most revealing about behaviors that could otherwise be one-offs or just bad nights.

And what do you— can't you filter with like these insecurity things off the bat? Like when you start dating, can't you spot these trends later on so that you don't have to fix them? We'll get to the fixing part, but like, you know, as a woman, just not to put yourself into danger, like can't you spot these things early and filter for like not selecting your mate off these traits?

Sometimes, yes, sometimes.

Or are these people like so good at hiding these things? Because pathological people, they, they compensate with being like being so good at hiding, like predatory style, right?

So yes, so some people are clumsy and they are clumsy off the bat. Um, that clumsiness may be due to a sense of entitlement, but there isn't necessarily a willful effort to wear down the other person, to conceal or to mask their true intentions, right? If someone's kind of clumsy from the outset, the other party might be like, wow, that doesn't feel particularly good. But abusive relationships don't start with abuse. They start with love bombing. They start with, oh my gosh, you're the most beautiful woman that I've ever met. I've never met anyone like you. You're totally not like my ex. She was so mean to me, but you're really wonderful. They want to get— they, they like to seek kind of intimacy early and, and gather information through that intimacy that they can use to really cement that relationship. We call it grooming, right? If we're thinking about that in terms of like, you know, perhaps an age-inappropriate relationship or, or, you know, child predation, we would be like, that's grooming. It's, it's breaking down the defenses of the other person. Well, what happens over time is, you know, the original bond that was created through that love bombing, through that grooming, persists even though the relationship starts to get more and more challenging. I— so, so sometimes you can see early on, um, often retrospectively, people will be like, oh, that period that felt really good was actually love bombing, and that was all— that was a red flag. It is hard to, to see love bombing as a red flag when you're in it.

Um, how do you fix that once you've spotted this? Um, are these people fixable? I think everyone is, but all depends on like environments and, uh, options of therapies that are available to these people and a bunch of factors. It is complex. In an ideal world, in a utopia, all of that would be fixed. Everyone's recuperable, in my opinion. Um, But yeah, how do you know if this is fixable? How do you know that, oh, let me not even try therapy because this is getting fucking dangerous and I need to walk, you know?

Well, first, statistically speaking, I— from the field of expertise, couples therapy is contraindicated when there are power dynamics. If one person is having a different, uh, relationship than you are then going in, I think that you guys can seek a shared goal, uh, is, um, is not true and can lead to, to obviously to additional harm. But I'm going to back up a little bit from the therapy aspect. You know, is this fixable? Is this person fixable? Is not the same question as should I stay with this person. You can believe in the infinite possibility of someone's self-recovery and their ability to grow and become better people and not make yourself the martyr that, that has to press that forward and to make that happen, right? Those can be two separate questions. The issue about whether or not someone's kind of deep sense of gendered entitlement is reparable is difficult to address because the only person who can decide that they want to improve the behavior is the person who is engaging in those behaviors, right? There's no amount of love from a partner that's going to fix that. There's no amount of things that a partner can say that is going to change that if the the person themselves says, no, I want to be the priority. I want my needs, uh, in the home, or my needs in the bedroom, or my needs, you know, for adulation to be the priority. That someone who, who persists in that mental framework has no reason to improve. There it is, succeeding on its face as they are behaving. Right? So it's really hard to think, like perhaps you, you know, you're a well-adjusted person who wants to see kind of equilibrium in a relationship where you believe the other person has agency and autonomy. You want to deepen your own understanding of yourself and of the other party. Like, yeah, you would come to that. Like, no, if things are wrong, I want to do something to make them better. But that is a fundamentally different mindset from someone who says, I don't care how you feel. I care how I feel.

That's hard. It's, it's so complex, right? But in your opinion, as soon as you get the early warning tells that the person is definitely seeking power dynamics and has zero openings, you should just walk away because it's like a slippery slope, the down, down, downward hill from there. Um, and your platform helps sort of giving the person these signs, right? It's like, oh, you have this sign, you have that sign. Even in one date, I mean, one day is not the most scientific thing. Usually it's like wait a couple of days, but even in one day, like, shit can get really bad, right? Like, things can go downhill very quickly. So your platform helps recognize the telltale signs of this. Um, What's your— do you have like insurances in case your AI just like misdiagnoses something and people blame you?

