Introduction

Welcome to RREPresentEd the podcast by the New South Wales Department of Education, exploring gender equality and masculinities, and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity. Together we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal Nations across New South Wales and pay our respects to their lands and waters. To Ancestors who have cared for Country and to Elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength, and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Cherryl Martinez

Have you ever been told to stay in your box? Usually when someone says that it's a way to shut us down or silence us. What if I told you there was a specific metaphorical box that represented a rigid set of expectations for how to be a boy or a young man? My name is Cherryl Martinez and I'm joined here today with Tyler McLachlan.

We are two members of the NSW Department of Education's Respectful Relationships Education team. We know that boys and young men can feel pressured to perform a certain type of masculinity, but how do these pressures shape the relationships they build and what is the cost when they feel they have to comply?

Today we are joined by Drew Hanger from the Jesuit Social Services. Together we will unpack the Adolescent Man Box and explore how we can support our students to break free from and stop policing and reinforcing these restrictions. Welcome Drew.

I just wanted to start off by thanking you, Drew and JSS for being part of our work and taking some time to help us all better understand the behaviours and actions of boys and young men.

Let's start by getting a little snapshot of your background and what your current role is.

Drew Hanger

Thanks, Cherryl. My name's Drew, I'm a part of the Men's Project team at Jesuit Social Services. I've been at the Men's Project for 5 years now. My background is in education, so I was a secondary school teacher and wellbeing coordinator before coming over to the Men's Project.

My work has been centred around building our work within schools, so that's our teacher professional development programmes, our work with students and having curriculum and teaching and learning resources for schools to be able to use in the classroom, to have conversations around masculinity, gender norms, harmful expressions of masculinity, healthier alternatives and identities. At the moment now I’ve pivoted into secondment in some practice across the Men's Project and looking at some strategic projects, working with people like Our Watch and organisations to look at practice that is happening in engaging men and boys in violence prevention.

But my passion, core is education and working with young people, particularly their role models, working with teachers. And I'm really passionate and proud of the work we're doing in upskilling teachers’ skills, knowledge and confidence to be delivering Respectful Relationships Education in Victoria and in NSW.

Cherryl

With your work with JSS comes that study the Adolescent Man Box, and some people have come across the Adolescent Man Box research. I know last year, towards the end of last year, a lot of news sites and Instagram posts shared some of the research, but could you explain what the Adolescent Man Box actually is and why it's important in understanding adolescent development, particularly for our boys and young men?

Drew

The Adolescent Man Box isn't something that we developed. It's a masculinity scale that was developed from overseas researchers, Oransky and Fisher, and they comprise of four different pillars or pressures around what it means to be a young adolescent boy. The first one is this idea of this constant effort to be manly, this norm that you always must be strong, confident and this kind of public persona that you've got everything under control all the time and you've never back down from a public challenge.

And the second pillar/idea is emotional restriction. That means suppressing my emotions, hiding my emotions, stoicism, ‘no worries’, ‘all good’ attitude all the time that real men or real guys shouldn't be talking about their fears, worries, or doubts, and they should hold it in all the time. That also means like happiness and joy. They're kind of suppressing all of these things. And the only acceptable one is normally anger.

And then the third element of the Adolescent Man Box is heterosexism. That's this notion idea that my masculinity would be opposing, and it might be seen as feminine or something, a part of the LGBTQI+ community.

If I move away from that and I oppose that, that's why I'm going to seem masculine. And that's things like, what songs I listen to, what music I'm into. There's so many subtle things we hear from young boys about how they monitor themselves and making sure they're picking things and activities that are deemed masculine.

And the last one is this kind of teasing or social teasing where there's attitudes and banter around, ‘I need to dish out this teasing and also take it back.’ So, kind of reciprocal nature of putting each other down and dominating each other through teasing and ridicule. And they're the four different elements that make up this concept of the Adolescent Man Box.

Last year we wanted to do some research and understand what are the attitudes of young people in Australia. So, we surveyed 1 400 young people from 14 to 18 of all genders across Australia to find out what are their beliefs in relation to this Adolescent Man Box, and what are some of the attitudes, behaviours, and experiences of young people.

We wanted to get not just boys in the survey and girls to non-binary to understand what is happening for adolescents and their understanding and attitudes, and then how's their life shaping out. It's been a really interesting piece of research as teachers, educators, and people who care for young people, this time of adolescent development is confusing.

They're trying to figure out who they are, grapple with this tension of ‘Who am I?’ And so, if you add these adolescent pressures of who am I? If I'm a young boy, I need to be living up these expectations and how confusing that is for them. And they can get caught up in the importance of social relationships and often doing things that might be straying from their values of who they really are.

It is a crucial time to understand in this development, what is going on for them. What are these external pressures? Being a teenager's tough and then adding on the pressure and layer of these gender norms and expectations, which have been made up over time that we think we need to stick to. And we don't always know where they come from, but young people tell us they're there.

And so, we wanted to understand the social pressure. Where are they coming from? What is the social pressure, and do you personally believe that's how young boys should be acting? That was some really interesting parts of what we found out in this research piece.

Cherryl

What did you find out with that? Between what their personal beliefs were and what they were actually doing?

Drew

The social expectations or pressures on men and boys, they feel it much higher than if they personally believe it. So, the question would be, ‘Society tells me I need to be tough at all times. Yes or no?’

They'd say, ‘Yes, society does tell me I need to be tough at all times.’

‘Do you personally believe you need to be tough at all times?’ They generally answer that as a no or a lot less. Not everyone does, but there's a gap in the perceptions between this social messaging and then the personal belief, which is really where the work lies. There's a bit of hope in that for us, that not everyone believes they have to be like this, but they know a social pressure exists.

What was interesting that we found, the young people identified as girls in the survey and the one identified as boys in the survey, they saw the social pressure, the exact same rate. So, they almost all said, yep, that social pressure to act tough and manly all the time. They both observed it at almost the same rate.

It's not being made up by boys or made up by girls. They're both telling us that this social pressure exists.

Cherryl

Because you brought up girls just then, and I know that they were part of your study. But how do those pressures for those boys affect our girls?

Drew

One interesting fact, if you're looking in a heteronormative sense, girls actually don't endorse these rules or norms for their boys, really at all. It's far less, they see the social pressure, but don't want the boys around them to be acting like that. There are a different range of things of how they're impacting them. If we get into some of the attitudes and behaviours, there are some clear impacts on the girls around them in their life in terms of relationships that if a man is violent, a woman did something to deserve it.

Really harmful things that are impacting women and girls from this survey as well. We look at the survey in relation to couple of things. There were some hopeful findings, but there are also some really challenging things we must confront. And the challenging things we need to confront are mainly the impact it has on women and girls.

So that's kind of the other part of what we've discovered as well in the research.

Cherryl

So why is it that boys do stay in that box? Do they feel safer being boxed in than when they decide to step out of that box? There are so many boys that act or perform in that way, to stay in that box and why do you think that is? And why is it so hard to step out of that?

Drew

How long do we have? I guess the question is.

Cherryl

We have as much time as you like.

Drew

So, I mean, it's a good question, Cherryl. We often say that the Man Box is underpinned by rewards and punishments, right? It's a system of belonging or not belonging. It is quite binary to say you're in or you are out of the box. But it is an easy metaphor to explain it like that.

I think about myself, I'm not always in it, always out, but there are some rules or norms where I feel more attached to than others, but it's about the rigidity or the attachment to these norms and pressures more than being in or out. I think the reason it still exists is because there is such a strong underpinning of if I'm not fitting into this box or being strong, tough, in control, even muscley sporty being a player, being a dominant, and I'm not these things, let's say as an adolescent and I'm outside of this box, I have a sense of I don't belong. I'm not feeling as connected. Maybe I am receiving teasing, ridicule, harm.

And so, it underpins this and we often have heard that what the easier thing to do is often just pretend or get back in that box. So, I'm going to pretend or be strong, tough, aggressive a little bit more the next day when I get back to school and around my peers.

That's not necessarily where I want to be or how I want to belong. And there's this pressure where the societal expectation is so strong that I'm more likely to get back in or subscribe or pretend to be this. And we talk a lot about understanding the rewards and punishment, but we need to understand particularly as an adolescent and even as an adult, how social relationships and peer pressure play into so much of what we do.

And it can be a part of a fabric, of a friendship group, of a family, of a sports team, and it can be really hard to be the outlier to stand out from that. The more people we can be educating and talking to and disrupting, the more people we're able to support, to actually not be just one outlier, but a whole lot of people who want to be pushing against some of these ideas of these harmful norms.

If we're not talking about it and we're not challenging it. I'm going to think everyone else around me is also inside the box. Right? And so, we also overestimate other men's ideas about this stuff because we're not having open conversations or challenging conversations with each other. I think that's a big part of what's still at play here is the rewards and punishments that come with it.

There are also some men who believe this is how men should be. And that's the other element of this. It's not just people saying, I've got to act or perform this. There's a lot of work to be done to unstitch some of this stuff and acknowledge how harmful that is.

Cherryl

All of these things about being man and being a young boy can all be perceived in a really, really negative light.

But you've also said there are some things that you can adhere to strongly and it be okay. So, what did you mean by that?

