by Jackson Katz
This conclusion does not flow naturally from the way the subject is currently understood. But there are numerous reasons why violence against women is a men’s issue. I am going to address some of the personal ones in a subsequent chapter. Still, most of the personal and professional reasons why men are, and should be, concerned are not part of the public discourse. Few people even mention them.
A lot of men (and women) are not even conscious of how they think about violence against women. But it’s a safe bet that some men consciously use the “women’s issues” label as an excuse not to pay attention. It’s not that they feel somehow unfairly excluded; more realistically they have no desire to probe any deeper. When some men hear the word “gender” in the same sentence as “violence,” they automatically shut down. Not that unpleasant subject again. Still others respond to the term “women’s issues” like they do TV commercials for feminine hygiene products. They would rather not go there. Better just to turn up the music and tune it out.
Unfortunately, few men pay any discernible price for this averting of our eyes. In part, this is because we’re not expected to do much or even care much about these issues—unless something happens to a woman or girl close to us. Most guys will say, “I’m a good guy. These aren’t my problems.” The trouble is, for a culture with as much gender violence as ours, the bar for being considered a “good guy” is set awfully low.
In fact, a lot of women actually feel grateful when men they know emerge as strong allies. When a man—in a group of friends, in a classroom, in the media—voices an objection to sexist portrayals of women in pornography, pop music, or other forms of media, or if he speaks out in support of the victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, women will often praise his sensitivity and thank him for caring. This speaks volumes about how low women’s expectations are of the average guy! In this country—perhaps in all of Western culture—in the early twenty-first century, a guy can become an instant hero merely for doing what any decent person should be doing. I know that many of my friends and colleagues who do anti-sexist “men’s work,” myself included, are often embarrassed by this, and by the way some women shower us with gratitude for any minimal effort we put forth.
Of course, not all women are so easily impressed; some women do have higher expectations of men. Consider the case of a woman lawyer who is an acquaintance of mine. When she was in law school, she came home one day, excited to share with her boyfriend some things she’d learned about sexualassault prevention in a workshop on gender violence. He was completely silent and uninterested. So she called him on it. “You don’t seem to care,” she said.
“I’m not really into that stuff; sort of like how you aren’t interested in economics,” he explained matter-of-factly. She was taken aback. She wondered, if the guy she’s seeing is not “interested” in what her daily life is like as a woman, how could he possibly be interested in her? She said that the moment he uttered those words she knew they were through.
2. “Women’s issues” are personal for men, too.
If you are a man, I have a question for you: Is there a woman in your life that you love dearly? A mother, daughter, sister, wife, girlfriend, or close woman friend? Are there many women and girls that you care about very deeply? Okay, then isn’t it true that every issue which affects the women and girls that you care about affects you—by definition? Now think about all of the men who are the fathers, brothers, sons, and lovers of women and girls who have been assaulted by men. Men whose wives were raped when they were younger, but who still feel the aftershocks. Men who have daughters who are raped in college. Men who—as little boys—experienced the trauma of watching their fathers or other men assault their mothers. Millions of men fall into one or another of these categories.
Nonetheless, it is a struggle to get men to confront each other about violence toward women because so many of us have been conditioned—in our language and otherwise—either to avoid the subject altogether or to look at it through a dichotomous and competitive lens: Men vs. women. Battle between the sexes. Us and them. And this is definitely one of those issues that is about them. Isn’t that why they call it a “women’s issue”? But it is more than that. There are some issues that primarily affect women as a sex class, and others where men as a sex class are more concerned. You do not need a PhD in evolutionary biology to make that observation. But it is just as true that we live in the world together. Our lives are lived in relation to others. Women and men have familial, platonic, and sexual relationships with each other. How can something that affects women not affect men—and vice versa?
3. Men are the primary perpetrators.
Contrary to the disinformation promulgated in recent years by the so-called “men’s rights” movement, the most important statistics about violence against women do not lie. The vast majority of credible researchers in sociology, criminology, and public health confirm that men commit the most serious intimate-partner violence and the overwhelming amount of sexual violence, including the sexual abuse of children. Some women in heterosexual relationships do assault their male partners, and a small number of researchers, most notably the sociologist Murray Straus, maintain that women’s violence against men is a more significant social problem than many people in the field recognize or acknowledge. But while women’s violence is wrong—if used for purposes other than self-defense—it is rarely part of a systematic pattern of power and control through force or the threat of force. On a wide range of issues, from domestic violence and rape to stalking and sexual harassment, there is no symmetry between men’s and women’s violence against each other, no equivalence. If the tables were turned, and the primary problem were women assaulting men, would we be as likely to blame the victim as we are now? Would the general public be endlessly focused on men’s experience of victimization at the hands of women? Would people constantly be asking: why do men stay with the women who beat them? Somehow I don’t think so. I think most of us—especially men—would be honing in on the source of the problem—women’s behavior. We would ask, rightly, “What the hell is going on with women? How are we going to get them to stop assaulting us?”