So, so let's take that misdiagnosis part and then something else you said that, um, I think you said that I believe that once people see the red flag that they should leave the relationship. I believe that people have agency. I— people— I believe that people should be able to make decisions based on real information and not manipulation. All right, so our hope certainly is that people are able to find healthier relationships, that they are able to thrive, and that our AI is able to help them do that. But neither me nor Amy the AI is ever going to say, you need to end this relationship. Now you know, now you need to end this relationship. And which really kind of branches into what you said around diagnosis. There is no diagnosis. A behavior is either harmful or it's not harmful. It has a flavor of pepper or salt or tamarind or something else, and the flavor are you know, system is going to identify that's gaslighting, that's emotional, you know, that's belittling, that's name-calling, that's assault, it's blocking your exit, it's a restriction of autonomy. Those aren't diagnoses, those are just giving words to the kind of lived experiences of domination that are so commonplace that we can't see them unless they become really, really overt. They're just kind of baked into our culture. There was a movie recently with Sasha Baron Cohen Cohen, um, was it called, uh, Ladies First? I, I highly recommend it. It's an easy watch. Um, it's funny, just about everything that he's in is funny. But he hits his head, and when he wakes up, the gender roles are reversed such that the women have all of the power. Uh, and it's really uncomfortable to watch because you recognize, just because the words are coming out of a woman's mouth, that they sound very different than when they come out of a man's. I, I highly recommend folks um, enjoying that movie. It's a, it's a pleasure to watch, and it is very revealing.

We talked about grooming, right? And I run a channel called The Greats, and we have like a section in that channel which is like, uh, the could have been greats, or like warnings stories, right? And there's, uh, Puff Daddy in there, there's Jeffrey Epstein with like, um grooming, right? Like, are these obvious patterns of grooming? And have, have these cases made, uh, it's more obvious? Like, has this sort of shown a light on what grooming is like and what, like, uh, women abuses is like?

Um, I, I love this question. First, I know a lot more about the, the Epstein cases than I do about the others, so I'll I'll keep my insights to that. What the Epstein case has revealed is how easy it is to continue to silence and sideline victims, how easy it is to continue to hold people in power with a sense of privilege and a buffer against accountability. Even when we look globally, because Epstein had friends all across the world, even when we look globally, we see that men in other countries are more likely to be held accountable and not shielded than men in our, in our own country. Uh, the behavior in those cases— was there grooming? 100%. Was there outright trafficking and direct coercion that came involuntarily, right, which is different from grooming? Absolutely. Should we be horrified by the things that happened in that case? Absolutely. I— but what I think was revealed by that coming to light was less like, oh, well, grooming happens, it can happen to anyone, we really need to, you know, look at this seriously and understand it better. That's not what came to light. What came to light is you can predate against hundreds of women, many of whom were, were young teenagers, and absolutely get away with it, right? And all of the other people to get away with it— I know that there was a, a minor amount of adjudication for Epstein, but I think what it reveals is how far we have to go, um, to protect victims, to believe victims.

