Tough Guise Written by Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp About Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp Overview of the video How to use this guide Source List for Statistics in Tough Guise Note to High School Teachers Recent Articles about Masculinity by Jackson Katz and Sut Jhally Video Sections: Introduction Hidden: A Gender Upping the Ante Backlash The Tough Guise The School Shootings Constructing Violent Masculinity Sexualized Violence Invulnerability Vulnerability Better Men Jackson Katz & Jeremy Earp Jackson Katz has been one of America's leading anti-sexist male activists in the 1980's and 1990's. He is widely recognized for his groundbreaking work in the field of gender violence prevention education with men and boys, particularly in the sports culture and the military. He has lectured on hundreds of college and high school campuses and has conducted hundreds of professional trainings, seminars, and workshops in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Katz is the founder and director of MVP Strategies, an organization that provides gender violence prevention training and materials to U.S. colleges, high schools, law enforcement and military services, agencies, community organizations, and small and large corporations. Katz is a former all-star football player who became the first man at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to earn a minor in women's studies. He holds a Master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where his research concentration was the social construction of violent masculinities through sports and media. In 1993 he co-created the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The multi-racial, mixed gender MVP Program is the first large-scale attempt to enlist high school, collegiate, and professional athletes in the fight against all forms of men's violence against women. MVP has worked with more than 20,000 high school students, as well as 2500 student-athletes at 35 colleges nationally. Katz and other MVP staff have trained coaches, players, and front office personnel of the New England Patriots Football Club. Katz is the primary author of the program's innovative teaching materials. Since 1996 he has been directing the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the United States Marine Corps. Since 1990, Katz has lectured at more than 450 colleges, prep schools, high schools, middle schools, professional conferences and military installations in 41 states. He has spoken and done trainings at numerous public schools and community organizations across the country. From 1988 to 1998, Katz was the chief organizer for Real Men, the Boston-based anti- sexist men's organization. Real Men leafleted at Fenway Park and Andrew Dice Clay concerts, provided speakers, sponsored debates and conferences, held fundraisers for battered women's shelters, and produced and distributed literature. Katz has served on the boards of Boston-area battered women's shelters and is currently a member of the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence. He has published several academic articles on topics including educating college student- athletes in gender violence prevention, violent white masculinity in advertising, men's leadership in gender violence prevention education K-12, juvenile detention, masculinities in media and the male sports culture. Jackson Katz is widely quoted in the national print media. He has appeared on numerous national and local radio programs in the U.S. and Canada, as well as television programs such as Good Morning America, Phil Donahue, Montel Williams, ABC News, 20/20, and the CBS Evening News. Jeremy Earp teaches English at Parsons School of Design at New School University in New York City. He previously taught English at Northeastern University, and literature and intellectual history at the Art Institute of Boston. He also taught and served as coordinator of Adult Basic Education for the Adult Learning Program in Jamaica Plain, Mass. In addition to teaching, he has helped develop writing, critical thinking and media literacy curricula for universities and urban adult literacy programs. Prior to teaching, he worked for a number of years as a reporter for a daily newspaper outside of Boston. Teachers Guide: Overview Copyright Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp The central premise of Tough Guise is that violence in America is overwhelmingly a gendered phenomenon, and that any attempt to understand violence therefore requires that we understand its relationship to masculinity and manhood. Playing off the image of Toto pulling back the curtain, the film announces its most basic assumptions: * that masculinity is made, not given (as opposed to maleness, which is biological); * that media is the primary narrative, pedagogical force of our time; * that media images of manhood – across distinctions of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class -- therefore play a pivotal role in making, shaping and recycling specific attitudes about manhood; * that a sustained look at media images of manhood and violence reveals a widespread and disturbing equation of masculinity with pathological control and violence; * and, finally, that looking critically at constructed ideals of manhood by definition diminishes the otherwise silent power these very images might wield in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, our institutions and each other. The last point is crucial, in that it underscores what we see as the ultimately hopeful message of this film: that change is possible, and violence can be prevented. In keeping with critical media studies, the film takes media images not simply as reflections of who we are, but as in some sense actively involved in telling us who we are. Reading media imagery and discourse critically can therefore change the way we perceive the world, ourselves and each other—while offering insight into how we might change the way media and other cultural/political institutions do business. A key point is that the persistent media fantasy of the "real man" is often just that—more fantasy than real. And as such, it needs maintaining. The "real man" caricature so often associated in media imagery and discourse with control, self-destruction and violence is of course neither fixed nor natural, and therefore can only maintain the illusion that it is so by remaining invisible and silencing alternatives. The personal consequences of this silencing—of ourselves and of others—are demonstrated in the film by the Oakland Men’s Project’s "box exercise." The film’s later examination of such persistent phenomena as men’s violence against women, gay- bashing, and reckless, self-destructive behavior extends the argument by suggesting that we are in the midst of a crisis in masculinity, a crisis that has produced devastating consequences. Just as, institutionally, media and other cultural systems often play up violent masculine ideals at the expense of other, healthier possibilities, on an individual level we see all around us the boy who swallows his emotions for fear of ridicule, for fear of being labeled "feminine" or weak—in essence, not a normal, natural male. Violent masculinity is no more "natural" than media imagery. Both rely on controlled performances. The conclusion of this film amounts to this: By recognizing, and naming, masculine identity as a process, an uneasy performance built on exclusion and policing, the box can be broken open—along with the traditional assumption that masculinity must be connected with violence. Similarly, by looking critically at how institutions—from the media to political institutions to our schools—often play a role in shaping regressive and violent notions of manhood that maintain an unacceptably violent status quo, we stand to clear the way for individuals, male and female, to live freer lives. How To Use This Guide This guide is divided into eleven sections which correspond to the full length version of Tough Guise. The guide was written to aid educators in screening the video in classrooms, community groups, workshops, etc. Please feel free to print out, copy and distribute this guide as long as the authors, Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp, are acknowledged. In the future, MEF plans to offer this guide and other classroom materials in printer- friendly, PDF form. Please revisit this web site for updates or call MEF at 800-897-0089. Thank you. Source List *Please note, this source list is in progress. Updated web addresses for missing data will be included soon. Males are most often both the victims and the perpetrators in 90% of homicides. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Gender. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm Over 85% of the people who commit murder are men and the majority of the women who commit murder usually do so as a defense against men who have been battering them for years. 90% of the women in jail for murder are there for killing male batterers. Bass, A. (1992, February 24). "Women far less likely to kill than men; no one sure why." The Boston Globe, pp. 27. Women commit about 15% of all homicides. Stark, E. (1990). Rethinking homicide: Violence, race, and the politics of gender. International Journal of Health and Services, 20(1): 18. More than 90 women were murdered every week in 1991; 9 out of 10 were murdered by men. Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p. 2. 90% of people who commit violent physical assault are men. Males perpetrate 95% of all serious domestic violence. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justic Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online. http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/ The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 95% of reported assaults on spouses or ex-spouses are committed by men against women. Douglas, H.