Author: Jackson Katz

Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is a regular Ms. contributor and creator of the 2024 film The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power, and the American Presidency . He is a co-founder of the Young Men Research Initiative and writes a Substack newsletter, In the Arena with Jackson Katz. The American version of Katz’s new book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a Men’s Issue, was recently published by Bloomsbury.

Trump’s White House UFC Fight Was a Master Class in Fake Populism

The White House UFC spectacle has come and gone—but the questions it raised about masculinity, power and political culture remain.

In a post-event column for The Guardian, writer Moira Donegan argued that the event reflected a governing style rooted in spectacle and domination, writing that Trump’s embrace of public displays of violence evokes “the dysfunctional Roman emperor” more than a democratic leader. Arts & Entertainment
National
Politics
Sports
Trump’s White House UFC Fight Was a Master Class in Fake Populism
PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by Jackson Katz | UPDATED 6/15/2026 at 9:22 A.M. PT
Updated June 15 at 8:40 a.m. PT: The White House UFC spectacle has come and gone—but the questions it raised about masculinity, power and political culture remain.

In a post-event column for The Guardian, writer Moira Donegan argued that the event reflected a governing style rooted in spectacle and domination, writing that Trump’s embrace of public displays of violence evokes “the dysfunctional Roman emperor” more than a democratic leader.

Josh Hokit speaks with President Trump following his win in a fight during the UFC Freedom 250 event on the South Lawn at the White House on June 14, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC)
The concern, she suggested, is not simply the fight itself but what it symbolizes: a vision of power that treats aggression, conflict and public humiliation as signs of strength.

The spectacle arrives amid continuing attacks on reproductive rights, gender equality initiatives and social programs that disproportionately affect women and families. In that context, the celebration of cage fighting on the grounds of the White House feels less like a harmless entertainment event than a cultural statement about whose values matter and which forms of power deserve public admiration.

The UFC event was never just about athletics—it was political symbolism. And for many observers, the image of fighters trading blows outside the executive mansion served as a stark reminder that authoritarian politics often rely on spectacles of strength, especially at moments when leaders have less to offer on the material concerns facing ordinary people.

Eric Swalwell and the Persistent Problem of Silent Complicity

The Eric Swalwell scandal is an altogether familiar and tired exercise: When allegations surface against a powerful man, the people around him scramble to distance themselves, downplay what they knew, or deny any knowledge at all. And yet, time and again, these cases are described as “open secrets.”

The real question is not just what he did, but what the people around him saw, heard and chose not to act on.

This is where the conversation needs to shift. For decades, sexual assault prevention educators have argued that we need to move beyond the perpetrator-victim binary and focus on the role of bystanders: What could colleagues have done? What kept them from speaking up?

The pressure to be “one of the guys,” to not rock the boat, to protect friendships or careers, remains enormously powerful. If we are serious about preventing abuse, institutions like Congress need to do more than react after the fact. They need to equip people, especially men, with the tools, the permission and the expectation to intervene before harm escalates.

Every Man Has a Critical Role to Play in Ending Violence Against Women

(An excerpt from Jackson Katz’s Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue, and How You Can Make a Difference, out March 19 from Bloomsbury Publishing.)

In 2024, a mass rape scandal rocked France and reverberated around the world. Fifty men in a small town in the southern part of the country were convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot, a woman who had been secretly drugged by her husband and set up to be assaulted. The shining light of this horrific case was the courage and dignity of Gisèle, who became an international feminist icon when she insisted on being present and highly visible throughout the spectacle of the trial. She made it clear that she wanted to appear in the courtroom to stand up for survivors and send an unmistakable message: “Shame must change sides.”

But this epochal story had another major angle: the 50 men. A brief glance at their bios revealed most of them to be otherwise ordinary men.

The concept of “every man” suggests there is growing recognition among the broader public that this enormous problem has deeper societal roots, and is not primarily about the deviant behavior of pathological individuals.”

Men from every walk of life have a critical role to play on this issue. But first we have to break through some of the layers of denial and resistance that have impeded progress for far too long.

