Jackson Katz, Ph.D. is an educator, author, activist, and social theorist who has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men committed to promoting gender equality and preventing gender violence. I consider him one of my intellectual heroes and recently I had the pleasure of interviewing him about his work and its intellectual underpinnings and the recently released updated edition of his groundbreaking book about men taking the lead in stopping and preventing sexual violence, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help.
According to Katz, the biggest paradox that men often face in their daily lives is that the things that they do and say that make them look “macho” or strong in the eyes of the world and to other men are actually often times the things that make them emotionally and psychologically weak to the point that it makes it difficult for them to create and maintain healthy relationships with the ones they profess to love. This is part two of our conversation about this and other issues. (Read Part One here)
JMA: Why do you feel the usage of gender-neutral language is problematic when it comes to describing the perpetrators of sexual violence?
JK: Because men and boys commit the overwhelming majority of sexual violence, whether it’s against women or other men. Gender (masculinity) is the heart of the matter. Not “maleness.” There’s a big difference. It’s not in any way “anti-male” to say that gender norms and cultural beliefs about “manhood” contribute directly to so much of the violence in our society, whether it’s rape on college campuses or school shootings and other incidents of mass murder. If we use gender-neutral language and pretend it’s just a problem of “people” hurting other people, we’re not being honest and we’re not getting to the root of the problem. I don’t believe men are biologically programmed to commit sexual assault. But sexual entitlement is the root cause of much if not most sexual violence. Sexual entitlement is not something male children are born with. They learn it, which means we (as a culture) teach it to them.
JMA: Why do you feel the “boys will be boys” explanation for male behavior is so potentially destructive and counterproductive for males and society in general?
JK: It’s usually said in response to bad behavior by boys and men, but it’s anti-male. It suggests that boys and men are incapable of making rational, ethical decisions, about how to treat women or other men. What do you expect? Boys will be boys. Ironically, feminists are routinely accused of being anti-male, yet they actually want to hold men to a higher standard, because they know that men are perfectly capable of demonstrating empathy and engaging in ethical decision-making, along with other high-level human skills. In other words, you don’t hear feminists saying, “boys will be boys,” because they have too much respect for men than to dismiss their bad behavior by reductive and simple-minded references to hormones and genetics. Also, it’s important to note that “boys will be boys” is usually meant as an explanation of and defense against bad behavior by white boys and men. When boys and men of color act poorly, they are rarely afforded the luxury of that rationalization.
JMA: What part do you think male peer culture plays in preventing and calling out the sexual violence that is committed by men?
JK: Unless we’re going to subscribe to the “bad apples” theory of social problems and say that sexual violence is largely a problem of pathological individuals, it’s absolutely critical to look at male peer cultures as a primary site of struggle. If we’re going to address and transform the gender norms underlying men’s perpetration of sexual harassment and assault, we have to address the role of peer cultures – small and large, local and universal, brick and mortar and virtual — that help to produce and reproduce those norms. That’s the work I and my colleagues — men, women, and others — in the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) universe have been doing for a long time. But it has to be scaled up. We have to make men’s abuse of women in all its forms – physical, sexual, verbal, etc. — socially unacceptable among men. If we can do that, we’ll reduce the incidence of perpetration by orders of magnitude.
JMA: At one point in The Macho Paradox, you emphatically state that
“Homophobia…plays a powerful role in keeping heterosexual men from challenging male power and privilege.”
What did you mean by that?
JK: In homophobic cultures and subcultures, one of the key ways that men police and keep each other in line to support heteronormative attitudes, beliefs and behaviors is to stigmatize and/or punish expressions of homosexuality, and then to identify any behaviors that deviate from strict definitions of heteronormative masculinity as gay. The message to gay and bi men and others is to hide your sexual orientation, because of the potentially high costs of exposure. At the same time, the message to heterosexual men is to hide any part of yourself that might expose you to stigma or negative consequences. To the extent that we can continue to push for full rights and opportunities for people across the sexual orientation as well as gender identity spectrum, we will diminish the power of homophobia as a policing mechanism that keeps boys and men in silent or active conformity with ideas and norms around masculinity and masculinities that do immense damage not only to gay and bi men and others across the sexual and gender identity spectrum, but also to heterosexual and cisgender men.
JMA: When it comes to men and the sexual violence they commit, what do you mean by the term “bystander”?
JK: I’m one of the early architects of the “bystander” approach to the prevention of sexual harassment, sexual assault and relationship abuse. The word bystander is just a synonym for friend, teammate, classmate, co-worker. It’s anyone in a given situation or peer culture who is neither a victim nor a perpetrator of some sort of abusive behavior. You don’t have to be present at the time of an assault to be considered a bystander. Unfortunately, some of what is now called “bystander intervention” training is little more than a kind of glorified nightclub bouncer training, where people learn techniques for intervening when they encounter situations of potential harm. But unless you combine this skill-building with robust and honest discussions about gender norms, you’re only scratching the surface. That means in working with men, you have open discussions about the pressures boys and men are under to conform to certain narrow definitions of “manhood,” and how group processes – on teams, in fraternities, the military, in male-dominated workplaces, etc. — contribute to those pressures. Doing bystander intervention training to prevent gender violence and not talking about gender is like doing anti-racist training and not talking about race. If you want to be transformative you’ve got to do both.
For more information about Jackson Katz and his work please visit his website at
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Previously Published on The Feminine Collective
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