Review Video: Violence against Women – It’s a Men’s Issue by Jackson Katz
This video has exposed me to very similar ideas and has also exposed me to different perspectives. I thought it was very interesting how Jackson presented the sentence “John beat Mary” and gave sentences following, that would drag the view away towards John who is the perpetrator. This is a big problem in society. Jackson has a strong point about how men are not viewed as the problem and how people blame the women for being the victim. I see this a lot within our society and it’s surprising to me that not much has changed this issue of men going unnoticed.
I also thought it was interesting how Jackson pointed out that when women try to speak out about the issues of violence, they are usually called out for it. They get called nasty names and are accused of hating on men. Jackson points out how this silences the issues with violence caused by men. I thought people just said those things just to say them. I never really looked at it this way, although it’s pretty obvious that that’s what’s happening. He has a point though, instead of looking at victims like they’re crazy, we need to pay more attention to those that commit the crime. Jackson helped me better understand why violence from men still occur so often.There are various themes within this Ted talk that I have come across.
One of the themes is that men need to stand up. Jackson specifically points out that although it’s great for women to stand up, we need more men to stand up. We need more men to stand up because it’s easier for them to be heard. As Jackson said before, women tend to be silenced. Jackson specifically focuses on adult men with power. Another theme that comes up is that a lot of us are guilty of being bystanders to these acts of violence. Jackson says “isn’t your silence a form of consent?” What Jackson means by this is that if you’re a witness to sexual violence and you don’t do anything about it, aren’t you supporting it?There are multiple ways we could decrease the prevalence of sexual violence in our society on the micro-level. One way is that we could encourage the people around us like friends and family to speak up or talk about sexual violence.
We could do this by talking about it with one another by having a small discussion. This will help us sort out the wrongs of sexual violence and how to further prevent it. Doing this will also help take notice of the issue more instead of just ignoring it. The second way to help decrease sexual violence is to discourage people around us who take sexual violence as a joke. This could lead to more people being serious on the matter at hand and hopefully it will encourage them to do the same with other people. The third way to solve this issue on the micro level is that we as individuals have to acknowledge that women are the victims of men sexual violence. Like Jackson said, we need to focus on the questions that matter.
The ones that actually help us understand and prevent these type of acts.There are also multiple ways we could decrease sexual violence in our society on the macro level. The first way to decrease sexual violence on the macro level is to have powerful leaders in our society to speak up. These leaders have so many listeners and could bring more awareness to the problems in society. Political leaders have a lot of money they could use to put into groups that bring more attention to sexual violence. This could lead to more messages about this issue being spread. This would be a strong move against sexual violence. The second way to decrease sexual violence is to bring more attention to it in our schools.
We could have a class to inform students on this issue and let them know who the victims are and how to prevent a sexually violent act if they sense that a person is about to be a victim. This class could also discourage the jokes made about this issue. The third way to decrease sexual violence in our society on a macro level is to increase punishment to those who act upon it. Much like the death sentence in our society, we could establish a harder punishment to those who are criminals to sexual violence. This could discourage people to do anything related to sexual violence.
I think everyone in our society needs to take notice of Katz’s approach to sexual violence. The reason I think everyone should watch this video is because this is still a major problem in society. I don’t think enough people are aware of how big this issue is and or how simple it is to prevent it. Katz is right, being a bystander is basically giving consent to those who act upon sexual violence. Until we further decrease this issue, we’re all guilty.
Works cited
MLA CitationsTEDxTalks. “Violence against Women-It’s a Men’s Issue: Jackson Katz at TEDxFiDiWomen.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 Feb. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8.
