EP. 63 — Men’s Violence Against Women with Dr. Jackson Katz

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil. I hope you’re well. I’m good. Lots of work stuff going on, very intense. I’m doing lots of things that I never thought I would ever do. I did not have any of them on my bingo card for 35 years old. One of them is that I’m about to do an animated movie with The Rock and Kate McKinnon and Keanu fucking Reeves and John fucking Krasinski. All these people that I love and admire so much, I can’t believe I’m about to be in an animated film with them. I’m going to be such a fucking nerd at that premiere. Can you imagine how much of a geek I’m going to be? I’m going to ask everyone for a selfie. I’m going to be so embarrassing and my manager’s going to have to say what she said when I was at this Hollywood Reporter shoot with all these brilliant icons that I totally didn’t deserve to be around. But I think they probably needed an Indian person. So they threw me in. And she was like, can you stop pointing at people with your mouth open? And sort of officially asked me to stop being a fucking loser because I was surrounded by my heroes, but I can’t help it, I just feel like Hollywood’s biggest competition winner, I will never feel like I belong here. And as I’ve said to you many times in this podcast, fuck it, lean in to the imposter syndrome, lean into it and enjoy it, indulge in imposter syndrome. Think about how lucky you are to not deserve to be here and yet be here anyway and then make the absolute fucking most of it. That’s what I’ll be doing at the premiere of this movie Super Pets, that I’m doing. Lots of other unexpected things going on at the moment. Anyway, that’s enough about me. I try not to talk about myself very much in these intros because give a fuck. Do you know what I mean? You’re more interested in what I’m interested in, which is the people that I have on this podcast. And this week I have someone, so. Interesting and strong and supportive and unusual and fantastic, and it is a gentleman called Dr. Jackson Katz, he is an American educator, a filmmaker and author whose work centers on violence, media and masculinities with an added focus on media literacy. He delivered a speech, a TED talk that went completely viral, like millions and millions and millions and millions of views viral. That was about men’s violence against women. And if you haven’t heard or seen or read the speech after you finished this episode of the podcast, I beg of you to do so because it is one of the most extraordinary 17 and a half minutes of your life. And having seen that speech, I asked him, it was being circulated a lot after the murder of Sarah Everard, which was a huge point of discourse across the Internet when it happened not so long ago. And so at the time, I reached out to him just to say that his speech really moved me and is something that. I haven’t just not seen a man say I haven’t seen anyone speak about the violence that women face most often at the hands of men in the way that he talks about it. And so we delve further into that issue and we talk about his history, his journey towards being someone who wants to spend his life educating other men to become allies for women and explaining how toxic masculinity and patriarchy harms all of us, harms every single gender. We talk about gun violence. We talk about so many different things. And I could have talked to him for 400 hours, I swear to God. But he’s such an informative man who comes armed with statistics, with empathy, with openness, with humility and and honestly it was just a fucking at a points during the podcast, he apologized to me for just like going on and on and on and speaking on and on and on. And I was fucking thrilled because I’m exhausted having to talk about feminism and women’s safety and women’s rights all of the time. It was so wonderful to have a man finally come on and do this labor for us. So please just sit back and relax and listen to this excellent episode that you should feel free to forward to any of the men in your life that you can’t be fucked to educate because he will do it excellently for you. This is the wonderful Dr. Jackson Katz. Dr Jackson Katz. I’m such a big fan of yours, I’m so happy that you’re here. Welcome to I Weigh. [00:04:22][262.6]

Dr. Katz: [00:04:24] Thanks, Jameela, it’s great to be with you. [00:04:25][1.6]

Jameela: [00:04:27] I for anyone who doesn’t know, Dr Jackson Katz is an American educated filmmaker and author whose work centers on violence, media and masculinities with an added focus on media literacy, which I’m dying to get into with him. And he was also the first man to minor in women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts. And you also hold a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA. So therefore, I couldn’t feel in safer hands than I do right now having this conversation with you. I first became aware of you upon finding your speech a couple of years ago called Violence Against Women. It’s a men’s issue and it’s just over 17 minutes long. And I’ve seen it so many times because it’s one of the best deliveries on the overwhelming societal issue at large around the violence that women face. And I’m even as I’m talking about this, I’m so aware of what we’re about to talk about, which is the problematic wording of calling it violence against women. And that’s one of the many important topics that you bring up in this speech that I’m going to link to everyone who listens to this episode. I’ll make sure to link to it on my Instagram. But can we talk about that incredible speech? That was, what, five years ago? [00:05:41][73.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:05:42] Well, it was 2013. [00:05:43][0.5]

Jameela: [00:05:44] Oh, my God it was more than that. [00:05:46][1.5]

Dr. Katz: [00:05:46] Yeah, I delivered it in the in the fall of twenty twelve and it went it went live online in twenty thirteen. [00:05:53][7.0]

Jameela: [00:05:55] My goodness. I remember thinking even back then that this felt so modern to see a man talking about this issue so passionately and such an informed and compassionate and active manner where you actually calling for action. And yet even I didn’t know that you were. I was almost eight years late to finding that video and also that you have been doing this for decades and that there are actually a lot of people, including in particular men, who have been doing the work that you do for quite some time now. [00:06:25][30.9]

Dr. Katz: [00:06:27] One thing that I’ve learned from that whole experience, and I still get emails and I still get people contacting me to this day who tell me that they had never heard a man say the things that I was saying. And they were a little shocked that it was several years before Me Too. And I was like, wait a second. It was not just a few years before Me Too. It’s like it’s like, as you said, Jameela, my my colleagues and I have been doing this kind of work, you know, engaging men, thinking critically about men’s violence against women from a from the men’s perspective, if you will, and engaging men with a whole range of feminist issues, to be honest with you, since the late 1970s. And so the idea that somehow you know, something in twenty twelve or twenty thirteen was was seen to be by many people I appreciate seem to be like cutting edge suggested to me how much work that we have to do. My colleagues and I around the world, the men who in a multiracial, multiethnic sense, who are doing this kind of work, how much we have to step up our game. And I mean, in terms of scaling up the things that we’ve already been doing because so many people don’t even know it exists, [00:07:30][63.1]

Jameela: [00:07:30] I think one of the things that I and the millions and millions of people around the world felt in watching your video, regardless of their gender, I felt so much less gaslit about this issue, because that is one of the main tools of and there are so many tools yet used to silence women who speak out against the violence that we receive often at the hands, most often at the hands of men. We are gastlit about it or we are immediately silenced by you can often be men’s rights activists or just disgruntled men who say, you know, well, technically and statistically, more men are sexually abused. More men are subjected to violence on the street. The world is technically unsafe for men and they use that to shut the conversation down because they have statistics at hand. And what always baffled me until I saw your speech as that no one realizes that, you know, it’s not women who are inflicting all of that harm against men. It’s a minority of women inflicting that harm. It’s men hurting those other men. It’s men sexually assaulting those other men as well as women and children. So this is an issue that we need to talk about. You can’t just shut it down by saying men are also hurt by men. That can’t be our bar of where we’re happy for society to exist at. [00:08:39][69.2]

Dr. Katz: [00:08:40] That’s right. That’s right. And I often say just to use, you know, easy phrases that can be easily digestible. The same system that produces men who abuse women, produces men who abuse other men and men’s violence against other men is one of the great problems and great tragedies of our species going back tens of thousands of years. Men’s violence against other men. Of course, men’s violence against women is the front line of my work, but it’s not one or the other, really. I’m constantly making the point that the same system, again, that produces a 19 year old guy who, you know, sexually assaulted his classmate in university or a college or university is the same after a night of partying is the same system that produced the twenty seven year old man who beats up his pregnant wife because he’s freaked out that she’s going to start focusing somewhere else other than him and his needs. And so he’s losing control and he acts out by aggressing against her. Is the same system that produces a thirty nine year old corporate executive who sexually harasses his colleagues or his subordinates in the workplace is the same system that produces a fifty eight year old white guy in the in the hills mountains of Utah who goes out in the woods and shoots himself in the head in response to a series of life circumstances. They’re all connected and sophisticated people make those connections. And yet so often in the discussion about men’s violence against women, you will hear men say, just like you reference, oh, well, what about violence against men, as if they’re not connected and they’re just showing their ignorance on some level. And it’s so frustrating to me because the women in the multiethnic, multiracial women’s movements around the world have been talking about this and trying to point us in this direction for decades. And yet they still get called often anti male male bashers. They have an agenda against men. And yet they’re what they’re doing is is so life affirming for men and boys, as well as for women and girls. If these if these ignorant men would just relax, take a deep breath, maybe read a book, maybe go to a training, go, go, go listen to people in the domestic and sexual violence field talk about the subject matter. Maybe they would see that there’s actually some great compassion and insight for what’s going on in men’s lives as well. [00:10:51][131.1]

Jameela: [00:10:52] One of the things that I found so particularly interesting about your speech is when you discuss the not almost a grammatical, I guess, way in which we break this down, how impactful that is on the way that we look at, think about and handle violence. So as you were just mentioning, that men say, well, what about violence against men? It’s because we haven’t put a protagonist at the beginning of that sentence that it’s men’s violence against women or men’s violence against men, because we don’t have that that protagonist and I don’t know the correct grammatical term and about to ask you for it in a minute. But because we don’t have that that that part of the sentence, they’re able to sort of fob women off with that as if this is a terrible thing that’s happening to women and a terrible thing that’s happening to men and there is no actual perpetrator. And so will you break that down for me and my audience, please? [00:11:44][51.7]