Drew

That's a really good point and a good thing to mention. Being strong or being tough, those aren't necessarily negative or harmful things. It's the way you choose to show up in circumstances.

And being strong and tough isn't just unique to men and boys. Just want to be really clear on that. That's something for everyone to be resilient and dig deep.

But I think it's like people's first response is, ‘You're taking those things away from young men.’ That's not what we're aiming to do or what the purpose is. We want people and young boys to choose how they show up.

To think, I don't have to be strong and tough all of the time. There's elements and times for that when that makes sense. Other times it doesn't. It's about understanding that it's not just looking at it through, you can't do this or be this.

To be honest there are some rules and norms we don't want. That are harmful all the time – homophobia, transphobia, all of those things. Control, domination – that’s not helpful. They're harmful and we don't want those things. But some of those other things around wanting to be strong, tough, or play sport or, or the gym or be muscley like, that's all great. Well and good.

But if you think that you have to be that to be a man or accepted, that is the thing you want to interrupt. So, we want people to have an expansive view of what it means to be a man and an expansive view of masculinity. And not just this one rigid form of this is how I need to be to also be included or be accepted by my community.

Cherryl

And I can see how with an adolescent, that would be really hard to balance that idea when those pressures are there. So, for instance, when I think about adolescents, I think of it being such an awkward time. Like it's such a strange period of our lives.

We're trying to figure out who we are. We're trying to explore our friendships. Some people are dabbling in a bit of romantic relationships there.

But with all of our kinds of relationships, at some point there's going to be some form of rejection. And I've spoken to you about this before, 'cause it's a hard one to grapple with when you do have those pressures of the Adolescent Man Box.

So, we've got awkward teenager, adolescent here facing rejection. How do the pressures from the Adolescent Man Box interact with rejection? And how can we better support boys in navigating that? Also, the shame that often comes with it. I feel like that's something that when I go into a lot of schools, high schools in particular, they talk about rejection and shame.

We're talking about emotional restriction and the only emotions that boys feel like they can show, it might be something more like anger. So how can we better support boys in navigating those kinds of feelings?

Drew

Shame's a huge one, and I think everyone tries to avoid shame in any part of their life 'cause it's an uncomfortable feeling and emotion.

There's good things that come from shame, like accountability, growth, reflection can also come from feeling shame. Sometimes we talk about this work of we don't want to make boys feel shame. If shame's being felt, maybe there's a bit of reflection on accountability and behaviour that might need to happen. We’ve got to be conscious of that.

We don't go in with our conversation intended to shame and blame young men, but if there's a sense of shame that comes up because they're reflecting on maybe they've strayed from their values of who they want to be, I don't think that's actually a negative thing. It can be where a sense of growth comes from and a good sense of reflection.

And in sense of that rejection, I also have done a bit of thinking about this and the Men's Project have as well a little bit further. There was 16% of boys in the survey said they would retaliate when rejected. I think I'm starting to think about a bit more like it's about the power and control under that rejection, particularly in terms of romantic relationships or intimate partner relationships.

Because I also get a little bit worried if there's never a link back to the person who said no. We can't be blaming the person for saying no. They have a right to say no. They have a right to say, ‘I don't want to be in a relationship with you. I don't want to hang out with you.’

That's their right. And sometimes it can be a little bit misconstrued. It might go back onto that person. They've done the wrong thing, or this has caused it.

Let's use a heteronormative example here where you have your girl has maybe said no or doesn't want to continue this relationship. It's the power and control and entitlement that's under that where someone feels they've got to get that power, control back.

That's a lot of the conversation. I think we get a little bit uncomfortable talking about the control and power and entitlement part of this work. It's really talking about those elements that come underneath this. What is it that's making you feel belittled by this? Is it because as a man you think you should be entitled to getting the girl for example?

Or you should be entitled to what you want? Or you've never received a no before? I think it's those questions we've got to start asking ourselves, and not just the rejection itself, but what's underneath that and why. If it's about relationship in that heteronormative sense, what is it about being told no from a girl or a female? Like I think that's some of the questions we need to be looking at a little bit more.

Cherryl

Yeah. That's such an interesting response.

Drew

I've been thinking about that a little bit more lately. Top of my brain.

Cherryl

I'm so glad. 'cause I feel like that would be so helpful for our schools to hear, to unpack those things as well. You shaped shame as being like a normal emotion and it's probably a good thing to sit in that because it does make you reflect.

Drew

And if you think about rejection, other spaces, like you didn't make the team, I don't think you're going to wait after footy trained to get the coach. If you don't make an extracurricular activity.

There's a difference in what's underneath the rejection. I think if you think about it in different elements of a young person's life, that same retaliation or anger or wanting to get that power and control back isn't in every other space. And so what is it that's underneath that?

Cherryl

Yeah, that's a really good point. One for all of us to think about.

Drew

It's something for us to consider. And even just talking about normalising a no, when you hear no or you've been told no, how does that make you feel? Like even just some of those questions to start off with exploring with young people can be really powerful as well.

Do you think you deserve this or do you want it? And even two different styles of question. We all have wants, we all have things we would like to strive for, but do you think it's something that you want or something that you deserve? And there's a difference in those two types of questions as well.

Tyler McLachlan

You did just touch a little bit on, I suppose a bit of anger and aggression. I just wanted to talk in Respectful Relationships, we talk often to the drivers of gender-based violence and one of those being male peer relationships and cultures of masculinity that emphasise aggression. You spoke earlier about the pillars in the Adolescent Man Box.

How do you think they might tie in together?

Drew

Thanks, Tyler. I think the drivers of male peer relationships and cultures that have aggression with disrespect and entitlement, I definitely can see that linking to some of the elements of the social teasing, like the kind of one-upmanship. Often the social teasing is used to establish social dominance.

If you made a mistake around me, Tyler, maybe it's something I'll put in my back pocket to then use the next time you do something. One up you, and say, ‘I've seen you make a mistake.’ And it's often around those things that the teasing and ridicule are used and it gets washed away like, ‘It's just a joke, it's banter. Tyler’s my mate. It's okay.’

But there is something underlying with that. The more that it happens and you're bringing someone down to one up them, you've got to understand a bit about what that is. And I think the other thing connected to the Man Box is that language is often connected with words about being a woman and I think the LGBTQI+ communities, people with disability.

We've also got to be really conscious of this kind of social teasing and banter that's used within male peer relationships. We need to be really aware of that type of language. And challenging it and stamping it out because it gives this idea that white cis able-bodied men are on top and everyone else's beneath 'cause we're using others as insults.

It's also that idea of the cultures and relationships that are connected to language. We need to be really conscious of stamping that out and being very, very clear on why that language is harmful. I think that's a big part of some of the work in peer relationships of male peer relationships, particularly with that social teaching that's underneath it.

Tyler

That's really important because I do think it's something that we as educators do see and hear in the school community. So, it's really important that we do address that.

The Man Box and the Adolescent Man Box have uncovered some really interesting statistics. What are some things that we can potentially be hopeful for when diving deeper into this information? And is there anything that we should be highlighting to our colleagues across NSW?

Drew

There are reasons for hope and there are challenges we need to confront. And so, I think always having that lens when you talk about it with educators and other people is really important because Cherryl mentioned earlier, we don't want it to just be looked at, this is all negative and deficit model.

There are some really hopeful things that we want to make sure are there and we have this conversation but make sure we have both the hopes and the challenges together. Many young boys are moving away from this really restrictive, narrow view of masculinity. Real life relationships do matter and parents matter, teachers matter. That was also something we found out in the survey, which is also great for educators to hold onto. A lot of boys feel safe to show vulnerability with family or friends. Similar to what I said earlier, the social pressure is much larger than the personal belief on these rules and norms, which is also really hopeful.

But then there is also the challenges we need to confront. So, the more that young boys hold onto these rigid ideas of masculinity, the more harm they are causing. That's basically the other part of it. The more work we can do to break down this rigid understanding of masculinity and the Adolescent Man Box, the better because many boys feel that pressure to conform, but they don't always conform.

But the ones who do conform are not necessarily doing well themselves and are causing harm to others. So, they hold more harmful attitudes, they engage in more abusive relationships and struggle with their own mental health. A concerning proportion of boys did express homophobic and transphobic views with 40% agreeing that being thought of as a gay man would make you less of a man, which is of concern and something that we need to not overlook in this work as well, addressing that.

And a small number of boys, but troubling number, you know, did say they have violence supportive attitudes. So, we mentioned before maybe retaliate when rejected, they've used physical harassment. A lot of boys are consuming pornography with non-consensual acts in it as well, which is of concern.

Their online environment is really a challenge in terms of what's not regulated on there with pornography, and I know that that's a big part of the work of Respectful Relationships is talking about some of those concepts as well.

Poor mental health is also another concern where teenage boys aren't seeking help. But I will be also clear in our survey, girls’ mental health was worse, but they seek help more than the boys do. That's also just something to keep in mind, the help seeking part is something to also build in.

Tyler

You've just touched on two things that I would like to revisit. The first one being, I really like the message that you're balancing reasons for hope with the challenges that we must confront. And I think that really ties in nicely with one of the principles we use in Respectful Relationships and that being we try to take a strengths-based approach when putting a lens on a lot of different things.

