Power, privilege, and gender violence

Jackson Katz Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today's conversation is with...drumroll please...a man. That's right: we're bringing on our fourth male guest to dive deep into an issue that affects women really all over the world, and that is gender violence. Jackson Katz is the founder and president of MVP Strategies and an outspoken expert on why gender violence is not just a woman's issue.

Kassia Binkowski
Not only that, Sabrina, but Jackson feels very strongly that calling gender violence a women's issue only perpetuates men's lack of engagement when in actuality they should be at the forefront of ending this.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Amen.

Kassia Binkowski
We're talking about masculinity, we're talking about strength about his TED Talk that's been viewed millions of times around the world. And we're talking about Jackson's work to end gender violence in the military and in professional sports.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And it's really an eye opening conversation. We love the chance to flip the paradigm and dive deeper into an issue that impacts more than one in four women around the world. We're super grateful for men like Jackson who are willing to challenge society's definition of what it means to be a strong man—men who are willing to challenge long standing institutions to train leaders to end gender violence. Take a listen. Hi, Jackson, thank you so much for joining us.

Jackson Katz
Oh, thanks, Sabrina, for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We're also looking forward, and I have to tell you that we generally have some notes that we put together for conversations like this, and we have so many different things we want to talk to you about.

Kassia Binkowski
So be ready.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, be ready. Prepare yourself. We're gonna come at you from all the different angles. But first, where are you calling in from today?

Jackson Katz
Massachusetts, west of Boston. I'm from Boston, but I live west of Boston.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I did pick up the accent I have to say I told Kassia I hear Boston in his accent.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, she did.

Jackson Katz
Very good.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So Jackson, I'm really excited to have this conversation. You're here in large part because of the work that you do—the extensive knowledge and experience that you have about men's role in gender-based violence, about how we can educate people around gender-based violence, the different ways that we should be talking about it. I mean, there's a whole slew of things that we want to talk to you about. You are also here in small part because a man whom I know to be a loving, compassionate, gentle human being—a man in my life—believes that male chauvinism is innate. In other words, not able to be controlled or altered, and that my son, for example, who is two will likely grow up to have chauvinistic characteristics regardless of his environment or upbringing because it's just how men are genetically; it's innate. And it's an argument that I know to be false, but we as a society tend to give men a hall pass I feel for acting in certain ways, for acting out in certain ways. So, we need to have this conversation and break that whole thing apart. And I need you, as an expert, as a you know, PhD and sociologist and someone who has been in this role for many, many years to unequivocally say that is a falsity.

Jackson Katz
That is a falsity.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yay! Okay, done.

Kassia Binkowski
Yes. Done. We can wrap here.

Jackson Katz
I'm sorry to offend the person you care about. But it's silly. I mean, it's like saying racism is endemic to the human species, and therefore we can't really work on it. It's a genetic...— I mean, really, you can't change it. It's genetic. It never changes and that we can only, you know, nibble around the edges of its damage that it does, but it's something that's inherent in being human. I just don't buy it. I think there's tons of evidence—there's libraries full of evidence—to show that gender, for example, and how we think about masculinity and femininity—and more accurately, masculinities—t-i-e-s—and femininities—t-i-es—because there's a whole range—are socially constructed in the sense that different cultures have different definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. It's in the same society in the same country or it's the same culture. There's different subcultures that have different definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine, and it changes. Trans-historically—in other words, different eras—what we consider normative gender practices were in previous generations unthinkable. They were like science fiction. Just like when we look back at the past and say, ‘Oh my god, they did that back then?’ we think, ‘Oh, my God, that was how they define manhood?’ There's so many examples. I mean, I'll just give you a couple, just off the top, just for this man in your life. I mean, people will say things like, ‘You know, pink is a is a women's color.’ But, you know, pink used to be a boy’s color until the 19th century, right? High heels are considered a, you know, sort of feminine, sartorial affectation, you know? High heels were an aristocratic, European, male phenomenon in, like, the 16th century. Men of high standing would wear high heels, and that was seen as very masculine. I mean, the idea that somehow, these things—these ideas about manhood and womanhood—are fixed, and not ever-changing and being contested—and also, by the way, marbled into economic and political and social structures and the belief systems around gender are also directly connected. The symbolic way that we think about and represent gender is also tied to concrete and material realities of power relationships—economically, politically, and every other way. They are also always changing. So the idea that somehow boys or male children are born genetically predestined to be sexist or to be chauvinist or to be treating women with sort-of second-class status or anything like that is, frankly, absurd.

