Jackson Katz: Violence against women—it’s a men’s issue
Posted by Michelle Moquin on June 4th, 2013
Good morning!
My friend Mirna posted this on my Facebook page in response to my FaceBook post, that I tweeted last week. Thank you Mirna!
Since I have been posting about sick men so much lately, this is kind of refreshing, don’t you think? In my opinion, this is a clarion call to men to break the complicit silence and do something to support women by challenging the men that abuse women.
Jackson Katz: Violence against women—it’s a men’s issue
Jackson Katz asks a very important question that gets at the root of why sexual abuse, rape and domestic abuse remain a problem: What’s going on with men?
Why you should listen to him:
Jackson Katz is an educator, author, filmmaker and cultural theorist who is a pioneer in the fields of gender violence prevention education and media literacy. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), which enlists men in the struggle to prevent men’s violence against women. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, MVP has become a widely used sexual and domestic violence prevention initiative in college and professional athletics across North America. Katz and his MVP colleagues have also worked extensively with schools, youth sports associations and community organizations, as well as with all major branches of the U.S. military.
Katz is the creator of popular educational videos including Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity. He is the author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help and Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood. He has also appeared in several documentaries, including Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes andMissRepresentation.
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Readers: Part of the problem is that men are always going to think they are better than women because they believe, because they have been told, that they were created in the image of God. No one seems to discuss that part. As long as men think this, they will think they are better than women, and women will be treated as less than.
Thoughts? Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
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michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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June 5th, 2013 at 8:33 am
Obama has stepped up to the plate and appointed Rice to a position that the republicans can’t affect.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:34 am
Zen Lill I am still savoring your pics.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:47 am
Zander on Dealing with Dislikable People
It’s an undeniable truth—we all know people we just don’t like.
Of course, some of these “enemies” are people we can simply avoid.
But all too often, the person is someone we’re in regular contact with, such as a coworker, a boss, a next-door neighbor or a best friend’s new love.
So how can we all gracefully handle this type of conundrum?
I got some smart strategies from life coach and Daily Health News monthly contributor Lauren Zander.
If there’s anyone in your life who really rubs you the wrong way…
YOU CAN GET OVER YOUR DISLIKE
Zander’s advice is likely to take many people by surprise. “If you have decided to dislike someone, then you are also capable of deciding to give up the dislike,” she told me. Now, this doesn’t mean that your nemesis has to become your best friend.
But by slightly adjusting your perspective, you can learn how to tolerate this person without pulling your hair out. And once you’re able to accomplish that, you never know—you might even begin to like the person (a little).
You wouldn’t mind that, right?
Here’s how to proceed…
1. Release your frustration.
If this person is actively hurting your feelings, then the first step is to gently talk to him or her about it. Let’s say that your best female friend’s new love interest is repeatedly rude to you during conversation.
First tell your friend about your concern, so she doesn’t feel like you are going behind her back. Then, the next time you see her love interest in person, beckon him to a private corner and be polite but frank about what bothers you and why.
Try saying, “I know my friend is very fond of you, but I wonder if you realize that you sometimes offend me. For example, the other day…” Getting this out into the open will not only ensure that he is aware of his effect on you (in case he wasn’t)…but it will also lift a weight from your shoulders. It means that you have made a sincere effort to improve the situation for everyone…it wipes the slate clean so you can, if he is game, start over fresh with this person.
2. Push away the negative and focus on the positive.
Maybe there is a woman in your office who bites her fingernails every time she talks to you, and it disgusts you…or she always takes the last cup of coffee and never makes a fresh pot…or she complains so loudly in the office hallways that she’s constantly disrupting you…or she always seems to try to “one-up” you at meetings.
It’s easy to focus all of your energy on those annoying habits of hers. Instead, try this for a week: Ignore her negative qualities and think about her positive qualities. (Think hard, because there’s a good chance that she has some!)
Perhaps she is a cancer survivor and organizes a bake sale for a cancer charity with coworkers every year…or maybe you saw her interact with her kids on “bring your child to work day” and were impressed with her warmth and sense of humor around them…or maybe she is a gym rat who eats very healthy foods and you admire her discipline.
When you revise your mind-set and make those positive traits the first thing that you think of when you hear her name or see her, then you will find yourself tolerating her better…perhaps even liking her a bit.
3. Be outwardly kind.
This strategy is actually pretty easy—because it’s easier to change the way you act than the way you think.