Can't stop but like finding, uh, potential cures for, for these people because obviously like jail and the punitive system, I'm not for it. I think we can do better. I think it's the best solution we found so far, but we can, we can do better, right? And I think, you know, you talked about having a daughter. I mean, it's definitely not the best one, but having a daughter, generally speaking, uh, changes your your side. I mean, if you're not a total psychopath, right? Because you need that— having a daughter has you develop empathy and put yourself in, in her shoes, right? And what it will be like to, to live in a man's world. And that changes your perspective. Before that, like, less drastic, right? Because you don't want to have like a kid with someone that's like mentally disturbed, generally speaking. Um, being a founder I think that teaches you agency, and men just need to put their energy into something, right? They need to conquer something. I think that's testosterone, and conquering something, like, not meaning not their wives and like having power over their wives. What wives should be like life partners, and you should have productive exchanges, and it's not about like putting that person down, right? Like, but starting a business is a a very good, uh, place to put your energies, and you will learn so much, and you will become such a better human being starting a business. And that's my bias, for— of course. And the last one is also biased, like, uh, go run, you know, like, go crunch a very hard distance. Because again, if you're a loser in life, and if you just don't have anywhere to put your energy other than, like, beating your wife, or, like, putting her down, Um, yeah, like running is a good outlet for that. Plus again, you will feel the pain, right? And you will just become better. Your biochemistry will evolve. And I think it's, it's a good, um, therapeutic mechanism. Uh, and both are hard, right? Like both are super hard. But I just think men have a need for, for domination in some aspect in their lives. It's just like about choosing productive and socially acceptable outlets. What do you think about that?

I, I, I love the utopia. Um, I love that it's difficult for you as a human, Charles, to put yourself in the shoes of a highly narcissistic person. But if we, if we go to the data, because yay data, we love data. Um, and we look at folks who are actually highly accomplished, right? So, so taking, you know, that context to what you just said about, you know, whether conquering something or starting a business, highly, um, uh, successful, competitive, driven people. We're going to take your CEO class, and we take a cross-section of that, and we look relative to the general population, what are the rates of pathological narcissism, pathological character disorderedness? It's higher. It's higher in that group. I don't know what happened, but I'm not actually able to hear you anymore.

That's because I'm muted. Sorry, I, I was just saying, does that mean they, they beat their wives? You know, like, I, I think a lot of them use that aggression and that violence inside their own company, and I think that, that's what I hope, please.

They're not meeting their employees.

No, I— and they learn by doing, by being in a socially acceptable context, which is the enterprise. And don't get me started on like corporations, because I think some, some of these are toxic. But I, I think that's where they invest their energy, and I think most are not like abusive, um, to their spouse. But data could prove me wrong. Why? Because it's freaking stressful to run an enterprise anyway. I just continue with your point. Didn't mean to cut off.

Uh, no, no, I appreciate that. I'm so sorry that I missed a moment of what you said. Um, I, I think that the, the research and the field and the understanding in this space would deeply challenge that perspective. Um, but I want to say that with the basket, the offering of it is very difficult to understand the root causes, the ideology, the, the ontology, the, um, the entitlement that lies underneath of this power dynamic if that isn't a way that you yourself think. And that's one of the challenges, is the people who understand that thought pattern, understand that dynamic, understand what causes it are either the perpetrators or the victims. People who don't engage in those types of behaviors say things like, well, going for a run would be a more healthy output, right? And I love that because I'm glad that you don't understand it and you don't engage in those types of behaviors. But it isn't actually, I think, adjudicative. It doesn't actually repair the situation, doesn't improve the situation because it misunderstands the fundamentals of it. So the perpetrators who have no desire to reduce their access privilege, etc., by improving or calling out that behavior, and victims. And we don't listen to victims categorically. We do not unequivocally listen to victims when we don't understand those stories, when we put them on the defense. Well, you saw the red flag early, you should have done this. And well, I would have done this thing differently. And well, then why didn't you leave? Why didn't you call the police? Like, how could you have children with this person? The many ways that we don't listen to victims. If we aren't the perpetrators and we don't listen to victims, it's really difficult to understand the complexities of the issue, which is why there's a highly specialized field to this and why something like our product now exists, because it bridges that gap of misunderstanding, of kind of mythical thinking even, to give survivors access to the types of support and information that just are not out there, or that aren't out there in the, uh, the, the, at the scale that they need.

Right. And the first steps to utopia, I guess, is like one, opening the channels of conversations and, uh, making all that stuff public, right? When you shine a light on all the disgusting stuff, it's, uh, we can now study it, right? We can come up with potential solutions and then we can build, uh, technologies off it. And arguably what you're building is a step towards that. So at what step are you in that journey? Like, how good is it? The app?