As educators, we're constantly interacting with boys and young men in a number of different roles. Is there any ways that you could suggest we might be able to get boys to buy in, or how can we get boys to be part of the conversation when we're trying to talk about healthy masculinity or dismantling some of these themes in the Adolescent Man Box?

Drew

I think they are in the conversation a lot and I think it's about giving adults the skills to have the conversation. They're having it amongst themselves already. We did some work with about 40 Year 10 boys recently, and they were so willing to have this conversation. There wasn't resistance about it. They actually wanted to have a safe space to have some of these kinds of conversations. Sometimes we need to give them a little bit more credit. They are able to have some critical conversations and challenging conversations as well. For me, it's about how do we actually upskill their role models and teachers and parents to be able to hold these conversations.

They know when teachers and parents feel uncomfortable with this and don't want to have the conversation and so maybe they're looking elsewhere. They want to rely on you for these conversations, as we found out in the survey. At the core, the relationship building, the trust and the care that they feel they can come to someone to have these conversations, particularly educators and teachers.

And we need to be investing in good professional learning and development for our teachers on these topics – how to have these conversations, how to manage. Resistance does show up. Also, for them to do some of the internal work themselves. It's one thing to be able to have the conversation but maybe think about some of your own biases and some of your own gender norms.

That can be challenging. It's not necessarily how do we get the boys in the conversations. How do we have the adults to support them to have these conversations? That is about having a relational approach, having the permission to get it wrong a little bit. The permission to also challenge and have healthy challenge and robust conversations around accountability, around support, around values, around who is the young person that you want to be.

And so all of those things I think make it helpful for boys to come into the conversation when they've got an adult or trusted adult who's willing to listen, but also who's there, who they know cares for them, that they can challenge as well in a really healthy way too.

When I was a wellbeing coordinator, I was able to have such robust conversations with some of my students and some of the ones who I didn't always agree with how they were acting or the way they were behaving. And it didn't ruin our relationship, didn't stop them coming by my office. They knew I cared. There was a strong, trusted relationships that allowed accountable conversations, 'cause you want more for them and they know that you want more for them. I think that's also super important in the work.

Tyler

Having trusted adults and role models in their life are so important.

The other thing I wanted to bounce back to you spoke a little bit before about boys’ mental health and I noticed one of the pillars is about that emotional restriction. There's data around that boys are experiencing poor mental health, but they're not typically actively seeking support. So, I was wondering how can schools and school communities try to support boys and young men in this area?

Drew

I think it goes back to then breaking down these rules on gender norms. You know, it's weak to seek help or strength and toughness is a part of being a young boy. I think the preventative work on that is tackling these unhelpful norms around what it means to be a young boy, continue to challenge these gender norms.

There is freedom for them to seek help. It doesn't make them seem weak or anything like that. I think that's a key part of it. But I do think the mental health of young people is of concern overall. Like as I mentioned, the girls’ mental health in the report was higher. And so, I think that is just for us to look across what can we be doing to be supporting young people and having conversations around mental health literacy and support and where they can actually seek help is, is really important.

I was at a forum recently where someone was speaking about media representations of how men are portrayed media and someone said, ‘I would just love to see men get more therapy in film and television.’

How do we normalise that so much more where that's okay? And so, it's also just about the representations of young men and men across the board. The more we can see it normalised the better. If we can break down where the rules are that you shouldn't be seeking help is going to go a long way into fixing that or changing that.

Tyler

I think as you were talking before, even having those role models as you're alluding to there, those role models that do seek support or offer support as well goes a little bit of a step in the right direction there.

Drew

The other thing is there's some weird rule that we're supposed to have all the answers or know everything, and so having role models who are just like, ‘I'm not sure’ or ‘Let's go figure that out together’, that's also just breaking down some of these myths and myth busting some of these things that are inside the Man Box.

Cherryl

Teachers sometimes forget that we can be vulnerable with our students. And be like, ‘We actually, don’t know, let me get back to you.’ I feel like that helps build trust. It makes you kind of look a little bit more human.

So, Drew, we've talked about the pressures that young boys and young men in our schools face, and I think we need to acknowledge that schools aren't just places of learning, but they're also places of employment.

And in those places of employment, we obviously have men working in a range of different roles. So, I guess my question then is, what are the pressures on our male colleagues to perform a certain type of masculinity and how might carrying those expectations impact their ability to model healthy masculinities to their students?

Drew

Oh, that's a big one. Schools are institutions and like it's all a part of, you know, the patriarchy and these structures and systems are set up where often the males were in these kinds of disciplinary roles within schools, and I think they needed to be tough as a school community and leadership within the school.

We've got to be challenging those things where it's not these traditional roles of what men should be doing or acting, or how do we give a bit of a diversity across the roles they're performing.

If you're looking at the whole school approach to Respectful Relationships Education, it's really important to think about how do we diversify the roles and responsibilities we're giving teachers, or people across the school? We want to give diversity of what we're seeing humans do, but men as well. To give that diversity of what you can be and I think that's also really helpful. Teachers need to be doing a little bit of this work themselves, understanding this in their own life, their own biases.

If they're wanting to be that kind of role model or showing up or delivering some of this curriculum, I think that's really important as well. How do we just diversify some of this and make the male teachers not think they've also been pigeonholed into a box as well from the school and from everyone else and their colleagues? How do we, if we're going to deliver some of these lessons and have these conversations, do it first as a staff group. But we are getting together to have some of these robust conversations before we deliver it to our students, so we know where each other sit. And we're having the same interesting conversations around gender and gender norms, how it's impacting us, because these schools will have that. And it's a part of institutions.

There's been a lot of work at the moment about the impact on female teachers and misogyny in schools and sexism in schools and harassment. Stephanie Wescott and Steven Roberts have done a lot of research into this. How do we make schools safe places, they are workplaces, and allow people to have healthy and accountable workplaces where people can thrive? Schools are well placed to be able to do this, but it's also the investment of giving them the support and that's what I'm deeply passionate about.

The work of Respectful Relationships and teachers being the delivery of this message. Giving them the support and the professional learning so that they are places where you are demonstrating what a respectful community looks like to the school and to the rest of the school and students too. Having like high expectations of each other, but also then the support to be able to do that if these things are not happening as well.

Making sure that these are safe places for people to break outside of those norms or that there isn't this kind of fear of what they're actually doing or understanding that these are a lot of things around harassment and sexism are actually happening in our schools. And so how do we make sure we're aware of this and keeping people safe as well.

Cherryl

And that kind of links back to what you were saying earlier about these kids are influenced by us, the people that are IRL in real life like in front of them. They're not just influenced by what's online. They are influenced by us.

Going back to our role as teachers. We are asked to be supportive and empathetic of our boys and our young men. And when we understand the pressures that they face to perform or behave in a certain way, we may be better equipped to do so. So, when we've gotten all that PL, we feel that we could support them a little bit better. But we've also been told to hold boys and young men accountable for their behaviours and be supportive of our girls, young women, and gender diverse students.

There are two things there that we've got to hold at the same time. But my wondering there is, is what does that look like? What does compassionate accountability look like?

Drew

Teachers do this quite well, like, I'll be honest. I really think that educators in schools do this well because people get into this work because they care about young people and their development and they want them to thrive. And they are educated people with degrees and experiences who have come to this work. We've got to give teachers that as well. We take it away by getting external presenters and people in, but we've got the people here.

I guess the compassion comes in with understanding, okay, there are these systems at play that are out there with these gender norms, these pressures and expectations placed on young men.

The compassion comes there with understanding the experience of what's going on with the Man Box at play, the systems, the punishments and rewards for doing this. The accountability comes in of wanting more for them, having the high expectation to make the change, the accountability to the female students, the gender diverse students who could be being impacted to the other students, the other boys in the class, to the teachers.

That doesn't go away of not looking at who the young person is in front of you. That trauma informed practice of separating the behaviour from the person. Really being critical of the behaviours we're seeing and how do we challenge those things and caring for the young person's experience and condition in front of them. But still having that accountability because we want more for them.

We want more for their class, want more for their community. And I think that's how the two can be held together, is really looking at who the young person is there, diversity, their intersectionality. All of that needs to come into that compassion part of it. But then also that the accountability of wanting more and having it accountable to the people who have been harmed as well in any circumstance.

It sounds complex and it is, but I also do think it comes quite naturally to teachers. Having the robust conversation after class, having that conversation where there is a sense of shame. It's not necessarily in front of everyone, but knowing that you might hold them accountable in front of the class by saying, ‘We don't accept this type of behaviour here.’

But having that follow up conversation, ‘I would love to understand a bit more, but I'm also not excusing that behaviour. That's not okay. We don't want that for our class or for our community, but I want more for you.’

That's the balance of those two things together can be done, but I actually do think it's done pretty well in schools. But also acknowledging some people who are asked to do this, who have lived experience of family violence or lived experience of harm or have experienced this within school cultures and stuff. So, it's also making sure that teacher has that support to be able to do that follow up as well as really crucial.

Cherryl

So, across the NSW state and all of our public schools, we have teachers and students who are facing some challenges. We've got students trying to figure out who they are and teachers who are trying their best to champion gender equality for everyone.

