Absolutely the Best! And applies to all wonderful countries and people .

thanks catwoman...very interesting and thought provoking!!

"silence is a form of consent and complicity..."

Uhmm! Though provoking sure but not the best ever video clip I have ever seen! It actually made me feel a little bit sick!

Could you catwoman make us a small summary of the major points he made there about Virginia attacks? What's his point? I understand but I want to understand it totally.

Intro about the video:
Jackson Katz is an anti-sexism activist who works with emotionally and/or physically abusive men. He is a critic of the way men are socialized and says that masculinity is in a serious crisis. He has been trying to make a point that violence in our society is clearly a men's issue, even though it is not treated this way in the debate about this problem. There are few men that act against violence (rape, murder, abuse), it's mostly women who have been talking about these issues.

Summary:
School shootings should not be looked at as individual male pathology, but in a wider social context. It is a fact that men are socialized in ways that encourage sexism and violence and even though not all men act in abusive ways, they almost always internalize problematic attitudes.
These school shootings should not be seen as "youth violence", but "men's violence", because all these perpetrators are men and this fact is completely ignored in the debate.
Katz says that many men don't want to be part of the abuse, but they rarely speak up in the face of others' abusive behavior (rape joke, sexism... etc.), which is seen as a sign of complicity and approval of abusive behavior of others. This has to change, otherwise, if men don't get involved in the struggle against sexism and men's violence (against women or other men), these problems will never be solved.

Sexism is the route of all ills I gather! I am afraid, whilst there are two sexes walking on this planet some one will always blame sexism! I feel the issues around violence by men is a far more complex issue. I have personal experience which backs this up, that I would rather not write about here.

To Libralady and all those of you who think our constant "bleating" about sexism is all "a bit of a bore" and is just an excuse for having a dig at different cultures and traditions, I would just ask you to do ONE thing.

Substitute the word "sexism" for "racism" and see how you feel about it.

The way some women are treated in this world is no better than land owners used to treat their slaves! How outraged we all feel about the way we used to treat other nationalities and ethnic groups. We are all so satisifed that we have such a "civilised" attitude to race issues now. So why then is "feminism" such a dirty word?

Its a fact that in this world, women have fewer rights, earn less money and still occupy a subordinate role. If this was a race issue, you would all be agreeing and demanding change. Because its a sex issue, you start to feel uncomfortable with it and resort to stereotyping those people who dare to challenge the unfairness of it.

Libralady, you have told us before that you are quite happy with your life, get paid a decent wage and feel like "one of the boys" (not something to boast about, in my opinion!). Well, good for you, in many countries such behaviour (or even entering a bar) would not be allowed. Don't you want other women to enjoy the same freedom that you have?

(BTW Catwoman - fantastic link, thank you )

Catwoman first posted this "Crisis in Masculinity" on the 20th Feb. Forum title 11_13799 and it recieved no replies from a site with a high proportion of women.Read into this what you like

angima,
some people cant see farer than their own noses!

a wonderful point you made (good comparison).

a little point: take prisons, a wonderful society of hot and macho (favourite type of mltm) individuals! who? men!

Bydand, to understand you would have to truly care about the lives of ALL human beings instead of seeing it as a threat to the possibility of your wife refusing to cook your Sunday dinner this week!

I think that there's simply no point in talking to certain people here. They are not the types with whom we can have a conversation.
I'm happy though that there were some people who found a valuable message in this video.

Joey, you have a nasty way of thinking. The reason why you should be concerned with gender equality is not because some women fight (or don't fight) for it, but because its your moral responsibility as a human being to defend equality and human rights.

i think this summary by catwoman is pretty spot on...

Thank you gezbelle for sharing these links. I think the campaign where Australia Says No is fantastic, it's been too long that the stereotypes on rape and male violence have gone unchallenged and not dealt with appropriately (as crimes).

