Jackson Katz

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Jackson Katz

Description

"It is important for us to pull back the curtain and take a sober look — both at the images of masculinity and what's behind them." -Katz

Jackson Katz (Ed.M., Harvard) is a former all-star football player who was the first man at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to earn a minor in women's studies. He is the founder and director of MVP Strategies, an organization that provides gender violence prevention training to colleges, high schools, professional and college sports teams, community groups, corporations, and the U.S. Military (including the first world-wide program in the history of the Marine Corps). He has lectured at hundreds of schools and colleges across the nation. [1]( MED)

Description

Tough Guise is the first educational video geared toward college and high school students to systematically examine the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century. [2]

Tough Guise focuses attention on the overwhelming, but largely overlooked statistical correlation between violent crime and gender in our society –usually over 90% male – and argues that as a result “masculinity should be designated as a public health hazard.” Katz identifies several disturbing cultural developments over the last 30 years he thinks are responsible for the current alarming epidemics of date rape, domestic violence and high school massacres.[3]

Examples

-Littleton, Colorado shooiting

-Hyper-violent male icons like Rocky, Rambo and Terminator. Katz says, "Violent masculinity is a cultural ill in the U.S.," he said. "How do we change the climate? Men need to stand up and speak up."

-Feminist bashers like Howard Stern, Andrew Dice Clay and Rush Limbaugh

-Male violence in professional sports, action games and slasher films

These are male backlashes against women’s economic and social gains, even gay liberation because it threats traditional assumptions of male supremacy.

In his film, Tough Guise,Jackson Katz uses an important image from another film: actor Frank Morgan as the Great Oz, being discovered at the controls of his larger than life wizardly image.Far from the great and powerful wizard he claimed to be, Morgan's character is an average man who found himself transported to a strange and fantastical land, and felt pressured to meet the expectations of its inhabitants. Such is the case for boys growing up in America. [4]

Pressures -Images of manhood can be a precursor to negative behavior, said Katz.

-Power is a common component of male identity, but often it is misunderstood and misused.

-Inside or outside of the masculinity box.

Katz's Outlook

Katz said, "In the language we use, the images we see and the belief systems we hold, we conclude that female victims of violence should be the focus of prevention programs...While women do deserve support and assistance, it is men who should be at the center of violence prevention education" ([5])

His Mentors in Violence Prevention ( MVP)program addresses ways in which young men in high school and college can change their thinking by personalizing "female" issues surrounding violence and holding peers accountable for their behavior. The program in used in classroom and college/professional sports sessions across the country.

Katz believes men have the power and responsibility to change society's views about what it is to be a man. ([6])