Praise for The Bystander Moment
A New Video with Jackson Katz on the Cultural Roots of Gender Violence
We’re thrilled with the positive response we’ve been getting to our new film, The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots, featuring leading gender violence prevention educator Jackson Katz. Ranging from peer cultures to popular culture to the highest levels of our political culture, The Bystander Moment places special focus on how social norms – in particular normative ideas about manhood across race, ethnicity, and class – have fed a culture of silence in the face of men’s sexual violence. At the same time, it offers a positive conception of bystanders as friends, teammates, classmates, and co-workers who have a crucial leadership role to play in challenging and changing these social norms and creating a climate where sexism and sexual abuse are seen as unacceptable and unwelcome.
Here’s just a sampling of what educators, activists, and leaders in the sexual assault and domestic violence prevention fields have been saying about The Bystander Moment …
“The Bystander Moment sets itself apart in its honest approach and its commitment to tackling the root causes of violence. It moves away from the ‘rape whistle’ style of prevention education, which only teaches skills to intervene right before an act of violence occurs, and seeks to stop violence at its core by addressing problematic cultural norms. The advocates and educators we work with will benefit immensely from this resource.”
— Amanda Grady Sexton | Director of Public Affairs for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
“The Bystander Moment is a great documentary film that builds on the momentum of the #MeToo movement and sheds light on what is needed to prevent gender-based violence. It unpacks how we are all bystanders, and often silent observers/contributors, to the pervasive culture of rape in our society. With examples of various sectors taking action, from sports to military, the film emphasizes that we all have a role to play in reshaping social norms in our communities.”
— Alisha Somji, MPH | Associate Program Manager at the Prevention Institute
“#MeToo has made it clear that no one – parents, teachers, co-workers, women or men, young or old – can stay silent about what we know about how ubiquitous sexual harassment and abuse are. The Bystander Moment tells us how to intervene. It’s not just speaking up once in the heat of the moment. It’s about speaking up all the time against a culture that perpetuates ideas of harmful masculinity. The Bystander Moment lays out what works, why it works and why we all need to be part of the solution. It should be mandatory viewing for teachers, coaches, parents, and in the workplace.”
— Gary Barker, PhD | President and CEO, Promundo-US
“The Bystander Moment is a terrific, timely, and necessary video. Longtime pro-feminist activist and cultural critic Jackson Katz powerfully demonstrates that silence is a form of complicity, and passionately and expertly illustrates how and why we must transform rape culture. This video needs to be screened in classrooms and communities far and wide.”
— Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., creator of the award-winning Killing Us Softly video series
“True sexual violence prevention is not just one method, and this documentary gives a glimpse into why approaches should be layered. An amazing video!”
— Krystal George, MPA, CHES | Interim Director of the Women's Center at Duke University
“The Bystander Moment is a great tool for all of us working with men and boys to overcome a culture of violence and misogyny that translates into violence against women and girls. I will use it in our training as we implement our new Sexual Harassment Policy.”
— Oswaldo Montoya | MenEngage Alliance
“The real benefit of the The Bystander Moment is how effectively it reinforces the message that we all, at every moment, have the opportunity – and responsibility – to help dismantle the rape culture we live in. The work of preventing men’s violence against women and girls needs to happen every day, in all of our social environments and interactions, not just during the “moment” of an assault… and we need more male-identified folks to take up this work urgently in ways that are accountable to women and girls.”
— Brian P. Heilman | Senior Research Officer at Promundo
“What we are witnessing when young men stand by silent as their friends and teammates sexually harass, degrade or otherwise objectify young women are not bad young men who hold sexist views. Rather, as Jackson Katz tells us [in The Bystander Moment], this is a dynamic fueled by masculine fears. By encouraging young men to think critically about the messages they have been sent about what it means to be a man, Katz suggests that young men can change their own behavior and encourage their friends to do the same. Like the #MeToo movement, The Bystander Moment is a movement whose time has come.”
— C.J. Pascoe | Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon
Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America, and the first major program of its kind in the sports culture and the military. Katz was one of the key architects of the now broadly popular “bystander” approach that MVP introduced to the sexual assault and relationship abuse fields. Since 1997 he has run MVP Strategies, which provides sexual harassment and gender violence prevention/leadership training to institutions in the public and private sectors in U.S. and around the world.
