What prison taught me about gender violence | Meggie Mapes | TEDxKC

A communication researcher spent months in prison studying men who'd harmed their partners — and found not monsters, but people taught that winning, at any cost, was the meaning of being a man. Meggie Mapes traces how the "language of violence" is learned, and what it actually takes to change the rules of the game — in relationships, and in ourselves.

Dr. Meggie Mapes is a communication researcher, educator, and author dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations to communicate with authenticity and impact. She is a professor and director at the University of Kansas, author of the award-winning open textbook Speak Out, Call In, editor of the Journal of Communication Pedagogy, and founder of the consulting firm Meggie Mapes, LLC.

Her research takes her inside prisons, where Dr. Mapes has co-facilitated batterer intervention programs to study the cultural beliefs that reproduce gender violence. What she found — that violence is a meaning problem, not a monster problem — is the subject of her forthcoming book.

When she’s not in the prison or in the classroom, she works with entrepreneurs and organizations on strategic communication and storytelling, delivers keynotes, workshops, and trainings across the country, and resides in Kansas City with her partner and two dogs.

Meggie believes that the stories we tell are a powerful tool – a tool that can connect or destroy us – and that changing destructive stories, through communication, is the life force of our future. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx