Violence Against Women – It’s a Men’s Issue: Jackson Katz

In this Ted Talk (19.06mins) Jackson Katz talks about Violence Against Women and how it’s a man’s issue as well as a woman’s.

The talk starts with Jackson thanking the women leaders who have been leading the way around gender violence. Jackson goes on to talk about –

• Gender violence issues – sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse, sexual harassment, sexual abuse against children and how they have been seen as women’s issues that some good men help out with (but he has a problem with that and doesn’t agree with it).

• How gender violence is a men’s issue as well as a women’s issue. He gives the analogy that if we just focus these issues on women – it gives men an excuse not to pay attention.

• The meaning of gender and how some people relate that word to just mean women and not men.

• Victim blaming (instead of living responsibly) and how we need to ask a different set of questions in relation to gender violence. For example why is domestic violence still a big problem in the USA and all over the world? What is going on with men? What are the roles of various systems that produce these men? How can we do something differently?

• Standing with women, instead of against them.

• The bystander approach – instead of men as perpetrators and women as victims or women as perpetrators and men as victims or any combination of that in the binary fashion, we focus on all of us as bystanders (i.e. anyone who is not a perpetrator or a victim in a given situation). Bystanders can include – friends, team-mates, colleagues, family etc. Questions for the bystanders could be – how do we support our friends who are experiencing gender violence issues, how do we speak up? (side note – this also relates to the bystander approach Dr Ken Rigby talks about).

• Martin Luther King said – “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – this is easier said than done as it can be challenging for men to speak up and challenge these issues through their leadership (here is a link to Jackson’s 10 things men can do to prevent gender violence).

• Stand with women and not against them.

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