Dr. Katz: [00:11:45] Sure. I mean, obviously, this is a critical piece of the paradigm shift or the the shift in framework that I argue needs to happen. In other words, most people continue to this day in, you know, 2021 to think about domestic and sexual violence and sexual harassment and those all those related issues. They think of them as women’s issues that some good men help out with. And we need more good men to help out those women because it’s really about a women’s concern and it’s a women’s issue. But it doesn’t mean that men can’t be supportive of those women. That frame itself is so deeply problematic. And one of the reasons for looking critically at language and the way that we talk about this very subject and the literally sentence at the sentence structure level is that language structures thought people understand the world through their interpretation and narration of the world, through their use of language. And so if you help people think about how they think and how they use language to express thought, it opens up all kinds of new ways of thinking. And so here’s a handful of examples to your specific question about how the current language that so many people use to talk about the subject of gender based violence keeps us in the old paradigm or the old framework. So people use passive voice all the time. They’ll say things like how many women were raped on university campuses in the United States or the U.K. last year, rather than how many men raped women on university campuses? They’ll say things like how many girls in a given school or 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 got pregnant in this country or that state last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls. And I say men and boys, because the majority of teenage girls who are impregnated are impregnated by majority age men. But when’s the last time you heard men focused on in discussions about teen pregnancy? I mean, even even by the way, the visual when you have an article in the online or some somewhere in the news in a magazine or something about quote unquote, teen pregnancy is the picture of a young woman with a big belly or something. And it just reinforces this is about girls. This is about women. Meanwhile, where are the men, where are the adult men, much less the boys who are implicated in the pregnancy as well. I mean, even the term violence against women is problematic because it’s a passive phrase, right? Violence against women is a bad thing that happens to women. But nobody’s doing it to them, they’re just experiencing it kind of like the weather, right? But if you insert the active agent men, you have a new phrase, men’s violence against women. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, but it’s more accurate, isn’t it? It’s more honest. And I know and Jameela, I know you’ll get this pushback, too. Clearly, I understand we understand that there’s women’s violence against women. There’s mother to daughter child abuse. There’s lesbian battering. There’s peer to peer harassment, abuse and violence by women against other women and girls. There’s no doubt about that. It’s not acceptable. It’s not OK. But the vast majority of violence against women in the world is done by men. And the overwhelming majority of sexual violence against women is done by men. But you wouldn’t know that from the phrase violence against women because men are absent from the phrase. So the very act of saying men’s violence against women rather than violence against women moves us a little bit further to being honest and honestly accounting for what’s really happening and put some accountability back in the language. And by the way, that’s what using active language does. It makes it puts accountability back in the language because so much of the discussion about violence in our society is passive and so much of the language is passive. And it’s not just, by the way, men’s violence against women. It’s other forms of violence. You’ll often hear the use of passive language as if everybody’s afraid of somehow implicating the perpetrators. And sometimes there’s good reason for that. Sometimes you don’t want to participate in perpetuating racist or ethnic stereotypes and sometimes using know neutral language is is effective in that. But I think what it comes when it comes to gender based violence, a lot of the reason why we use passive language and by the way, the individual speakers aren’t necessarily conscious of this. Sometimes they are, but they’re often not conscious of what they’re doing by using language in this way. But it’s partly it’s taking care of men’s feelings about being, quote unquote, attacked if the truth is being told or somebody is telling the truth to use active language. In other words, a lot of men react really defensively to the idea that somehow they are implicated in this as a problem. And a lot of men will say, what about, you know, I’m not I don’t abuse women. I don’t abuse my girlfriend. I’m not a rapist. I resent the implication that just because I happen to share the same secondary sex characteristics as the majority of perpetrators, that I am somehow implicated in the commission of their crimes. And I don’t want to be guilt tripped. And, you know, I don’t. And I think this is really the men’s the way that so many men react defensively that has sent a message to women. And I’m making general statements here, of course. And it’s not just women, women and others beyond the men, women, binary, but certainly women. The message to women is if you use active language, if you use the kind of language, if you say this is a men’s issue or it’s a men’s problem, if you say men’s violence against women rather than violence against women, if you use active language, some men are going to be hostile and angry and push back. And so a lot of women, including women in the domestic and sexual violence fields, learn this years ago and they realize, you know what, we have to work successfully with men, especially law enforcement. And law enforcement tends to be dominated by men, even though women have made significant progress still dominated by men. We have to work with political bodies, you know, state legislatures and parliament and everything else. We need money for funding for our programs to serve survivors and and victims and survivors. And we can’t afford to be seen as anti male. We can’t be seen as the ones who are always calling out men if we want to successfully work with men in those institutional settings and political settings. And also a lot of women have men in their private lives, their intimate lives, husbands, boyfriends, friends, colleagues, you know, who they don’t want to always get into arguments with around this subject matter. And so they they use gender neutral language or they use passive language. And because they decided to to work on other issues, if you will, and not really fight that particular battle to use a violent metaphor. And I think one of the one of the roles that men can play in this work is that to the extent that men say the things that I’m saying, it takes pressure off of women. The more men and prominent men as well as men in everyday life, the more men say these kinds of things, the less women are going to be accused of being anti male for just telling the truth. And I often say, you know, the truth is an anti male, unless unless of course it is. But I don’t think I don’t think it’s really anti male, to just be honest. And I as a man, when I hear about how much how much violence men are perpetrating against women and I’ve been you know, I’ve known about this for a long time, but when I hear about it, I don’t get defensive like I’m being attacked when these women are angry and upset, I don’t I don’t feel like I’m being personally attacked. I feel like, oh, my God, this is a huge problem. These women are speaking up and they’re they’re right. It is a huge problem. And I respect their leadership. I respect the fact that they have the guts to speak up both about their personal experience and the experience of all women and children. And I think as a man, what can I do about it? How can I support this? How can I make a difference rather than hunkering down into a defensive crouch and trying to deny it and say not all men are the problem, not all men. You’re blaming me. It’s like this is so childish in the face of these huge problems. [00:19:31][465.4]

Jameela: [00:19:31] You I mean, in that speech all those years ago, you talk about silence being its own kind of form of complicity. And, you know, and I think that back then, even when we were in discussions about gender, about race, about all kinds of different things, it’s really only been recently that we have started to actually understand the concept of silence being complicity. I think this last year of protest and and, you know, post the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor via the lens of racism, specifically against African-Americans in particular, we have finally learned that there is complicity and violence in our silence. And so it’s not good enough to just hold your hands up and say, well, you know, I’m not I’m not doing it. I’m not a racist. I have never harmed a black person in America or anywhere else in the world. That’s not enough. What are you doing to counter it? What are you doing to fight that system? Because if you’re not doing something, then you are explicitly condoning it. You’re you’re you’re you’re also you’re also being able to benefit from the luxury of the privilege of being a part of the part of the system that oppresses these people. Even if you’re not the actual literal active oppressor, you are benefiting from that oppression. [00:20:48][76.5]

Dr. Katz: [00:20:50] That’s right, and I and I and I’m glad you made the analogy about race and racism and white people’s responsibility vis a vis working against racism and men’s responsibility, vis a vis sexism and misogyny and the direct direct connection between these issues on many different levels. But certainly conceptually, it’s the same exact thing. I mean, it’s like like like a white person saying because I myself don’t burn crosses on people’s front lawns or paint swastikas on, you know, the fence or something. I’m not a racist, and therefore I don’t need to work against racism because I personally haven’t perpetrated these horrible abuses, it’s those kinds of people that do it, not me. Is very similar to a man saying, I don’t rape women, I don’t beat my girlfriend, I don’t harass women. So this isn’t my issue. I mean, it’s it’s literally as simple minded and problematic for a man to say that as it would be for a white person to say something similar. And I think it’s important to make those connections. And by the way, in the Black Lives Matter movement or the Movement for Black Lives, both in the United States and all over the world, sparked, you know, I mean or accelerated, I should say, by the way, the murder by Derek Chauvin of George Floyd, as opposed to saying George Floyds murder. That’s a passive way of saying it, but one of the notable features of the movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, that was accelerated as a result of this was was how many white people were out in the streets, how many white people. And that was remarked upon by lots of commentators, both the United States and elsewhere, is that the driving force behind the movement was young people of color, especially African-American people. But there was a ton of white people out there, you know, showing solidarity, support and and actually putting their bodies out there in support of this, you know, racial justice movement. And I think we need exactly the same thing when it comes to men supporting women and women’s efforts to achieve gender, justice and equality and reduce dramatically the levels of men’s violence against women. We haven’t gotten there yet. We’re not there yet. Although I have to say, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, inaugurated in January, twenty seventeen, the women’s marches, which at the time were the biggest one day sort of protest marches in United States history until Black Lives Matter surpassed that. But it was a huge event, right all over the United States in multiple cities. And I was I attended the one in Los Angeles with my with my then I don’t know, 14 year old son, 15 year old son and my wife attended and a lot of my friends attended the one in Washington, D.C. There were tons of men out in the streets that day in Washington and in Los Angeles, in New York and Boston. There were tons of men out in the streets. And when I was in Los Angeles, I was like, it was shocking to me. I mean, a really positive way. How many men were out there and yet. There was no discussion about that, it was more like, OK, because it’s called the women’s march and you don’t want to say men are out there because you want to you want to acknowledge that women’s political energy and strength and outrage and indignation at the election of Trump and the misogyny that was part of the 2016 campaign, you don’t want men to step on that story. But I’m just telling you, there was tons of men. I mean, my estimate and other people that I know estimated 20 to 30 percent of the people were men. But the point is, we need to create a situation where that’s not even exceptional when that’s seen as normative and expected rather than some unusual event. [00:24:26][215.8]