Okay. Big question. Sorry Drew. I've dropped a few, a few big ones on you this afternoon. What's a key message or takeaway you have for us in the Department of Education to create more respectful environments and relationships with one another?

Drew

If I get this right, I might be able to retire, hey? I don't know. That's a pretty good question. I think making sure the work is evidence-based, making sure that we're coming back to what is working.

What is our hope? What is our hope for New South Wales? It's almost like your own theory of change we want the schools to be going through so that at the end of this, we have these kinds of communities and young people who can navigate complex relationships or complex worlds.

I think that's really what we want. They can navigate complexity with respect and kindness and inclusivity. Sometimes you can just want to give up a little bit with this. You know? Seeing the media cycle, seeing some of the rhetoric, seeing who some of our leaders are and the conversation. I think it's like if we just make sure we've got the evidence of what we know is working, being really clear with that, leading with that, leading with the impact we are making, not letting people give up because it can feel like you want to sometimes and then articulate this is the hope and the vision we have for NSW.

If we are able to invest in Respectful Relationships and have a whole school approach and really robust conversations around compassion and accountability with our young people, that is what we're aspiring to do.

Cherryl

I like that idea of being hopeful because that's what we want, right? Like the whole idea of RRE is that our kids, our students, our population, our communities have it better. As opposed to what is currently happening now.

Drew

I think it's two-fold; that we want to reduce harm and violence and gender-based violence and sexual assault and harassment. Yes, we can all, we want that, that is core, but we also then we want to have happy, healthy, thriving young people who can navigate complex world and relationships and inclusivity.

Like we also want to have the positive hope of what that's going to do as well of all young people across the state.

Cherryl

Absolutely. What's so powerful in your work is that it helps us see the pressure many boys and young men feel is not just personal, it's social, learned, and constantly reinforced. And if those messages are learned, then they can also be challenged, interrupted, and changed.

So, thank you so much, Drew. We really appreciate it. And I know that all of our colleagues in the NSW Department of Education and all of our schools that are rolling out RRE are going to benefit so much from this conversation with you.

Drew

Awesome. Thanks so much, Tyler. Thanks Cherryl. Appreciate it.

Cherryl

We hope you enjoyed that conversation with Drew Hanger from JSS for schools. I think the key message is that supporting boys and young men is not about lowering expectations or excusing harmful behaviour. It's about creating environments where they can be curious, vulnerable, and respectful, without feeling they have to perform a narrow version of masculinity to belong.

Thank you Drew for helping us better understand the Adolescent Man Box and what it means for the young people in our classrooms. Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful and inclusive school communities. One conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREpresentEd, the podcast by the NSW Department of Education, exploring gender, equality and masculinities and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity. Together, we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal nations across New South Wales and pay our respects to their lands and waters, to ancestors who have cared for Country, and to elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Cherryl Martinez

Welcome to RREpresentED. My name is Cherryl Martinez and with me today is Tyler McLachlan. We are two of the Respectful Relationships Education advisers supporting NSW public schools across the state. Today, we're sitting down with Mitch Brown, educator, advocate and someone who's spent years working closely with young men in schools and communities.

In this conversation, we're going beyond the surface. We're diving into Mitch's ideas about gender, what shaped him as a person and how he learned to embrace his authentic self, despite the pressure of fitting into narrow expectations of what a man should be. Mitch opens up about his journey, the moments that changed him and why vulnerability became his strength rather than his weakness.

But this conversation isn't just for young men, we're talking directly to teachers and educators who support young people in their classrooms. Mitch shares practical advice on how to create spaces where boys feel safe to be honest, to ask questions and to grow into healthier versions of themselves.

If you're a teacher, a parent, a mentor or just someone trying to understand what it means to be a man in today's world, this episode is for you. Let's get into it.

Welcome Mitch. Thank you so much for taking some time out to come and have a chat with us we know that you've been super busy with it being Pride Month. So, we'll start off with, what was it like for you growing up playing AFL in Ballarat as a kid?

Mitch Brown

Yeah, thanks Cherryl and Tyler. Its, thanks for having me on this podcast. Been really looking forward to having this conversation, I think it's really important. Anytime I get to talk about my lived experiences, I guess, and relate it to my learnings around masculinity and how that shaped me, it's, it's like therapy for me. So, it's really cool.

I mean, so I grew up in a regional country town, Ballarat. And I lived sort of, we had five acres outside of Ballarat. I had an identical twin brother and an older brother who was two years above and then, Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad were great role models for us. We loved our sport, sport was everything for us and then was lucky enough to get recruited in the Aussie Rules Football, professional league and jump on a plane and go to Ballarat.

All I wanted to do was like, play Aussie Rules football, like kids in Victoria and in New South Wales. Like, well, you want to grow up and be like Rugby league players you see on TV and that's all I wanted to be. It's like you have the poster on the wall and it's like, ‘I want to be like that person. I'll do anything to be like that person.’

So come home and put the TV on and watch sport and the sport that I would only see would be men's sport. And being in the country in, and towns like, there's not much diversity. So, like, the only versions of men or these role models that I would see are the typical strong, stoic, tough and in my case, straight men.

And I had no one to tell me, like, ‘Hey, you know, you don't have to be like that.’ For us, that was, that was the only way you, you were meant to be.

Cherryl

That's the only thing you saw as a representative for what it meant to be a man. So, they were the people that you aspired to be when it came to playing football, being a guy. What was it about them that made you think, ‘This is what I have to be like’?

Mitch

I like the term ‘cultural wallpaper’, because everything around us, and it's still to this day, like, everything TV, radio, the people that you see that I guess seem successful are these types, these versions. So it's like, you know, and remember when, when we're kids, when I was a kid, I'm still growing up, I don't know the difference between, like, what kind of a man I want to be or anything. I just see these influences all around me, if you want to be successful or you want to grow up and have partners or have family or, or whatever, that's the version. And that version for me was, like, the physique, looking good, driving fast cars, and having money. You know, being straight.

I never once grew up seeing a queer male in the sports world. So, I was like, 'Well I really, really, really want to play Aussie rules football,’ but I had no one there that was queer. So, I was like, ‘Well, okay, queer people can't play.’

So, wow if I, and I start to really explore my own feelings of the inner, inner self and was like, ‘Well, definitely can't be queer because queer people don't play football.’

This goes throughout all aspects of my life, including when I entered professional football, as a 17-year-old teenage boy. This is the thing, and no one has ever once, once sat me down and gone, ‘Hey, Mitch, if you want to play AFL football, you have to be straight.’ No one has ever once said, ‘Hey, if you want to fit in here, you have to party all night, you have to go sleep with as many women as possible.’

It's just this, this culture, right? This culture that is all around us, that reinforces, that guides us, that influences us. We can't even see it, we don't know that it's impacting us. And, you know, for me, growing up as a young kid with trying to figure out the world as it is, like I didn't know at the time that I was being influenced into being only one version of a man.

And I'm not saying that version is bad by any means, but it wasn't who I am.

And this version was a version that said that who I am inside, not only my sexuality, but other aspects of myself, was not okay.

Tyler McLachlan

How did that tie in Mitch, with sort of team selection and comradery around the team environment?

Did you feel a sense of pressure to conform to that in order to get selected in the teams? Was there any pressures around that, do you think?

Mitch

Oh, phew man, this is the thing. I was always tall, naturally strong. I was always good at sports. I was good at being this version of the man that I wasn't inside, because of my ability, my natural ability to play sport, or my height.

If I conformed to these set of rules of what I thought was the only version of a man, I was rewarded for it. I was good at it. I was really good at being, like, non-emotional, tough, aggressive, not talking about our... I was really good and I was good at football and sport, so I would be selected. I would be rewarded.

That path was going to be more successful for me, because society rewards that path and I was also good at it. It was like an easy choice for a young boy to make. It's like, well, I don't want to go down that path of talking about, ‘Hey, I might have feelings for other boys or whatever,’ when I was a teenager, because society says, ‘Hell no, that's not allowed. You're weird, you're blah blah, weak or whatever.’

And as a young boy, I just want to fit in as well and have this sense of belonging. I'm like, ‘Well, I don't want to go down that path, that doesn't feel good as a human being.’

Going down this path, because society and coaches and teams and group chats, and everyone when I was growing up would reward that, that was an easy choice, right?

Sometimes it's an easy choice to deny, aspects of myself, because I'm going to get outcasted. I was battling my own internal shame and embarrassment and was like, ‘Well, I'm going to choose that one, 'cause life might be a bit easier for me if I just conform to the version of a man that everyone else in society wants me to be.’

Cherryl

That's so hard, 'cause you were, you know, you're 17, 18, you're being set up to be a professional athlete then and you're dealing with these internal struggles around your identity. You want to be who you are, but then you've also got that external pressure, outside that's making you conform to a certain view of what a man is.

I just wanted to interrogate that a little bit more. So, you were hiding yourself there, how did you do that? I look at you and I just think, ‘Mitch is so strong, Mitch is so tall, like, he's got big enough shoulders to carry the weight of the world here.’

But internally it's different. How did you manage that as a 17-year-old boy?

Mitch

That's the enormity, that's the scary part, is, you know, a lot of us as humans, and I guess boys and men, we're so good at hiding our feelings and our emotions and not voicing them. And remember, I was living with this every second of the day and lying and hiding every second of my life. And I became really good at lying to myself.