But with the situation reversed, we focus not on the perpetrator class but on the victims. There’s some history behind this, and some language. Ever since women succeeded at breaking silence around the historic reality of their experience of violence at the hands of men, Western and other world cultures have framed gender violence as a “women’s issue.” This act of framing/naming has had a profound impact on our collective consciousness, both positive and negative. On the one hand, thinking about gender violence as a women’s issue has contributed to a foregrounding of the needs of female victims and survivors. The dramatic growth over the past three decades in public understanding about how violence against women harms women—how it is a violation of their basic human rights—is one of the great achievements of modern multicultural feminism.
On the other hand, focusing on what happens to women has helped obscure the role played by men—and male culture—in the ongoing violence. After all, men are not only the primary perpetrators of gender violence. We are also the not-so-innocent bystanders. As we will discuss in this book, men hold a disproportionate amount of economic, social, and political power. This means we’re more responsible for those aspects of our culture that promote and encourage violence against women. It also means we’re more responsible for what we do or do not prioritize in terms of prevention—including the prevention of gender violence.
On a personal level, men who are not abusive toward women nonetheless play important roles in the lives of men who are. Men who physically and sexually abuse women are not monsters who live apart from the civilized world. They are in our families and friendship circles. They are our fathers, our sons, our brothers, and our best friends. They are our fishing partners, drinking buddies, teammates, fraternity brothers, and colleagues. We too easily let them and ourselves off the hook when we call their violence a “women’s issu
e.” Do we do it intentionally? I don’t know. But whether conscious or unconscious, it’s an effective strategy to avoid accountability.
4. Until more men join the fight, there is no chance that the violence will be dramatically reduced.
Men already play important roles in almost every aspect of these issues, from the personal to the professional to the political. For example, men are friends and family members of women who have been victims past or present. We’re also the friends and family members of violent boys and men. In a professional context, we’re rape-prevention educators and batterer-intervention counselors. We’re sex crimes prosecutors. We’re doctors who treat women and girls who have been assaulted. We’re lawyers who represent battered women in custody battles. We’re judges who hear domestic violence cases. We’re therapists who treat rape-trauma survivors. We’re cops who show up at the door when someone calls 911. In political terms, we’re policy makers who write legislation to fund women’s programs. We’re activists who call attention to unmet needs. We’re politicians who support changes in the law to strengthen protections for rape, battering, and stalking victims.
Until now the gynocentric nature of the “women’s issues” label has distorted the role that men are already playing in these issues—both good and bad. But I wouldn’t be pressing this point if it were simply about appreciating men’s positive contributions. We have far more serious things to worry about than the hurt feelings of some men who might feel unacknowledged. The fact is that the current practice of calling rape, battering, and sexual harassment women’s issues actually hampers prevention efforts. To cut right to it, how many more woman-as-survivor stories do we need to hear (however inspiring they might be) before we figure out that violence against women isn’t caused by women, and that it won’t be stopped by focusing on what women can do to change their lives?
Women, of course, have been and will continue to be the leaders of the fight against all forms of sexism. But because anti-sexism has for so long been identified with women, one of the first steps in motivating more men and boys is to talk about rape, sexual assault, battering, and sexual harassment as our issues. Of course it could be argued that men should already be concerned about women’s issues because we should be concerned about women. But regardless of whether we should be concerned, the fact remains that very few men have historically committed time, energy, and resources to the fight against gender violence. It has not been a priority for most men. That is why we need the paradigm shift. In order to occasion a true cultural transformation, we simply must convince a sizable group of men to—in the words of the famous Apple Computer campaign—“Think Different.” Only with this new thinking will they be willing to invest the personal, professional, and political time and effort necessary to get the job done.
What are the stakes? Without more active male support and involvement, there is every reason to believe that the outrageously high rates of men’s violence against women that we’ve grown accustomed to will persist indefinitely. The only meaningful debates will be about appropriate levels of funding for victim services, along with ongoing debates about criminal justice versus community-based ways to hold offenders accountable. In other words, organized response to gender violence will continue indefinitely in clean-up-after-the-fact mode, quite possibly for decades.
True and lasting change will require—at a minimum—a critical and multicultural mass of men emerging to partner with women in confronting men’s violence on both a personal and an institutional level. There are signs that this is beginning to happen. Both nationally and internationally, the number of men and men’s organizations that are willing to grapple with men’s roles in ending violence is growing. But this is a movement that is still in its infancy.
