‘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.”
Read the interview in the Guardian.
[This piece was published on 28/02/25]
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