Club Respect

Smart Plays is Club Respect’s podcast that shines a light on uncomfortable topics in Australian sport and aims to rebuild respect as the base platform for interaction between fans, parents, coaches, players and officials.

Overview

• Transcript – See below
• TED Talk – Violence against women — it’s a men’s issue
• Book – The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help
• Book – Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a Men’s Issue, and How You Can Make a Difference (Release date Feb 2025)
• Program – Be More Than a Bystander – EVA BC & BC Lions
• Program – Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
• News article – AFL’s minute of silence for female victims of violence important but industry-wide change needed By Kate O’Halloran
• Website – Jackson Katz

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Transcript:

Contents

1. Introduction [00:27]
2. Why is this so important? [02:21]
3. What’s changed since Macho Paradox? [05:21]
4. Predictable pushback [09:24]
5. Sport as a mirror to society [18:12]

 

1. Introduction [00:27]

Tarik Bayrakli:

In May 2024, all 18 teams in the Australian Football League stood for a minute’s silence, arm in arm, to take a united stance on preventing men’s violence against women.

The statistic of 1 woman being murdered a week at the hands of a man they know is now ingrained in the way we speak about domestic violence in Australia.

In reality, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath are injured victim-survivors and traumatised kids; Broken families and disconnected communities.

Lost friendships and issues with mental health; People living in fear, intimidation, sadness, and regret; A culture of abuse and violence.

Men’s violence against other men is also a significant issue. The pressure to be a “real man,” act tough and suppress emotions are the hallmarks of a masculinity that don’t allow men to fully express themselves. It’s leading to higher incarceration rates, mental health issues and higher rates of suicide.

The consequences of men’s violence ripple out into other parts of people’s lives, their workplaces, schools and of course, in community sports clubs.

Sport mirrors society – so it’s no surprise we see violence and abuse in our clubs: coaches yell at players; parents insult umpires; players sledge and swear; and the way teams easily break down into punch-ons and all-in brawls.

So, what responsibility do men have in reducing violence and abuse?

Our guest today is Jackson Katz, a thought leader in the global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence.

Jackson once wrote, “we need to redefine strength in men, not as a power over other people, but as forces for justice.”

Jackson, thank you for joining us on Smart Plays.

Jackson Katz:

Thanks very much for having me, Tarik good to be with you.

 

2. Why is this so important? [02:21]

Tarik Bayrakli:

Your work has been really important for me, learning what I have in the world of gendered violence and figuring out what men could do to reduce harm. You’ve been involved in this work for decades now. What is it about this topic that makes it so important to you?

Jackson Katz:

I mean, I think it’s one of the most important issues in the human species. That’s not an overstatement. I mean, I’ve been involved in this work since I was a university student back in the early 1980s. And I think I very early figured out that all the issues that I was concerned about, whether it was racism, colonialism, poverty, obviously sexism and the LGBTQ issues that all have been swirling about over the last number of decades, I was interested in all of them. But I thought as a man and as a white heterosexual man, I was going to use whatever platform and advantages I had to start speaking out about gender inequality and men’s violence against women, which I understood pretty early on was a hugely important subject unto itself.

But it was also marbled into every other social issue and social problem that I was interested in. And I was, as a young guy, trying to figure out how I can make the biggest impact. And I thought, you know what, domestic and sexual violence and sexual harassment are pervasive problems in the world. They cut across all the social categories of race, ethnicity, geography, education level. They’re in every society and they’re, like I said, marbled into every other issue that I was concerned about. And so, I thought if I could make a difference on this subject, then I can make a difference in a big way.

And so, I didn’t know exactly what I would do. I didn’t know exactly where my work would take me, but I just knew I had to start speaking out about this subject, especially because there were so few men doing this. It was so few men.

To me, it was obvious even as a young guy, that even referring to and calling and understanding domestic and sexual violence as women’s issues, that good men help out, with never rang true for me. Because, I always thought to myself, why is it a women’s issue when men are the ones doing most of the violence? and why is it a women’s issue when men have most of the social, economic and political power, which is to say they have, you know, they have the power and they’re the ones doing the most of the violence, why should we put it off or hoist it off on women and say it’s their responsibility to deal with? It didn’t make any sense to me.

