by Jackson Katz
Start anti-sexist men’s groups
The power of individuals to catalyze change increases exponentially when they work together to create new institutions and organizations. A growing number of organizations have made significant contributions in recent years to gender violence prevention efforts with men and boys. Some of these groups have paid staff and operate along the lines of traditional nonprofit educational organizations; others are more grass roots and volunteeroriented. It is not possible to provide anything close to a comprehensive list of these various initiatives, but consider a handful of examples from around the country: The Washington, D.C.-based group Men Can Stop Rape regularly conducts anti-rape trainings with high school, college, and community organizations. Their “strength campaign” posters and other materials have been widely circulated. The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community, headed by Dr. Oliver Williams, regularly brings together scholars and activists to discuss issues of particular interest to men (and women) of color, such as the potential role of the hip-hop generation in preventing men’s violence against women. The anti-rape men’s group One in Four has chapters on dozens of college campuses. In 1999, a group of men in the famous fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts—carpenters and clergy, bartenders and bankers—started Gloucester Men Against Domestic Abuse. They march annually in the town’s popular Fourth of July parade and sponsor a billboard that says “Strong Men Don’t Bully,” a public testimonial of sorts that features the names of five hundred Gloucester men. The Men’s Leadership Forum in San Diego, California, is a high-profile annual conference held on Valentine’s Day. Since 2001, MLF has brought together a diverse group of men and boys (and women) from across the city to learn how men in business, labor unions, the sports culture, education, the faith community, and the human services can contribute to ending men’s violence against women. Some men are politicized about sexism out of concern for their daughters, or as a result of things that have happened to them. One of the most effective organizations that addresses these concerns is Dads and Daughters, a Duluth, Minnesota-based advocacy group led by Joe Kelly. Part of the mission of DADS is to mobilize concerned fathers to challenge companies whose marketing is sexist and exploitative—especially when it involves the sexualization of young girls or adolescents, or treats men’s violence against women as a joke.
In addition to some of these now well-established organizations, anti-sexist men on college campuses and in local communities have worked—often in collaboration with women’s centers or domestic and sexual violence programs—to educate men and boys about the role men can play in confronting and interrupting other men’s abusive behaviors. One venue for this collaboration has been the proliferating number of V-Day events held on college campuses. While V-Day is woman-centered, male students have played all sorts of supportive roles, such as organizing outreach efforts to men and coproducing and promoting performances of the Eve Ensler play The Vagina Monologues.
Some anti-sexist men’s efforts have been ad hoc and customized to fit the needs and experiences of various communities. For example, in 2003 a group of Asian American men in Seattle organized to support the local chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum in their opposition to a restaurant that was promoting “naked sushi” nights, where patrons took sushi off the bodies of semi-nude models wrapped in cellophane. And in the summer of 2004, a group of men (and women) in the “punk, indie, alternative” music scene organized a Different Kind of Dude Fest in Washington, D.C. Along the lines of the Riot Girrls and Girlfest, Hawaii, they sought to use art as an organizing tool. Their goal was to call attention to the ways in which progressive political punk culture, while promising liberation from other forms of social conformity and oppression, nonetheless helped to perpetuate sexism and patriarchal domination. The organizers of the music festival also explicitly affirmed the need for men to be allies of feminists in the fight for gender justice and social equality.