In my mixed-gender speeches and trainings, I try to introduce this subject matter gently, in a non-threatening way, by starting with an interactive exercise. I ask the men—just the men—to participate in a little demonstration. “By a show of hands,” I ask, “how many of you have either a mother, daughter, sister, wife, girlfriend, close female friend, or another woman or girl that you care deeply about?” This usually prompts laughter and some grumbling, but eventually most guys put up their hands. (I can tell that I am in for a long night when more than a smattering of men choose to signal their unhappiness at having to attend a talk about women’s issues by refusing to raise their hands.)
At a talk I once gave on a college campus, there was a middle-aged white man and woman seated in the front row, looking out of place. I assumed they were married. When I asked the men to raise their hands if they had a woman close to them, the guy didn’t budge. He sat there ten feet away from me with his arms folded and the hint of a scowl on his face. His posture distracted me the entire night. I kept glancing down at them and wondering: What is going on in their relationship? How did she get him to come out and hear my talk? What will they be talking about in the car ride home?
Okay, so the guy might not have liked the slightly manipulative quality of the exercise. Regardless, its message was clear: every issue which affects the women and girls that we care about affects us. Our lives are inextricably interwoven. We live in the world together, share the same beds, and eat at the same breakfast tables. We make babies together, have daughters together. Everything that happens to women happens to men, too.
CHAPTER TWO
Facing Facts
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”
—Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom
One of the most memorable movie lines of the 1990s is from A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup bellows, “You can’t handle the truth!” at the young prosecutor played by Tom Cruise. Its power derives from Nicholson’s volcanic portrayal of the career Marine Corps officer, who is indignant at having to answer, under oath, pointed questions put to him by a much younger and less war-tested junior officer. The “truth” in this case is a metaphor for the danger and ugliness in the world. Thus the colonel’s admonition is really an attack on the younger man’s masculinity, because a “real man” should be able to face the truth unflinchingly. At least in theory.
In reality, “real men” can be very selective about what truths they are willing to confront. Until recently, men as a group have been largely AWOL from the fight against gender violence. In one sense, it is easy to see why. Men’s violence against women is a pervasive social phenomenon with deep roots in existing personal, social, and institutional arrangements. In order for people to understand and ultimately work together to prevent it, it is first necessary for them to engage in a great deal of personal and collective introspection. This introspection can be especially threatening to men, because as perpetrators and bystanders, they are responsible for the bulk of the problem.
Introspection can also be unsettling for women. Gender violence is a painful subject they would rather not think about. Some are pessimistic about the possibility for meaningful change in men’s behavior. Others don’t want to draw larger conclusions from what happens to individual women because, deep down, they do not want to think it could happen to them. In addition, many women worry that a close examination of men’s attitudes and behaviors toward women might shine unfavorable light on men they love and care about.
But my purpose in this book is to look at gender violence as a problem and a challenge for men. In order to do this, right up front I need to explore some of the dynamics in men’s lives—and psyches—that prevent them from coming to terms with the “truth” of men’s violence. There are clearly some reasons why men have not faced up to the reality of the ongoing pandemic of rape, battering, and sexual abuse.
In some cases, old-fashioned guilt keeps men from delving in too deeply. They are
ashamed of their own behavior and would rather not be reminded of it. Some men avert their eyes because they are afraid of what they might learn, not only about themselves, but about men around them: their brothers and friends. Finally, many men participate—in peer cultures and as consumers—in what feminists have described as a “rape and battering culture.” They laugh at sexist jokes, go out with the guys to strip clubs, and consume misogynistic pornography. So even though most men are not perpetrators, they nonetheless contribute to—and derive pleasure from—a sexist cultural climate where women are put down and sexually degraded. Thus they have little motivation to examine it critically, and a lot of incentive to look away.
I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY
Long before the 9/11 attacks prompted unusually honest national dialogue about the effects of terrorist violence on the American psyche, our culture’s pandemic of men’s violence against women was one of the defining characteristics of our historical era. Decades before anyone had heard of Al Qaeda, one-half of the U.S. population had learned to live in near-constant fear of the other half. Gender violence has occurred with such frequency for so long in this country that many people are no longer alarmed by how common it is. It is the status quo, an unremarkable feature of the social landscape.
What is perhaps even more disturbing is that in this culture, many people see gender violence as a problem of sick or damaged individuals, and not as a social phenomenon that’s causes—and solutions—lie in much larger social forces. So let me be clear. There is no such thing as an isolated incident of rape, battering, sexual abuse, or sexual harassment. These are not merely individual pathologies. It is not enough for us to ask in each case: “What went wrong in his life?” “Why would he do something like that?” These problems are much too widespread for us to think about them in such narrow terms.