From ‘Every Man’ to the ‘Epstein Class’: Misogyny in Male Peer Culture Cuts Across Class Lines

The rich men surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and the working and middle-class men who were lured into Dominique Pelicot’s twisted fantasy, navigate the social world from very different sides of the class chasm.

But they share something in common, too: They’re all men who were socialized into a misogynous culture that dehumanizes women, turns them into sexual commodities and licenses men to mistreat them.

Misogynous exploitation is not rooted primarily in plutocratic privilege. The sense of unquestioned entitlement to women’s bodies that many observers have noted about “Epstein class” men is hardly confined to the wealthy.

The Missing Voices in the Epstein Files’ Media Commentary: Sexual Assault Prevention Educators

The Epstein files scandal has all the elements of a gigantic media spectacle. It encompasses everything from true crime to political intrigue, and offers a peak behind closed doors into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It has more than a little sex and violence. 

It’s a conspiracy theory come to life.

Media commentary has explored seemingly every angle. Or has it? On closer examination, something has been missing.

At Home and Abroad, MAGA’s Politics of Force Try to Reassert White Male Power

The connective tissue of Donald Trump’s takeover of Venezuela, his threats to invade Greenland, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by masked federal agents in Minneapolis, and the EEOC’s encouragement of white men to bring claims of discrimination against them is this: All represent increasingly desperate efforts by Trump and MAGA to forcefully put white men back in charge.

At Turning Point USA, JD Vance Picks Up Where Charlie Kirk Left Off

Vice President JD Vance gave the closing keynote speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 conference in Phoenix on Dec. 21. It was the first TP gathering since the right-wing organization’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed in September, and thus bound to attract an extraordinary amount of media coverage and commentary.

His speech cycled through a laundry list of right-wing Christian nationalist gripes about Democrats and the “left.” It’s certainly his right, and prerogative, to share his views. But it’s up to us—his audience—either to accept or push back on those takes.

That’s what I’m doing here.

Misogyny, Racism, Power: Connecting the Dots in the Violent Far Right

In Part 2 of the Q&A between Jackson Katz and Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the author of Man Up discusses the link of misogynists and mass shooters: “The fact that so many domestically violent extremist attacks have both gendered and racialized dimensions shows that racism and misogyny are inseparable in the minds of many perpetrators.”

Miller-Idriss explains the key role online gaming and chat spaces play within the radicalization of young men and boys.

Misogyny is no doubt threaded through nearly ever mass shooting, and feminists are used as a scapegoat for taking away men’s opportunities.

‘This Is the Blind Spot in Extremism Research’: Cynthia Miller-Idriss on Misogyny, Gender and Violence

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, makes the connection between gender policing, misogyny and far-right extremist violence, which for many years was not a connection scholars were willing to make.

Jackson Katz and Miller-Idriss discuss her book, Man Up, on misogyny, gendered violence, the MAGA movement and far-right extremism. Miller-Idriss says political violence coming from the far-right includes gender policing and exploitation.

“These aren’t just opportunistic elements of extremism—they are deliberate, organized and large-scale forms of gendered violence aimed at increasing pain and humiliation of victims, witnesses and family members. … I’m still blown away by how few people will acknowledge the connection.”

What Boys Learn When Powerful Men Face No Consequences

For decades, Donald Trump has modeled a version of masculinity rooted in entitlement, impunity and the casual degradation of women—and he has done so from one of the most visible platforms on Earth. That visibility matters. When the most powerful man in the country repeatedly evades consequences for misogynous acts, it sends a potent cultural message to boys and young men about what manhood looks like and what women’s lives are worth.

This is why the stakes of the Epstein files extend far beyond Trump’s personal exposure. His ability—or inability—to finally face accountability is inseparable from the broader crisis of male socialization and the normalization of men’s violence against women.

At the same time, focusing solely on Trump risks missing the larger system that made Jeffrey Epstein’s predation possible. As feminists have long argued, these abuses were not aberrations but expressions of a patriarchal network that exploited girls and women with impunity. The Epstein saga is not simply a story of individual bad actors; it is an indictment of the cultural, financial and political institutions that protected them. Whether the public and political leaders confront that reality—or once again look away—will reveal as much about our collective values as it does about the men at the center of this scandal.