Status of Women Committee on Jan. 27th, 2015

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

What are some of the greatest ways we can gain men's support in the fight to end gender-based violence? Sometimes men don't want to come outright, openly...sometimes they might see it as their problem as well. What are some of the best, most effective methods we've put in place?

[Jackson Katz]

One of them, as I've said, is defining it as a leadership issue. If you define it as a leadership issue, that's a positive thing. They won't feel they're being blamed, in a sense, but they're being challenged in a positive way. If it's framed as a leadership issue, a lot of men can hear what you're saying and join in.

Over time it becomes an expectation, not a hope. In other words, we're not hoping that men will join us, if you will. We're saying we expect you to join us. If you're a person who's a leader in your faith community, in your business community, in labour, in politics, in sports, in education, in your family, by definition you need to be knowledgeable about and engaged with these issues. When that is said to men, I think a lot of men can hear that.

I've worked with men for a long time. I've done a lot of leadership breakfasts in Canada, in various provinces, where men come together from various sectors of the community, men who are not already involved, typically, in domestic violence or sexual assault issues. Business leaders, labour leaders, sports figures, and others come to these breakfasts. The theme of the breakfast is that everybody in the community has a role to play.

We know that not all of these guys are going to become activists. We understand that, of course, but they are members of the community, and they can play supportive roles. Sometimes it means writing a cheque and supporting a program, but other times there are other forms of support people can give. A lot of men haven't even thought about what role they can play. As I've said, a lot of men think that if they themselves don't engage in these behaviours and they don't teach their sons to engage in them, they shouldn't be involved. We have to make the case that we have to be involved because these are community issues. Gender equity and the prevention of gender violence are imperatives in a civilized society, and you have to be part of that.

Ma'am, can I say one other piece?

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Yes.

[Jackson Katz]

Thank you.

Another way to get men involved is to make connections between the issues of gender-based violence and men's experiences. Do you know how many adult men have grown up in homes where they were the victims, they and their sisters and brothers were the victims of their father's violence against their mother? How many boys and men have girls and women close to them who have been sexually, physically, and emotionally assaulted and harassed and abused? How many men have experienced both, directly, pain and suffering and sadness, and, secondarily, trauma and suffering and sadness because of our care for and love for women who have been abused? So many men have this as a personal issue.

And, I might add, men's violence against other men is a big problem too. Men assaulting and murdering other men, and men sexually assaulting other men are very big problems. The same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men.

If you say to men that yes, men's violence against women is a critical issue and we need their involvement, and we also need them to speak out about bullying and harassment and abuse by men against other men, a lot of men will think, “I hear that, maybe in a way I hadn't heard it before.”

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I like how you say these are leaders in the community and people look up to them, and they offer that kind of support. That too gives these younger men and children the idea of how to act.

I was just going to say that I also like how you mentioned teaming up with a sports team. So many kids look so favourably to hockey players or any players to that extent, so that too is a very good idea to help us with our communities.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Duncan, you have seven minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Doctor Katz, thank you for your time and effort this morning, and for your work over the last 20 years.

I'm going to pick up on the comments of my colleague Ms. Gordon. A lot of your work involves engaging professional sports teams to the cause of promoting positive male attitudes towards women, to ending violence against women. Recently and sadly we have seen not the best examples for boys and men of how to treat women. I'm wondering if you think this dichotomy poses any problem. How do you overcome this?

[Jackson Katz]

I think what sports organizations, in this case to be specific, professional sports organizations, need to be doing is providing training and education for their players, their coaches, their staff. Everybody needs to know that just because you're providing training doesn't mean that you're going to prevent every incident from happening. It doesn't mean you're perfect. It doesn't mean you're hypocritical if one of your athletes ends up assaulting a woman. It just means that we're doing our best. Everybody needs to do their part and do their best in being part of the solution to these issues, not that there's any such thing as a perfect solution.

In addition, I would say that in my work with professional athletics my focus has not always been on the athletes themselves. The time we get when we work with a professional team is typically so limited, 90 minutes or something; 90 minutes is good, but it's not what you need.

But my thinking is professional athletic organizations have enormous resources in the community. They have brand power in the community. They have such influence. I'm thinking about kids when I'm thinking about professional athletes. I'm thinking about the message to boys that we can say these professional athletic organizations are part of this campaign. What's the message to young men who have big posters of these guys on their walls? When a guy whose poster is on the wall commits an act of sexual assault or domestic violence, obviously that sabotages the idea that these guys are somebody you should look up to. I understand that. But professional athletic organizations can do so much partnering with local domestic violence programs and sexual assault programs. They can provide resources.

Can I just give you one example? If every one of the Canadian franchises in the National Hockey League decided every year they were going to have training at their facility, high school coaches or youth hockey coaches from their region would come to their arena and have a day-long training on the role of the coach in leading young men and women—mostly young men—in sexual assault and relationship abuse prevention. The Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, the Vancouver Canucks, whatever team it is, are the co-sponsors of this event with, say, a local women's organization, and the coach of the team maybe makes an appearance at the training, or one or two high-profile players. in other words, make it a status thing for the local youth hockey coaches or the high school coaches to come to the arena and be trained. That's a way that professional organizations can use their power and brand to enhance the work that's already being done in the community and engage the coaches. A lot of those coaches, for example, wouldn't show up if it was just organized by the local domestic violence program, but if the Toronto Maple Leafs were organizing it, you'd see a lot more people turn up. That's an example of how professional athletics can play a positive role.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thanks so much, Dr. Katz.

MVP Strategies, in collaboration with the Ending Violence Association of BC and the BC Lions football team, created the Be More Than a Bystander campaign. Has there been a measurable impact? Was that studied? What has been the response to the campaign, please?

