Katz said the term "gender issues" has become synonymous with women's issues, but that he believes gender-based violence is as much men's problem as it women's.
Society places too much emphasis on risk reduction, or informing women how to guard themselves against sexual-abuse, rather than risk prevention, according to Katz. He explained that common preventative discussions caution women to take the well-lit route back to their dorm but "getting to the root cause of the problem, and the root cause is men," Katz said.
Rape can seem paradoxical because while it is widely recognized as solely a women's issue, less than 1 percent of rape is perpetrated by women, according to Katz. Society cannot afford to accept men acting as bystanders, but instead needs men with "moral integrity to break complicit male silence," he said.
Men need to raise the standards of male integrity, since many male opinions of what constitutes a "good guy" today simply refer to someone who refrains from physically abusing women, Katz said.
Katz called on the media to prevent violence against women, stating that the use of the passive voice to describe acts of sexual abuse "desensitizes" the issue of violence against women by subconsciously shifting public sentiment from empathizing with the victim to questioning the victim. Katz said that media outlets ask, "How many teenage girls got pregnant this year?" rather than, "How many men have impregnated teenage girls?"
Although Katz insisted that "violence against women is a man's issue," he challenged men as well as higher education institutions to involve themselves in preventing gender-based violence. Many schools across the country are not doing enough to respond to gender-based violence, Katz said.
Helen Damon-Moore, director of service and educational programs at the Tucker Foundation, said she suggested inviting Katz to campus due to his successful visit four years ago during which he encouraged the Dartmouth community to "explore issues related to positive gender relationships."
"We need to develop a network of people who are willing to look hard at violence prevention against women and apply these learnings to the rest of our life," Damon-Moore said.
Katz, who is accustomed to lecturing to audiences comprised mostly of women, said he was pleased to see that more than half of the audience at the lecture was men.
The timing of the event corresponded with the 40th anniversary of WISE, a program empowering survivors of domestic violence through mentorship.