Jameela: [00:24:27] Yeah, I can I think that from what I see of the discourse online that when men do make an effort towards. Towards supporting women’s justice, some women kind of treat it as, like, yeah, like a bit fuckin late, so they’re not really willing to offer any applause. But my personal stance on it is that I do want to make a big deal out of it. I do want to kind of almost like not deify but glorify it and and and encourage use that to encourage other men to participate. And I completely I do not in any way invalidate I’m not trying to invalidate the feelings of those who are just like I’m not going to fucking congratulate these men for their basic common sense. But I do think that for me, I get excited when I see progress. My whole podcast is about progress, not perfection. And I want to encourage more of that progress. And I’m very hard on the men around me. You know, I live with a bunch of men in the house. I’m the only woman in my household. And and whenever I’m talking about men’s violence, especially years ago, they used to get a little bit prickly because they’re all very soft, sensitive, kind men, none of whom have ever or would ever lay a finger on a woman. And they would use that as an argument as to why what I’m saying doesn’t include them. And I would always say, tell me any explicit action you have ever made to protect a woman or women in general. Give me one. And none of them could. [00:25:47][80.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:25:48] That’s right. [00:25:49][0.2]

Jameela: [00:25:49] Not one of them had made like an actual active move towards women’s justice. And so therefore, they don’t get to exclude themselves from this nightmare. [00:25:58][9.0]

Dr. Katz: [00:26:00] That’s great. That’s absolutely the case and so many men who are, quote unquote, good men who who see themselves as good human beings and are compassionate human beings, if they were honest, would would have to say they’ve never attended a Take Back the Night rally. They’ve never donated money to battered women’s shelters or rape crisis centers. They’ve never challenged or interrupted other men who are acting out in sexist ways other than if they saw an actual assault in front of them or something. But they they didn’t interrupt even, you know, jokes that the guys will tell, sexist or misogynist comments that men will make in groups of all men. Most men have remained silent, and I often say not because necessarily they agree with what they see or that that they are somehow embodying the same belief systems, necessarily, as the man who engaged in that abusive behavior or talk, but whatever the reason that they don’t say anything, they don’t say anything, and their silence is read as consent or complicity in the enactment of whatever beliefs or behaviors is being, you know, another man is engaging in or other men are engaging in. And so there is this sort of false consensus. I mean, I think this is part of what’s going on. There’s a false consensus in certain parts of male culture where guys think that what they’re doing is completely acceptable and normative, in part because men who don’t agree don’t speak up. And one of the reasons, by the way, Jameela, one of the reasons why men don’t speak up is because a lot of men are afraid of other men. They’re afraid. [00:27:26][85.6]

Jameela: [00:27:26] I was about to say this. They’re afraid of the violence of men against them. [00:27:29][3.3]

Dr. Katz: [00:27:30] Well, they’re yes, they’re afraid of violence against other men. In some cases, that’s a realistic fear. In other cases, there is social fear. They’re worried that they’re going to say something that’s going to lose them status within the the bro culture, if you will, among men. They’re going to be seen as soft or weak or taking women’s side against men or being too politically correct or or something like that. And they worry. And sometimes it’s a realistic fear. I mean, I don’t completely dismiss it. They worry that taking that stand as a man anti sexist stand will cost them something in their relationships with other men. And that will be often awkward interpersonally with other men. And because they haven’t practiced it or they haven’t seen it very much, they haven’t seen it modeled for them by other men, including adult men in their lives, whether it’s fathers or other, you know, you know, father figures, what have you, or in the mainstream media conversation, they haven’t seen it modeled very often in other words they haven’t seen men interrupting other men’s sexism in a way that’s subtle and sophisticated, but not and not necessarily holier than thou, because self-righteousness, like if I’m not talking of being self-righteous and saying [00:28:41][71.4]

Jameela: [00:28:42] No like virtue signaling is very off-putting. [00:28:44][1.1]

Dr. Katz: [00:28:44] Right. It’s off putting, just like with white people saying making it clear to other white people, I’m more anti-racist than you because you just did that and I would never do that. That turns people off. But because men don’t see that and they don’t they don’t feel confident that they have the skills to do it. They don’t feel like they have the permission to say anything because it hasn’t really been part of the the normative male culture. There’s all these pressures on men and the sum total of of all of this is that a lot of men remain silent. And so a big part, I think a big part of what has to happen is we just have to break the silence and we have men have to see that other men are not comfortable with the behavior of some of us. And by the way, I’m not naive about this. I do think that there are some men who are very much invested in maintaining the status quo and are not going to be just, you know, eager to be social activists around disrupting and dismantling patriarchal power and control and privilege. That would be naive. There are some white people who are clearly invested in maintaining a certain racial hierarchy that they don’t want to disrupt. And so they’re going to be pushing back. So I think that’s going to be true with some men. But I do believe there’s an awful lot of men. And by the way, this is a product in many ways of now generations of feminist activism across race and ethnicity and all over the world. There’s an awful lot of boys, for example, who have grown up with feminist mothers and who have grown up with feminist friends and colleagues and and have sort of normalized certain certain things that feminism has taught that used to be radical and now they’re completely mainstream. And I think there’s an awful lot of those men. I think the next step for those men is not just to say I think women deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. I think they should get the same pay as men. I think they should have the same opportunities. Tons of men will say that. But we need more than that, more than just believing in formal equality. We need men who have the courage and strength and the self-confidence to interrupt other men and both individually and institutionally take some risks, not just say it’s not my problem. [00:30:45][121.3]

Jameela: [00:30:53] Can you break down, like if we were to imagine a scenario, let’s say, not to be completely stereotypical, but here I go and I also attend poker night. So I’m just saying we have a guy’s poker night and we have a man saying problematic, sexist or harassing things about a woman that perhaps everyone else knows or even doesn’t know. You are a male who wants to interrupt this this normalized flow of of problematic conversation. What would you do in that situation? As the male who wants to interrupt it. [00:31:31][37.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:31:33] Well, it’s an important question, I would I would say context is everything. And so in my teaching, like in my teaching of the bystander approach and my my and my colleagues development of this approach decades ago now in the Mentors in Violence Prevention Program, the MVP, we call it the MVP model, we always say. It’s impossible to tell people in a given situation what they should do, because there are too many factors and variables that you can’t know. You can only help people think about their ethical decision making process, who they have responsibility to in these various circumstances, and then how they have to think through their responsibilities to the various parties and to themselves and then act based on that understanding. So like like, for example, and we also say I also say that interrupting or challenging sexist comments or or behaviors before, during or after the fact is an important way to think about it. So in other words, it’s not just at the moment that it’s said that you need to say something or if you don’t say something, you have now been part become part of the problem, because that’s a high bar, because oftentimes in a public space, like when I say public space, a group of guys playing poker. That’s there’s a lot of tension around the idea that somebody who just said something, who thought what he was saying was was normal or inoffensive or at least was going to be received well by the group. If another member of the group is calling him out on that directly, that’s a confrontation. It can be very difficult. And a lot of guys will back away from this. Even if they know that they want to say something, they won’t say something. But but but later on, for example, saying something to the guy the next day and saying take on his time on his own and saying, you know, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the guys. But, you know, when you said that, it really made me feel like, you know, you’re really not respectful. I know that’s not who you are or who you want to be or something like this. I mean, you can’t tell people what to say because, again, context is everything. But taking somebody aside after the fact and talking to him is very different than confronting him in the moment. And I don’t believe that just because you didn’t confront him in the moment, you’ve missed the opportunity to be, to be to be helping to be part of the change. Can I just give you one I’ll give you one example. Yeah, I do a lot of trainings with with professional educators and others in all kinds of different settings, but certainly in the athletic world. And I’ve been working in that world for about 30 years now. I was doing a training at an elite East Coast United States East Coast University with an athletic department, because in the in the US, athletics is a big part of universities and colleges and. There was a young man who was a soccer coach or football coach, and he. Coach the men’s team, but he was also the coach of a boys 14 year old soccer or football team, and he he he recounted this experience that he had that he said he felt really bad about where recently a player of his had used the word rape in a sentence. It was in reference to the other team, like, we’re going to we have to rape that team or something totally inappropriate. And the guy said, I was so taken aback by the fact that he used this language that I was I froze and I didn’t say anything. And I feel really bad about it. And he said, what should I have said? He says to me, what should I have said? And I said to him. Well, are you still the coach? And he said, yes, and I said, well, what about just going back next time you have practice before you get out in the field, just say to the guys, look, a couple of weeks ago, one of you said, use the term rape in a really inappropriate way. And I I didn’t know what to say because I was so taken by surprise. But then I thought about it and this is what I want to say and then say it say I don’t think it’s appropriate to use language like this is trivializing a hugely important, you know, abusive behavior that some men engage in against women and against other men. You didn’t miss the opportunity just because it didn’t happen at the moment, that it happened at the first instance and he hadn’t it had that it hadn’t occurred to him. So I think if we think more expansively about what it means to be a responsible person in our peer culture, to our friends, to our colleagues, to our family members and to ourselves. And by the way, when I when I say to ourselves, what do I mean by that? I mean, I think we do have a responsibility to ourselves. And if, for example, if you’re a person who believes that you stand for justice and fairness and equality and nonviolence and people should be treated with respect and dignity and their physical and sexual boundaries need to be inviolable. If you believe that about yourself, this is what I believe. And then you’re confronted with situations where this is not happening right in front of you. People are just disrespecting other people’s boundaries in those ways. If you don’t speak up or if you don’t interrupt it in some way, in a sense, you’re not living up to your own aspirations for yourself of who you are or want to be. So how can you align your behaviors with your sense of who you are or want to be? And it’s not always easy because taking action is not always easy. In fact, there is all kinds of impediments, as we’ve discussed, to taking action even when you know that what you’re seeing is wrong. But if you think about your responsibility to yourself in that way, that it shifts the conversation, I think for a lot of people. And by the way, what was just one last point. I’m sorry, I’m not. [00:37:02][329.2]