Champion institutional reform
Men who hold positions of power in government, non-profit organizations, business, and labor unions can do much to prevent men’s violence against women if they take two critical steps: 1.) Recognize domestic and sexual violence prevention as a leadership issue for men, and 2.) Start to think creatively about how they can push their institutions to address it. The problem is that many men in positions of institutional authority do not yet see gender violence prevention in this way. That is why I strongly suggest that public or private institutions who want to begin serious primary prevention initiatives first arrange trainings for men in positions of senior leadership—and the more senior, the better. If done well, gender violence prevention training for men can be transformative. Men often come out of such trainings with an entirely new sensibility about their professional and personal responsibilities to women and children, as well as to other men. This is important because in the long term, dramatic reductions in the incidence of men’s violence against women in the U.S. and around the world will only come about when people with power—which often means men in power—make gender violence issues a priority. Among other things, this means that male leaders must set and maintain a tone—in educational institutions, corporations, the military—where sexist and abusive behavior is considered unacceptable and unwelcome, not only because women don’t like it but because other men will not stand for it. This sounds good, but people often ask me how to get powerful men to take these issues seriously. For example, how do you convince male legislators, educational administrators, business leaders, or military commanders to attend gender violence prevention training? There are a variety of strategies, but the bottom line is that they do not necessarily have to be motivated—at least initially—by altruism or concerns about social justice. They need instead to be persuaded that prevention is a widely shared institutional goal, and that it is their responsibility to be as knowledgeable and proactive about these issues as possible.
Think and act locally and globally
The focus of this book has been mostly on the U.S., but obviously men’s violence against women is an issue everywhere in the world. Since 9/11, many Americans have learned what many people around the world have long known—in the modern era, what happens in foreign cultures thousands of miles away can affect people right here at home, sometimes in ways that are impossible to predict. That is the irrevocable reality of the global environment in which we now live. As I have maintained throughout, gender violence is best seen not as aberrational behavior perpetrated by a few bad men but as an expression of much more deeply seated structures of male dominance and gender inequality. This is much easier to see when you are looking at someone else’s culture. For example, in radical fundamentalist Islamic countries, women have few rights, and in many instances men’s violence against them is legal and even expected—especially when they defy male authority. In other words, men’s violence against women functions in some cultures to maintain a highly authoritarian, even fascistic male power structure. In that sense, gender violence is clearly a political crime with potentially far-reaching consequences. As a result, the way that men in distant lands treat women—individually and as a group—cannot be dismissed as a private family or cultural matter. It has too much bearing on political developments that could affect all of us—like the possibility of nuclear war, or the constant threat of terrorist attacks.
At the same time, it is tempting for some Americans to hear and read about the way men mistreat women in foreign cultures and attribute that mistreatment to cultural deficiencies and even barbarism. But it is important to remember that by world standards, the incidence of men’s violence against women here in the U.S. is embarrassingly high. No doubt many American men would be offended to hear people in other countries speculating about the shortcomings of American men—and the inferiority of the culture that produced them.
Fortunately, the growing movement of men who are speaking out about men’s violence against women is international in scop
e. There are anti-sexist men’s initiatives in scores of countries across the world. In addition, one of the most promising developments in the history of international human rights law is the growing international movement to identify men’s violence against women as a human rights issue. A pivotal moment in that movement came in 2001, when the United Nations war crimes tribunal named rape and sexual slavery as war crimes. And today, a number of international organizations—most prominently Amnesty International—have begun to focus on gender violence and link the physical and sexual exploitation of women to a host of other social and political problems. One of the major challenges for American anti-sexist men in the coming years will be to make connections between men’s violence against women in the U.S. with violence around the world, and to support efforts everywhere to reduce men’s violence and advance gender equality—not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is arguably in our national interest.
What’s in it for men?
Men who occupy positions of influence in boys’ lives—fathers, grandfathers, older brothers, teachers, coaches, religious leaders—need to teach them that men of integrity value women and do not tolerate other men’s sexism or abusive behavior. Obviously they have to lead by example. But that is not enough. In a cultural climate where the objectification of women and girls has accelerated, and boys are exposed to ever more graphic displays of brutality toward women disguised as “entertainment,” men need to preemptively provide clear guidelines for boys’ behavior. This does not always have to be defined in negative terms, e.g., “Don’t hit women.” It can be framed as a positive challenge to young men, especially if they aspire to something more special than being “one of the guys” at all costs.
In fact, when I give talks about men’s violence against women to groups of parents, I am often asked by parents of sons if there is something positive we can offer young men as a substitute for what we are taking away from them. “We constantly say to our kids, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, I wish you wouldn’t listen to this music.’ We tell them they shouldn’t treat girls a certain way, they shouldn’t act tough. We spend a lot of time telling our sons what they shouldn’t be. It’s so negative. Why shouldn’t they just tune us out? What’s in it for them?”
My answer is really quite simple, and it is as true for the fathers as it is for the sons. When we ask men to reject sexism and the abuse of women, we are not taking something away from them. In fact, we are giving them something very valuable—a vision of manhood that does not depend on putting down others in order to lift itself up. When a man stands up for social justice, nonviolence, and basic human rights—for women as much as for men—he is acting in the best traditions of our civilization. That makes him not only a better man, but a better human being.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of intense labor over the past year or two, but in truth I have been working on it much longer. I am therefore deeply grateful not only to those who generously helped me navigate the painstaking writing process, but also to those who have inspired me personally and professionally over the years, whether through friendship or by sheer example. Writing is a lonely endeavor, but in meaningful ways it is still very much a collaborative process, and this book is testimony to that fact.
I want to thank my family for giving me decades of support and patience, especially my mother, Frieda Miller, my sisters Janet Miller and Julie Katz, and my cousin Rivka Polatnick. I grew up surrounded by exceptional women, and I feel their influence daily.
My teacher Ann Ferguson, professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, provided an early and enduring example of how to combine a passion for knowledge with unflinching political commitment. If she was skeptical about a young man fresh out of a small-town football jockocracy who was inspired by philosophy and women’s studies, she never let on.
Some of my closest friends have been a great source of love, camaraderie, and late-night brainstorming over the years. In particular, I want to thank two soulmates: Miriam Zoll, my feminist fellow traveler since college, and Jeremy Earp, my confidant and intellectual partner with whom I have been connected for nearly thirty years. I also want to thank Gail Dines and David Levy, who have long been a source of personal and political solidarity, and Dode Levenson, who has stood by my side from the time I was a struggling activist with big dreams and bad apartments.
The process of bringing this book to print started with my search for a literary agent, no easy task with a subject as difficult as this one. I am grateful that James Levine was up to the challenge. I thank Rosalind Wiseman not only for recommending Jim, but also for her friendship and support over the years. I also want to thank my publisher, Sourcebooks, for believing in this project from the beginning, and for never doubting that a book by a man about men’s violence against women was worth getting out to as wide an audience as possible. In particular I want to thank my editor, Sarah Tucker, for her brilliant editing work, her patience, and her calm reassurance in the face of my many harried phone calls from airports and taxis. Thanks also to Michelle Schoob, a talented editor at Sourcebooks whose resourcefulness and flexibility made the late-stage editing process much less painful than I had anticipated.
I want to thank my mother-in-law Jan Bue for her love and encouragement, and for being so generous in providing the best conceivable child care at crucial times during the writing process.
I am also indebted to several people who read and commented on portions of the manuscript or contributed useful anecdotes: Daryl Fort, Gail Dines, Diane Rosenfeld, Caroline Heldman, Alan Berkowitz, Rhonda Hammer, Doug Kellner, Lori Strauss, Angie Aaron, Heather Sturm, Marie Brodie, Kristen Houser, Molly Dragiewicz, Laura Vargas, and Zeus Leonardo. Thanks to Giannina Cabral for research assistance. Of course none of them bears any responsibility for any errors or omissions that may have made their way into the final product.
