Men should be more proactive to work to reduce violence against women in society, said gender violence expert Jackson Katz in a Clinton School speech Monday.
Too often, sexual assault is seen as a “women’s issue” or only as a problem for those men who commit the crime, Katz said.
“What is going on here and what can we do about it on a macro scale? Those are the questions that need to be asked,” Katz said.
One of America’s leading anti-sexist male activists, Katz gave a lecture titled, “More Than a Few Good Men: A Lecture on American Manhood and Violence against Women.”
Ninety-eight percent of rape is perpetrated by men, Katz said, but the large majority of men treat women with respect, and those men should do more to bring down the rate of sexual violence in America.
All men should “step up and do something about it,” Katz said.
Katz is the co-founder of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, a leading gender violence prevention initiative in professional and college athletics.
He’s also director of the first worldwide sexual and domestic violence prevention program in the U.S. Marine Corp.
Before his Clinton School lecture, Katz hosted a press conference with Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to raise awareness for his work to fight gender violence in America.
Video of Katz’s lecture will be posted soon at www.clintonschoolspeakers.com.