Jameela: [00:37:03] No please. No, this is great. [00:37:04][0.6]

Dr. Katz: [00:37:04] Thank you. Thank you. You have I always say you have a responsibility [00:37:07][2.4]

Jameela: [00:37:07] It’s nice to take a break if I’m fuckin honest, mate like, it’s really nice to have a man talk about this and educate other people for a change instead of me having to harp on about it. So I’m loving this. Please keep going. Talk as long as you like. You’re so welcome here. [00:37:21][14.0]

Dr. Katz: [00:37:21] Well, thank you very much. And by the way, I didn’t say it’s the beginning, but I totally respect how you’ve decided to use at least part of your platform to talk about real issues like this, this is a fantastic so I’m honored to be part of that conversation. So thank you for giving me the opportunity. [00:37:39][17.6]

Jameela: [00:37:39] You’re very kind. [00:37:39][0.0]

Dr. Katz: [00:37:41] Well, you are too. So the. I often say to men, you have responsibility to women to speak up, and when your friends are acting out in sexist ways, your workmate is is is saying things about women in the work space that, you know, are problematic. You have responsibilities to women in your workspace to make to say something or to do something to intervene in that situation. But you also have a responsibility to guys and to guys that you say you care about. So, for example, if your friend is treating his girlfriend poorly and I’ll give you I’ll give you a concrete example text like like if you’re a guy and you have a guy friend and say you’re a young guy. Right. And you have a guy friend who’s texting his girlfriend constantly and to the point where you’re thinking that this has gone well over the edge of a sort of a normal infatuation or, you know, love or, you know, what have you. But he’s like he needs to know who she’s with, you know, he needs to know what she’s wearing. He needs to know where she is at all times. And he’s constantly texting her. And and you’re his friend. And you see this. He’s with you and he’s doing this. What is your responsibility to her? Yes. Let’s talk about your responsibility to the girlfriend who you might or might not be close with. You might not even know her, but what do you have responsibility to her? Let’s talk about that. But do you also have responsibility to him? He’s your friend. And if you if you’re minimally checked in to the warning signs for abuse in relationships, you know that this is a red flag because he’s controlling her or he’s trying to control her, which could mean that he’s physically abusing her or already, or it could mean that he’s on the road towards that, because we know from decades now of working with men who are abusive that there’s a there’s a pattern of behavior that begins with non physical forms of controlling behavior that sometimes graduates into physical forms of controlling behavior like physical violence and the threat of violence. if you know that and he’s your friend, don’t you have a responsibility to interrupt it and say, dude you get some issues here. You’re my friend. But the way you’re talking about, you know, texting your girlfriend the way you’re trying to, I’m kind of concerned about you. That, to me, is an act of integrity and strength and friendship with the guy, as well as an active responsibility to the girl or to the woman. If you frame it in those terms that you’re helping as a man, you’re actually helping other men. You’re actually coming to their assistance because they’re doing something that’s harmful not just to her, but potentially to him. Then it changes the conversation for a lot of guys [00:40:12][152.0]

Jameela: [00:40:14] Yeah because it’s also it’s not a happy headspace that of an abuser is not happy headspace and, you know, it’s unpopular, I guess, to talk about it in an empathetic way because of how much pain they cause other people. But I was in when I was twenty 20, 22, almost 23, I was in an abusive relationship. And again, as you said, it started with just kind of micro aggressions verbally that turned into very abusive language and language that would undermine my confidence and my importance in the world and would make me feel as though my friends don’t really like me. Only he really likes me, only he understands me. I’m only safe with him, which is a method of isolating me from everyone. And then as things progressed, it became very quickly physical and sexual violence. So I’ve watched that pattern go by and felt exactly what it feels like to be the victim of that. But also I was watching this man in constant turmoil. This wasn’t fun for him. He was. And it’s you know, I don’t have I’m not throwing huge pity party for him, but he would feel disgusted with himself. Not all men do, but a lot of men do afterwards, it would kind of be like he would just switch and snap and then afterwards feel tremendous remorse. He would feel guilty. He would see the way that I was crying and how I was disgusted by him and and how afraid I was of him. And he wouldn’t like that. And he was also having to be secretive with his friends about the way that he was treating his girlfriend. He was isolating himself like it’s a lonely, scary, guilty, shameful space to live in. And and we should work the most hard to set victims free or to be preventative in in our care of victims. But also, this is not a healthy or happy headspace for those who harm the victims. And we need to help those people as well to prevent them from not just harming others, but also harming themselves. [00:42:10][116.5]

Dr. Katz: [00:42:13] Well said and thank you for sharing that and I and I think you flagged earlier, just a few moments ago that some people like recoil at the idea of being of expressing any kind of empathy for someone who’s committing harm against another person, and I appreciate that, but I don’t I don’t think it’s one or the other. I mean, I think if we care about victims and survivors, then we have to figure out how to do it better on the other side. And then we have to figure out how to prevent men from doing these things and not just using criminal penalties as the only as the only go to for our solutions. I mean, the whole you know, the whole movement towards restorative justice, which, by the way, has been led by people of color and women of color, including women of color, who didn’t want the only response to domestic and sexual violence to be a criminal justice response where the state comes in and throws these guys in jail. By the way, some guys knew [00:43:04][50.7]

Jameela: [00:43:04] Where they were going to experience more violence, by the way, and maybe participate or be the victim of more violence and they come out more violent person perhaps, [00:43:11][7.5]

Dr. Katz: [00:43:12] That’s true, too. And I appreciate that. But but yes, it’s true. There’s no doubt the prison system and the jail system in the United States is just and elsewhere is just an absolute violent sort of subculture where where guys are arming up or sort of armoring up against other guys. If there aren’t if they aren’t already in a defensive crouch about the dangerous world that they live in, if you will, once they are in prison, they’re even more armed, up against, kill or be killed. You have to you have to you know, everybody is it’s dog eat dog world. But the point is, I do think some men do need to be some people do need to be in prison. Some people do need to be separated from society because they are a threat to people’s safety. And I think the safety, for example, of women when it comes to the sexual assault and domestic violence issues is way more important than what’s you know, then the you know, whatever happens to the man, the women’s and children’s safety and other men’s safety is more important. However, if we want to get to a society where we are dramatically reducing the levels of violence, we have to ask these more difficult questions like what is what is going on in these men psyches? What is going on in the normative culture that we generation after generation, we socialize boys in such a way that a certain percentage of them are acting out in these ways and harming women and men and, you know, and themselves. We have to do it differently. The status quo is not working. So I just want to I just want to reemphasize it’s possible to be to be both centering the needs of victims and survivors and not, quote unquote, feeling sorry for the abuser. It’s possible to focus on changing the culture and thinking more empathetically with boys and men’s experience and not making excuses for their bad behavior. You can do both at the same time. We know we’re Homo sapiens with big brains. We can hold numerous thoughts in our head at the same time, and we can hold people accountable for their crimes and we can step back and ask what’s going on and how can we change it? [00:45:12][120.4]

Jameela: [00:45:12] One hundred percent. And my only point about prison is the fact that that person at some point will likely be released from prison. Be it three years, eight years, fifteen years. Twenty five years. That person is is likely going to come out of that jail, potentially more violent or having infused or been surrounded by more toxic masculinity, et cetera. And so it doesn’t it the the punitive system makes sense, but it would be better to treat the cause rather than always just the symptoms. In my opinion. [00:45:40][27.7]

Dr. Katz: [00:45:42] Amen. And by the way, understanding the perpetrator is not excusing the perpetration, [00:45:46][4.3]