Here’s the rule:
No matter what you are thinking, change the way you behave around the person who grates on you. Instead of rolling your eyes or ignoring him, smile when you walk by him, say hello and ask how his day is going.
Why do this? The more polite you are to him through your actions, the more polite his actions are likely to be in return—in fact, he may even welcome the “opening” that you have given him. And when he acts more kindly toward you, then you will start to think nicer thoughts about him. So it’s quite the positive domino effect!
4. Shoot for consistency.
You do need to be careful about a reaction that people commonly have when they decide to be “nice” to someone they don’t like. They successfully pull off the “acting nice” part…but then, when they are with other people behind closed doors, they really let loose with chatter about how annoyingly dislikable the person is.
Who knows, maybe it’s the stress of being nice to someone you’d like to punch that has to find an outlet somewhere. But whatever the reason, if you improve your demeanor toward someone in person but then ramp up the hostility when he’s not around, not only are you being two-faced, but your hostility will create negative energy within you that will make it harder for you to really improve things with your tormentor.
So make sure that you are positive 100% of the time, and you’ll watch your distaste for the person slowly slip away. And if he proves not to appreciate all this effort on your part to make things easier between you? Then start the cycle all over again—and keep trying!
Source: Lauren Zander is a life coach and the cofounder and chairman of The Handel Group in New York City, which provides life-coaching services to individuals, corporations and schools. She teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University School of Business and has moderated a roundtable for the White House Office of Social Innovation.
She has been a monthly contributor to Daily Health News since 2006 supplying advice to readers in dozens of articles that help them shed the psychological or emotional burdens that hold them back. For more stories featuring Lauren Zander, click here. http://www.HandelGroup.com
June 5th, 2013 at 8:50 am
Former sex workers provide non-judgemental support and services for women and girls that are or have been involved in sex work. Unfortunately, human trafficking plays a major part in prostitution. Not pretty stuff. Rampant human trafficking is a huge problem in the U.S.- women and girls are indeed kidnapped, lured, and raped under the guise of prostitution here. (think Elizabeth Smart’s speech) The FBI’s website has some useful information on this subject, but it’s not hard to find similar data elsewhere.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:51 am
Hello, Howie. My male friends are asking where are you? Okay so are some of my female friends.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:52 am
This is headed in the right direction– inspite of the qualms. Let’s not trip over statistics and semantics so much, though. Where are the solutions? It is important to focus on perception but we need to, simoultaneously, take active roles in turning the trend. I would like to see men change the way they think about these issues. Let’s not tell men how to think differently… let’s help men learn to change their paradigm. Let’s facilitate.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:53 am
Growing up as a male in America, and knowing personally a victim of rape, I can say with utmost certainty that Katz is right when he says that we need to look seriously at the way we raise men and define masculinity in this country.
It is absolutely disgusting the things that men still believe and the justifications that men use to abuse women physically, emotionally, or psychologically. Whether or not we have experienced these things firsthand, the current approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” will not serve to change the underlying thought processes that many men still have.
Whether most men acknowledge it or not, we are raised to believe in many of the archaic stereotypes that our fathers were raised with, that we should have some form of control over women, and that many women “ask” for the things we do to them.
Ultimately, when we truly look at the pain and suffering this causes, we should all find some role in changing the way our society views “manliness,” both in ourselves and especially in the ways we raise our children.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:53 am
First off, if Katz is going to talk about these issues, he needs to stop using euphemisms and start calling things what they actually are. He is stereotyping against males, no matter how you look at it. Even if all school shootings and spousal abuse are perpetrated by men, it does not make them men’s or women’s issues.
These are societal issues. The media uses passive voice to report many issues. How about when America sends a peacekeeping force overseas? We are really sending a militant force into another nation to kill and oppress our enemies. We need to stop focusing on men and women in our country, and focus on what our country believes as a collective.
Stop telling children that men are the dominant gender and this needs to change. Start telling them that everyone is equal, and that will make it true. If my son approached me about someone’s “sexual orientation” I would not say to him, “Some people don’t like fags but they’re ok in my book,” I would tell him it is ok for any person to love any other person. This man is foolishly supporting stereotypes while at the same time trying to destroy them, something that will never work.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:54 am
I’m so glad to see Jackson Katz getting some attention. My husband and I attended a talk he gave at a nearby university. My husband was really affected by what Katz had to say and is in the process of reading The Macho Paradox. We have a four-year old daughter and for the first time my husband is seeing our male-dominated culture in an eyes fully opened way.
