Rebecca Ross recently wrote an article about Jackson Katz, including an interview. Here’s an excerpt:
Jackson Katz believes it’s time to stop calling domestic violence “a women’s issue.”
The educator, author, filmmaker and activist has spent years speaking out on the issue of gender violence, an issue he feels is firmly rooted in America’s culture.
“There isn’t violence against women because of some genetic abnormality in men; it is our culture. It is learned behavior,” said Katz, who wrote the 2006 book, “The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help.”
I agree with Jackson Katz that domestic violence is more of a man’s issue than a woman’s issue. If we want to stop domestic violence, we have to focus on stopping the perpetrators, which tend to be men. We cannot just tell the victims, which tend to be women, that the problem is theirs. Instead, to fight violence we must change the culture that leads men to commit violent acts against women as well as each other.
Of course, we do need to remember that sometimes women abuse men as well, even though it happens much less frequently.
Friday, May 25th 2007 at 11:12 am
I agree on changing the culture that leads men to be violent with women. It’s called teaching women how to diffuse a situation by not pushing buttons until the breaking point. It’s teaching women that you can be equal to men without trying to dominate. It’s teaching women that if you take everything else that makes a man a man away, then physical violence is what we resort to. My plea to women is this, “Let’s work together for equality, because your policy of trying to be the one in control is not working.”