I, I mean, we've been on the market for 2 and a half years. We've had tens of thousands of users from 160 countries. Um, we're pushing billions of tokens. Uh, it is, uh, a, um, rapidly growing product in a space that people are still catching up in believing that we even need it, right? Unless they're the, the survivor, um, themselves, which is an interesting intersection to be at because typically You know, when you look at fields of innovation or spaces where innovation is happening, there is a kind of downward pressure of, hey, we need this thing. And they know the ultimate user, whereas we are really building kind of this grassroots consumer-led revolution in innovating in this space. So we're well into this. We are well into this. Are we where we want to be? No. Could we— the way I imagine it, here's how I imagine it. I— when the first TVs came out, it was incredible, right? A moving picture, but there wasn't necessarily volume, or things were kind of granular. And now we've improved to these, like, you know, 4K super high resolution things where I can't tell if that bug isn't crawling on my arm while I'm watching that, that video. We're still in the early television phase of what AI is going to be able to do for people, but man, that first television was still incredible. It was still the introduction of a technology that transformed people's lives.

What's been— what kind of success story have you got from your platform? Like, it must be gratifying, but it also must be a bit traumatizing. I mean, you've lived some of that stuff yourself. Um, is— what's the good part of running that business? What's the, the very challenging part?

Uh, the good part is all of the success stories, the people who said, um, I never felt like I had the support that I need. I waited on the phone for 45 minutes. My lawyer didn't believe me. My own mother didn't believe me. I, you know, my children were taken, uh, whatever, right? They have the kind of support that makes the dark forest that they're walking through— like, we can't— listen, we can't, we can't extract them from the forest. They have to walk that journey. I'm sorry. Like, we can't undo the past, but we can light it for them. Heck, we're building a Jeep with headlights because, you know, maybe like they still got to drive the Jeep, but we can give them 4 wheels and there's headlights. And so they know where they're going. I mean, those are the success stories that we hear. The hard parts are, you know, technology isn't perfect. Technology can be frustrating to use. Not everybody utilizes it in the same way or has the same background. So the hardest emails for us in kind of customer service space are the, I can't get it to do this. I'm maxed out. I'm frustrated. I'm already traumatized. You know, fix it, make it work. Those are, those are the hardest. It breaks my heart because, you know, we're working over here as hard as we can to try to solve issues for survivors, and for some folks, at the end of the day, using a, you know, a tech tool is a challenge.

Again, pardon my naïveté, but say the physical part, right, and the security, I feel that's still important, right? Like, I'm still the chief security officer of my wife. Um, and when someone doesn't feel in security, um, physically or mentally, I think that's when they start imploding and making bad decisions and freaking out, right? Um, and these, uh, women are— I mean, it's, it's the opposite, right? Not only is their men not making them feel secure, they're, they're doing the opposite. They're like the bad scary predator. Um, the physical part, calling the police for physical security, does that help? And again, pardon my naivete, but like, your app, shouldn't you provide like, I don't know, like a call in that security guy as a Uber? It's just like Uber a big 6-foot-5 fridge, uh, at your house to a company used as to some place. Maybe very naive, but, uh, is there some, some truth or value in that?

I, I'm not sure I 100% understood the question because I don't know what a Uber is.

Uh, but you've never taken a Uber? Like a cab?

An Uber? Oh my gosh, okay, an Uber.

Yeah, uh, an Uber security to you, it's like—

yes. Um, I— that's funny, I like that. Yeah. So, so one, you know, if our system detects that there's imminent risk to that person, which is, you know, not the majority of the time, the majority of the time you're managing kind of in-between incidents, but if there's imminent risk, our computer is detecting it and it's throwing a banner recommending folks call, um, for local support because, you know, an AI cannot reach out and be big and scary and, you know, stand in between a perpetrator and the victim. Uh, the, but whether or not bringing in other parties for protection is, you know, helpful is a really complicated question. And perpetrators tend to be very skilled. That's how they got these, you know, these relationships in the beginning. They tend to be very skilled at character management and perception management. So unfortunately, it's really common to call the police, have them show up, and have the guy say, oh yeah, she's just— she's off her meds right now, she's not doing well, I've been trying to take care of her, but, you know, things are really bad and she hit me. Um, it just can be really difficult to— for officers to figure out who the primary aggressor was in a situation. And often it's actually the victim that ends up arrested. They look crazy, they're panicked, they're freaking out, they're yelling, they're crying, whatever. And the perpetrator is like, let me give you a totally rational explanation for what happened here. And they're calm, and they're, they're often the party that's believed, unfortunately.