And so, I just started writing about it as a young guy and as a journalist. I was organising student groups when I was a university student and then after, when I was making my way in my twenties, and it just grew from there and I’ve just been doing what I’ve been doing.

What I started doing in my early twenties, I’ve been doing now for several decades, and I often say my hair is shorter, not by choice, and my clothes are nicer, but the work is the same. It’s the same and I’m still trying to figure out how to institutionalise and normalise men’s engagement and mobilisation around the set of issues related to gender justice, gender equality and the prevention of gender-based violence.

 

3. What’s changed since Macho Paradox? [05:21]

Tarik Bayrakli:

Your book Macho Paradox, which was first published in 2006, is essential reading. Your TED Talk, in 2013, was a game changer for millions of viewers. And your new book coming out is called Every Man. What’s changed over the last 20 years? What’s the difference in the way that you’ve been talking about this?

Jackson Katz:

Sure. Well, there’s a there’s a bunch of changes. One of them is that there’s a lot more men talking about this, organising around this, involved with institutions, not just individual men, but institutional entities that didn’t exist back in the day. There’s again, across the world, not just in United States or Australia, but in various countries. It’s just a lot more common to hear men talking about this than in previous decades.

Another big change is that the technology has changed so radically, and the onset of digital revolution has been utterly world historical in its impacts. And the introduction of digital technology is similar to the introduction of electricity in the late 19th century. It’s just changing everything. And so, you have to incorporate all the tools of digital communication, both the technology, but also the social impacts of the technology.

And one of those impacts, some of it’s good, I mean, it’s complicated cause some of it’s good. Like there’s an ability through technology to connect people across the vast reaches of the world. And for young women, for example, and women to organise, to have a voice, to talk about their experiences, to organise around advancing their interests as well as men. Men have the opportunity to dialogue with each other, connect with each other, organise with each other, and people who aren’t men or women. In other words, across the gender and sexual identity spectrum, there’s a whole bunch of things that have happened as a result of the digital revolution. They’ve created a very different world than there was 20 years ago.

In addition, one of the pieces of that digital revolution is the proliferation of misogynist pornography, which is be unbelievably, unbelievably influential in shaping norms, in this case, especially in heterosexual male sexuality. And millions, billions of men and young men are immersed in porn culture, which is shaping their sexual psyches in ways that are extraordinarily harmful both to women and to men themselves. And that has increasingly become more prominent and more openly misogynist. So, I think we’re dealing with a real crisis in that regard. The influence of pornography is way more pervasive than it was 20 years ago, and it’s all negative.

Those are some of the differences there is also, in Australia in particular, I think there’s real desire on the part of multiple, sort of, individual and sectors to address the issues of domestic and sexual violence in a whole of country way. That is very unusual. It’s way beyond what, in terms of the commitment and in terms of sort of the national introspection, the national, or the expressed desire of people, influential people, to really figure out what to do in a big way and not just, you know, nibble at the edges, I think is very impressive. And there’s a lot of hope there.

I live in a country where we’re so desensitised by violence, including sexual violence and domestic violence, that people shrug their shoulders and they move on after tragedy, tragedy, tragedy, one after the next. And like in the United States, for example, something like four women every day are murdered by their male partners. And the level of sexual violence that is completely normalised is off the charts. And I’m not saying that’s not a significant problem in Australia and other countries, because it is. But I think that what I’ve seen in Australia, and certainly in my recent travels across the country, I’ve seen more of a commitment to actually doing something structural, institutional, political, is hopeful.

 

4. Predictable pushback [09:24]

Tarik Bayrakli:

There’s definitely hope at times, but there’s also a fair bit of backlash.

Why is there pushback by some men who feel that the fight for women’s equality, rights and freedom from violence is accusatory?

Jackson Katz:

Here’s a news flash. For well over 100 years, this is how men have responded to women’s assertions of their rights, their dignity, their equality. There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s totally predictable. Even if women mildly assert themselves and say that we deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, some men will interpret that as an attack on them.

So, I have to say in my book, my new book that I just completed, which is set to be published in early 2025 by Penguin Random House UK, called, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a Men’s Issue. I have a chapter that’s devoted to predictable pushback from men who don’t accept the premise of the book. The premise of the book being that all men have a role to play in promoting gender equity, but specifically countering men’s violence against women. And in the chapter I have, I lay out a series of arguments about what men say when they are opposed to or defensive about addressing these issues, because honestly, there’s nothing new in there.

And so, some of the things that I was hearing when I was 20 years old, young men today who were saying it, they might think that being original, but they’re saying the same thing. It’s totally predictable. And I don’t mean to be totally dismissive of this. Young women will sometimes say why would I want to identify myself as a feminist, because feminist has taken on a bad meaning, and I’m thinking to myself, study the history, this has been over 120 years, women have been called names for identifying themselves as feminists. This is well over a century. So, the idea that somehow young women are the first women to experience the negative backlash for asserting their rights and dignity, it’s an old story.

I think one of the things that I would say, though, to take it in a slightly different direction, Tarik, is that I think we need to figure out ways to move beyond men’s defensiveness. And I and my colleagues have been doing this for a long time. In other words, there’s a way to talk about this subject and engage and mobilise men on this subject without provoking the predictable backlash and pushback and so framing it positively and aspirationally, for example. I frame it as a leadership issue. This is about leadership. This is about the lack of leadership on the part of men.

Women’s leadership in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic sense, has been utterly transformative all over the world in incredible ways that have helped not just women and girls, but also men and boys. Men and boys have been profoundly affected in a positive way by women’s leadership in the domestic violence field, in the sexual assault field. This doesn’t get said out loud that often, but I think one of the roles that men can play, like myself and yourself and other men, is that we can say to men and to young men and boys, hey, look, guys, the idea that somehow feminists hate men or that the women who are engaged in this work are somehow got an agenda against men, it’s just completely false, it’s just wrong.

And I’ll give you one example: In the field of domestic violence, of domestic abuse, we’ve been talking for now, probably 30 years, at least, about the effects of domestic abuse on children, right? All the children who are growing up in homes where their fathers abuses their mother, their mother’s boyfriend abuses their mother. Sometimes the mother is the abuser. This is also true in gay male and lesbian relationships and other social arrangements. There’s an awful lot of kids in Australia, the United States and elsewhere who are growing up in homes where they’re being exposed to, quote, domestic violence. Right?

And by the way, there’s a word that people have used to describe those children. They often say it’s ‘children who witness domestic violence’. And this is a term that I don’t like, and I don’t use because, you know what? If you’re a seven-year-old kid cowering in the closet as your father or another man is raging against your mother, you’re not a witness, you’re a victim. You’re not observing something happening to somebody else, you’re experiencing it happening to yourself. Right. That the experience of trauma is much more immediate and profound than is suggested by the passive word witness. Well, guess what? The category of children who are being traumatised by this in their families, in their homes, includes not only girls but also boys.

For example, do you have any idea how many boys are in the juvenile system throughout the country of Australia? who are boys who have come out of traumatic experiences in families where they were exposed to and traumatised by an adult man’s violence against their mother, against themselves and their siblings? Do you have any idea how many young men and men are in jail and prison throughout Australia, again, across the racial and ethnic spectrum and the socioeconomic spectrum, although skewed towards men who are impoverished, men who are from marginalised communities, which is another issue, it’s an important issue to acknowledge.

But there’s an awful lot of men who are in the system in part because their life journey started as traumatised boys who are victims of violence. And by the way, there’s an awful lot of men who are not in the system, in other words, who are not in jail or prison, but they are walking wounded. They’re adult men who are walking wounded as a result of childhoods and adolescence that are filled with trauma and violence and victimisation, often at the hands of adult men. Many of those adult men are their fathers or other men in their lives who were involved with their mothers. And a lot of those men are struggling to this day to maintain adult relationships and intimacy in relationships.