I know he sometimes wants to stop reading because it’s discouraging to know the reality of the world our daughter and other girls will be facing as they grow up. I encourage him to keep with it though because he can help her prepare to face it only if he is informed himself.
I just don’t understand why Katz isn’t more of a presence in the media. He has such vitally important things to say.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:54 am
Well, I found a statistic that says that 90% of rape victims are women which was obtained by the Bureau of Justice. As for the 1 in 6 boys being sexually abuse before age 18, I don’t think the previous statistic includes all types of sexual abuse, only acts that fulfill the legal definition of rape.
I think women’s violence against men and women’s sexual abuse of males adheres to a different psychological profile and results from different causes than men’s. And I don’t think that women’s violence of men or sexual abuse of boys is a systematic or ingrained part of society like men’s violence is.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Actually, Toy Soldier, Katz is quoted as saying, “Over 99 percent of rape is perpetrated by men, but it’s a women’s issue?”
In case it needs to be broken down further for you to understand, he is saying that of all rapes committed (against both male and female victims), in 99% of the cases, men are the perpetrators. Since men are committing the vast majority of rapes (again, against both male and female victims), we need to reframe the problem as an issue of men’s violence, not women’s victimization.
Try not to jump to conclusions about Katz’s motivation until you actually read and understand what he is saying. Because it seems that you are the one with the inaccurate statistics.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Is that culturally and legally we have a really hard time defining rape. People’s definitions of ‘rape’ vs. their definition of ‘sexual abuse’ can be all over the place. Therefore, it’s really hard to compare a statistic of rape victims with one of sexual abuse victims. Depending on who is asking the questions and who is answering them, rape can be any number of things and sexual abuse can also be any number of things.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:56 am
I find it rather sad that Katz presented gross misinformation in his comments. According to the most recent statistics 1 in 6 males will be a victim of sexual abuse by 18. Approximately 40% of those perpetrators are women. It is truly disturbing that Katz felt the need to deny male victimization, and even worse that he used a completely inaccurate stat–like 99% of all rape victims are female–to support what appears to be his tacit endorsement of sexual violence against males.
June 5th, 2013 at 8:57 am
I would have to say not all together true.Women have been known to rape,domestic violence,abuser’s.Maybe not as much,I know several women who are so mean as a male when it comes to fighting,abusive.
SO these female teachers that are having sex with underage female/males students most time in the law eyes that is rape.
Sometimes women will get feed up and go beyond abusive to murder as some men do!
June 5th, 2013 at 8:57 am
Since only a small percentage of acts of sexual violence are brought to the attention of the authorities, it is difficult to compile accurate statistics. Often, the statistics of successful convictions are looked at lieu of this. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (1997) stated that that 91% of United States people whose rape accusations resulted in convictions against the accused were female and 9% were male. It also stated that 99% of the people convicted of and imprisoned in response to rape accusations were male, with only 1% of those convicted being female.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender
June 5th, 2013 at 9:00 am
Current Events Update: Did anyone else watch the news coverage yesterday (6/4/13) of the hearing between the Joint Chiefs of Staff representing the US military, and several leading female US Senators, led by the magnificent Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)? The purpose was to discuss sexual assault in the military.
Since the military has completely failed to fix the problem, Senator Gillibrand has proposed moving control of sexual assault cases outside the “chain of command.” The military essentially said, “We don’t like that idea.” Yet there was a deafening silence about what, if anything, they were going to do differently to fix the problem.
That hearing was a “poster child” for what Jackson Katz is saying. Each one of those men (and one very frightened looking female officer) sat there, all solemn and shiny in their uniforms, content with the personal satisfaction of perhaps never having assaulted a woman themselves (?), content with the status quo and their glorious career success. Not one of them was willing to risk “breaking ranks” to get personally involved, to feel the outrage or the helplessness of women who are sexually assaulted under their commands every day.
If you want fresh, powerful footage of men in leadership positions, men who otherwise might have been considered well above average, collectively dodging responsibility, failing to understand sexual assault of women as a men’s issue, you need go no further than the national embarrassment which was that hearing yesterday, on display for the world to see.
In a remarkable moment of candor, it may have been the very pro-military, hawkish Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who made the most honest assessment when he said, “{Because of this issue] I would not recommend my daughter join the military.”