You may not come into a highly patriarchal society and
say hey, tell me about how you mistreat women around here.
Of course, that would not be responded to well.
But it doesn't mean you can't find a way to ask those questions.
And say, well, I understand that,
from what you've told me, this is how your families behave,
or how girls get married as soon as they menstruate.
This is an issue we have been dealing with, in child early forced marriage.
You have to find a way, I think, to somehow represent
what you may strongly believe to be a human-rights based
orientation to a problem that isn't matching up with what
might be sort of traditional cultural religious values.
But to do so in a way that, as much as you possibly can,
is thoughtful, polite, and open to dialogue.
Because then you have at least maximized your chances that there will be dialogue,
as opposed to just denial, or go away,
or, in fact, you're a threat [LAUGH] to us.
And that doesn't do anybody any good, particularly,
I would say, the people who you feel may be most vulnerable in this context.
And those may be minors, they may be girls, they may be women,
they may be minorities, they may be disabled, LGBTQ, all those populations
that we know in global context may be facing marginality and disadvantage.
Those are the people we want to represent.
But those are not often, typically, the people you first meet.
You meet the gatekeepers that are in the positions of power.
How do you negotiate your way through that gate without sort of storming
[LAUGH] through or accepting somehow no is the last word, or
we don't have that problem around here is the last word?
Obviously, we have to keep questioning, but to do so in a way that,
as much as we possibly can think of, is done in a culturally-appropriate manner.