‘Jordan Peterson's comments prove he doesn't understand feminism'

Telegraph

03-03-2025

Jackson Katz is talking 19 to the dozen, his words coming so fast he often starts several fresh sentences before finishing the last. This is normal for him – although we're speaking on Zoom on this occasion, we've met several times in person since our paths first crossed in the late 1990s, at a conference on male violence towards women.
I'm speaking with Katz ahead of the publication of his book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a Men's Issue.
'I've been struggling for 30 years to find a mainstream publisher,' he tells me. 'This is the first to ever publish a book about this subject by a man.'
His book opens with the case of Sarah Everard – the 33-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens in 2021. The day it happened, Katz was contacted by multiple media outlets, asking 'why this continues to be such a big problem, and what can men do about it?' Thus, it was that terrible event that led to his book being published in the UK.
Katz, 64, is an internationally renowned American educator, author and activist known for his pioneering work in violence prevention and his crusade to convince men that violence against women is a problem for them to tackle. In 1993, he co-founded Mentors in Violence Prevention, which aimed to challenge the machismo within sports and military cultures. The programme has been adopted by a number of secondary schools in the UK.
'There's an awful lot of good men who care about gender justice, who care about feminism, about women's rights and dignity, but also care about men and boys,' says Katz. 'But a lot of men keep quiet, thinking, 'If I personally am NOT abusive to women and girls, then it's not really my issue''.
In 2013, Katz was invited to do a TED talk entitled 'Violence against women – it's a men's issue', which quickly went viral. To date it has been viewed 5.5 million times, and has catapulted him to international prominence. Speaking from his home in Massachusetts, a few miles outside of Boston, he has substituted his trademark dark suit for a more at-home casual look – a black Fred Perry shirt. With his short, dark hair and neatly clipped beard, Katz gives off a scholarly, serious vibe.
'My goal is to get my ideas into the mainstream,' he says. The US publishing industry feels there's no market for a book by a man about the subject of men's violence against women – he approached a number of publishers, none of whom bit the bullet. Katz, who has been doing this work since the 1980s, sees it as urgently needed.
As a feminist campaigner against rape and domestic violence, I agree. There was a 37 per cent increase in male violence towards women and girls in the UK between 2018 and 2023. Conviction rates make grim reading: around 1 per cent of the rapes reported to police result in a conviction. Every three days, a woman dies at the hands of her former or current male partner.
I speak to Katz again the day it is announced that Andrew Tate, the self-described misogynist influencer, has left Romania for the US, despite the travel ban imposed on him, seemingly at the behest of the Trump administration.
'Tate's success should be a fire alarm for men and others who care about boys and young men,' says Katz. 'Both he and Trump send the message that they listen to them, and no one else cares.'
Many of the other factors feeding the rise of misogyny can be linked, one way or another, with the rise of Trump, who has 'marketed himself as the man's candidate, and Maga as the men's movement,' says Katz. '[Sexism is a] central part of his appeal… Trumpism is a sort of backlash to feminism and the progress it has made. It is masculinity on steroids.'
And that masculinity, he adds, is 'part of the story about why Trump was elected'.
He feels that the Democratic Party 'has failed badly over the past half-century at figuring out how to speak to men, especially white men'.
Why does he think there is this hunger (among men and women alike) for a 'real man' to take charge of the country?
'Republicans present themselves as the party that represents the interests of men. They push the message that the Democrats don't care about you. They care about LGBT, they care about women, but they don't care about white heteronormative men.'
Trump and the trans issue
How did he feel on seeing the photograph of Trump, surrounded by smiling women and girls, as he signed the executive order banning men (including trans women) from female sports. 'I found it profoundly depressing,' he tells me. I ask why, bearing in mind the unfairness to women and girls, and the harms of gender ideology. But however many times I ask, he avoids giving a clear answer.
'I do think the trans issue helped Trump, but it's not clear how much. I think the trans issue (in terms of how it plays for many men) is intertwined with the Right-wing backlash against feminist critiques of 'toxic masculinity',' is all he will concede.
Does he think instantly available, increasingly violent and degrading pornography is what underlies the tidal wave of misogyny we are currently witnessing?