Kassia Binkowski
Excellent.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Standing ovation. If this is the only thing that our listeners hear out of this conversation, well worth it. But the fact is that it's so much more complex than that. And that is really just the fundamentals. So I'd really like to take a step back and start at the beginning, which is how did you take an interest in gender issues, and specifically domestic and sexual violence, gender-based violence?

Jackson Katz
Well, I mean, like, for anybody, Sabrina, this is complicated, like, my personal history, if you will, and, you know, personal experiences as a child in my family and everything else and as a kid growing up and then in university...— I mean, I started becoming an activist around this subject matter when I was 19 years old—a long time ago—but anybody who's listening who has any sort of insight into the complexities of personal identity and family history and anything else, will know that you just can, you know...— you can pick out points in time, but you can't account for all the complexity. So having said that, I'll say that when I was in college—it was in the early 1980s—I was quite enjoying my freedom, away from home, to be able to come and go as I pleased and not worry about what time I came home. I'd be coming home at three o'clock in the morning from parties, and I didn't live in and I didn't go to school as an undergraduate on an urban campus, but it was 20,000 students, so it had some urban elements to it. And I was just like, not even thinking about my personal safety coming home at three in the morning. And I'm not saying that was rational, but it was normative, and certainly for men and white men of my cohort, and to this day, a lot of white men live in parts of this country, the United States, but also in other parts of the world where they don't really worry about their personal safety. Anyways, I'm not saying it's rational, but it was normative. I lived in a co-ed dorm, a co-ed residence hall where my roommate was a man but my hallmates, you know, right next door on both sides, were women, and they had a completely different lived experience. Their freedom was completely attenuated or narrowed by their fear, basically, of sexual violence from men, especially at night—not exclusively, but especially, at night. And this was just after the era of the Take Back the Night rallies had begun in the UK in the mid 70s andthen in the United States in the late 1970s. The Take Back the Night movement was obviously an attempt by women, in particular, across class and race and ethnicity and everything to say, ‘We have the right to be going out at night and not worrying about being sexually assaulted.’ I mean it seems like a basic assertion, which it is, of human dignity and human rights. Anyhow, I remember thinking if I were a woman and I had to worry like my hallmates were constantly worrying about where they were going, who they were going to get home with, what time it was, do I have a ride home—just constant concern in a way that I didn't even think about—I remember thinking I would be ticked off if I were a woman, and I had to live like that. And I remember, I was a journalist. We had a newspaper, the college newspaper. It still exists. But it was a daily newspaper, and I wrote a weekly column, but I also covered some events. And I was assigned to cover an event where a group of women students had been organizing a rally for better lighting on campus, and better lighting on campus is a really basic public-safety intervention. And there had been a couple of rapes in a parking lot in my campus on the outskirts, and most rapes—I always make sure to say: Most rapes on college campuses don't happen outside in the parking lot; they happen inside. 90% of the perpetrators know the victim. 90% of the victims know the perpetrator. So it does happen; stranger rapes happen, but they're not the most common at all. Anyhow, I remember as I was approaching this group of women students with picket signs and everything, thinking not that these women hated men or they had some agenda against men, or that they were anti-male; but rather, I remember thinking, ‘This is what leadership looks like. These women are leaders. They're standing up for themselves.’ And I remember being inspired, like, this is great. And I remember I wrote a column about my experience of that moment, if you will, and thinking about, as a young guy, how I would feel if I were a woman and had to live with this daily threat. And then beyond the threat of violence from men, it was also the daily indignities of sexism. And it was also at a time, as a young guy that I—a young, white person, I should say—that I was learning about racism. And again, I was already 18, 19 years old, but my level of understanding and education around racism was not, shall we say, nowhere near up to speed. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I was starting to realize how pervasive a system racism was. And I remember thinking, again, how would I feel if I had been born, say, African American in the United States, and how, you know, unbelievably pissed off I would be about being treated as less-than-human, if you will, and have less-than-full rights. And as a heterosexual person...— this is all happening at the same time—... I was thinking about what we called the gay rights movement back then. And you know, and I'm somebody who graduated from high school, never having met an openly gay person. I mean, never having met an openly gay person, I'm not saying that I didn't meet many, you know, LGB—even T—people back in the day, but nobody openly. The first time that I had an encounter with a person who was openly gay was in college, and I remember it was a guest speaker at one of my classes, and he was a student activist in what was called the People's Gay Alliance. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, this guy has guts to walk through the door and say that he's gay in front of all of us.’ And I couldn't...— it was a big moment for me. And again, all this was happening at the same time. Then I started realizing, ‘Okay, what can I do as a man, as a white person, as a heterosexual person?’ It became obvious, very quickly, that I, in those cases, occupied a social position of advantage—and that I was in a position to do something about all of this. And when it came to the issue of men's violence against women, I remember thinking, ‘Okay, why aren't there men out there? Why is it all women protesting when, in fact, men are the ones doing the vast majority of violence?’ But most men say they're not violent; they're not abusive. In other words, the problem is caused overwhelmingly by men's behavior and a culture of male dominance, and yet, why should women be the ones that have to protest against it? If supposedly good men are not really, you know, committing these acts or part of the problem, then why aren't they the ones who are protesting it? I just saw it as unfair. And so it seemed obvious to me that there was the missing piece in the issue of men's violence against women—and sexism more generally—the missing piece was leadership from men. So I just started speaking out.

