When Penn Badgley isn’t thrilling audiences as love-struck lothario Joe Goldberg on Netflix’s You, he’s busy educating himself as an advocate against gender-based violence. Badgley has been working closely with the Tahirih Justice Center — a national nonprofit organization committed to serving vulnerable populations of immigrant women and girls through direct services, training, education, and policy advocacy — to better understand how people can impact meaningful change.

Teen Vogue spoke with Badgley about his recent time touring a detention facility in El Paso, the need for gender equality, and the books he recommends that promote a greater sense of empathy and understanding.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Teen Vogue: Can you talk about your time in El Paso?

Penn Badgley: I was part of a delegation of advocates and lawyers with the Tahirih Justice Center and the National Center for Human and Civil Rights. The center has been trying to establish their own quadrant of the conversation in their space, and it’s great. It was a learning delegation. We went there to witness, which was hard. For instance, walking into a detention facility knowing that you’re there on a tour, and everyone being detained is not. That particular aspect is very surreal, because it’s not a prison; these are not criminals so the entire thing seemed arbitrary and obviously racist. I shouldn’t say it seemed, the whole thing is racist and evidently arbitrary. It was disturbing, to say the least.

TV: What made you want to become an advocate for migrant women and girls?

PB: The seed of this is my friendship with the founder of the Tahirih Justice Center, Layli Miller-Muro, and the shared ideals that we hold sacred, including equality among women and men — the latent equality of women and men because it doesn’t yet exist. I think, also, it is — how can it not be something I think about at this stage, given the nature of the role that I’m currently recognized for? Moreover, I might say, for any role I’m known for. There are so many facets to the ways we learn about ourselves, and then therefore treat ourselves and others; the stories that young boys and girls learn about themselves, and the way that that translates into the ways they treat each other. We learn these lessons at home, we learn them on television and in movies and books. For instance, the role that I’m known for now, Joe in You, it is a deconstructive exercise, examination, and commentary, which is an important step in the process towards justice and equality for us all. But we also have to be constructive. So I think what we learn by watching a show like mine right now — hopefully people are thinking about it in that way — is how bad things are in a very quiet way, that we don’t always examine in these gender roles and media. But then the really important other 50% of the process is also trying to imagine, and hopefully embody, healthier gender roles.

TV: Often people don’t understand the impact of gender-based violence. Violence against women is everywhere. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about gender-based violence that need to be dispelled?

PB: Well, first, let me say that I’m not an authority and I’m not sure. Or rather, let me say, I don’t want to mansplain any of this. I think young people, depending on the environment they’ve grown up in, don’t at all realize the seriousness of it. They don’t realize how prevalent it is, how kind of violent even some of their own behavior can be — like emotionally violent. We can be abusive without using our bodies, and I think it actually kind of starts there, and then later manifests physically. There’s a lot of coarseness in our culture that young people are taking on and absorbing very nonchalantly. While at the same time, this great sensitivity is developing for young people that’s never really been there. One misconception might be that gender-based violence only happens to weak people, to weak women and girls, to unintelligent women and girls, to minority or lower socioeconomic status, impoverished women and girls. It happens, as far as I understand, across all segments of society, across all populations, all cultures.