Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help Read online

  Dedicated to Shelley and Judah

  Copyright © 2006 by Jackson Katz

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Katz, Jackson.

  The Macho Paradox : why some men hurt women and how all men can help / Jackson Katz.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 1-4022-0401-9 (alk. paper)

  1. Women—Violence against. 2. Women—Crimes against. 3. Sex crimes. I. Title: The Macho Paradox. II. Title.

  HV6250.4.W65K39 2005

  362.88’082—dc22

  2005017683

  “After hundreds of years of anti-racist struggle, more than ever before nonwhite people are currently calling attention to the primary role white people must play in anti-racist struggle. The same is true of the struggle to eradicate sexism—men have a primary role to play…in particular, men have a tremendous contribution to make…in the area of exposing, confronting, opposing, and transforming the sexism of their male peers.”

  —bell hooks

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Author’s Note on the Title The Macho Paradox

  1: Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue

  2: Facing Facts

  3: Taking It Personally

  4: Listening to Women

  5: Male-Bashing?

  6: Stuck in (Gender) Neutral

  7: Bystanders

  8: Race and Culture

  9: It Takes a Village to Rape a Woman

  10: Guilty Pleasures: Pornography, Prostitution, and Stripping

  11: MVP: Athletes and Marines

  12: Teach Our Children Well

  13: More Than a Few Good Men

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  PREFACE

  Americans like to boast that we’re “the freest country on earth,” and yet half the population doesn’t even feel free enough to go for a walk at night. Unlike the status of women in Afghanistan under the ghastly Taliban, women in the United States are allowed to go out. Fanatic men in government don’t issue edicts to prevent them from exercising their basic freedom of movement. Instead, the widespread fear of men’s violence does the trick.

  Women in the United States have made incredible and unprecedented gains over the past thirty years in education, business, sports, politics, and other professions. The multicultural women’s movement has utterly transformed the cultural landscape. But at the same time, restrictions on women’s ability to move about freely are so pervasive—such a normal part of life in the post-sixties generations—that many women don’t even question them. They simply order their daily lives around the threat of men’s violence.

  And men? A substantial number of them simply have no idea how profoundly some men’s violence affects the lives of all the women we care about: our mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and girlfriends. I had no idea, either, until the lightbulb first went on when I was a nineteen-year-old college student.

  Today, a quarter century later, I’ve lectured about men’s violence against women on hundreds of college campuses. I start my talks with a deliberately provocative statement. “The subject we’re here to address,” I say, “touches every single person in this room—whether you’re aware of it or not. Gender violence—rape, battering, sexual abuse, sexual harassment—dramatically impacts millions of individuals and families in contemporary American society. In fact, it is one of the great, ongoing tragedies of our time.”

  Is this alarmist hyperbole? I don’t think so. An abundance of credible statistics—some from conservative sources—bears it out. Study after study shows that between one in four and one in six American women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. An American Medical Association report in 2001 found that 20 percent of adolescent girls have been physically or sexually assaulted by a date. A major public opinion poll in 2000 found that two-thirds of American men say that domestic violence is very or fairly common in the U.S., and in a 2005 national survey conducted for Family Circle magazine and Lifetime Television, 92 percent of respondents said that family violence is a much bigger problem than people think.

  But statistics on men’s violence against women, while shocking, only tell part of the story. Another part of the story unfolds in women’s daily lives. To demonstrate this concretely, I request the students’ participation in an interactive exercise.

  I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. Then I ask just the men: “What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted?” At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they’ve been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally a young guy will raise his hand and say, “I stay out of prison.” This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, “Nothing. I don’t think about it.”

  Then I ask the women the same question. “What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted?”

  Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Here are some of their answers:

  Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don’t go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I go to sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don’t put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man’s voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don’t use parking garages. Don’t get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don’t use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don’t wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don’t take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in publ
ic places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don’t make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.