I became really good at going, ‘Well, hang on, no, nah, Mitch, like, you're actually not. You're, like, you're actually not bisexual. You're not, you don't have these feelings. Like, you're just weird. Like, everyone's a bit weird, aren't they?’

I would never talk to anyone about this. So, like, I created my own little world and, and the only person to talk me out of it was myself, and I convinced myself that I wasn't bisexual or I wasn't having these feelings.

And then when you start lying to yourself repetitively, and then your environment, your sports club, and that just keeps reinforcing your straightness. You just start to believe it, honestly and believing it makes you feel better because you trick yourself to say that you're not. Then you're like, ‘Oh, well, oh, awesome. I'm not going to be one of the ones that gets outed or outcast or, or whatever,’ and you start to feel good.

It's a really complex thing around shame and hiding and no one wants to feel shame inside a lot. So, I want to get rid of it, so let's actually double down and convince myself that I'm not who I am inside.

And remember, I have an identical twin, we're inseparable, we're in the same classes at school and we're being treated the same. I idolised him as, like, this epitome of this version of a man that I thought was the one that is going to be rewarded and will be the boss one day or will be the best player on the footy team. So, I was like, well, not only I had this society pressure, what I watched on TV all around me. I had it literally looking like me right next to me 24/7. Reinforcing to me, ‘Well, hang on, no Mitch, like, Nath is the one. That's how we're meant to be, like that's how we're meant to be.’

Cherryl

That's just so interesting to think about 'cause you are an identical twin.

I mean, you've got someone who looks exactly like you, he is and was the closest person I imagine you could have. You've been together forever and spent so much time together, and yet you still felt like you couldn't speak to the closest person who knew you.

Mitch

Yeah, fast-forward to the present, and that's what's- I mean, a sense of grief and sadness between us because, you know, we talk about why, why couldn't I share it, or why couldn't he allow or contribute to an environment where I could feel safe enough to share it with him? Because, I could see my brother being rewarded. He was somewhat better at basketball, the girls would like him better and I just desperately wanted to be like him. So, like I, I was just like, ‘Well, I just want to be like him. I'm definitely not going to tell him about this other stuff.’

So I don't blame myself, I don't blame Nath or like, we're growing up young boys like. We're just young kids ourselves.

If I had someone… and that's where, like we jump into visibility and, and role modelling positive and healthy masculinity, just to be able to see someone that is in that, I guess, leadership area, like a teacher or, or a principal or a class captain or, or whatever. Just be able to role model that, you know, there are different types of a man. Like, having role models like that just would've changed everything for my life.

Cherryl

We talk a lot, in our team around representation and how important it is to have representation. What's, what's the saying? It’s, ‘You’ve got to see it to be it.’

Mitch

‘Be what you can't see or something like that. ‘

Cherryl

Yeah, thank you.

That was a lot, so much more articulate than what I just said. I've got a question to ask you in that and before, like I want to get to this point. I’ve got a map in my head. What was it that made you feel like this is the time? Because I was one of the listeners to The Daily Aus podcast where you, came out. And I just, I remember driving to work and I was listening to that podcast, and all I could think of was like, ‘This needs to be shared, I need to share this with everyone I know.’ And I did.

But what was it that made you feel like, this is the time? Now is the time that I need to open up, and show everyone who I really am.

Mitch

Well, there's, there's a couple of reasons. I've been going back and forth for years about speaking out publicly about my sexuality and arguing and debating whether I could actually have a voice and would it make a difference or an impact. So, it was a difficult decision to make.

But I've got 6- and 4-year-old kids, 2 boys. And I would repetitively every day just be like, ‘Hey, like guys, I just want you to feel like you can be yourself. As long as you bring kindness and respect. I want you to show up at, at school or kindergarten and like express yourself, be honest with your, your parents and your dad and let's, let's have open chats.’

And so, I preach that with my kids and then I was like, hang on, I'm not living this myself. I want this for my kids but hang on I should want this for myself as well.I should want an environment or a world where I can just go, ‘You know what? I'm bisexual and, you know, I, I feel comfortable to be myself.’

So, I like it was like this, driving force for me to be able to speak up for my own self, but more importantly, to try and disrupt the rigid stereotypes, especially in the AFL world. And wider to that in boys and men in our country around, you know, there are different versions of a man that we can all be and be successful and loved and more importantly, love for yourself.

I'm not dismissing the version of a man that I grew up watching on TV and these stoic, warlike figures. As long as those men have kindness and respect, I think that's a somewhat a great version of a man. There are other versions of boys and men that are also beautiful and, and strong and should be role models that we all look up to.

Part of me was like, ‘Oh, I'm going to show one other version,’ and put it out to the world to go, ‘Well, this is, this version is also okay to be also strong, and good at footy, and play AFL and also be in touch with another side. You know, be prepared to put colour in my hair and express myself with fashion or be bisexual.’

That is also a version of a man that is also okay. Whereas in a world where I grew up, we were repeatedly told that it wasn't okay. Again, no one sat me down, some people you'd hear it, and that's where discrimination and homophobia would come into it. But no one, my parents, footy commentators, the world around me, schoolteachers would never tell me that, ‘Hey, this is wrong.’

But the, the environment, the culture that was all around us would say to me that, ‘No, you can't be bisexual and exist as a man, a successful man, and raise a family.’

But I wanted to speak up and say, ‘You can,’ and people do and we should be proud of that, and that is a beautiful way to raise a family and 2 boys as well.

Tyler

I think your boys are so lucky to have such a positive role model in their life Mitch, it's, it's fantastic to hear, really.

Mitch

The reason why I do speak up is because benefits all of us, I want Bowie and Rudi, my 2 boys, to grow up and be themselves. If we can be ourselves, we're going to be happier. Every single day I turned up and I felt like I had to hide parts of myself and that showed up in nervousness and anxiety.

And I was then told that being nervous is weak and if you're weak, we can't select you. If I was in an environment where I could rock up and feel safe to be who I am, I wouldn't have been nervous. I wouldn't have had anxiety. I would’ve actually been like more confident, happier. I would've had better wellbeing, I know that. I would've played better football.

Tyler

Was there a time, that you tried to express yourself to some of your teammates or close friends, how was that experience, how'd you feel?

Mitch

I reflect on my life, just moments in my life a lot and maybe things could've been different. When I was 17 and I was drafted, so I was over in my first month of playing football and I don't know, like I had a sense of separation from my old life and maybe I could share a little bit and the influences of the football culture hadn't really hit me just yet.

One of the other guys that got recruited with me, he was also 17 years old, and he was a good mate of mine, and I just said to him, ‘Hey, how do you know when you're gay?’ Or ‘I think I'm gay.’ And in that moment, and we have beautiful conversations since about this moment, but in that moment, he turned it into a joke and a laugh. And then I saw that reaction and I was like frightened in the moment, and I saw that it was not okay I've revealed this about me.

And then I went into protection mode and I doubled down on my straightness to protect. I didn't want him to, to find out or tell the, the teammates. So, I doubled down and became homophobic, and I said some homophobic things to hide what I just revealed. And I often think about what happens if he reacted a different way. What happens if I shared or explored a question and he put his hand on my shoulder and embraced me and smiled and showed me care and love and said, ‘It's okay. Do you want to talk about this some more?’

And again, we're 17, but maybe that would've fundamentally changed my whole entire life. Maybe I would've been like, ‘Oh, okay, I've got a teammate that has embraced it and has taken it seriously.’

And that's the simplicity of the best thing you can do for someone, is how you react in that moment can mean the world.

I've got a partner and I remember telling Lou for the first time about my feelings, and I was as equally scared and fearful of her reaction of losing our relationship.

But seeing how she responded, just the most beautiful, most powerful moments of acceptance, right? You're so scared and shameful of things that are going on inside and you reveal it, all you want is acceptance and belonging or safety, and to say, ‘Hey, this is actually okay and I'm not going to be outcasted.’

And sometimes it's quite simple, and it's creating safety for yourself and for others around you.

Cherryl

You mentioned the first person you came out to was a mate. So, what could you tell us about being a good friend. What does a good friend look like?

Mitch

Allowing your mates, to show up as they are, as long as it's, again, with kindness and respect, is I think one of the greatest roles and skills, responsibilities of any mate, is creating or helping create environment that it's okay to show up as you are.

And that goes down to the language you use, the jokes that you use, the casualness, the maybe the moments of calling out behaviours or language about certain people, women and gender diverse communities, and all that can signal that, ‘Hey, this is a safe place to be who you are.’ I think that's one of the most important things.

This is the thing, right? We all love our mates, we want the best for our mates, and so that's one thing that we should all want to do, right? Is create a space. You want your mate in your presence to be able to turn up as they are.

Tyler

Do you think culture is improving, Mitch?

Mitch

Yes and no. I think we've still got a lot of work to go.

I think there's a lot of good people that are still afraid to stand up and call behaviours out in fear of being alienated or called weak or that themselves. I think the fear of that is enough for us to remain silent, and I've been, I've been involved with this. There's been plenty of behaviours that I've walked past because I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't want to create a fuss.’ Or, ‘I don't want my mates to think I'm all weak or bully me for standing up for someone that we're bullying.’