Kassia Binkowski
So you seem to really have this tidal wave of social justice hit you, specifically in college it sounds like. Was it ever more personal than that? Or was it always from the distance of being a bystander, of reporting on it as a student journalist, as being intrigued by it from a research angle? Did it ever become more personal?

Jackson Katz
You know, thank you. Kassia. I mean, as I said, right at the beginning, everything is always personal. And so there's no way that I could say that it was just, you know, ‘Intellectually, I came to this understanding,’ right? It was personal. For me as it is for everybody. I mean, gender is personal, but, you know, I grew up in a dysfunctional family as well. I grew up with problems in my family with damaged men everywhere I looked and damaged women. It wasn't just men, I mean, but it was certainly damaged men. And that's true today, too. I mean, not just in my family. And when I saw women, and when I heard feminist writers and activists and professors—in the classroom and outside the classroom—talking about gender as a category and talking about, you know, white, male supremacy...— And we were talking intersectionally, by the way. Back in the late 70s and early 80s. This didn't just come... We didn't have the term intersectional back then, but the smart people were thinking intersectionally a long time ago, and I've certainly had that access myself, which I'm happy about...— But when they were sort of explaining the world through the lens of gender which is what feminism does, among other things, it made so much sense to me about men's lives and about men's experiences. I mean, it became clear to me that it was not just about improving the quality of life of women, although that was the central political goal of feminism; it was also... gender is bigger than the category women. I mean, it's, men are gendered beings too. And patriarchal culture is shaping everybody's experience. And I got that viscerally and intellectually, very quickly.

Kassia Binkowski
So how has building your reputation around what is widely perceived to be a women's issue challenged your own masculinity? You've been in this work for decades. I don't doubt that you've kind of wrestled with that. But early on...— you know, you're certainly not immune to the societal expectations and the pressures that we place on men. You grew up as a jock in that culture. And yet, you're a really incredible example of positive deviance. What internal work have you had to do to be confident taking such a vocal role on such a triggering topic?

Jackson Katz
Great question. Honestly, because I got it so young and I was so confident as a young guy—... I mean, again, I should qualify that because I wasn't confident in every realm of my life, but I was pretty confident that when I started realizing how big a problem sexism was and men's violence against women and such, and I started deciding that I was going to speak out about it, I wasn't worried what other guys were going to say because I was like, ‘What are they going to say? That I'm soft? That I'm a wimp?’ It seemed so ridiculous to me.

Kassia Binkowski
And yet, it's so powerful, and yet it's so effective.

Jackson Katz
At keeping men silent.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah.

Jackson Katz
Oh, absolutely. And this is why—one of the reasons why—for all these years, and certainly, you know, in my sort of adult life beyond college, in my work, part of the whole approach here is to reframe these issues. And, by the way, reframe them not just in the way that I do, which is that these are men's issues not just women's issues that good men help out with; men are the ones committing the vast majority of the violence, the abuse, and harassment; men hold the vast majority of economic, social, and political power all over the world; therefore, it's our issue, period, end of sentence. But in addition to that, I mean, so many men have diminished lives as a result of the narrow understandings of manhood. So many men have diminished emotional and relational lives. There's so many men who live lives of quiet desperation. It became so clear to me that these were connected. In other words, men's abusive behavior towards women was connected to the system of gender inequality, which, of course, hurts women, first and foremost, but it also diminishes men's ability to be whole human beings, to participate in that system, and to get specific to your point, Kassia, because I was young and self-confident, and a bit, you know, bold—and I think that's a good thing. I mean, I'm glad I was—it didn't really matter to me what anybody said. And most of the support that I got back in the day was from women who were so happy to hear a man talking about this in the same way. I think a lot of men didn't know how to talk to me, and they didn't know what to make of me because they couldn't just write me off because of my traditional, sort-of hegemonic, masculine characteristics and accomplishments as a young guy. They couldn't just say he's, he’s...— And one last thing: the heart of so much of the work that I think has to happen with men is we have to redefine strength, what it means to be a strong man, and I didn't necessarily articulate it like this when I was 19, but I certainly do now, which is, I want men to be strong. I want my son to be strong. I want all men to be strong. But the question is: How do you define strength? And defining strength as your ability to impose your will physically, or even cerebrally, on another through force or the threat of force and what have you is such a narrow and, I think, cartoonish understanding of strength. So strength involves moral courage and social courage and the ability to be introspective and the strength to look inward and to acknowledge your vulnerability and to acknowledge the fears that you have and not to pretend that you don't have them. None of that is to me strong. So when I see men presenting themselves as, ‘I'm too tough for this. This is for soft men...’— To me it's so transparently ridiculous, that it's hard to...—it's like almost comic opera—it's hard to take it seriously. And I proceed with that, you know, understanding.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You also talked a lot about the importance of men standing up when women are not necessarily present to affronting behavior, to jokes, or discussions that would otherwise be offensive or insulting behavior. And my question to you is, right now, you've kind of talked about how those are the people that should be cast out, right? Those are the people that we should highlight as, ‘This is not the way we behave. This is not the way we talk.’ But right now, it seems like in terms of the locker room behavior, you know, it's the guy who's standing up saying, ‘Hey, that's offensive. Don't talk like that,’—that's the guy who's at threat of being cast out. So what was it for you when you were young? Was it this inherent confidence that you came that you didn't care what other people thought? And how can we ensure that the young men who are growing up right now are not afraid and have that confidence to stand up so that we can diminish that locker room behavior that has become so acceptable?