  The exercise can go on for almost half an hour. Invariably the board fills up on the women’s side. This is true, with slight variations, in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Many women say the list is like an unconscious mental checklist. Despite three decades of Take Back the Night rallies and feminists raising consciousness about the politics of women’s safety, few women in audiences where I’ve presented think about their daily routine in terms of larger cultural issues or political questions. “It’s just the way it is,” they say. “It’s what we have to do to feel safe.” (At the end of the exercise, I always hasten to point out that most sexual assaults are perpetrated not by strangers lurking in the bushes, but by men who know their victims—often in the victim’s home.) Some women do get angry when they see the radical contrast between the women’s side of the chalkboard, which is always full, and the men’s, which is almost always blank.

  Some men react emotionally when they contemplate the full chalkboard on the women’s side. They’re shocked, saddened, angered. Many report its effects as life changing. Many of them had never before taken the time to think about this subject. They knew violence against women was a problem in our culture, but not this big a problem. They didn’t realize how far-reaching it was. They didn’t think it affected them. They were unaware of—or in denial about—the fact that it has become the norm in the U.S. for women and girls to remain hypervigilant—sometimes 24/7—about the possibility of being raped.

  How could so many men be oblivious to such a basic aspect of life for the women and girls around them? One of the most plausible explanations is that violence against women has historically been seen as a “women’s issue.” We focus on the against women part of the phrase and not on the fact that men are the ones doing it. But the long-running American tragedy of men’s violence against women is really more about men and our problems than it is about women. We’re the ones committing the vast majority of the violence! We’re the ones whom women have been conditioned to fear. In the twenty-first century, it is long past time that more men—of all races, religions, ethnicities, and nationalities—faced up to this sad situation, educated ourselves and others about the hows and whys, and then went out and did something about it.

  That’s why the intended audience for the chalkboard exercise about the steps women take to protect themselves is actually men.

  That’s why this book is about men.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE TITLE THE MACHO PARADOX

  Because there is no explicit discussion of the phrase “the macho paradox” in the body of this book, I would like to offer readers a brief explanation about the term from two different perspectives: 1) the contested cultural meanings of the word “macho”; and 2) the way that I have used the term to describe some of the contradictory aspects of traditional notions of masculinity, as related to men’s potential for leadership in the ongoing struggle to end men’s violence against women.

  1) The term “macho” carries multiple meanings, with both positive and negative connotations. For some Latinos, the positive characteristics of the Spanish word “macho” have been lost in mainstream English usage, where “macho” is used almost exclusively to refer to hypermasculine aggression. Traditionally, the word “macho” carried many positive associations. To be “macho” was to be well-respected, embodying traits such as courage, valor, honor, sincerity, pride, humility, and responsibility.

  Since language usage has a political context, it is unfair to discuss the definition of “macho” in contemporary U.S. society without acknowledging the colonial exploitation and cultural domination of Latin America by early European and later U.S. imperial powers that characterize an important part of the past five hundred years in the history of the Western hemisphere. Thus, when English-speaking Americans use the term “macho,” they should be aware that some see the negative connotation as further evidence of the ongoing effects of the Anglo conquest of Latino cultures in the southern part of the hemisphere. While some would argue that the “true” meaning of the word macho has been lost, it is important to remember that there is no such thing as the “true” meaning of words—only ways they evolve in particular cultural-historical contexts.

  In any case, the term “paradox” in the book’s title was intended to address any concerns that use of the word “macho” might contribute to the perpetuation of a negative cultural stereotype of Latinos. A key definition of “paradox” is “exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects.”

  By using the term “paradox,” I mean to coin a phrase that expresses both the negative and positive definitions of the word “macho” and appropriately conveys the word’s contradictory meanings and rich history.

  2) Many people have rightly asked, “What is the macho paradox?” Here are suggestions which form the basis for our thinking:

  a. If you are a man, it is a lot easier to be sexist and abusive toward women—or remain silent in the face of other men’s abuse—than it is to speak out against sexism. It is ironic that men who speak out against men’s violence against women are often called wimps, when they actually have to be more self-confident and secure than men who remain silent in order to fit in and be “one of the guys.” (Thus, a “macho” man, with its original Spanish meaning, would have the courage to take responsibility for controlling sexist or violent behavior in his community.)

  b. The same qualities that some people ascribe to macho or hypermasculine men (see discussion above), such as “toughness” or a willingness to use violence to get one’s way, can be read as expressions of weakness and cowardice. In other words, a man who beats his wife or girlfriend proves not that he’s a “real man” who is “in control” and thus worthy of others’ respect, but rather that he has serious problems and needs immediate help.