You know, that's when like leadership so matters. Like being able to stand up and go, ‘No, guys, fellas, lads, this is not the right behaviour.’ It's so powerful. I can't stress it enough that leaders drive culture and to change culture, it starts from leadership.

Cherryl

Absolutely. You are a leader in this. Does that feel like a lot of pressure for you, being a role model?

I remember reading somewhere that the CEO at the time had said that anyone who comes out, there's going to be a lot of pressure on them. And I just think you were it, like, you're it. So, what, what's that like for you, being the first person to put their hand up, the first person to stand up? You're, you're a lot of firsts here.

Mitch

I'm not downplaying the pressure, but, like, firstly, I have the comfortability that I played nine years ago. So, I don't have to front up every week and also be worried about my on-field performance. So, there is that comfortability. But yeah, I go back and forward too, 'cause it's like, well, I wanted to show that it's not a burden. It shouldn't be a burden for this person, but right now we're still trying to make it safer. Like, it's not perfect. It is well and truly not perfect. And I think without people willing to do the hard thing, the uncomfortable thing with a bit of pressure, without people standing up how are we going to get progress?

I feel like I've stepped up to the amazing advocates and people that are leading in this space that have done so for so many years. I believe that, so I don't feel like I'm alone.

I can't solve homophobia, I can't make the world completely safe, but what I can do is also stand up and do the hard thing and try and make my environments, football environments, these hyper-masculine environments, a little bit safer for the next player to stand up and do the hard thing.

I think the next person will be out in their community and feel loved and supported in the talent pathways not to pull out, to keep forging ahead, and then getting drafted and getting recruited into the AFL or the NRL system as a queer young man.

Cherryl

You mentioned creating safe environments, so I'm going to ask about schools and creating safe environments. If a teacher has a little Mitch Brown, which would be very cute in their classroom. There's little Mitch Brown.

Mitch

I was quite tall, I couldn't fit in the desk when I was at primary school.

Cherryl

So, you'd be one of, you'd be one of my kids, that could see over the top of my head in my class.

So, there's, there's Mitch, he's got questions in his head, he's got questions in his heart. What do we do as teachers, how can we support our students to make sure that we do have safe environments, that our little people in front of us feel safe to be who they are- without... 'cause, you know, you talked earlier about those, they weren't explicit messages that were telling boys in particular to behave, but there are those messages around.

What do we do to create that environment where little Mitch feels good about himself, where little Mitch feels celebrated?

Mitch

Like I just have so much admiration, by teachers, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on this podcast.

Cherryl

'Cause we're here.

Mitch

I just think, 'cause I see the role that they play in my little kids’ life. And arguably they're more hands-on and have more influence on these kids at this age than, say, their parents. So, like, I've just got so much love for teachers.

For a teacher that's teaching that little young, tall Mitch in the class is not putting pressure on yourself for that big speech moment about Pride or about consent or about masculinity. Just role model respect and kindness. And I think just modelling each and every day.

Students, I think you can all agree, will pick up on that more so than a big speech moment that they'll probably not listen to anyway. By being a positive role model, that's the greatest thing. Like, it could be not really talking about Pride Month, but it, you could be just one day walk in with a rainbow pin on you, and like that's just the smallest thing.

But I can tell you, for that hypersensitive queer kid that's closeted in your classroom, they'll spot that. They'll spot it. Like, and if you're the macho PE teacher out there that has that, it's like, ‘Wow, I didn't expect that,’ and that's really cool. So these little, tiny moments that mean the world because students, they're sitting there hypersensitive, especially the vulnerable one, trying to figure out whether this environment they're in is safe or not to be able to show parts of themselves.

They're sitting there wondering if people have figured out if they're queer or not. I sat in meetings just feeling I had a spotlight on me whenever we talked about safety, inclusion, or Pride stuff. I felt like everyone's looking at me, everyone's looking at me, and it's like, they weren't, but that's the anxiety that's happening.

And I'd also say to that little Mitch, there's always a space for you, but there's always safe places to be able to be who you are and feel safe to, to show up. And if school can be one of those environments, then that's just incredible.

Teachers do have a huge role to play, and I know they're heaps busy and there's a lot of things going on, but that's when I'm saying take the pressure off yourself and just role model kindness and respect every day.

Tyler

Such great messaging.

Mitch

Yeah, and then you don't have to do Pride celebrations. You don't have to have Pride rounds in football. Just model kindness and respect, and you'll be inclusive to the queer community by virtue of that. So yeah.

Cherryl

A simple thing for everyone to do.

Tyler

Such great messaging. It's nice to hear. I heard a famous man once say, you might resonate with this, ‘Love is the key, love who you need to, but love yourself, too.’ That famous man obviously being you, Mitch.

I just wanted to dive a bit deeper, that end of that said, ‘Love yourself, too.’ You started to touch on it there, but is there any messaging you can send for someone right now that might be struggling a little bit with their identity, maybe a little bit with their belonging?

What's a key message or something you might like to pass on to them that, to help them on their own journey?

Mitch

When I talk about this, I really try and think about my own self, and I do get a little emotional at sometimes. So many times, I would be scared to turn up to things, scared to go to a party, scared to rock up to a football club, and so much shame and embarrassment of who I really was.

But I would tell anyone struggling in the same kind of experience, ‘Hold on, don't worry, these feelings, this person inside will be the very thing you're most proud of one day. And there'll be people around you, more than just a few. There'll be a huge community that will embrace and love you, and you will feel that happiness and joy just like I do now.’

I'm really proud to sit here and I'm still a work in progress too. There's still parts of me that I fall back in these rigid stereotypes of masculinity that I have had all around me all my life. I still sometimes fall back into that mode or, or like trying to fit in or belong. But I sit here very happy and proud of the weird and wackiness and the version of a man I love so deeply. And that is not necessarily the version that I grew up thinking that I had to be.

Tyler

And we're proud of you too Mitch, we're so stoked to have you on the podcast today for sure, happy to have you. So proud of you, too.

Cherryl

We love you just how you are, Mitch.

Mitch

Thanks Cherryl.

Cherryl

I think that's all we've got time for now, but thank you so much, Mitch, for coming on and speaking with us here from our RRE team.

We appreciate your time and thank you so much.

Mitch

Yeah, thank you, Cherryl and Tyler. It's been a wonderful conversation, and I just love the work that you're all doing and keep it up.

Cherryl

We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Mitch Brown. Maybe something we can all think about is how we can role model kindness and respect in our classrooms, staff rooms, schools, but maybe not even just in our workplaces.

How can we show kindness and respect to our friends? What are some of the things we can all do or say to make sure that our students, staff, colleagues, and mates feel comfortable, respected, and celebrated for who they are?

Thank you again, Mitch, for sharing your story and helping us better understand the simple but powerful actions we can all take to create safer and more respectful environments for everyone.

Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful and inclusive school communities one conversation, one relationship and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREpresentED, the podcast by the New South Wales Department of Education, exploring gender, equality and masculinities and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity.

Together, we'll explore the ideas, evidence and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal nations across New South Wales and pay our respects to their lands and waters, to Ancestors who have cared for country, and to Elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Renee West

Welcome to RREpresentED. My name's Renee West, and with me today is Cherryl Martinez. We're 2 of the members of the Respectful Relationships Education team who support New South Wales public schools across the state.

Today, we chat with Luke Bateman, former NRL player, reality TV star and a powerful voice for young people. But this episode isn't about his career highlights, it's about who Luke really is. The line he lives by, his views on gender, breaking free from rigid masculinity and embracing authenticity under pressure.

From football fields to reality TV, Luke's story is one of reinvention, vulnerability, and strength. This conversation challenges us all, especially educators and leaders, to rethink what it means to be a man. So let's dive in.

Welcome Luke so great to be able to speak with you today, and we are really grateful that you're really keen to work with the New South Wales Department of Education to support our students and our staff so thanks for joining us today.

Luke Bateman

No, my pleasure. Thank you very much Renee and Cherryl for having me on.

Renee

Now, Luke, we know that you've have quite the story and life's really taking you in all sorts of directions right now. So let's, for us, let's just start at the start. Can you tell us a bit about growing up in rural Queensland, playing footy as a kid?

What was it like for you? And maybe even in there, who helped shape your ideas of gender or what it means to be a boy and a man, or even, you know, what it meant to be a girl and a woman?

Luke

Yeah, great question. You know growing up in Western Queensland, I grew up in a very harsh, hard environment, physically, emotionally, even the external world.

The land was very harsh and hard. Everywhere I looked it was harsh and hard. But in saying that, I really loved my childhood. I adored my childhood. I grew up on a farm. I had a lot of freedom. I played, you know, played a lot of footy growing up. I was very sporty growing up. And growing up in a small town, I was able to, I would say, compete in all of those sports without any restrictions because it was very easy to access playing sports growing up.

So I loved my childhood. I had such a fantastic upbringing. But growing up in that place and growing up in that culture where every man was very blue collar. There were farmers and truck drivers, mechanics, you know, oil workers, rig workers. It was all extremely hard men who were very stoic. And men in my world, men didn't talk about their feelings, men didn't cry, men weren't emotional.

Men did their jobs, and their jobs were very harsh. They weren't vulnerable. They didn't speak about I would suppose, you know, delicate things. They were very hard, impenetrable men.