Yeah, I've heard similar stories, right? Like, um, I think one of my, uh, brother-in-law or something, he's in, uh, LA, and he had like— he has homeless people trade in their, um, their cans for money, right? And he, he has— sometimes they get crazy, right? And they attack him and they call the police on him. It's like— and like the police is like thinking of arresting him because the, the homeless person that just started that shit, right? Is like, it's very tricky. Another thing, and I know we sort of need to wrap this up soon, but, um, community, right? If they have community, I think not only would it help with like diminishing the cortisol— people need friends and families around to just chill— but it would also potentially help resolve the conflict, right? If I think of, uh, I don't know, like, can't they call a brother, uh, the the brother might not be there physically, but is, is it, uh, smart to call a friend to be just like a middleman and prevent stuff from going downwards?

Um, so two things. One of the frequently deployed tactics, uh, is isolation. So, you know, your brother doesn't really have your best interests in mind, or, you know, I really don't like when you contact my family. That's not appropriate. That's undermining me. And slowly they can sever the ties to, to the community. And that's intentional, because when you have other people out there who will do your bidding, uh, you know, then the perpetrator is going to have less power. But there's another challenge to that, which is even within family systems or community systems, perpetrators tend to keep their bad behavior private in, in the home, quiet, such that it doesn't raise the suspicion of the people around them. So if I'm the victim and I call, you know, my friend and my friend says, you know, I don't really know what to do. I don't really want to get involved. That's a common response. I don't really want to get involved. I mean, like, I've never seen him do any of that. Like, are you sure that that's going on? So there, that is not the clear pathway that most folks think it is. And unfortunately, lots of people are, their ideas around relational harm are not rooted in kind of the, the, the well, you know, deeply understood kind of fields level of context. And so they invalidate the, the survivor. Well, I'm sure he didn't mean it like that. Well, you know, sometimes people get mad and punch holes in the wall. You know, my husband's never done that, but, but maybe there was another cause. Maybe he had a really bad day. It is really difficult for people at the individual level who aren't the targeted person to identify and make efforts to hold accountable for perpetrators, which is part of why this, you know, continues to go so unchecked in society.

How can we help, uh, people sort of observing that, understanding the problem, right? I've told you, like, for this podcast, like, it's not like if my relationship has been easy. It's not like if I've been chilled, like, all the time, right? Like, I had we all have like moments of extreme stress and we need to learn to deal with these things that we were never taught by anyone, uh, how to deal with it, right? But I mean, it's— I got my shit together. I don't consider myself abusive. Um, how can we people like outside of that circle— and I could fully understand how someone not in my situation could like this could go south, right? Like economically, or they don't meditate and they, they have like a very worse off situation of mind. How can, how can I help like as a quote-unquote outsider?

Yeah, like how, how do you be an ally? I believe women. That's a, that's a simple one. But being willing to say like, hey, even to a guy, like, I don't know what's true or what's not, but I want you to know that I do not tolerate dominating women. That's not healthy. And if it's ever something that I see, I'm gonna call it out, right? Like, just saying, like, it doesn't have a place here. I don't have to make an accusation. I didn't see anything, but maybe I've, I've heard something. Like, if more men knew that other men around them wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing, if they knew about it, I, I think that that would be helpful. So one is on the, the victim side, like, hey, I'm gonna believe you. I, you know, let me know how I can if I can help. Um, believing is often enough. Uh, but men, men to men, like, I, I don't know what's true or not. I've heard some things. I, I— that has no place here in this relationship. If that's something that I ever see, I'm going to make decisions about our relationship based on that.