  —Jackson Katz

  CHAPTER ONE

  Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue

  Most people think violence against women is a women’s issue. And why wouldn’t they? Just about every woman in this society thinks about it every day. If they are not getting harassed on the street, living in an abusive relationship, recovering from a rape, or in therapy to deal with the sexual abuse they suffered as children, they are ordering their daily lives around the threat of men’s violence.

  But it is a mistake to call men’s violence a women’s issue. Take the subject of rape. Many people reflexively consider rape to be a women’s issue. But let’s take a closer look. What percentage of rape is committed by women? Is it 10 percent, 5 percent? No. Less than 1 percent of rape is committed by women. Let’s state this another way: over 99 percent of rape is perpetrated by men. Whether the victims are female or male, men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators. But we call it a women’s issue? Shouldn’t that tell us something?

  A major premise of this book is that the long-running American tragedy of sexual and domestic violence—including rape, battering, sexual harassment, and the sexual exploitation of women and girls—is arguably more revealing about men than it is about women. Men, after all, are the ones committing the vast majority of the violence. Men are the ones doing most of the battering and almost all of the raping. Men are the ones paying the prostitutes (and killing them in video games), going to strip clubs, renting sexually degrading pornography, writing and performing misogynistic music.

  When men’s role in gender violence is discussed—in newspaper articles, sensational TV news coverage, or everyday conversation—the focus is typically on men as perpetrators or potential perpetrators. These days, you don’t have to look far to see evidence of the pain and suffering these men cause. But it is rare to find any in-depth discussion about the culture that’s producing these violent men. It’s almost like the perpetrators are strange aliens who landed here from another planet. It is rarer still to hear thoughtful discussions about the ways that our culture defines “manhood,” and how that def
inition might be linked to the endless string of stories about husbands killing wives, or groups of young men raping girls (and sometimes videotaping the rape) that we hear about on a regular basis.

  Why isn’t there more conversation about the underlying social factors that contribute to the pandemic of violence against women? Why aren’t men’s attitudes and behaviors toward women the focus of more critical scrutiny and coordinated action? These days, the 24/7 news cycle brings us a steady stream of gender-violence tragedies: serial killers on the loose, men abducting young girls, domestic-violence homicides, periodic sexual abuse scandals in powerful institutions like the Catholic Church and the Air Force Academy. You can barely turn on the news these days without coming across another gruesome sex crime—whether it’s a group of boys gang-raping a girl in a middle school bathroom or a young pregnant woman who turns up missing, and whose husband emerges a few days later as the primary suspect.

  Isn’t it about time we had a national conversation about the male causes of this violence, instead of endlessly lingering on its consequences in the lives of women? Thanks to the battered women’s and rape crisis movements in the U.S., it is no longer taboo to discuss women’s experiences of sexual and domestic violence. This is a significant achievement. To an unprecedented extent, American women today expect to be supported—not condemned—when they disclose what men have done to them (unless the man is popular, wealthy, or well-connected, in which case all bets are off.)

  This is all for the good. Victims of violence and abuse—whether they’re women or men—should be heard and respected. Their needs come first. But let’s not mistake concern for victims with the political will to change the conditions that led to their victimization in the first place. On talk shows, in brutally honest memoirs, at Take Back the Night rallies, and even in celebrity interviews, our society now grants many women the platform to discuss the sexual abuse and mistreatment that have sadly been a part of women’s lives here and around the world for millennia. But when was the last time you heard someone, in public or private, talk about violence against women in a way that went beyond the standard victim fixation and put a sustained spotlight on men—either as perpetrators or bystanders? It is one thing to focus on the “against women” part of the phrase; but someone’s responsible for doing it, and (almost) everyone knows that it’s overwhelmingly men. Why aren’t people talking about this? Is it realistic to talk about preventing violence against women if no one even wants to say out loud who’s responsible for it?