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‘If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to raise a rapist,” Jackson Katz says. “Perpetrators aren’t individual monsters; they are people reflecting a system. We need to address that system.”
For the past 40 years, the researcher and activist has been advocating that violence against women be treated as a men’s issue. He works across the US in universities, schools and the military to encourage men to speak up when they encounter misogynistic behaviour in their peer groups. Katz believes that it is only through boys and men holding themselves accountable for their behaviour that violence against women can end. Since the re-election of Donald Trump, he believes his work has become more urgent than ever.
“The election has been a complete catastrophe – it was a huge setback for the prevention of domestic abuse and violence,” Katz, 60, says from the book-lined study of his home in Massachusetts. “Seventy-seven million Americans voted for Trump after he was found liable for sexual abuse in Manhattan and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages. The jury’s verdict is undeniable. By voting for someone with that history, it has a normalising effect on his behaviour. It’s unleashed a firehose of misogyny.”
The consequences have included funding cuts for gender-based work and an attack on the mandate set out in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. “Trump and Elon Musk’s Doge [Department of Government Efficiency] team is freezing funding for swathes of non-profits, including many of those that should be protected by the Violence Against Women Act,” he says. “They’re getting rid of DEI [diversity, equality and inclusion] initiatives and anything with the keyword ‘woman’ is coming under scrutiny. People who work in the area are stunned and despairing. This isn’t a normal moment – it is medieval and a huge rollback of progress.”
Katz has also witnessed a louder and more forceful chorus of young men promoting misogynistic ideals; online, he is often called a “virtue-signalling cuck” or a “beta male”. “There’s an assumption that young people are more left-leaning, but we are seeing the opposite right now and it’s very worrying,” he says, referencing the fact that 56% of 18- to 29-year-old male voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, compared with 40% of women in that bracket.
“We’re witnessing a global backlash against women’s progress, since the past 50 years have seen unbelievable challenges to patriarchal norms. Trumpism and rightwing populism isn’t a revolt against the ‘elites’; it’s a reaction to men being de-centred and a backlash against feminism. Trump has been marketing himself with the men’s movement and it’s fuelled the manosphere from being an abusive men’s rights subculture to becoming the mainstream. We on the other side need a bigger microphone to get into the conversation – we each need to stand up and say ‘not in my name’, since people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson [who has argued that ‘the masculine spirit is under assault’ and that the patriarchy ‘might be predicated on competence’] have platforms with millions of followers being indoctrinated.”
Driven by that mission to reach a wider audience, Katz has written a book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue, which outlines the ways that men can and should involve themselves in the fight against gender-based violence. He believes it may be the first time a major commercial publisher has released a book about men’s violence against women that has been written by a man. “It’s shocking to me, because you can go as far back as John Stuart Mill writing a critique of marital rape in 1869 to see how men have been talking about the issue,” Katz says. “We have been doing this work for a long time and the book is a toolkit for other men to get themselves involved. It’s our moral, ethical and human duty to help women in this struggle together.”
Katz was born in a small town north of Boston in 1960. He says he was brought up in a “jockocracy”, where social life and status revolved around American football and basketball. His biological father was a second world war medic and medical sociology professor who died while Katz’s mother was pregnant with Katz. Her second husband, the man Katz grew up with, was a blue-collar factory worker and truck driver: “A very tough, old-school guy who wasn’t very communicative,” Katz says.
In high school, Katz became a star football player and was celebrated in his parochial, male-dominated culture. He describes witnessing “generalised misogyny” as a teenager, but it wasn’t until he went to college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst that he began to learn the extent and pervasiveness of the problems faced by women and marginalised people.
“It was the 70s and my mind was expanding on issues of racism, sexual assault and the women’s movement. I found it all so interesting,” he says. “I started seeing how gender was one of the primary organisers of our society and, as I developed an interest in changing the world around me, it felt like the issues with gender needed to be addressed first. I was enjoying such freedom as a young man, walking home drunk late at night and not worrying about myself while my female hallmates were always thinking of their safety.”
Katz’s columns for the student newspaper became increasingly concerned with sexism and the Reclaim the Night protests that were occurring across campus. “I was inspired by these women who were standing up for their rights and safety,” he says. “That’s when I decided to speak out, too. It was as simple as that.”
Katz signed up for gender studies classes and eventually became the first man in the history of his college to minor in women’s studies. After graduating, he began working in grassroots gender campaigning, founding the anti-sexist men’s group Real Men in 1988.
Was it really simply attending college classes and protests that turned Katz from his working-class, sports-dominated male culture towards feminist campaigning? “I get asked all the time if something has happened to me to set me on this path. I have women close to me who have been assaulted by men, but it’s not just a personal experience,” he says.
