Home > Education, Life > Real men don’t abuse women, says Dr. Jackson Katz; renowned speaker offers advice and solutions to Eugene audience

Real men don’t abuse women, says Dr. Jackson Katz; renowned speaker offers advice and solutions to Eugene audience

by Drew Dakessian on February 9, 2010

In Oregon 18 people die as a result of domestic violence every year, and one in six women is raped in her lifetime.

Last week, Eugene residents and University of Oregon students gathered at the Erb Memorial Union ballroom to hear renowned anti-sexist activist Dr. Jackson Katz give a speech entitled “More Than A Few Good Men: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help.”

Katz opened his speech by revealing that his wife, Shelley Erickson, grew up in the Emerald City. “I know the issues are extremely important, but also I have a personal connection to Eugene,” Katz said.

In the United States, men perpetrate 99 percent of rape even though only 10 percent of men are rapists, according to Katz. “If you abuse a child’s mother, you are abusing a child, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, pointing out that there are “an awful lot of men who don’t deal with childhood experiences [of witnessing or experiencing abuse] very well in their adult life.” Additionally, Katz said, men tend to gang up on other men who attempt to break the cycle of abuse or who verbally denounce it.

“We need [to expect] a whole lot more from men,” Katz said, asserting, “One of the ways to get to this paradigm shift is to critically examine how we’re currently thinking.”

Katz identified three reasons why he disagrees with the term ‘women’s issues’:

First, it gives men an excuse not to pay attention.
Second, it has resulted in risk prevention for women and girls passing as rape prevention.
Third, these issues are of a personal nature for men.

Katz believes that these are the true reasons for the overwhelming amount of abuse perpetrated against women by men in the United States, contrary to the popular belief that everyday life circumstances drive men to violence. “Let me just say, for the public record, the economy does not cause a man to murder his family. This is nonsense,” Katz said.

In the end, says Katz, real change will require men to take these three steps:

Change the way they think;
Stand up to other men; and
Give young boys a better example of what it means to be a man.

An educator, filmmaker, and social theorist, Katz is the co-founder of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the first large-scale attempt to enlist athletes of all ages in the fight against violence against women. He was also the first man at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to earn a minor in women’s studies.

After giving a compelling speech, Katz initiated a dialogue, providing the audience with an opportunity to pose questions and make comments. One woman said, “I’m sitting in a row that is designated for our coaches at the University of Oregon, and nobody showed up. Can you speak to this?”

“As a matter of fact, I can,” said Katz, amid laughter and applause from the audience, for whom the irony of the situation was clearly felt. “Here we are in 2010. If there’s any college or university athletic program that does not have a systematic sexual and domestic violence prevention program for all the student athletes, male and female, there is no excuse for it.”

“We need to overthrow the pornography industry,” Katz argued, describing how modern pornography tends to portray men in positions of sexual dominance and women in positions of submissiveness and servitude.” On a more local level, he said, “We need more fraternity guys from the University of Oregon in the local schools,” to serve as role models for young people. The high attendance rate at Katz’s speech by the fraternity community indicated that the need Katz articulated could have the potential to be met in the future.

Katz admonished those responsible for painting a swastika in the University’s LGBTQA office and called them “idiots.” However, these recent events have not disheartened him. When asked if Katz had a message for the City of Eugene specifically, he thought for a moment, and then said, “How about: live long and prosper?”

With good-natured sarcasm and feasible solutions to the city’s problem of violence, Jackson Katz showed the University community, and Eugene at large, what it truly means to be a man.