And feminist women who started the domestic violence movement and the sexual assault movement back in the 1970s have been talking about this for years, for decades. And they’ve been on the side of and allies with the boys and young men, as well as the girls and young women who are experiencing all of this and being traumatised by all this. And they’re standing with those boys and men. So, the idea that somehow it’s anti-male to talk about this, or it’s anti-male to call out this abusive behaviour or to try to transform the culture that produces this abusive behaviour is completely false.

One of the ways to counteract the defence of this, as so many men feel, is to say, you know what? These women who are in this work have been pointing us in the direction of healthier families, healthier communities, healthier society, trying to reduce violence, trying to redefine what it means to be a man in ways that are more life affirming and less, you know, based in this sort of dominance based and abusive based masculinity, which is hurting boys and men as well as girls and women.

And so, I think framing it this way or re-framing it this way, I think, is a way to challenge men in a positive sense. And by the way, defining it as a leadership issue for men is another positive and aspirational thing that I often do. In fact, I do it all the time. And I say we need more men and young men who have the courage, the strength, and the self-confidence to speak out on these matters, to challenge each other, to support women and girls and men and boys who are experiencing abuse, or who just want to be treated with respect and dignity.

And if you’re a man or a young man, it actually takes more courage and strength to speak out about sexism than it does to go along with the guys, because if you’re a guy, being one of the guys takes absolutely nothing special. If you’re a guy, just going along with your boys, going along with your mates, takes nothing special. What takes something special, if you’re a guy, is when your guys are acting inappropriately or abusively in some way, whether it’s harassing girls or women or treating their girlfriends badly or anything related to that, turning to them and saying, hey, dude, you’re my friend, but that’s not cool. The way you’re talking to your girlfriend or the way that you’re making these comments is not cool. That takes strength of character, it takes courage, it takes guts.

And so we have to say that because I think a lot of men and young men get policed into conformist silence with abusive behaviour, not because they agree with it, but because they don’t want to take the risk of standing out in a way that will call negative attention to them and it’ll perhaps jeopardise their status within the group, or it’ll cause awkward interactions or whatever.

And a leader is somebody who actually speaks up when other people, for whatever reason, don’t have what it takes to speak up. That’s one of the definitions of a leader, and it’s a positive definition. So, I think by saying it’s a leadership issue, instead of wagging our finger at young men and saying, stop doing bad things, stop being toxic, we’re calling them into good behaviour rather than calling them out for bad behaviour. And the call in is, come on, guys, we need more guys who are willing to say, enough is enough. This is not cool.

 

5. Sport as a mirror to society [18:12]

Tarik Bayrakli:

I’ve always been interested in the idea that sport is a mirror to society. Where we’ve seen sport follow the way the business world has commercialised and globalised. We’ve seen how sport has followed politics in professional sports. And we’ve seen how movements such as a greater push for gender equality have played out through sport as well. In what ways does the abuse, and respect, we see in society reflect in sports?

Jackson Katz:

Again, there’s one way of thinking about this is that these are much larger problems than sports, but they show up in sports. So, it’s not that sports are causing the problems as much as sports are under a spotlight. So, therefore, people who are involved in sports often tend to get more attention.

And so, for example, this is something that I and my colleagues have been saying to male athletes for 30 years. If a male athlete is arrested for sexual assault, the first line of the story in the news is going to be a member of such and such football club was arrested Friday night for sexual assault or something like that. In other words, the fact that you’re an athlete is going to be a prominent part of what calls attention to you. And let’s just be clear, especially if you’re at the elite level, at the professional level, part of the package is you’re under the public spotlight. You know, you can’t say that I’m going to complain that I’m getting attention for the negative things, while you’re not going to complain about getting attention for the positive things. In other words, you’re under the spotlight because of your athletic accomplishments. That’s part of the package. Period. End of sentence. It’s like, how are you going to deal with it in a positive and constructive way, is the question.