Jameela: [00:45:47] Exactly. it’s actually it makes us a lot safer to be able to see the warning signs, interrupt the warning signs and and and to be able to spot patterns, create patterns that people can understand, which I believe you’ve done extensively throughout your career. And I want to get into that in a second. So will you break down for me why are men so violent? Tiny question, but we’ve been talking so much about, you know, men’s violence against women, men’s violence against children, men’s violence against men. Right now, we’re not saying that women’s violence doesn’t exist against women, children and men, but seeing as it is the overwhelming majority that is committed by men. Where does this come from? Why in spite of there being so much information out there about what a problem this is, clearly not enough, but so much information when we see so many murders of women that don’t make any sense and and so many sexual crimes against women. Why is it not changing enough and where does it come from mostly? What is it? What is causing this? [00:46:53][65.1]

Dr. Katz: [00:46:56] Well, I appreciate the spirit of the question, I have to say a phenomenon as extensive, as pervasive and as trans historical as violence. It’s impossible to give one definitive answer, so so having said that, I appreciate that their people want answers, but there isn’t one specific answer. One thing I would say, it’s not genetic and biological at its root. I would say one way to think of and when I say it’s not genetic or biological at its root, you could say that humans, including male humans are born with the capacity to commit violence. It would be it would be, I think, silly to say otherwise, looking at the bloody history of our species, we we are born with the capacity to commit violence. So in that sense, it’s biological or genetic. But we also are, I guess, what, born with the capacity for nonviolence. And you could say to the extent that people say that violence is predetermined, genetically or biologically, so is nonviolence. So we are and most for example, most men are not violent. So what is it? Our genetics are different than the men who act out violently? I don’t think so. So I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s it’s not a question of whether biology is driving this or genetics is driving this. It’s how do we organize our societies? How do we socialize boys? How do we define manhood? How do we how do we use our big homosapien brains to figure out ways of interacting with each other that don’t rely on sort of knuckle dragging cro magnon kind of like, you know, like like like unthinking beasts who are just going out and can’t control their hormones. It’s not it’s silly. Right. So but then the question becomes, well, one question is. What is violence? In my thinking violence is not an end unto itself, it’s a means to an end, like violence is used what’s called instrumentally with a purpose. And the question is, what is the purpose? Why is violence being used? So, for example, in domestic violence again, the battered women’s movement and the better intervention movement have been teaching us this for the past almost 50 years. Often times when a man in a heterosexual relationship is physically abusive to his girlfriend or his wife, it’s not because he has a bad temper or he has an alcohol problem. It’s because for some reason he feels the need to be in control or have his needs be met, you know, his emotional needs, his physical needs, his sexual needs. And if he has to use force or the threat of force to get what he thinks he needs, then he in some sense feels like a license to do that. Now, I’m not saying that all men are thinking about this. And I’m and I do think that there are men who have other psychological, emotional and even mental health challenges that are factors in their abusive behavior. But this ideology, this belief that men’s emotional, sexual and other needs should be met by women and that force is a legitimate maybe it’s a last resort, but it’s a legitimate way to get what you need if you don’t address the underlying belief system, then what are you doing? You’re just you’re just scratching the surface when you’re talking about he needs anger management. He needs to figure out or maybe he needs to drink less because when he drinks, he starts acting out. These are the things that people say who because they don’t really either they don’t understand the deeper belief system that underlies the abuse or they don’t want to they don’t want to go there because it’s because it’s really you know, some people are invested in this in this notion that perpetrators are just sick or they’re just crazy or they’re just [00:50:37][221.5]

Jameela: [00:50:37] Boys will be boys [00:50:38][0.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:50:39] or boys will be boys, which, by the way, is the most anti male thing somebody can say. You know, people say boys will be boys as a way to defend bad behavior by boys or by men. They’ll say, what do you expect? Boys will be boys? [00:50:51][12.2]

Jameela: [00:50:51] It’s stereotypes them [00:50:52][0.9]

Dr. Katz: [00:50:53] and it reduces them. It says boys and men are not ethical beings who can make complex moral and ethical choices. They’re just kind of beasts. And you just got to get used to it. They’re just going to do these things. By the way, Jameela, this is a key thing. Oftentimes, the people defending bad behavior by men, by saying boys will be boys, are often conservative and right wing politically, who then accuse feminists of being anti male. Right. And yet you don’t hear feminists saying boys will be boys. You know why? Because feminists have too much respect for men than to say boys will be boys because they expect more of men. But right. Conservatives who say boys will be boys, they say they respect and they’re defending men, but they actually are degrading men. And they’re actually they’re actually the anti male ones because they’re they’re saying that boys and men can’t help themselves. [00:51:44][51.0]

Jameela: [00:51:45] They can’t do any better. [00:51:45][0.6]

Dr. Katz: [00:51:46] Right. Which is, by the way, flipping this on its head. Feminists actually have I’ll repeat it, feminists have too much respect for men then to make silly statements like boys will be boys because they know that men can be better. And I often I often say boys and men can either rise to our expectations or they can sink to our expectations. And we have to raise our expectations. Men can be and are better. And when and when those of us who are men don’t speak like like I’m speaking and the only ones who say these things are women, then oftentimes men will because of sexism. And I appreciate this is this is this is where this gets complicated. Complicated is that sometimes men will delegitimize things that women are saying because they’re women, because these men are invested in this worldview where men are either smarter or know more than women or women don’t understand men. We men, we understand men. And those women don’t understand what’s really going on for us. But if men don’t say these things in the standing side by side with women who are saying these things, then we’re allowing that sexism to continue. And we’re allowing those women like yourself who have the guts to say some of these things, to stand alone against a lot of angry men who are trying to deflect and blame women for just telling the truth, both about their own experience and about what they see in terms of men and they and the behavior that so many men are engaging in that harm them, the men themselves and the good the good news, if you will, about all this is that is that there’s another way to do all this, which is we need more men who are just willing to be honest. We need more men who are willing to read the books that women have been writing and take the courses and listen to the podcasts and gain more insight into this. And then, you know, step up, take some risks. [00:53:36][109.7]

Jameela: [00:53:44] Let’s talk about the media, because I’ve talked about this a bunch for maybe 12 years publicly, the problematic media that reinforces ridiculous constructed gender stereotypes. And how much that that harms men’s worldview, also all genders, well, you really would you like to talk about that? [00:54:06][22.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:54:08] Sure, the media is the great pedagogical force of our time, it’s the great teaching force of our time, people learn more and are taught more by media than any single source of information. That’s that’s the reality in the 21st century. It is. But it is there. It is the world. Right. And and by the way, one of the one of the refrains that I do link linguistic reframes around this subject matter is you often hear people say things like, well, violence, if it’s not genetic or predetermined, biologically or genetically, it must be learned behavior. People say this and I say, I’d rather say it’s taught behavior rather than learned behavior because learned behavior is passive, like they’re just learning it. But if you’re if you say taught behavior, it shifts the onus of responsibility onto those of us who are teaching, for example, boys and young men what it means to be a man. And because the media is the great teaching force of our time, it is critically important to look at the way that we as a society or, you know, globally, certainly are teaching boys and men normative ideas about manhood. And by the way, at the same time, teaching girls and women normative ideas about femininity and how to fit in and how to how to conform to certain norms or there’s punishment. Right. I mean, in both cases, if you don’t conform to certain norms, you’re going to pay consequences. [00:55:29][80.5]

Jameela: [00:55:30] And this leads this leads off and I think in no small part to the suicide rates among men and not just men who are over the age of 50, but also young men are killing themselves at alarming rates more and more every year. And part of that, I think, has been attributed to the, the belief systems they’ve they’ve obtained from from toxic masculinity, like not being able to be sensitive and not being able to talk about your feelings, like not being able to talk about men’s or mental health because you’re so afraid of being accused of femininity. [00:56:02][31.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:56:03] That’s right. Because vulnerability is in the silly gender binary system that we have. Vulnerability is seen as a feminine quality and a quote unquote real man is supposed to be be able to, you know, kind of suck it up and deal with it and and to acknowledge vulnerability, which is, by the way, another way of saying, to be honest with yourself and with others, because we’re all vulnerable and the pretense of invulnerability doesn’t fool anybody who is minimally checked in emotionally or psychologically sophisticated. I mean, it’s it’s an absurdity. But you see these men walking around, you know, I got I got it all going on. I’m OK. I mean, guys will come up to and I’m guilty of this, too, by the way, I don’t mean to say this self-righteously, guys go up to each other. How are you doing, man? I’m doing good. How are you doing? I’m doing good. How’s the family? Pretty good. And it’s like you can be in turmoil. [00:56:49][46.0]

Jameela: [00:56:50] I’m British, so that’s not gendered over in Britain. Like that’s just how we are. I come to America to be able to figure out how to talk about my feelings. [00:56:57][6.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:56:57] Ok but [00:56:57][0.1]

Jameela: [00:56:59] It’s definitely more prevalent amongst men, of course. [00:57:00][1.5]

Dr. Katz: [00:57:01] But the thing is, you could be in turmoil. And you say that, though. You say you say I’m doing good. How are you doing? I’m doing good. I mean, because I’m not and I’m not saying that in every social interaction, you have to be, you know, revealing your deepest, you know, anxieties. [00:57:15][13.8]

Jameela: [00:57:16] That would be very grueling for checkout assistants. [00:57:18][2.1]

Dr. Katz: [00:57:19] And yes, that’s right. But honestly, that is caricatured all the time, even including in media, like in other words, the idea that a man being, quote unquote sensitive, it’s like so soft and weak and we are we glorifying some kind of, you know, just grow up and be, you know you know, it’s it’s it’s more complicated than that. [00:57:43][24.4]