Kassia Binkowski
Which is to say, we're the parent of two small sons. How do we do better? How do we do this different?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, what do we do?

Kassia Binkowski
Give us the cheat sheet.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want my son to be for sure to be the one that stands up and is like, ‘Hey, dude, you know, love you, you're my buddy, but don't talk like that. It's not cool.’

Kassia Binkowski
Well, and that also associates strength with bravery and with vulnerability, but it's hard to actually instill sometimes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Jackson Katz
Well, true. And I appreciate that. It's not an easy thing, to say the least; it's a really difficult task. To be a parent, period, is a difficult task. To be a parent of sons in this generation, of daughters...— I mean, they have their own...each of them have their own challenges. And some people don't have sons or daughters, you know? It's beyond the binary...— But I would say there's so many different pieces to this, and forgive me—and you can cut it in—because I could go on about this. But I'm one of the architects of the bystander approach to gender violence prevention, and the bystander approach—you know, the program that I created back in the early 90s, the mentors and violence prevention program at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport and Society—we were the first to employ this understanding of the bystander to the domestic and sexual violence prevention fields. And we took it from the middle school bullying world where a professor mine in graduate school, along with his colleagues in the late 80s and early 90s, was looking at an approach to middle school bullying prevention that moved beyond the perpetrator, victim binary. In other words, they weren't focusing on the kid doing the bullying and the kid experiencing it; they were focused on all the kids around the kid doing it and all the kids around the kid experiencing it. And what they were trying to do is to say everybody in a given peer culture has a role to play. The people around the kid who's engaging in this bullying behavior should be making it clear to that kid that what he or she was doing was not acceptable, not because they want to get in trouble with the authority figure like the teacher or the principal who was an external agent of authority, who was going to come into the peer culture and remove the offending party, but because the peer culture was going to police itself. In other words, the kids were going to make it clear to other kids, ‘You can't treat kids like this. We don't respect this. You're not doing anything positive for your standing amongst us. In fact, you're showing that you have issues and problems. You got to knock it off. You got to get some help.’ And the goal was to get the kids around the kid experiencing the bullying, to make it clear to that kid that ‘what's happening to you is wrong. We don't support it, what can we do to help you?’ And again, the beauty of that approach was everybody in a given peer culture had a role to play. It wasn't just isolated to the kid doing it and the kid experiencing it. Well, what we did is we took that into the sexual assault and domestic violence world and what we're saying to men in particular, and it started out focused on men. The bystander approach was an approach that came out of the need and desire to figure out how to speak to men about preventing domestic and sexual violence because most men will say, ‘This is not my problem. It's not my issue. I don't rape women. I don't harass women. I don't harass my colleagues in the workplace. I'm a good guy. You need to be talking to those guys who are doing it, not me. I'm a good guy, right?’ So what we said is, ‘By using this bystander approach, it's like, if you yourself are not harassing or abusing women, number one: that's not something you should be, you know, getting high fives for, like, that's not like a big, impressive accomplishment. Every human being who is a decent person should not be abusing other people, so don't expect that we're going to give you all kinds of rewards for not being abusive. But it's not enough that you yourself aren't abusive if you don't confront and challenge and interrupt men around you who are engaging in this behavior. Then, in a sense, your silence is a form of consent and complicity in their abuse.’ Again, directly analogous with white people and racism or Christian or Gentile people with anti-semitism: If you yourself are not speaking up and challenging other white people, for example, who are telling racist jokes or making demeaning comments about people of color, then, in a sense, your silence gives them a message of consent, that what they're saying is acceptable. And are you going to sit here in the 20th and 21st century and say that attitudes don't influence actions? That somehow the actions of racists out in the world or racism out in the world has no relationship to attitudes and beliefs that are nurtured in places like peer cultures where people make comments and other people don't challenge them? Are you kidding? So what we did is we applied that thinking, the bystander approach, to the sexual assault and domestic violence field, and it gave us a great way to talk to the men and say, ‘You do have to speak up, and it's not just at the point of attack. It's not just when a rape is happening in front of you or an incident of domestic violence is happening in your room or next to you. It's even the attitudes that lead to it. And how can you do this? How can you interrupt? How can you make it clear that you're not on board with that?’ And the key here—and relates to the earlier question—is the bystander who speaks up—and, by the way, I use the word ‘bystander’ as a synonym for friend, teammate, classmate, colleague, co-worker, family member; in other words, there's no such real category as bystander; it's just another way of saying ‘everybody else’ in any given situation whether it's a specific peer culture or an entire community—but the person who speaks up in the face of disrespectful language or abusive behavior of any kind? That person is a leader. That's what a leader does. So the word ‘bystander’ is also another word for ‘leader’. And if you frame this issue as a leadership issue, which I've been doing for a long time, it's a way to positively say to men, ‘We need more men who have the guts and the strength to be leaders; to have the guts and strength and self-confidence to not be silent when other men are acting out in these ways; to have the guts and the strength to say ‘that's not cool’. And I'm not saying that this is easy. The reason why it doesn't happen very often is because it's not easy. And there are all these mechanisms in male peer cultures that conspire to keep men and young men silent. And so I think one of the challenges for those of us and those of us who have boys is that if boys themselves don't see adult men talking like this, don't see adult men challenging other adult men in the public discourse, as well as in their private and family lives, then they have intense pressure on them as young boys and young men. That's even more pressure than older guys like me. If they never even see adult men say it, I think it's putting too much pressure on them.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I want to make a direct connection with the bystander approach to the experiences that you had growing up, which is that you were a bystander of certain gender dynamics in your family that you witnessed, and you were also a bystander when you were on college campuses seeing these groups who were going through certain kinds of oppression and trying to rise up, and the fact that it became such a clear connection to you at such a young age, that you as someone who comes from a community—the Jewish community—that you experienced as either individually or through your family, or through the culture or the history, what you experienced, to be able to say, frankly, that we are not in competition for oppression, right? We are not, you know, I have suffered more than you have suffered, or my people have suffered more than your people have suffered, frankly, what you were saying, which is true, is that during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the rabbis and the Jews were standing shoulder to shoulder with their black peers and with, you know, Reverend King and marching, and that is exactly what we should be saying when it comes to civil rights and activism of all kinds and all colors and all shades. And so, I want to highlight kind of the importance of your experience, which is you as a white, straight man, you know, having this epiphany of ‘I am the bystander. I am in a position to be able to use my experience to try and shift the needle, not just for women, but also for men,’ and acknowledging that pressure on the men and acknowledging what's happening with the men as well is just as important in many ways. So I think that's a really important piece, right, that the bystander approach is all of us, and you experienced that personally and then created a program around that. And what I want to ask you is that...— We had a conversation with Jeffrey Tobias Halter, similarly, a white, straight man who had his kind of epiphany about how he could be an activist around gender issues, and we kind of challenged him about the privilege he has as a white man and the access it has afforded him to create that change. You know, he acknowledged that he could be standing in a room with his female colleague and people are hearing things differently from him than they are from her, so: how has that afforded you access to things like the US military, to sports teams—places where, historically, sexual violence, you know, has been a critical issue and remains a critical issue?