What can you define dominating? You know, because again, I'm not clear on yellow lights and green lights. Um, men, generally speaking, are macho, uh, and like put women down, like in their normal interactions, right? Like, it's just, uh, we, we live in a man's world, right? But that's like soft, right? Like, that's not a red light. What, what's an actual red light, you know?

I, I mean, is it not a red light if a man says something deeply objectifying, um, or I, I cruel about a woman that indicates that he finds his life or quality of life to be of higher importance. I mean, that's a, that's a red flag. Uh, that's the locker room talk that we talked about.

Can you define like word for word what that would be? Just give me an example because I mean, I don't often witness these things, right? Um, I, you know, like something deeply sexual or be like 'Yeah, who gives a fuck about her? You know, she's just a stupid dumb bitch,' like whatever. Like, I don't know, tell me.

Yeah, yeah. Um, how about, uh, yeah, because that, that doesn't have to do with women.

Like, some men will say that for men, right? Like, that's, that's true.

And I, I would, I would think that the language that I'm gonna say is gonna be more specific about a woman or a relationship. Um, you know, for example, uh, yeah, I took that— I took a woman out last night and I bought her dinner, but that bitch wouldn't even kiss me at the end. That is, yeah, entitlement, right? Yeah, right. That is pretty clear entitlement. But, but you were asking a, um, a, a question earlier that kind of bleeds into this one. That's a red flag, right?

Like, he believes pretty bad stuff, obviously.

Yes, but that's really, really common. That is really common. We hear that kind of stuff all of the time.

But tell me something that a man in a relationship, right, would say, because there's a bunch of men that are chasing, uh, skirts like that. I don't tend to get along with this type of man, by the way. Uh, but like someone in a relationship, give me like something.

Um, she can, she can leave this relationship if she wants, but she's not getting anything. She's not going to get back in this house. I'm going to change the, the locks on the, on the door, right? Like, okay, so sure, you can have this, but I'm gonna take all of this away from you. Um, yeah, I don't know why she's, um, you know, why she gets upset with me. She doesn't work. All I'm expecting is she has dinner on the table at 5 o'clock, right? These are gendered levels of entitlement.

Oh yeah, that's old stuff, by the way. That's stuff we used to hear all the time in 1980, which is fucked up when you think about it. It's like, bitch, go make me a sandwich or something. But some men, like a very small propensity, still think that way.

It's alive and well. There are a billion ways that it can show up in language, and it is hard to name it all in language because then people are like, well, I didn't say that, so it's different. The better thing to check in on is, is it— do the two people in this relationship, is it equally safe for them to disagree? If one person feels like it is not safe to disagree, that's because the other party is willing to use more dominance, things that feel scary and threatening, to assert their way. It doesn't matter if we're talking about things in the bedroom or the kitchen or who gets to drive or who's picking who gets to hang out with what, we're going on vacation, how money is spent. It doesn't matter what the topic is. If one person does not feel like it is safe to disagree because the other person will be intimidating in some way, whether that's sexually, financially, psychologically, emotionally, and certainly physically, that is a relationship where one person is dominating the other. And when we look at that, that can be women dominating men too. Like, I— every word that came out of my mouth was not the right word, and so I just let her yell at me, and then like, that's how argument went. Like, she would tell me that I was wrong, I would have to apologize, and that's how the argument— you know, that's how, that's how we resolved conflict, air quotes, in our relationship. That would be an example of a female perpetrator of that kind of domination. But it's easier to see it that way than to name all of the, you know, potential iterations of, of thought or language, and they could come out of someone's mouth. Is, is it equally safe for the parties to disagree?

Yeah, um, interesting. I think you made it pretty clear here. Thanks for being on. Where can, uh, people find out more about you, Anne?

Yeah, visit us at ameesays.com. It's A-I-M-E-E-says.com. Any of the contact buttons get to me. My name's Anne Wintermute. You can find me on LinkedIn and social media. I'd be happy to, to, uh, continue the conversation.

That was Anne and Charles Cormier for another