Jameela: [00:57:44] It’s fucking amazing. I’ve only just realized this just now, which obviously means I’m super late to the party. But every time there is a sensitive, thoughtful character in any film I’ve watched, especially a romantic comedy. But like any film, he’s always of a certain physical frame. The casting is always a very slight man, a very thin man. He wears cardigans, not a full sweater or a hoodie. He’s a cardigan man. He wears a shirt buttoned up often. He’ll have glasses, longish hair and and and if you ever see a man of someone like John Cena’s build, for example, the wrestler, the pro wrestler is now turned into an actor or Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, if they’re saying something sensitive, it’s used as a kind of punch line of lol. Isn’t it hilarious that this big manly man has got any kind of vocabulary around talking about emotions? That’s the the set up that we think of these very, like, sort of slight and a quote unquote. And I’m not in any way diminishing their appearance, but puny men is the way that they’re framed, puny feminine looking men already. They’re the only ones who could have any kind of sensitivity. And the big strong men are just alpha and they don’t have that at waste time talking like this. I’ve never even thought about that before. [00:58:54][69.8]

Dr. Katz: [00:58:56] Well, I appreciate that and it’s a great it’s a great insight, and by the way, this is the advertising industry knows all of this, right? I mean, for example, I’ve used this little story about light beer, light beer from Miller, which, you know, with the story of light beer from Miller is an example of how media can be used in a in a constructive way. Although in the example that I’m about to use, it’s it’s about beer and beer marketing, which is not I’m not saying I’m going to change the world with better beer marketing, but in nineteen seventy two, Miller Brewing Company bought the rights to Meister Brau Lite, which is a beer that Meister Brau, which was a small Chicago brewery, had been attempting to market to women as a diet beer. And Miller had had a problem because men comprise in the early nineteen seventy something like eighty five percent of the beer market. And what guy was going to drink, who was a beer drinker, was going to drink a diet beer targeted towards women. So what they did is they hired a series of football, American football players, big tough guys, white and black, and they put them in barroom settings. They had arguments. I don’t know if you ever heard of these, not in this campaign, but it was taste great, less filling. And these guys would start arguing with each other about the quality of this beer. One would taste great and the other would say less filling. And so what it did was it had these tough guys arguing with each other about this beer, which then became by association a masculine beer. It no longer was associated with women and diets, but rather hypermasculine men and light beer from Miller became the campaign for Light Beer from Miller became one of the most successful advertising campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, and Light Beer became the official beer of the National Football League at a certain point. The point the point here is that people in the advertising world realize if you want to get guys to change their behavior in this case around the purchase and consumption of a product that had been identified as a women’s product, the way to do it was through the leadership of men who have already achieved a certain kind of status. And it will make it easier for other guys to identify with the product if the tough guy footballers have already said it’s OK. And I think this is what’s happening, by the way, in the National Football League and the National Basketball Association in particular, where men have come forward and said that they have emotional and mental health issues. And this is interesting that this is happening with Naomi Osaka right now. And she’s a woman tennis player. But other professional athletes, including men who have said I have depression, Michael Phelps, the greatest men’s swimmer of all time, who said I have, you know, mental health challenges. I have issues with depression. And it’s it’s so powerful when you have a man who’s achieved so much in traditional terms, say, you know what, I sometimes need help, you know, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s it’s an acknowledgment of my humanity. I think we’re starting to shift a little bit. And that’s that level of honest vulnerability is compatible with strength and power and competence. It’s not it’s not you’re not going to melt into the ground and be and not be a functioning human being just because you acknowledge that you don’t always have it figured out. [01:02:09][193.1]

Jameela: [01:02:09] But having a six foot four gold medalist Olympian is the way that that feels acceptable to some men. Where they’re like that guy represents what I see as manliness and manhood. And so if he’s struggling with this, then it somehow means I’m allowed to because there is a feeling of like I’m not allowed to dress that way. I’m not allowed to talk that way. I’m not allowed to use this vocabulary. I’m not allowed to call out other men on their behavior that I find problematic towards women. We need more. You know, I part of my heritage, South Asian and a big thing that I you know, we have horrific men’s violence against women. And by the way, thank you so much for pointing out how problematic the way that we use language is, because it’s going to hopefully forever change the way that I talk about this. I will now always make sure that I’m no longer passive as much as I can. But, you know, we are seeing alarming numbers of sexual violence, in particular by men against women in India. It is it is so widespread, so prevalent, so terrifying. And all we have are a handful of women speaking up about it. None of the big cricket players, none of the big celebrities, the Bollywood celebrities, no politicians, no men in power who represent, you know, quote unquote, masculinity, manhood, manliness, who have so many men hanging onto their every word and action, none of them taking a stand for women and for their safety against men or from men. And so it’s something that I’m constantly calling out for and desperately wishing that while we shouldn’t need a certain stereotype of man to be the one in particular to speak out right now because of the set up of our society, that we cannot deny being so infused with toxic masculinity. We we need those men. To come and speak out about these issues, we need more men to participate. [01:04:00][110.8]

Dr. Katz: [01:04:01] Yes, we do. And if they’re not doing it, guess what? They’re not being good leaders. They’re not just they’re not just letting down women, which they are. If by not speaking up, they’re actually not being good leaders for the twenty first century. So, for example, if you’re a man in your leader in India, in the U.K., in the United States, anywhere, and and you’re in a position of influence, cultural influence, political, social and religious communities. You’re a labor union leader. You’re a coach, you’re a teacher, you’re a school administrator. There’s so many men and of course, fathers and uncles and other men who have an incredibly important role to play in the lives of young men and boys, as well as young women and girls and people outside the binary as well. If you’re a person and you’re a man in those positions and you’re in those positions of leadership and you’re not doing your part in speaking out about men’s violence against women and advancing gender, justice and equality, you’re not just letting down women. You’re actually being a bad leader in the 21st century. And you’re not helping your community. You’re not helping your country. That silence is not actually helping anybody. I think it needs to be said like that. [01:05:05][63.9]

Jameela: [01:05:06] I loved in your speech when you were talking about the fact that you took issue with someone referring to your work with, you know, communities like the Marine Corps, like they were talking about the fact that, you know, do you do sensitivity training? You were like, no, I don’t do sensitivity training. I provide leadership training. That’s what I’m teaching people. I’m teaching them how to be good leaders. This work that you are discussing throughout this entire podcast is something that you describe as leadership training. And I love that. And I think that that is so appropriate and empowering to men. [01:05:35][29.5]

Dr. Katz: [01:05:36] Yes, it is. And it’s I thank you. And it’s aspirational and positive. It’s like instead of it’s instead of like my colleague Esta Soler, who’s the founder of an organization in San Francisco called Futures Without Violence, she says we need to invite men into the conversation rather than indict them as potential rapists and abusers. So invite rather than indict, which is related to what I’m saying is like if you invite them in, like we need more men who have the courage and strength to be leaders, to take a stand, and rather then you better stop doing these bad things. It’s a it’s a positive challenge in a way. And it reframes the conversation. And by the way I don’t think it’s anything wrong with sensitivity. I think sensitivity is a good quality that humans should aspire to, but it is coded feminine and is coded feminine in a way that a lot of men hear it and think, oh, you’re trying to turn me into a woman. And again, I don’t think that’s necessarily a horrible thing. I’m just saying, if you want to be realistic about how change happens one of the ways is reframing it. And if you reframe it as a leadership issue, there’s an awful lot of men who are leaders or aspire to be leaders. And by the way, Jameela, you don’t have to be in a formal position of leadership to be exercising leadership. So, for example, I often say that if you’re a 15 year old boy and your friend tells a rape joke and you turn to your friend and say, hey, dude, could you joke about something else? I don’t find jokes about rape funny. You know, maybe maybe this 15 year old’s mother is a rape survivor. Maybe he knows how big an issue this is. And he’s, you know, anyways, he might not see himself as a leader in any formal sense of that word. He might not have any credentials next to his name that suggests that the society has ordained him as a leader. But the act of saying to your friend that’s not funny is a leadership act. And he is he’s he’s executed a leadership protocol. He’s seen something that’s wrong. He’s he’s decided that I have to I can’t remain silent. And he’s taken action. That’s what a leader does. So by framing it this way, I think that you can a lot of guys can start thinking about the ways in which they could actually step up and be. Have their actions be closer to their sense of themselves or what and who they want to be than if you tell them don’t do this. And if you’re if you’re if you’re more like negative rather than issuing a positive challenge. [01:07:53][136.4]

Jameela: [01:07:53] One hundred percent. And what part do you think let the media, the mainstream media, like the press, movies, music, etc.? What do you think? We could improve upon that [01:08:03][10.0]

Dr. Katz: [01:08:04] One thing and one thing. And I’ve heard you speak about porn culture. Oh my God. Porn is so implicated in the socialization of heterosexual boys and young men’s sense that sex with women is sex is an act that men are doing to women, it’s not a reciprocal, pleasurable experience. It’s something that men are doing to women. And the brutality that so many boys and young men associate heterosexual sex with from their exposure to porn culture is it’s impossible to talk about reducing sexual violence and sexual harassment without talking about the normalization of sexual violence and harassment in porn culture, which is, by the way, by far the single most important form of medium of sexual socialization in the world. And and porn is media. Porn is an is an example of the role that media plays in sort of normalization. And, by the way, the effects of not just porn, but media more generally when it comes to violence. It’s not about imitation necessarily. It’s about normalization and desensitization. And so think about all the boys whose sexual awakening has been accompanied by masturbating to porn, that is showing men, ridiculing women, calling them names while they’re doing something to those women. Right. And. [01:09:31][86.2]