Jackson Katz
Another great question. Well, I was intentional, by the way, Sabrina, in going into the sports culture, and then the military because my goal was to establish credibility beyond the sports culture and the military. These are massive problems. Men's violence against women is a global problem of the first order of magnitude in the human species. It's one of the great problems in our society and in the world—I mean, in our species. Forget about our society. In the world and in history, men's violence against women is directly overlapping with and connected to and intersecting with every other social problem that you can name. I mean, we could play a game—I'm not saying we should—but we could play a game where you could name a social problem, and I could give you an angle where it's connected either directly or indirectly to domestic and sexual violence and sexual harassment and gender inequality. It's a huge problem. And so my thinking was: If we go into parts of male culture that have enhanced status, and enhanced, sort of, impact on defining certain norms about, quote, unquote, manhood, that we would have an exponential impact beyond the insular athletic subculture, for example. I mean, for example, the way I ended up in the military was because of the success we were evidencing in our work in the college sports culture. Because people in the military, in the Marine Corps, you know, the various officials in the Marine Corps saw that what we were doing in college athletics was something that they thought could translate into the military setting. And so it all built from there. But yes, it's true that my both background and knowledge and being a man and being a white man—although my program has been gender and racially integrated from the beginning so even though I think one of the specialties that we have is effectively working with men across class and race and ethnicity and sexual orientation and everything else, it's not exclusively that I work only with men. But let's be clear, the big elephant in the room when it comes to gender violence prevention is engaging men. The big elephant in the room when it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace is about men, and how do you, especially white men, how do you engage men who are in positions of leadership? And to me, that's the Everest of the field of equity and inclusion. How do you successfully work with white men because white men have so much disproportionate power? And if you had more white male allies and more white men saw that leadership on these issues was required—not hoped for as, like, a gesture of support—but rather an expectation of leadership, the changes that have to happen in our societies would happen much, much more quickly. And again, by the way, I've always been clear that the driving force for gender justice in the world is women and in a multiracial, multiethnic sense. It's no doubt. It's not men; it's women, just like the driving force for racial justice is people of color, not white people. But white people have an incredibly important role to play in the struggle for racial justice, and men have an incredibly important role to play in the struggle for gender justice. And if we just got a critical mass of men, not a widespread mass movement, but a critical mass of men to join with women in furthering feminist goals of gender justice and equity and fairness and everything else, that's the tipping point—the tipping point for a massive social transformation. But getting to that critical mass of men is very difficult and so my thinking was: ‘You have to go into the heart of male culture—the dominant male culture—because if you're going to nibble around the edges; in other words, if you're just going to work with, for example, marginalized identities—marginalized male identities—that's important, to be inclusive. But you're not really going to the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is the hegemonic or the dominant male culture. And that doesn't get us anywhere.

Kassia Binkowski
You've been very vocal since day one, that calling gender violence a women's issue is part of the problem. I'm curious: would a woman ever be able to do the work that you're doing? Would they ever have the professional success, the reputation, the access to this, like, heart of masculinity that you have if they weren't a white male?

Jackson Katz
Well, I mean, it's similar to would people of color ever have access in the same way to white people when it comes to racial justice? I mean, it's exactly analogous. What I heard from feminist leaders and activists and theorists back in the late 1970s and the early 1980s—including, famously, bell hooks—is the proper role for men who are wanting to support gender justice, is to educate, organize, and politicize other men. And the proper role for white people who want to work for racial justice is to educate and organize and politicize other white people and white institutions and white political power. And to me, there's no contradiction there. It's like, that's what you do. If you occupy a position of social advantage, or relative privilege, then the way that you can be the strongest ally for justice and fairness and equity is to help to break down the unfair advantage that members of your group have. Period. End of sentence.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You have focused a lot on the language we use being part of the problem, being alienating to certain groups. You, in your TEDx talk, which was a phenomenal kind of example of this, you even talked about how when we use a sentence like ‘John beat Mary’ and then you kind of go all the way down to ‘Mary is a battered woman,’ it’s suddenly a completely different story. Now, suddenly, you know, it's all about Mary. John is not even in the picture. We're not focused on the man. We're not focused on the perpetrator. It's all about victim blaming. And I guess what I want to understand is when thinking about having a critical mass of men in this conversation and men as advocates, we certainly are nowhere close right now, and given that you agree that it is men's responsibility to educate themselves but doing that when you don't have a critical mass is an extremely challenging ask, what kind of language have you been using that you have found to be effective in bringing men into the conversation?

Jackson Katz
Well, thank you. Look, can I just make a clarification? I think clearly women and women as educators, women as teachers, women as mothers and caregivers and other roles that they play in the lives of boys and men, have an incredibly important role and an ongoing role. So I'm not saying...— When I say it's men's responsibility, I don't mean it's not also women's responsibility.

Kassia Binkowski
Absolutely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I completely agree. And I think that's a good clarification. But the important distinction, though, is that it is not solely women's responsibility to educate men who are kind of sitting there going, ‘Uhh, I don't know,’ right? Yeah.