Throughout all phases of the writing process, I had the additional privilege of being able to draw inspiration from the work and friendship of innumerable activists and educators. I wish I could acknowledge them all, but my all-star team begins with Judy Stafford, Cindy Waitt, Alan Heisterkamp, Nancy Beardall, Annette Lynch, Denise Thomson, Dean Peacock, James Lang, Barbara Kasper, Hank Shaw, Patti Giggans, Abby Sims, Mary Atwater, Bob Haynor, Lori Strauss, Carolyn Ramsay, Mark Dubin, Verna Taber, Steve Allen, Ann O’Dell, Gerry Sea, Victor Rivers, Nina Cummings, Al Emerick, Sally Laskey, Marissa Mezzanotte-Zadrozny, Linda Blanshay, Beverly LeMay, Rashmi Luthra, Bob Paret, Kathy Xian, Grace Caligtan, Sally Spencer-Thomas, Joe Kelly, Hollie Ainbinder, Leah Wyman, Steve Sherblom, Amy Levine, Rob Okun, Jerri Lynn Fields, Claire Kaplan, Peter Jaffe, Shelia Hargesheimer, Evelyn Brom, Linda Tangemann, Jeff Share, and Jill Montoya. I have also benefited immensely from work I have done with Mary Dixon, Toby Graff and Meredith Wagner at Lifetime Television, and Maria Kalligeros at PT and Co.
Since first hearing him lecture on masculinity when I was an undergraduate, Don Sabo has remained a steady source of wisdom and guidance. The same is true of Lundy Bancroft, Terry Real, Alan Berkowitz, Nan Stein, Jean Kilbourne, Michael Kimmel, John Stoltenberg, Leah Aldridge, Debby Tucker, Sarah Buel, Mike Messner, Mariah Burton Nelson, Paul Kivel, Sandy Caron, Harry Brod, Sandy Holstein, Michael Kaufman, Rus Ervin Funk, Ann Simonton, David Lisak, Tim Beneke, Marie Fortune, Susan Bailey, Ron Slaby, Connie Sponsler-Garcia, Tom Gardner, Warren Blumenfeld, Jamie Kalven, Sherryl Kleinman, Helan Page, Myriam Miedzian, John Badalament, Craig Norberg-Bohm, Barbara Ellis, Delilah Rumburg, Agnes Maldonado, Michael Flood, Steve Bergman, Nina Huntemann, and bell hooks.
I want to thank my lecture agent, Kevin MacRae, at Lordly and Dame, for his belief in my vision and for our many years of productive collaboration. I also want to thank the lecture agents Kevin and Jayne Moore, who helped me get started in the college lecture world.
I will always be grateful to Rich Lapchick and Art Taylor for working with me to create MVP at Northeastern Univer
sity’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society in 1993. MVP has been a magnet for many talented people. I especially want to thank Jeff O’Brien for his inspired leadership and friendship, and Don McPherson for his willingness to provide even more leadership off the field than on it. I also have MVP to thank for my long-time collaboration and friendship with the filmmaker Byron Hurt, from whom I have learned a great deal and about whom I brag at every opportunity. Thanks also to Michelle King, Dave Kay, Miles McLean, Craig Alimo, and Tom Penichter for their early and important contributions to the development of MVP.
My deepest appreciation also goes out to Randy Eltringham and Claire Lebling for their roles in initiating my work with the Marine Corps. And I want to thank all of those Marines, too numerous to name, who have supported my prevention program in the Corps. Thanks, too, to Marney Thomas, Brian Leidy, Mary Page, and Ellen Pence for working so productively with my colleagues and me in our years with the Marines, and to all the civilian and military members of the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military, for all their insights, friendship, and camaraderie.
I have had the additional benefit of working over the years with the gifted staff of the Media Education Foundation (MEF), in particular the producers Ronit Ridberg, Susan Ericsson, Loretta Alper, Sanjay Talreja, Jeremy Smith, and Jeremy Earp. I especially want to thank MEF’s founder and tireless executive director, my friend Sut Jhally, who believed in me enough to make a longtime vision of mine a reality with the film Tough Guise, and has since then enabled me to reach ever-wider audiences with the films Wrestling with Manhood and Spin the Bottle. One of the most encouraging developments in gender violence prevention in recent years has been the emergence of a new generation of anti-sexist men, both college students and young professionals. In the latter category I want especially to thank Chad Sniffen, Brad Perry, Kaili McCray, Ross Wantland, Brian Pahl, Keith Edwards, Kevin Ladaris, Matt Ezzell, and Ben Atherton-Zeman for specific contributions to my work and thinking, and also for the intangible inspiration their dedication has given me.