Mordant Belle

From the author of The Macho Paradox comes Tough Guise, a great documentary which I watched during one of my Media Studies classes.

Here’s an excellent preview; more embedded below the fold.

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The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help
By Jason Katz, 2006, Sourcebooks, 296 pages
Mel’s Reading Status: UNREAD

Commentary:
This popped up on my Amazon recommendations, and it looks fascinating. Katz, who I never heard of before looking at this book, is a famous anti-sexist and anti-violence advocate, specializing in prevention. Once I started looking into him and his work, I realized I’d already seen some of it, as the man behind Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity, an excellent documentary from the Media Education Foundation, who I hope to post on more in the future.

Summary, Description, and/or History:
From Publisher’s Weekly, via Amazon.com:

“Katz is cofounder of the Mentors in Violence Prevention Program (MVP), and his focus is on prevention—his intended audience is not violent men who need help changing their ways, but all men, who, he says, have a role to play in preventing male violence against women.
His basic assertion is that rape, battering, sexual abuse and harassment are so widespread that they must be viewed as a social problem rooted in our culture, not as the problem of troubled individuals. He urges men to directly confront the misogynistic attitudes and behavior of their peers.
Some men may find Katz’s advice occasionally baffling: he is full of directions about what not to do (such as paternalistic actions that deprive women of their autonomy). He wants to bring men into the larger discussion of pornography (which, he points out, has been dominated by women) and get them to look at its impact on themselves. Katz also presents eye-opening exercises and discussions from the MVP model that engender productive discussion among participants — usually high school or college students.”

A great excerpt from the opening page:

“Most people think violence against women is a woman’s issue. And why wouldn’t they? Just about every women in this society thinks about it every day. If they are not getting harassed on the street, living in an abusive relationship, recovering from a rape, or in therapy to deal with the sexual abuse they suffered as children, they are ordering their daily lives around the threat of men’s violence.
But it is a mistake to call men’s violence a women’s issue.”

Additional Comments always welcome.

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