Jackson Katz
I think men's inaction on these matters is an illegitimate use of their privilege. In other words—and, by the way, some men, and this gets a little bit, you know, into sort of some of the ethical questions of what does it mean to be an ally, what does it mean to privilege?—but I think some men wrap themselves in these sort of ethical knots, you know, create this pretzel logic, where they end up saying, ‘Well, I can't really speak out on these matters because then my voice will be too loud, and if my voice is too loud, then I'm going to be shouting over women and don't we have to just sit back and listen? And women are the ones who should be the leaders on these matters.’ I'm talking about men who consider themselves enlightened, okay? So I'm not talking about the knuckle draggers. I'm talking about men who see themselves as smart, thoughtful, 21st century men who will say, ‘My role is to be quiet and silent, and, you know, this is women's thing,’ which, to me, is an abrogation of their responsibility because they have privilege. And if they're not going to use that privilege in a positive way, and they have a voice; if they're not going to use it in a way to advance gender justice, then, in a sense, their passivity or their inaction, even if it's dressed up in fancy language of ‘I want to give women the platform,’ is actually irresponsible. And I think it's also irresponsible because I think if you have privilege and you don't use it actively to address injustice, then you're part of the problem.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Can I just interrupt to say that I agree with that, and I also want to say from the women's perspective that we have heard a number of times that there are women who stand up against the men who are trying to be allies and advocates and being outspoken about this issue, who the women are saying, you know, ‘We don't need saviors. We don't need men to be our white knights. Sit down. You're taking the focus away from women. You're taking the focus away from the female voices in this.” And that is also irresponsible. And I speak to the women when I say that we do need both sides of the story. We need men and women to be completely outspoken about this, and it is irresponsible for the women to stand up against the men who are really trying to be our advocate.

Kassia Binkowski
Or at least ineffective. Hugely ineffective.

Jackson Katz
Right. Well, again, there's this direct analogy with racial justice. It's like, it's always, always useful to use analogies, I think. When people are stuck in a way of thinking, especially around power and privilege, is to take them out of the specific issue you're talking about and move it into another issue. So there are plenty of people of color who are sensitive to and have a heightened awareness of white people moving into spaces of leadership around racial justice if that moving-into impedes people of color's leadership or somehow steps on that leadership. And that's a problem. I mean this is an ongoing thing in social justice movements. People have to be careful that they don't reproduce in systems of inequality and injustice and privilege while they're claiming to be advancing it. I understand. That's what being self-aware and self critical and being accountable means, is checking in on these kinds of questions. But to say that we're going to achieve racial justice in the United States without white people supporting—it's silly. It's ridiculous. And most people of color who are racial justice activists know this. They know that you need white people out in the streets. You need white people in positions of corporate power and political power to be addressing these issues, to be changing policies, to be using whatever resources they have to advance racial justice. That's just smart politics. And yeah, there are going to be some women and, you know, feminist activists and others who are going to...— There's going to be places where they're resentful towards strong male voices, and sometimes what they're identifying is, in fact, true, which is to say that sometimes men do cross those lines and do become, you know, like...— For example, on a college campus, when a group, a group of men, really want to get involved in, you know, sort of speaking out about rape and sexual violence, and they don't as the first order of business, go have a meeting with the women who are at the at the forefront of dealing with the issue of rape and rape prevention and education on that campus. So a group of men who wants to start a program like an organization, like, say, student activists who want to start an organization, the first thing on this subject, the first thing they need to do is check in with the women on campus who have already been doing it. If they don't do that, then of course, I understand how those women would be like, ‘Who these guys think they are? We've been doing this.’ So that's just being smart politically and being smart strategically, as well. And I appreciate that. But I don't live in the world where men don't have a role to play in being leaders on gender justice. To me, it's just obvious that men need to be playing a much, much more powerful role.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's just go back to the question of the importance of language. Talk to us about what language you have been using that you found to be more effective in your work?

Jackson Katz
Well, yes, thank you, Sabrina. Well, let me just say, in my TEDx talk, which became a TED talk, and it's, you know—

Kassia Binkowski
—Has been viewed by millions of people around the world.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Millions. Yes.