So growing up, the narrative that I got of gender was that men were hard. Men were the financial providers. Men weren't emotional. Men weren't soft in any way, shape or form. Men were very capable and if you weren't capable and you weren't tough, then you weren't a man.

To be soft, to be emotional, to be vulnerable, that was what women and girls were. So if you were any of those things, you were a girl. That was what you had to stop yourself from becoming, and that was always filled with a lot of shame.

You know, always emotions. Anything emotional, anything vulnerable was always surrounded with a lot of shame. So I learned from a very young age to divorce myself from those and hide those things and suppress those. Anything that was emotional or vulnerable, I suppressed that within myself so that I could fit in, so that I could belong and so that I could be the man that was expected of me by my culture.

Cherryl Martinez

That's a lot of internal conflict there. So you've got the external world telling you one thing about how you should behave and then you've got your inside. What was your inside telling you about how you should show up as a man?

Luke

Yeah, well, I was always so... I was always so soft and empathetic and compassionate.

So my internal world was, you know, very at war with the external narrative that I was being given. And I remember this so clearly. When I was in, I was in preschool, and because we, you know, were such a small school, whenever we had lunch breaks, the whole school would sort of come together because there was only like 100 kids. So, and we would play soccer on the oval.

And so you'd play, you know, whether you were 6 years old or 10 years old, you would be playing soccer together with all the boys. And one of the older boys, I remember, he pushed me into the ground, like kicked me in the shin and pushed me into the ground, and I started crying.

And one of the girls in my class came over to me and she said, 'Oh, you know, Luke, you're tough. You're one of the toughest boys in our class. Like, you can't cry. You'll be okay.'

And I remember that moment so distinctly because that was the very first time that I'd felt shame from, you know, peer expectations around what I needed to be. To be one of the tough boys in my class.

And that wasn't her fault, because she was also swimming in the same waters that I was swimming in.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

My internal world and my external world were really at war, and I knew that the narrative that was running within me internally didn't match the narrative that was expected of me externally. So I had to learn how to build a mask or build a persona that would match the narrative that was expected of me that would receive validation, acceptance and belonging

Cherryl

You brought up expectations that other people had of you, and that was a really explicit example, I guess, of someone saying, 'You are tough. This is who you need to be.'

Were there other things around you that were giving you that message of how you should show up as a young boy playing football? What were those external or those implicit messages that you were receiving?

Luke

Football always came with the glorification of the suppression of physical pain as well, you know. So there was the suppression of emotional pain and suppression of emotions. But then I existed in cultures where the suppression of even physical pain was glorified, you know.

To be the toughest, to be the strongest, to be the meanest, to be the most aggressive. You were glorified. And to play through injury, to play through pain. You know, you could be knocked out or concussed and then come back on the field, and that was glorified. You were tough, you were strong.

My parents never did this, but I remember other boys, you know. Their parents from the sideline would be yelling like, 'Get up. Stop being a girl,' you know, when they were injured. That was the messaging that we got.

And even though it wasn't directed at me from my own parents, that was, as I said, the waters that you were swimming in. You learned from a very young age that emotions and physical pain were weak and they were soft, and that's not what you're allowed to be, to be a man in those cultures and be accepted.

And not only was it not accepted, the opposite of that, was glorified. And then those peer expectations, what we give status to, what receives status as a boy or a man, that became internalised within me. And that becomes, you know, and I think we always talk about what we get told externally and the external messaging, but we internalise these things.

And then long after, you know, long after I had someone, I had a girl telling me that I wasn't allowed to cry, I didn't have people telling me that I wasn't allowed to cry, but my internal voice was telling me, 'You aren't allowed to cry.'

And you know, that's what, you know ... external voices policed us to begin with, but then our internal voice shaped us.

Cherryl

That's such an interesting thing that you've just said about policing people. Policing how everyone behaves and how, I guess, I'm going to use this word, and there's a reason why I'm using it, 'perform' according to what their gender is.

Or, you know, that performative side of being a girl and being a boy, and you've talked about this on your Instagram. You had a post on there about being a performative male on social media.

Luke

Male, yeah.

Cherryl

Where do you think that comes from and have you felt like you've needed to perform to that male stereotype before?

Luke

This comes with multiple layers. I get accused, oh, every, you know, weekly, daily of being performative and it's always by other men.

And the idea that to want you to step outside of these rigid gender narratives, these rigid gender roles or rigid gender expectations, if you're someone who steps outside of that, then you're being performative. You know, you're not being true to who you are. Whereas the issue with that is the most performative you can be is when you're performing to those gender expectations.

As did I perform for so much of my life, I performed being a man or being what was expected of me, that I performed that every single day. And then once you actually sort of step out of that, I think that that really is very confronting to other men.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

Because you're holding up a mirror to them, and when they're not capable of understanding that or, or not capable of meeting that. What they have to do is, because we live in such cultures of shame. They try... you know, the performative male label is meant to shame me back into the narrative that keeps them comfortable.

Cherryl

Yeah. It's like putting someone back in a box.

Luke

Exactly, yes. Because what I'm doing is holding up a mirror to them and saying, 'Hey, you don't have to exist in this box anymore.'

Cherryl

Yep.

Luke

You can step out of that. You don't have to keep performing to that narrative. But when men have built their identities around that narrative, that means it would have to come with the total disintegration of their identity. So men would rather shame other men back into that box than have to disintegrate their identity and form a new one, because that is really difficult and I understand that.

But that's what that label, that performative label, that is meant, that is handed to me with shame. And that is trying to evoke shame within me so that I will stop making them feel uncomfortable.

Renee

And Luke, you're a young man who's feeling that now. What is the impact of masking and, and hiding the authentic version, you know of oneself? What might be the impact for a young person?

Luke

Yeah. Oh. I mean, the impact on a young person is profound because not only does it disconnect you from the world externally, because when you're showing up wearing a mask and you're showing up as a character and you're performing, you're not connecting with the people in your life.

You're not forming friendships, you're not forming deep bonds that really support who we are as humans. The health and happiness of our life depends upon the strength of our relationships. When you're performing to a role that someone else expects of you, but it not only disconnects you from the people in your life and disconnects you from the world, it disconnects you from yourself.

So when you suppress all of those things within yourself, you become disconnected from them. So when we talk about young men, you know, being lonely. That's not only a disconnection from other people within their lives, that's also the disconnection from themselves. Which really, which in -, you know, in severe cases, when you speak, when I speak about my own journey especially, that then manifested itself as depression, addiction, and it's very harmful.

It was very harmful to me. It was very harmful to my loved ones and my friends. You know it causes severe amounts of harm to everybody involved with that.

Cherryl

I'm going to go back a little bit with something that you had mentioned in relation to this and what you were navigating just then, and it's about shame.

How did you navigate that shame to come out to where you are now?

Luke

Really good question. And the antidote to shame, you know, shame's kryptonite is vulnerability, which is what men and boys are taught to fear. You know, what they are taught to flee from is vulnerability.

And as I said, the antidote to shame is vulnerability, and leading with vulnerability, and sharing your failures, sharing your shortcomings, sharing your fears, sharing your, what your, you know, what scares you the most, sharing your fallibility.

That, all of that is how you overcome shame. And it is really, really difficult to begin with. You know, and it's very easy for me to say, 'Just be vulnerable.'

But you also have to understand that vulnerability is something that we learn, and it is a practice and a skill that has to be trained up and used repeatedly, and men don't have the training in that.

Men don't have the skills to be vulnerable. Men don't have the language to be vulnerable.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

So, you know, it's very easy for me to sit here and say, 'Just be vulnerable.'

Cherryl

Yep.

Luke

But when you're not taught how to be that, it is extremely difficult. And when you're taught to fear that, you know, when that- when vulnerability comes surrounded with such shame, that is something to be avoided at all costs.

So yeah, so my journey was definitely one through honesty and vulnerability, but that is much easier said than done. But the only path to doing that is by starting.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

You know? And just practicing that and failing at it, and exactly like riding a bike, exactly like doing any other skill. Start somewhere, fail often, fail fast, and get better.

Cherryl

Yeah. When you're saying to take that step first and show that vulnerable side of you.

Luke

Mm-hmm

Cherryl

Who did you show that to first? Because there's a time when you were hiding your authentic self. Who do you feel you could be vulnerable to? What were the people around you like when you did show up as your authentic self?

Luke

Yeah. So the very first person that I was ever vulnerable to was my mum. You know, when my life really started to come, where it started to go off track and the wheels started to fall off. The only person I was ever comfortable with being vulnerable with was my mum.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

And that was, you know, that came from my lifetime with her because she was always the, she was the one who I could be emotional around. She was the one I could cry to. She was always my safe harbour emotionally, was my mum.

So when I very first started having issues, or I actually shouldn't say when I started having issues, because when I started having issues I was still so silent and shameful around it, but when the issues got to the point where I could no longer ignore them and I had to share them, it was my mum who I went to first.

And very slowly, you know, then I would, I started to share that with, you know, a partner at the time and my closest male friends. But I was always still, even in those early, like in the first couple years, I was still so wrapped up in shame that I didn't want, you know, anyone outside of that to know.

