by Daphne Brown of DeSoto TODAY

Brighter Tomorrows collected about $60,000 from the event for its work with victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Brighter Tomorrows' Chocolate and Chic fundraiser had a decidedly “Y chromosome” tilt to it.

The biggest auction bids went toward a day with the Cedar Hill SWAT team - which was purchased by a woman. Brighter Tomorrows honored the second man in the history of the luncheon with the Doris Black Award. And the keynote speaker, Jackson Katz, addressed his remarks mostly to the men in the largely female audience.

The women in the audience did not seem to mind sharing the stage or the cause, though, and Brighter Tomorrows collected about $60,000 from the event, according to preliminary totals, for its work with victims of domestic and sexual violence.

“We were very pleased, especially with the economy the way it is,” Executive Director Jana Barker said. “It's more than we expected, and we are not even all the way through (counting).”

The money raised will go to fill the gaps that grant money with restricted uses cannot.

Hostess Debbie Pecor reminded the audience the event was not just about raising money, though. It was also about education and joining together to stand against domestic and sexual violence.

“All of you belong to a community,” she said. “Whether it is friends, whether it is church or whether it is a civic organization, all of you belong to a community. It can be just a little group of people doing just a little bit. But when we all join together it makes a huge difference in people's lives.”

That was a big part of Katz's message as well, albeit directed more specifically toward men.

Katz, an educator, author and filmmaker who works with the military and professional sports organizations including the National Football League to teach men how to help end domestic and sexual violence, told the audience he does not like the way some people perceive abuse as a “woman's issue.”

He said that often, the domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment and the sexual abuse of children are often lumped in together as “women's issues,” not gender violence issues.

“These issues have historically been seen as women's issues that some good men help out with,” he said. “But I am here to say that is a problematic framing and we need new thinking on this subject.”

He has a problem with the term “women's issues” in that it gives men an excuse to nod out of the discussion.

“A lot of people hear the term ‘women's issues' and we tune it out and say ‘Hey, I'm a guy. That's for the girls.' And a lot of guys don't get past the first sentence,” he said.

He said he travels all over the world and the people that show up at sexual and domestic violence conferences are overwhelmingly women. There are a handful of men there and they are congratulated just for being in the room when they are only doing what they should be doing.

Men should be standing alongside women in the cause, he said. He said men should be challenging other men when they use insensitive language or threaten abuse of a woman, “making it clear to each other that abusing women in any way is unacceptable, that you will lose status in male culture, you will not gain the approval of adult men whose approval you seek, that mistreating women in any way will be completely negative in any way.”

Katz said that using the term “women's issues” to describe sexual and domestic violence also takes the focus away from the people who are doing that violence. More than 99 percent of rapes are committed by men.

He said that calling rape a women's issue puts the onus on women to protect themselves. The “rape prevention” being taught in colleges is really risk reduction for women and girls. They are taught how to avoid situations that give men the opportunity to make them a victim - use the buddy system, do not put drinks down at parties lest someone put a drug in it, look in the backseat of the car before climbing in, etc.

That is important work, but that focus can be skewed, Katz sid. Prevention means going to the root of the problem. And the root of that problem is a culture that produces men and boys that commit those acts.

Most men are not rapists or abusers, he said. But most men are not doing nearly enough to help stop the few who are.

He said that some men say it is not their problem, because they are not abusers and do not treat women with disrespect.

“I think we need to raise the bar a little higher in terms of what it means to be a good guy in the United States in 2009,” Katz said. “Just saying ‘I'm not a rapist,' is not impressive to me. Just saying ‘I don't beat my wife,' is not something guys should be getting high fives for. We need a lot more than that.”

Katz said more men need to break their silence and challenge other men's sexism, which provides a bad model for young boys. It is through their example that young boys learn their behavior. If a man is a leader, Katz said, then he needs to be knowledgeable about domestic and sexual violence, and should use his station to speak out and change the cultural definitions of manhood.

“If men had the attitude that this is our responsibility, there is a whole, whole lot we could be doing,” he said.

Katz did not name him during his talk, but this year's winner of the Doris Black Award has taken a little of that responsibility on himself.

Richard Mauldin teaches financial literacy classes to domestic abuse survivors through Brighter Tomorrows. An extension of other work in public service - in 2008, he taught more than 130 classes to more than 1,000 people - Mauldin volunteers two hours each week teaching his students how to maintain their fiscal health, so that they cannot be controlled through financial means.

Mauldin said Brighter Tomorrows is the model he uses for the many other organizations where he teaches financial literacy, working with the students to build a nest egg while they are learning how to maintain it. “The main thing (about the financial literacy classes) is that when they graduate, they will not only have the money” he said, “they will also have the information.”

What do you think?