There are a couple organizations in the US as well where men organize themselves to stand up against rape and violence, like Men Can Stop Rape or Men Stopping Violence. It's a sign of hope, though the media culture is so extremely powerful that they are undoubtedly winning the game. There are countless examples of how the media is soaking us with violent, sexist messages from childhood - starting with Disney films, through cartoons, most video games and movies and the recent big money maker - hip hop music. It is absolutely not surprising to see what our societies are becoming if you look at the messages that we are being fed with. Sexism has always been the issue, that's for sure, but I don't know if it was ever so explicitly glorified and it's very alarming to me that in our modern, civil societies these messages go unchallenged.

yes, the hip hop culture is riddled with violent and sexist messages against women...it's in the lyrics, it's in the vidoes, it's in the attitude, it's in the way women are referred to.

unfortunately, some women within the hip hop culture see it as ok to be referred to as "hoes", "b*tches", etc...their reasoning being that it's not personally aimed at them...but it is. it's aimed at women, it is denigrating women as a whole.

as i quoted before "silence is a form of consent and complicity..."

with silence, nothing will change.

i have only seen bits of this video, it would be good to see the whole thing...
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes

I have my views on sexism, but not necessarily in the same format as the "gang of three" above. I just find this continual debate about equality so boring. When it is no longer "when it suits" sexism I will support it. Whilst there are millions of women happy with their "sexist" situations, and whilst sexism has never affected me personally, then I will look after number one.

The three of you are giving out the wrong vibes to me, that you all hate men with a vengance.

" Sexism has always been the issue, that's for sure, but I don't know if it was ever so explicitly glorified and it's very alarming to me that in our modern, civil societies these messages go unchallenged. "

You blame me for being naive, but then you conflict with youeselves because what I said before was the same, man has always been the dominant and ruled the world, but why has it become so alarming today in the modern world? This hip hop culture and most of the stupid beautiful sexy girls images propagandas have come from USA since the late 1980. Isn't it because of capitalism? Even the rappers have become much more muscled to attract the girls in a sexy way. What's all this? Isn't it just making more money? So, you have to change all the system in order to challenge with this sexism. This sexism is not about the ignorant men seeing themselves superior and wanting to dominate women and ignorant women that want to be submissive.

I think you make mistake when you give here all kinds of different sexisms and degradations of women. All of them are not the same, the sources are not the same. All of them has its own characteristics, the sexism and masculanity in the walt disney, and the sexism in the hip hop culture, and then the sexism in the undevelopped countries are relatively all different, and they should be all handled rather independently not to complicate things.

i believe that men nature more weak about many things then women nature,so mostly men opne the bad paths front of women i think...

anyway i can say females look like flowers (sure some exceptions) and males look likes bees (sure some exceptions to)

1. disagree
2. protest
3. dont know why.

Oh la la

I will tear out my hair

I don't just blame USA, but if you read carefully my last paragraph, I said sexism appears in different places in a different context. You handle sexism as if a unique type of sexism exists as if its causes all over the world are the same. You understand? I said the sexism that you see on TV, on advertisements, on music clips are about marketing, and I don't think that you will ever gonna be able to solve it if you do not change the system of capitalism or whatever it's which aim to make money and money and just more money. No matter how much you give educative lectures, you can do nothing against this sexism because human will always have sexual desires, and no matter how civilized a person becomes, he will always look at some breasts more than a jacket wearin woman. And his desires will always be exploited. This one cannot be finished by education.

And again the sexism which you see heavily in the eastern countries or even in the west where women are paid still less or women are not seen in the politics are different. This one is not about desires, it's about men controlling women. It's about the continuation of the male dominant culture. It can be finished by education.
So, I think the technics to fight with these should be also different.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with ypu. Do I have to disagree all the time?

hip-hop things are from immature to immature, who always do immature things, it stays in that circle.
it is their choice to be stupid. its not as compulsory as traditions or customs, some of them grow out of it and some not.

I have a degree in engineering and even though I never worked in the industry (which I'm sure is much more rough for women), even among the faculty and certain male students there were similar attitudes (regarding respect for women's intellect and taking them seriously as professionals). Interestingly enough, women in my classes were one of the best students. Then after graduation the guys could get a job easier then the girls in this field.

Take a look at this: Making of a perfume commercial. It's very striking that almost all the producers are men. When it comes to more significant productions (music records, video games, top selling movies), it's completely male-dominated and therefore these products reflect male pornographic fantasies and dreams of dominance over women... which in turn sets the standards and attitudes of the whole society.