“I took those classes because I wanted to learn how to have better relationships with the people around me and in the process I realised how gender-based violence affects everyone. Violence begets violence and the same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse men. I came from a position of influence as a straight, white man and sportsperson, so I felt I had to speak up to try to break the cycle.”
What did his peers think about his shift into activism? “Mainly people thought I was a little weird,” he says, laughing. “But they couldn’t write me off, because I had been part of their culture and that was the key. They knew me, so in some way they had to listen.”
Attempting to change the culture from within became a tenet of Katz’s work with Real Men and, later, with his Mentors in Violence Prevention programme. Enlisting role models from professional sports and the military, Katz began running workshops and training programmes to encourage changes in behaviour from the top down in male-dominated organisations.
“I’ve long been convinced that lots of men are uncomfortable about their peers’ behaviour, but are scared of speaking out because of losing social status or facing retribution,” he says. “By getting role models talking about it, especially people like male athletes, who have a higher status, we can make other men feel comfortable to speak out when they see or hear something sexist, as well as bring these ideas to men who might never have considered their role in gender-based violence before.”
Gaining the ability and confidence to interrupt sexist behaviour from men is the main purpose of Katz’s book. Written in a conversational, largely jargon-free tone, it is intended as a practical toolkit for men to think about ways in which they can challenge difficult behaviour, with each chapter ending with a section on “how you can make a difference” that outlines lines of argument and conversation. Katz covers the history of men’s work in this space from the 1970s onwards, arguments against victim-blaming and men’s defensiveness when it comes to taking responsibility; he advocates against watching pornography, an industry that he says “legitimises misogynist abuse by normalising sexualised brutality”. He ends by analysing the “manosphere” and online groups that are influencing schoolchildren to support outspoken misogynists such as Tate.
A “how to” book tackling an issue as entrenched and systematic as gender-based violence may seem a futile response, but amid the guidance Katz lays out a strong argument often accompanied by shocking statistics. He refers to the World Health Organization statistic that almost one-third of girls and women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner, while one in seven children have lived with domestic abuse.
“It’s much more comforting to see the people committing these acts as monsters. We can dissociate ourselves from them, then we don’t have to be introspective,” Katz says. “It’s easier if rape is a pathological behaviour, but if we think about how we might be perpetuating a culture that produces rapists, it forces a level of introspection that makes people very uncomfortable. That introspection leads to action and choices about how we can change our lives.”
One method that Katz has helped pioneer in his career is the bystander approach – initially employed as a tactic against school bullying, where peers are encouraged to step in and support the bullied child, rather than leaving the onus of responsibility solely on their shoulders.
Katz began running workshop scenarios where men would think through their ethical obligations when faced with sexist or potentially abusive behaviour by one of their group. “Men would walk in with their arms folded, saying they didn’t need to be there because they weren’t abusers, so I would say: ‘You don’t abuse girls or women, but what are you doing to help others who are abusing them?’” Katz says.
“It’s leadership training, since it takes nothing to be one of the boys, but it takes courage to stand up for what is right. It can be scary, relationally and physically, to challenge someone, and people push back when you upend the status quo, but your silence is telling them that it’s OK. Those men would walk out with their minds changed. I want it to be required training across the board, from schools to colleges, sports teams, workplaces and beyond.”
Since there are almost 400 million guns in circulation in the US, Katz emphasises that his approach is not to engage in potentially dangerous public interventions, but rather to focus on “known peer cultures” like friends, teammates and co-workers. “People don’t speak in those situations, because of social fear, but by framing the guy who speaks up as a strong man, or a good friend, you’re making it positive and aspirational, which has more likelihood of success,” he says. “The most important aspect is making sure those in positions of power speak up the loudest and that our leaders are confronting the issues, too, as that is where widespread change can happen.”
With the most powerful political leader in the world in the process of opposing much of what Katz advocates, he emphasises the need for persistence and bravery from bystanding men – a show of leadership in the absence of a leader. “We can’t tell boys that bullying is bad and then equally reward bullies like Trump in power,” Katz says. “There’s a lot of fear in the face of a rightwing populist government, but we need men to loudly oppose him, otherwise real people will be harmed. We’re living in a different world now and it’s urgent.”
As the father of a grownup son, Katz says his main responsibility is to be a role model for young people and to provide a platform for their voices. “We owe it to the next generation of boys and girls, who haven’t chosen to be born into this patriarchal society,” he says. “Challenge your peer groups, educate each other and make sure your voice is louder than those spreading abusive norms. It takes courage, but it will only cause more tragedy if we don’t show it.”
Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue (Penguin, £10.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
