Jackson Katz Quotes

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary.

For millions of women and men around the world, the playwright Eve Ensler is a beloved figure. She represents the epitome of the politically engaged artist, someone who uses her creative brilliance to illuminate injustice and give voice to the voiceless.

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 a 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 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 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 onl

There's been an awful lot of silence in make culture about this ongoing tragedy of men's violence against women and children ... we need to break that silence, and we need more men to do that.

In corporate culture, in sports culture, in the media, we honor those who win at all costs.

As governor of California in 1970, Reagan endeared himself to millions of conservatives nationwide when he publicly rebuked the anti-war movement that was exploding on college campuses.

If journalism is the first draft of history, then talk radio provides an early glimpse into how the meaning of political events will be spun for ideological and partisan purposes.

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.

When media coverage sets up a binary opposition between 'the accuser' and 'the accused,' there is no longer a victim or even an alleged victim - a flesh and blood person who was harmed by the violent act of another.

How many more school shootings do we need before we start talking about this as a social problem, and not merely a random collection of isolated incidents?

The whole gun debate needs to be infused with a discussion about manhood. It's frustrating to hear debates about gun rights vs. gun control, and yet very few people say what's hidden in plain sight: It's really a contest of meanings about manhood.

Men are every bit as gendered as women.

Ben Roethlisberger is a proven winner in athletic competition. But the measure of a true leader is how they conduct themselves 24/7, not just during a winning touchdown drive or a goal-line stance. Leadership isn't something that gets switched off because the game clock expires.

In the alternate universe of conservative talk radio, the killing of Bin Laden coincidentally happened on Barack Obama's watch. He had to be kicked dragging and screaming into authorizing it, and even then he made lots of mistakes.

The major political battles about guns in our society concern handguns and assault weapons, not long arms like hunting rifles.

During his runs for the GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has done a good job of mimicking Reagan's anti-government diatribes and 'better days ahead' rhetoric.

A society that respects women needs to elect leaders who care more about women's lives than they do about their or their company's bottom line.

Advocates of 'free speech' often repeat the mantra that the best response to bad speech is more and better speech, not the suppression of the bad stuff.

We need more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them.

Elite athletes learn entitlement. They believe they are entitled to have women serve their needs. It's part of being a man. It's the cultural construction of masculinity.

We need to redefine strength in men, not as the power over other people, but as forces for justice.