I mean, I would say that there are some aspects of male peer cultures and again, I’m talking about men here because, I mean, women can be abusive. Women are not abusive anywhere near the level that men are. But I’m focusing on men. But there are dynamics within cohesive male peer cultures, like athletic teams, that are directly analogous to military units, biker gangs, fraternal organisations. In other words, there’s homo-social aspects of the dynamic within certain kinds of male peer cultures, including teams that have their own characteristics that are different from a disconnected group of individual men that you might run into on the street. And so, one of the things that you do in working with athletes is you talk about the team concept and the group concept and what responsibility members of a team have to each other, to challenge each other to push each other to be better. What responsibilities do the leaders on the team have? The captains, the co captains, the senior members, the older members of the team to mentor the younger guys on the team? If the concept is we’re working together as a team, and therefore everybody has a responsibility, not just for their individual behaviour, but for the team and the health of the team, then that’s a way to think about leveraging that sense of group identity in a positive way.

And we talk about that in my colleagues work with athletics. We’ve been talking about this, you know, for forever. For example, if one member of your team is abusive to his girlfriend or is arrested for sexual assault, the first victim, or the first person we should be concerned with is the person who was victimised, who was sexually assaulted or who was abused. But the whole team, in a sense, is diminished by that act, by that one person, because, as I said, the first line in the news story is going to say a member of such and such a team was arrested for sexual assault, which means that everybody in the team is diminished by that, in addition to the fact that if that person is found liable or guilty or has some kind of punishment, then they’re no longer able to play the function that they play on the team, which means they’re letting down their teammates who have been counting on that person to play the role that they’ve been playing. So, the person’s act was very selfish, it was abusive to the person, but it was also disrespectful to the team concept.

And if you can talk about this, in other words, if this can be part of the conversation, that teammates speak up and challenge each other and they push each other to be better, not just wait for law enforcement or the agents of authority, like the coach or the administrator of the league, although those people are important, too, but they take it upon themselves. For example, the leadership on the team, the players leadership, like the senior members of the team or the captains or what have you, and they say, this is my responsibility to mentor young men or other men, and it’s a responsibility, not just of me, but of anybody who’s in a senior or a leadership role. You can positively frame all of this as taking care of your teammates, helping the team get better, helping the team be more responsible, rather than thinking that the only responsibility or the only sense of loyalty to your teammates is after the fact, when the police come knocking on the door or the media comes writing stories, and you cover up for your teammate, but you don’t want to talk to the media, you don’t want to say anything about what you know happened last weekend. Because somehow that’s loyalty.

I think there’s another way of thinking about loyalty, which is if your friend is treating his girlfriend disrespectfully, if you have a guy friend who’s grabbing women’s butts in bars and parties when he’s drinking, you know, he’s having a few too many beers, and he’s grabbing women’s butt, go and taking him aside one day when he’s sober and saying, dude, the way you’re acting in bars when you’re drinking, this is not going to fly. This is not cool. That’s an act of loyalty. That’s an act of friendship. That’s an act of teammate-ship. That’s not being soft or weak or a beta-male or a cuck or all these b.s. It’s like the opposite. It actually takes more courage; it takes more maturity. It takes more strength. And so, it’s all of this is reframing. What does it mean to be a strong, in this case, a strong man, a strong member of a team, a good person who happens to be an athlete as well as a good person. And if you frame all this positively and aspirationally, again, I’m not saying that in every case it’s going to get through, but I’m saying that at least some of these men and young men can hear it as a positive challenge rather than a critique or a criticism.

Tarik Bayrakli:

Hope you’ve enjoyed Part 1 of our conversation with Jackson Katz.

We spoke about the crucial role men play in addressing gendered violence and the powerful opportunity for change. But this is just the beginning. In Jackson’s words: Men’s leadership has not met the moment yet. But it can.

So, in Part 2 we look at the ways men can. From institutional support that can change the game at policy level, to individual actions where men can safely call out their mates.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

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