[Jackson Katz]

Yes, I think this has been a fabulous development in Canada, as well as in the world, really. I think the EVA BC and Lions partnership has taken this work to a different level; obviously I'm part of this as well. The campaign consists of, among other things, a public service piece where you have professional football players from the BC Lions Football Club doing public service announcements on television, radio, and billboards. Since 2011 they've gotten over 100 million views. They have studied this in terms of media metrics and everything. Through lots of high-profile placements of these public service announcements on television, etc., they've had 100 million views in a province of four million people or something. It's just amazing, that kind of exposure.

In addition, my colleague and I trained a series of BC Lions players in intensive three-day training to deliver assemblies in high school gymnasiums. For the last three years, BC Lions players in the off-season have been going out in greater Vancouver and throughout the province and doing these big assemblies. A thousand kids march into the big gymnasium, and the BC Lions players do a 45-minute to one-hour presentation where they talk about their personal experiences. They show some clips of their football exploits, and then they talk about the need for men to join with women as partners and allies, to be more than a bystander, to not stand by when you see abuse, speak up, challenge each other. The response has been incredibly positive throughout British Columbia.

The Edmonton Eskimos and the Calgary Stampeders are now doing their version of this campaign in Alberta. They started just last year. During the next stage, we'll be training the Blue Bombers in Winnipeg.

It's good for everybody. It's a win-win, because the sports organizations get good, positive community relations and the fans and everybody wins.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Sorry; I get it, Dr. Katz, and I—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Dr. Katz, and thank you very much, Dr. Duncan.

[Jackson Katz]

I'm sorry.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I wanted to know the metrics.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Ms. Crockatt, you have five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dr. Katz, for being with us.

I'm thrilled that you've started to get into the White Ribbon campaign and the work with athletes. I was going to ask you about that and where it was going. Are you involved with those campaigns, the education of the football teams, and getting them excited about joining this campaign with our government?

[Jackson Katz]

Yes, I'm directly involved with all the CFL teams I just referenced, and I hope with more. We started in the western provinces and are kind of moving our way a little bit east; that's how it has been working, at least. I'm definitely involved in that. We haven't worked systematically yet with NHL teams, which I think is the next step. I think the NHL should be involved in all this, but they haven't been. That needs to happen as well.

In the United States my colleagues and I work with various teams in the NFL. We are working with dozens and dozens of teams in the NBA, including the Toronto Raptors. Of course, because of the scandal last year with Ray Rice and the National Football League, all the professional leagues are starting to scramble and ask what they can do to get ahead of the curve here.

So yes, I've been involved, and my colleagues have been involved, in consultation and actual training, with major league baseball, professional football, basketball, and not yet enough with hockey.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Just to be clear, is this the federal government White Ribbon campaign that you are talking about, or is it a hybrid?

[Jackson Katz]

No, this isn't the federal government White Ribbon. What I was just talking about specifically was the Be More Than a Bystander campaign with the Canadian Football League teams. MVP Strategies, which is my organization, is sort of the partner, the United States partner. White Ribbon is a great organization, a Canadian-started organization obviously, that's worldwide and that I have friends and colleagues in all over the world, including in Canada. But what I was just referring to are not White Ribbon-specific campaigns.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay. I just wanted to clarify that, because White Ribbon is funded by the Status of Women, which is the group you're speaking to today. It sounds like the objectives are very similar to that.

[Jackson Katz]

They are.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

You mentioned that you're now affiliated with the Calgary Stampeders. They are owned by the same organization as the Calgary Flames. Sheldon Kennedy, you might recall, is a former Calgary Flame who is now involved with the Child Advocacy Centre. I would say he's probably a good champion for you to work with there.

[Jackson Katz]

Yes, you're right. Thank you very much. I would love to work with him.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Could I ask you about the media? You mentioned—and I think your testimony was fantastic—about how we see various cultures in society. They seem to suggest that it's okay to commit violence against women. We often see this in celebrity culture and so on, and in the media.

I'm wondering if you can talk about what appears to be a double standard. In one case, the media reports all the time if there seem to be cases of sexual assault and violence against women. On the other hand, the public appears quite willing to look the other way when it happens in the celebrity world. How do we tackle that?

[Jackson Katz]

I appreciate the question. I understand we're all limited by time. I know I can be pretty verbose, and I know there's so much more to this than we can possibly get to in this setting.

I've written about it, and I've thought a lot about this question, about celebrity culture and the excuses people make for behaviour by certain individuals. I think one of the reasons for this is that people have an identity investment in some of the men who do these horrible things. People don't want to think that the person they respect, admire, or appreciate on the basketball court, the music they love to listen to, or the movies they love to see somehow are implicated in abusive behaviour, if they're a fan of this person. There's a built-in mechanism of denial, they don't even want to deal with this. They don't even want to think about this because it's going to make them think differently about something they enjoy. They want to root for this team, and if they think this guy's a rapist, they're going to have a hard time rooting for this team.

It's much easier to blame the victim. It's much easier to say she's just making it up. These women are just trying to exploit these men for money or something. That's much easier than saying they can't keep going to these games. They can't keep listening to this song, because every time they hear this song, they think of this guy as an abuser. I think people have a built-in mechanism, a denial mechanism, that is defensive at base, and it's hard to get beyond this.

By the way, one of the reasons for the idea of “the other” is “the other is the one who commits the violence”. Somebody who's different—a culture that's different from us, an individual who's crazy or different from us—is comforting to people. If we take in that a large percentage of the abuse is perpetrated by guys who are average, normal guys, or in some cases charismatic celebrities, then it really disrupts our world view. What does that mean about our society if some of the people we admire are acting in these ways? I think it's very disconcerting for people.

I know in Canada just recently—I won't name the person but the famous radio individual—