Jackson Katz
It has been. I did this exercise that was based on the work of the feminist linguist, Julia Penelope, and I credit her in my...— she's deceased...—but I credit her in my TED Talk because that's an example of women's intellectual brilliance that needs to be, you know, acknowledged, if you will, but I had the platform, so I did it. That's...that's an example right there, in action, of how a man with a platform and a voice can enhance a woman's leadership and intellectual contribution. But I would say there's a bunch of things. One is that this passive language piece is really important because, again, Julie Penelope was ahead of the curve and figuring this out. The use of passive language in descriptions of gender violence has a very powerful political effect, and the political effect is it shifts the focus off of men and puts it onto women. So for example, you'll hear people say things like how many women were raped on college campuses last year rather than how many men raped women on college campuses. You'll hear people say things like how many girls in this school district were sexually harassed last year, rather than how many boys sexually harassed girls, or how many girls sexually harassed girls. You'll hear people say things like how many teenage girls in this state got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls. And in each case, the use of passive language has a very powerful political effect. And the political effect is the shift in focus off of the group with more power onto the group with less, and as I always point out, I mean, this is not a coincidence. It's not sloppy thinking. This is how power works: through either stealth or invisibility or the shifting of accountability off of itself. So I think the very act of using active language is itself a powerful thing. And, by the way, the term ‘violence against women’ is a term that I don't use. ‘Violence against women’ is a passive phrase. It's a bad thing that happens to women, but nobody's doing it to them; they're just experiencing it, kind of like the weather. But if you insert the active agent—men—you have a new phrase: ‘men's violence against women’. And let me say: a lot of men react defensively to this level of honest language. So I'm not saying that it's a cure-all to use active language because a lot of women, for example, in the domestic and sexual violence and sexual harassment field have learned over the years that if they use active language, that sometimes guys will get so defensive in reaction. ‘Oh, what are you saying? Not all men are abusive. Not all men are rapists, I can't stand these broad brushing, feminist indictments of all men. It's about bad actors and bad men. And I agree that they're a problem, but I can't stand—and I resent—being implicated in their crimes and their abuse just because I happen to be a man.’ You get this defensive reaction from some men when you use that level of honest language. But I would say another piece, Sabrina, in terms of language is by framing it as a leadership issue for men, like as a positive challenge, like, ‘Guys, we need more guys with the courage and the strength to actually act on what we say our beliefs are. And if we say we believe in justice and fairness and human rights and democracy, then what are we doing to advance that? What are we doing about the issue of men's violence against women?’ For example, how many men have done nothing—zero—in their lives to advance speaking out about, or, organizationally, men's violence against women? Or if they've done anything, it's to either support women in their lives—you know, their wife, their daughter, their sister, or another woman that they like or love or what have you. Or sometimes men will write a check, and they'll say, ‘Okay, we'll support that nice program in our community that deals with domestic violence and sexual assault, because, you know, that's a valid use of our funds to help these people’. But how many men who care about women and who claim to care about all those other things that I talked about, including democracy...— How many of those men have actually done anything beyond that? It's tiny. It's tiny. And so by saying to them, ‘We need more men who have the courage and strength to be leaders and to take some risks and to not worry what other guys are going to say, but just do it anyways’. I mean, that's a reframe that I think really works: when they start talking about engaging men.

Kassia Binkowski
It's a really fine line that you've learned to walk because on the one hand, you're saying, ‘Put men back in the center of the problem’—like speak about men, reframe the issue around men. And on the other hand, you're saying, ‘But keep it aspirational. Keep it positive,’ you know? And that's a hard thing to do.

Jackson Katz
[Laughter] Yes, you're right.

Kassia Binkowski
[Laughter] That's like a real...— You're like threading a needle.

Jackson Katz
That's right. And, you know, what a lot of men who have the sort of consciousness and motivation to even think about some of these ethical questions, do, as I said earlier, is they tie themselves up in ethical knots, and the result is they don't do anything.

Kassia Binkowski
Which is a cop out.

Jackson Katz
That's right. It's a cop out, and the collective, the sum total, of all these men trying to figure out how they can play a role and then realizing, ‘Wait a second: it's complicated. If I walk that tightrope, I might cross the line...’ The sum total of all those ethical, you know, quandaries that so many men find themselves engaging with is silence among millions—billions!—of men is this ongoing problem of sexism and men's violence against women all over the world. And to me, the status quo is not acceptable. We have to change it.

Kassia Binkowski
So you've spent decades approaching this from the leadership development angle, which makes a lot of sense. You made—you make—a really compelling case for. How do we...— What's the next step? How do we hold leadership accountable? I mean, when leaders are so often white men, and women are so systematically oppressed, still,m around the world, how do women stand up safely against that authority? How do we empower women to stand up without risking their personal or professional safety? Because it's one thing, again, to hear it from you as a white male who can speak out against that ,with very little repercussion. How do we empower women to be able to do the same?

Jackson Katz
That's the billion dollar question. That's what feminism is. I mean, it means joining a social movement. This isn't about individuals. I mean, individuals can play an important role, but it's an important role as part of a movement, and there is a multiracial, multiethnic women's movement—or women's movements—that have been utterly world-changing. You know, feminism is not just like one decade or two decades of, you know, sort of activism. This is like one of the tectonic shifts in the history of human civilization. Feminism is so much bigger than any specific social movement. It's a huge shift in the world that we happen to be part of. I mean, I think there's a blessing to the fact that we're alive in this time. This is an unbelievable time of transformation in the human species.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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