Jameela: [01:09:31] I mean, there’s a huge amount of rape, pornography out on the Internet, just like completely hyper normalized mainstream rape pornography. I did a documentary with the BBC back in like 2012 about this. And we were talking about the harm of pornography to children. And we cut this out of the documentary at the time. So we didn’t want to expose this little boy’s privacy, but he was only 12. He put his hands up in a sex education class and asked the question, if I rape a girl, will she start to enjoy it eventually like they do in porn? And that was his most genuine innocent question. He’s 12 years old. He was a virgin. He had never had any kind of interaction with a girl that was intimate, but that was what he wondered, because that’s what he’s being explicitly taught, that, you know, at the end of some of these these videos, the woman starts to have an orgasm and starts to enjoy it. And that’s the programing. [01:10:26][54.4]

Dr. Katz: [01:10:27] That’s right. That’s right. And honestly, it’s pervasive. And so many boys exposed to porn at 10, 11, 12 who are innocent, you know, when they’re when they’re going through puberty, you know, of course, they’re turned on by the heterosexual ones are turned on by seeing, you know, women’s bodies. And I believe me, I appreciate that. I’m not criticizing that. But what they get when they get there is not just bodies having sex and mutual pleasure. There’s this incredible level of brutality that’s been completely normalized. And one of the reasons why there hasn’t been a conversation about this more broadly, I mean, there’s many reasons. But one of them is this notion that being critical of porn means you’re you’re a prude or you’re against sex, which is total B.S. It’s like it’s like the idea that somehow you’re looking at this in this industry that’s created this normalization of misogyny and criticizing it because you’re uptight about sex. I’m just offended by that. Yeah, it’s B.S., [01:11:24][56.5]

Jameela: [01:11:24] but you don’t even have to be it’s not even just being uptight about sex. You don’t even have to be against porn, the existence of porn in order to be against where porn has gone. You know, there is there is some pornography in the world that does show mutual pleasure, does show sensitivity, softness, dare I say it, maybe sometimes even a bit of romance, if that’s what you’re looking for. There is some safe pornography that exists. And there are some people in the world who cannot access sex in any way for many variants in their life, and they can enjoy that form of entertainment or sexual satisfaction via safe pornography. The problem is, is that we live in a culture of shock and outrage being the things that most travel. And so the more shocking, the more dehumanizing, the more violent you can make footage, the more likely it is to be reshared, even if someone didn’t find it that sexually arousing, they’ll share it to show someone else like, oh, my God, have you seen what happens to this woman or these women or this young girl’s in this video? Can you believe it? So because it’s the travel of whatever is the most shocking, you know, which is also part of why there was so much media coverage of Donald Trump when he was in power, the more shocking it is, the faster and the further it will travel. And so I’m not even anti pornography, but I’m very anti where pornography is going and and how little attention is being put into not just what happens to a lot of the women in those actual videos, but what’s happening to women around the world because of the lessons men are learning. And so I’m hoping to, you know, reapply in the bedroom or in the street. [01:13:04][99.4]

Dr. Katz: [01:13:05] Or yes, or consider the or that that they consider it normative or normal or expected. I mean, that’s the desensitization piece. There’s so many men who have grown up and not just boys anymore. I’m talking about now several generations of men who have grown up with incredible brutality in porn and humiliation, men’s humiliation of women while they’re having sex with them. There’s whole generations have grown up with that, as in the sense normative. And by the way, it’s important to say that, of course, individuals can use their own sort of brain and say, wait a second, that’s porn. And that’s I mean, that’s not real life, et cetera. But that’s this decades of media literacy research. And I consider I am a media literacy educator. I make films about masculinity and violence. My first film is called Tough Guise, by the way. Tough Guise. Violence, manhood in American culture. And what I was doing was building on feminist media literacy work that was looking at images and narratives about women like Jean Kilbourne put together a slide lecture which became a film called Killing Her Softly advertising images of women, where she was showing back in the starting in the 70s and into the modern era, if you will, about how showing women as thinner and more waifish and more girlish and whiter than real women in the real world was a form of take I’m talking about in advertising and in media representation was a form of taking power, in a sense taking power away from women as well as women in the concrete realms of politics and business and the professions and education were challenging men in these various ways, you know, traditionally all male domains. At the same time, the culture was flooded with images of women taking up less space, being much thinner, like I said, and younger and girlish. [01:14:49][103.4]

Jameela: [01:14:49] Submissive, yeah. [01:14:50][0.8]

Dr. Katz: [01:14:50] Submissive and whiter than real women in the real world. At the same time, I started learning. I learned from Jean Kilbourne and then I started doing my work in the nineteen eighties about representations of men and masculinities in media. And I was trying to figure out how are we teaching boys and men a certain kind of ideology or belief about manhood that connects manhood to power and control and dominance and violence? And how does the media help to the narratives and images and media help to reinforce certain stereotypical understandings in that way? And by the way, everybody who does media literacy work knows that there are counterexamples. In other words, there are thoughtful and more complex narrations and characters of men, for example, who are ourselves reflexive or or inward looking or, you know, aware or more or non binary in there in the way that the way that the evidence, gender traits, if you will. But there is still a dominant culture and there is still a dominant idea that a real man, you know, gets what he wants. A real man uses force. A real man doesn’t express his vulnerability and has enormous influence on men and boys. And by the way, the United States is the leading exporter of media in the world. It’s also and violent media. So we in the United States are producing media that’s disproportionately affecting people all over the world in in the sense that we’re reinforcing this idea of manhood as being, if you will, violent. We also and the United States is also the number one arms exporter in the world. We export more weapons of war and weapons of violence than any country at the same time. So, I mean, it’s all this is connected. I mean, interconnected. And if we really want to have a healthier world and less violence in the world, we have to figure out ways those of the United States, but also beyond how we can create narratives about manhood that are less connected to both violence on the one side and the sexual entitlement to women’s bodies and in the heterosexual act as men doing something to women as opposed to it being reciprocal. These are giant ways that the media helps to either shape or perpetuate certain kind of norms that directly contribute to the ongoing problems. [01:17:07][136.8]

Jameela: [01:17:08] Before I leave you, because you’ve just been so wonderful, generous, exceptional, can you tell me and this is not a it’s not a small question, but for parents who are listening to this podcast right now who know that they can’t make an impact on pornography, on the media at large, on a societal toxic muscular messaging. What can they do with young people who currently identify as boys in their household? [01:17:37][28.9]

Dr. Katz: [01:17:40] Well, I would say a couple of things. One is parents are incredibly influential in the lives of their children and by the way, people who aren’t parents who are also caregivers and mentors to young people have an incredibly important role in the lives of young people. But they’re not alone because the culture is is also doing its thing. So no matter how good they are as parents, they also or as mentors, they also have to contend with a culture that is teaching their kids about these various ideologies and beliefs about manhood and womanhood and beyond and race and ethnicity. So so what I’m just saying that because people often blame parents when things go wrong with their kids. And it’s not really fair necessarily, because there’s a whole culture that is raising our kids. But I would say one key thing, and this is as a concept that has to be applied in various ways, but we have to define strength differently. A lot of people say about especially about boys and young men pushing back against some of the things that I’ve been saying or you’ve been saying, they’ll say, what are you saying? We need to make men soft. We need to make men weak. Or, you know, you’re you’re trying to undermine men’s power and in various ways. And my response is. I don’t think that we want to make men weak, and in fact, I don’t believe that for a millisecond I’m a man I identify as a man and I don’t I see myself as a strong man. And, you know, I have a son and I want him to be a strong young man. And the question is not whether we want boys and men to be strong. The question is, how do you define strength? To me, the definition of strength is the critical piece. Is the old definition and this is somewhat of a caricature. But the old definition is somebody who is has the ability to impose his will through force or the threat of force that’s that’s being strong. Or the person who who denies vulnerability, who who won’t acknowledge his own need to help for help or to reach out to others for help, somehow. That’s supposed to be strong. I don’t I don’t buy that. I mean, I just don’t buy it. I think it’s ridiculous. [01:19:47][127.1]

Jameela: [01:19:49] It’s not sustainable. It might be a small bust of some type of momentary strength, but it’s not sustainable. It doesn’t create durability at all. [01:19:56][7.2]