Yes, he responds. 'Part of the reason why porn is so misogynist is because men are fighting back against feminism in the private sexual realm. In other words, 'women might make more money than me, they might be more professionally successful than me, but I'm still in control here'.'
What does he think we need to do in the UK to get to boys before they become indoctrinated? 'Talking to boys, and girls about sexism and male violence has to be a constitutive part of teacher training, and must be institutional, not individual. It's a failure of the educational system that this is not in place.'
Through his educational programmes that run in schools, colleges and sporting arenas across the US, and that have been implemented in countries around the world, and attended by a range of age groups, Katz has developed the 'bystander approach', to encourage men to challenge other men about abusive behaviour. 'The person who speaks up is actually a leader and a person of integrity, not a soft, wimpy beta male,' he says.
'A lot of men are afraid of other men. But I think the bigger fear for most men, rather than violent retribution, is fear of the potential loss of status. When it comes to the issues of sex, sexism, misogyny – a lot of men don't speak up. There's intense pressure on men not to say anything, not to do anything [about sexism].'
What Katz does is 'create space just by saying some of these things out loud. They have a sense of relief, and think, 'Somebody's finally saying this'.'
In his book, he also talks about the difference between guilt and responsibility. 'I don't feel guilty for being a man. I was just born one. I am interested in calling men in rather than calling them out.'
Katz was born in Boston and grew up in what he calls a small-town suburban 'jockocracy'. He grew up with two sisters, one a year older who was an early feminist, and the other who is four years younger and was a girls' and women's sports pioneer. His father was a Second World War Army medic who died from a heart attack at 37 (before Katz was born), his mother a teacher and a liberal feminist. His stepfather was a Second World War veteran, truck driver and carpenter.
In his youth, Katz was both a 'jock' and a 'nerd', but was always uncomfortable with mainstream male culture. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he was the first male to minor in women's studies. He says his initial interest in gender courses was sparked by wanting to understand his own life better.
In 1987, Katz founded an anti-sexist men's group in Boston called 'Real Men'.
In his first public lecture ('Football, Feminism, and Other Contemporary Contradictions,' 1990), he combined his insider perspective of male sports culture with feminist insights. In 1993, he co-founded Mentors and Violence Prevention at the Centre for the Study of Sport and Society. It was the first large-scale programme of its kind in university athletics; in 1997 he began working with the military.
'Going into the sports culture initially, and then the military, was intentional. We have to figure out how to get into parts of male culture that are the heart of shaping the norms of what they consider to be masculine behaviour.'
Feminists are not anti-men
Katz also thinks it's important to undermine 'the argument that feminists don't care about men… In fact, some feminist ideas are some of the most pro-male ideas that have ever been invented.'
He says some men, like Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, make 'thoughtless comments about feminism being anti-male, without any understanding that so many of the best things that have been happening in men's lives have been as a result of feminism.'
Feminist women have been 'extraordinarily supportive' of his work, he adds.
Katz describes the fact that he's been able to share his ideas globally as one of the gifts he's been given in life – and estimates that at least 90 per cent of the thousands of lectures he's given worldwide have happened because women made them happen.
An accomplished athlete since his youth, Katz continues to both play sport and spectate.
He is married to a feminist sociologist, and the couple have a 23-year-old son who is about to graduate from university. His son, he says, has given him an insight 'into the forces at work in young men's lives. As a scholar, as a journalist, I would have understood some of it but not as viscerally as I have.'
It's refreshing to meet a man who understands that patriarchy – in addition to the damage and destruction it does to women – also damages and destroys the lives of so many boys and men. Katz is someone who cares as much about men as we feminists do about women, and reading his book – which is clearly set out as a call to action, and dedicated to 'survivors, healers, advocates and activists', more men might be inspired to join him.
'One of the positive developments that resulted from the horrific murder of Sarah Everard, and the way that women organised to protest police misogyny, is the way that so many men said they wanted to know what they could do,' says Katz. 'This was a teachable moment for men.'