Dr. Katz: [01:19:56] No, it doesn’t. And it’s not evolutionary. Evolutionarily successful. We are killing ourselves as a species. It is actually maladaptive to the realities of life in the 21st century, both environmentally and socially. For example, women are not going back into the you know, into this into second class status across race and ethnicity and religion and everything else all over the world. The tectonic shift that’s been happening for the past couple hundred years and accelerated in the past half century is women are not going back to second class status. I mean, in some countries, there’s there’s attempts to I mean, obviously there’s attempts to roll back progress, but the tides of history are are are moving, you know, and and men who want to actually be part of those societies and get on board with the with the tides of history need to understand that women are not going to go back. So how are we as men, those of us who are men and those of us who are influencing the lives of young men, how are we going to help them adjust to these changes rather than try to pretend that somehow we’re going to hold back the tides of history? How do we help them adjust? One of the ways to do that is to define strength as the ability to be introspective or self-aware, to be so to think about. Maybe I don’t have all the answers and maybe that’s OK. And maybe I need to learn from women as opposed to always be the one who has the authority, if you will, or always be the one whose needs come first. In a relational context, maybe that’s not a sign of strength, maybe a sign of strength is to say, you know what? I don’t know how to do this or I don’t or I’m unclear about this or I need some help. And by the way, a man like this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump’s presidency, in my opinion and so many others opinion, of course, was such a disaster. I mean, it’s on so many levels, both on policy and on sort of persona levels. Was that his his notion of not apologizing and not acknowledging mistakes because that would be somehow acknowledging weakness is such a caricature of a masculine strength. In other words, if you’re confident if you’re a man and you’re confident. And you make a mistake, you just admit it. I’m sorry I screwed up, I should I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry that it made you feel this way. And I’ll try to do differently next time. That to me is a strong man. But to say, oh, I wouldn’t admit making a mistake because that admits that I’m weak is it’s embarrassing. So I would say to parents and others who are in the lives of young people to help, especially boys, is to encourage them to to to think more broadly about what it means to be strong. And, you know, and and being compassionate, being caring is a sign of strength, not weakness. Caring about other people’s feelings, including girls and women’s feelings. It’s not it doesn’t mean you’re soft. It means you’re a good person. And so some of the some of the best qualities of human beings are not gendered qualities. This is some of this is all artificial, right. This notion that, you know, power and strength is masculine. Vulnerability and compassion and caring is feminine. This is this is silliness. Right? It’s silliness. And and we need to we need to encourage boys to boys to to exhibit a whole range of emotions and then not shame them when they evidence those emotions. And by the way, you can be a guy who in some you said this just a few moments ago, who in some parts of your life exhibit really strong and powerful sort of qualities and others, you’re vulnerable, you’re emotionally present. You’re, you know, you know, sensitive, if you will. That’s OK, because we’re complex human beings, right? We’re not we can’t be reduced to caricatures. And I do think that. To get really to get to bring it back to the big picture feminists and intersectional feminist thinking and teaching and activism has figured this out, I mean, it was all it’s all a work in progress, but has figured a lot of this out. And I think instead of men and people who are trying to raise men, if you will, thinking of feminism as somehow antithetical or or antagonist as either or but as antagonistic towards boys and men’s lives and interests, I think that’s a very problematic way to think about it. I think it’s feminists that give us great insights into some of the ways in which traditional notions of masculinity are both destructive and self-destructive for men and young men. And instead of instead of working against feminism and the changes that are happening, how do we work with them in collaboration with the brilliant women who are coining us in a direction that is healthier and more sustainable. [01:24:36][279.6]

Jameela: [01:24:37] My hope and wish as a feminist and what I understand of the people who I most look up to as feminist leaders is that we’re not just looking to set women free. We also want to set men free. We recognize that men are in pain. We recognize that the patriarchy didn’t just do a number of women, it did a huge number of men. We recognize that men are in pain. We are seeing the suicide rates. We are seeing the rise in violence. We don’t want anyone to be in pain. We want to set everyone free. And and I think that that’s something that I especially really want, because I see the men around me suffering because of these things. I don’t see them walking around happy as Larry, feeling very connected to everyone else on Earth. They feel very isolated and afraid. There’s so much fear in toxic masculinity. [01:25:19][42.6]

Dr. Katz: [01:25:21] Absolutely. There is millions. And if you look globally, billions of men living lives of quiet desperation who have who have diminished lives, who are walking wounded, who can’t don’t even have the language or certainly the permission to even explain what’s happening to them and to get connected in a positive way. And I’ve seen what you just said. I’ve seen that from the beginning, from the time I was a young guy at university, when I started learning all of this. I’ve seen feminism as a vehicle for looking critically at men in a way that helps men. In addition, of course, it helps women, and it’s going to reduce dramatically the level of violence and pain that men inflict on women and girls, no doubt about it. But there’s no doubt that that’s not incompatible with also improving the lives of men and boys. They are intertwined. [01:26:08][46.7]

Jameela: [01:26:09] So if you are someone who is going out into the world, maybe you’ve heard this podcast and you feel ready to, you know, carefully and politely and safely interrupt toxic masculinity or violent rhetoric or behavior from men by men of men, then just know that you’re not trying to take them down a peg. You’re not trying to harm them. You are just simply not giving up on men. The thing that I most hope that you do is don’t give up on men, don’t give up on boys. Do not just dismiss them as being coded a certain way and being therefore incapable of change, if you yourself as a human being have noticed any change or progress in your own life, then there’s no reason another individual isn’t isn’t capable of the same. I’m an imperfect person. I used to be a problematic full of misogynist Jackson. I was very slut shaming and rude and didn’t understand the concept patriarchy a mere 10 years ago and I have changed. So therefore I know for damn sure the men around me can change. [01:27:14][64.7]

Dr. Katz: [01:27:17] So well said Jameela. And by the way, it’s true with white people, if you’re a white woman, for example, and you know that you’ve been challenged to think about racism and think about the ways in which you perpetuate racism. Well, think about men can do this about sexism, too. They can they can grow. I mean, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have certain advantages because they’re a man and in a sexist world or that a white person has certain advantages. This is structural. It’s political. So it’s not just about personal growth, although part of it is about personal growth. So you can’t we can’t be obviously naive about systemic forces, but. Well, I appreciate your your your sort of spirit of like inclusivity and hope, because I think it’s accurate. I think it’s I don’t think it’s just fanciful. I think it’s accurate. Men can change. Women can change. People can grow. And and the status quo the bottom line is the status quo is not working right. The status quo is just not working. And and something has to change. And can I say also the great thing about the current moment, and you’re centrally involved in this, which again, I admire greatly, but. Because of technological changes in the forms of communication and particularly the digital revolution and then the social media revolution, women like yourself have a voice that women in previous generations did not have. And in and part of what made Me Too, for example, even possible was social media. It wasn’t like a new issue. I mean, men’s violence against women has been a big problem for decades, centuries and millennia. This is not a new problem. What’s new is that women, and especially young women, have had a voice to be able to talk about and narrate their experiences and connect with others. And now men have no excuse to say, I didn’t know this was a problem or I didn’t realize that it was such a big problem. It’s like that’s that’s taken off the table as an excuse for men not to get involved. Right. Because now we do know that there’s tons of women, billions of women out in the world are saying we want better. We don’t want to live with this. We we experience it on a daily basis and it’s wrong and we can’t keep going. So men have to say in the twenty first century, what are we how are we going to respond to these women and with integrity? And again, I’ll narrow it to two choices. One is to defend, to be defensive and hunker down and say it’s not all men and it’s not my problem and I’m not going to get involved. And I’m sick of hearing about men being bashed. And the other, which to me is an immature and problematic response or the other way is what can I do? What can I do to be to adapt to this moment, to learn from these women, to to respond to what they’re saying? And how can I educate and politicize other men? How can I bring other men into the conversation? How can I get involved in organizations, you know, in my community or in the larger country or or or a political body that I’m part of? How can I be part of the changes that have to happen? And if certainly if I’m an educator or a parent or another person who has influence in young people’s lives, especially young boys lives, and I’m a man, how can I show boys and young men that there’s a way to be a man that is not taking down others to to lift yourself up, but actually lifts up others as a way of lifting yourself up. I mean, I do think a lot of men will respond to that. And I think you’ve I hope that you’ve had that experience. But I hope that going forward, the conversation that we’re having right now will be seen in a time capsule 100 years from now will be seen as like, oh, my God. Back then, it was unusual to hear a man say some of these things and have a dialog with a woman about this kind of about this kind of subject. They’ll see it as like so obvious and so normal, whereas today it’s still an unusual thing. But again, I thank you for the opportunity to have this dialog. [01:30:57][220.5]

Jameela: [01:30:58] Thank you so much, Jackson, for coming on to this podcast and for all of the work that you have done for decades now, for all of the books and documentaries that you have put out to the world for going traveling around the world and and educating the people who most need this information, who have been starved of this information, a lot of people haven’t even had a choice as to whether or not they are indoctrinated into toxic masculinity. And so you’re offering people a way out. You’re offering people hope. And I really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure and honor to meet you [01:31:28][29.9]

Dr. Katz: [01:31:29] back at your Jameela. I hope you know. May the wind be ever at your back. I love what you’re doing. I love what you’re doing. And I know you’ll carry on. And and I hope that our paths cross again. [01:31:38][9.5]

Jameela: [01:31:39] I’m sure they will. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh Jameela Jamil is produced a researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Aaron Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher Premium by going to stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code IWeigh. Lastly, over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at one eight one eight six six zero five five four three. Or email us what you weigh at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. [01:32:30][51.4]

Listener: [01:32:33] So I weigh being a writer. I weigh being a feminist. I weigh being a vegetarian and caring about the Earth and my impact on it. I weigh being part of the beautiful LGBTQ+ community. I weigh being a sister, a daughter, a friend, and also weigh trying my best against depression. [01:32:33][0.0]

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