And I only wanted like my immediate circle, like my immediate family and my closest friends. They were the only people who I wanted to know, because I didn't want other people to find out about it, because once again, I felt so much shame.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

I felt like a failure, I felt weak, I felt soft. And the cultures that I was in, you weren't allowed to fail, you weren't allowed to be weak, and I didn't want anyone to know about that.

Renee

And Luke, just picking up, you've brought friends up a couple of times.

I mean, talk to us a little bit about friendships, particularly as a young man. I mean, how important are friendships, and what are the, I guess, the positive characteristics young men should be looking for in friends?

Like when you say your close friends, you know, like how does a young man know that their friend is a close friend? And what are those characteristics? What should our young males be looking for in their friends?

Luke

What we're looking for in a friend is someone who supports us no matter what. You know, I've really learned through my journey who my genuine friends were, and they were the friends who weren't envious or jealous when I was successful, and were supportive and still there when I was down and out.

And when I would open up to them, and when I would be vulnerable with them, they were the people who held space for that, who were accepting of that, and who loved me no matter what. I think that there were, you know, men in my life where I would be vulnerable with them and they would weaponise that vulnerability to bring me down or, or shame me, or try and use that for their own gain.

So when we're talking about what a true friend looks like, especially for young men, and I want, and also I really want young men to be aware of this, and young girls too, friendships, we need friendships for, in both men and women.

You know, boys and girls need to be friends with each other. The way that we grow, the way that we learn, the way that we stay connected is in relationship with each other, and it's really important that we have both female and male friends for girls and boys. That is so important to our social fabric.

But yeah, for young boys wanting to know who is a true friend for them I would say, is this person someone you have to compete with?

Is this someone who, if you be vulnerable, if you share your fears, if you share your failure, if you share your, what you're scared of or what you're feeling, you share your emotions with this person, will that person accept it?

Will that person support you? Is that person available to talk it through with you and go through each step, you know, walk alongside of you? Or are they someone that you're going to compete with?

Because young men, we teach them to compete with each other, not connect with each other. So is that person someone who's going to compete with you and use your vulnerability for their own gain?

I think that that's such a, such a good, a good measure of it.

Renee

And to what extent do you think a friend has a level of responsibility to call you out.

Luke

Oh.

Renee

You know, I mean, we're, like within the space we're in, we're obviously working with teachers around building capability to prevent domestic, family and sexual violence.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

That's where we're coming from. I mean, what role do friends have here in supporting others to step up and take action and to call mates out? And you talked a little bit about sort of weaponising, you know, taking vulnerability and weaponising. I mean, what does policing look like for young men, keeping men inside, as you say, like the box. The man box. The adolescent man box?

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

What does that policing look like, and how do you kind of break out of that? What role do your mates play in that as well?

Luke

Male-to-male accountability is really important to us. We really desire respect from our peers, especially when it comes to men. You know, we desire respect and status amongst our peers, and for so long, that status amongst our peers came from our silence and our willingness to conform.

Conforming to what everybody else was doing was how we stayed safe. But it has led us to a place where we are, you know, young men are really mentally unhealthy. So male-to-male accountability is so important to change narratives because we cannot do it alone. And also speaking out against something that you disagree with is also the best pathway for yourself to learn that in yourself and to stand in your own truth and to be your own authentic self.

Because I was that person who, you know, things would happen and I wouldn't speak out against them because I'd just be like, 'Oh, you know, that's just what boys do, and I want to, I want to belong as part of the tribe.'

Renee

Yeah.

Luke

But we really have to hold each other accountable and say that this is not good enough.

This is the standard that we accept. This is what we have to change what receives status. You know, we have to change what receives respect and status amongst each other, amongst men and young boys.

And we have to say, 'This is what we accept. This is now what will receive status. This is what we see as cool, as being one of the boys. This is what it looks like. And if you don't live up to that standard, then we will not be your friends. Like, we will not stand beside you if you're not living up to these standards.'

So when we talk about male-to-male accountability and holding your mates accountable, that is truly how we change cultures, change social norms, and change expectations amongst each other.

Cherryl

You mentioned changing the narrative, and I look at you. You are what a stereotypical football player is. Then you start talking about the parts of you that you did hide to stay inside that box.

What are all the positives that come from going, 'You know what? I'm stepping out. This is, this is me'?

So tell us all the things that have been so wonderful since showing up as your authentic self.

Luke

The list is endless, but I do, I want to touch on one thing you said just there. You know, when I talk about my younger self and I say, you know, I was compassionate, I was soft, I was kind. This is all young men, you know.

Like, this is, and I want to make this clear, you know, to anybody who's listening to this. I'm not the abnormality, you know, to be soft, kind, compassionate. That's not one in a million or that's not a random occurrence.

All young boys, all young boys are soft and kind and compassionate and so capable and full of love, and we really, like, we mutilate the internal words to, you know, to flog that out of them.

So yes, so while I get to show up as my authentic self that is very, you know, soft, compassionate, kind, et cetera. That is all boys' authentic selves. So, and how that expresses itself in the world is going to be different, but it is always grounded in that we are so capable of compassion and love as men.

But the benefits that I've had since showing up as my authentic self. I can talk about a lot of the external benefits, which there have been numerous ones, which is deeper connections with my friends, deeper connections with my families, more love in my life, more happiness, more joy.

I would say, you know, more fulfillment in my interactions with everybody in the world, and there's also been career success as well, and I'd even say, you know, income success too.

Like being aligned with what I do and who I am, and what brings me joy and what brings me fulfillment and purpose, I wake up each day and I can't wait to do what I do. You know, I can't wait to speak on this. I can't wait to, I can't wait to write, I can't wait to read, you know? And being so aligned with that purpose also comes with many beneficial factors externally.

But the most important thing that it has brought to me is internal peace, and internal acceptance and belonging within myself. Because for so long I didn't belong within myself, because who I was, was at such odds with who I pretended to be.

So I didn't belong in my own skin, in my own body. And there's nothing more beneficial than being in your own body and knowing exactly who you are, and that you belong, and that your worth, your worth as a human, your worth as a man, is not tied to any external factor.

I wake up knowing that my worth, my place in the world is inherent to me. And I think that that is the biggest benefit that I've had.

Cherryl

You've gotten so much more success from showing up as you when, you know, you look at what some people believe is success in contrast to where your life is now.

You know? When you were playing NRL, or even when you were a young man, maybe that's what success looked like for you, and now you've changed that narrative for yourself.

Luke

Absolutely. And I think for so many young men or, and young people in general, and for me. You know, I'll talk from my own experience. I was given these markers of success.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

And it was, you know, make the NRL, earn lots of money, buy a house, have a nice car. Everything was always external. You had all these markers for success, and I was always told, 'One, if you have this, that makes you successful. That makes you important. That makes you valuable.'

And I was living that life where many people would have looked at me and said, 'Wow, that's successful. I want to be him one day' or 'I want to be in that position'.

I was living, you know, my childhood dream. I had every... all the markers of success were all ticked, had every single one of them and I was the most unhappiest, the most unfulfilled, the most depressed I've ever been, and living with addiction, you know? That was what that narrative of success brought to me, was the complete opposite of success.

Renee

All right, so here's the, I guess, the million dollar question then for you. There's a 14 year old boy out there and he's currently hiding what his true interests are. Like, he's masking.

So I mean, what are the steps for him? How does he determine the line he wants to live by? How does he reclaim his identity? How does he start becoming his authentic self and sharing that with the world?

Luke

It's such a big question. I feel like putting that expectation or that on a young man is too much.

You know, I really feel like saying to a 14 year old boy, identity is always a moving scale. Identity is something that, you know, it evolves constantly.

And saying to a young man at such a young, formative age, you know, 'You need to figure out your identity'.

I feel like we really fail young men in not providing them, young boys and girls, they need the space and the safety to be able to work that out.

And asking them to work that out in such a hostile world, where their identity keeps them safe, you know, because we don't provide them the safety to be able to explore their identity. Asking them to do that in such a hostile world, I think we really, as adults, we really do fail them.

I want to say to all young people, we as adults need to offer you the space and the safety to be able to do that safely, to explore your identity.

It is going to be a process where you try on many different hats, and a lot of those hats aren't going to fit, and you're not going to like a lot of those hats. And that's the pathway to figuring out who you are and what you love.

Living to another person's expectations or social expectations, social narratives, is the pathway that will lead you the opposite way from where you want to be.

And where you want to be is fully embodied in yourself and fully expressive of who you are as a beautiful, unique human being. Conforming to what your peers expect of you, conforming to what society tells you, you must be, is walking in the opposite direction to that, and all you're going to do is make the walk back the other way even longer, and that's what I experienced.

Now, I sprinted for so long in the other direction that it took me years and years and years just to walk back in the right direction. So to the young 14 year old sitting there, I want to say to you that you don't need to be anybody but yourself to be of value and to be of worth, and figuring out who you are in the world and what your identity is and what your authentic self is, is a process of becoming, and it is a lifelong process, and something that I even now, as a 31 year old man who's very confident in who they are, I haven't figured that out either.

You know, I'm not perfect. I fail all the time. I'm so fallible. You are never going to get to the point where you are complete, but we are here as adults to provide you the safety and the space to do that, and we will work it out together, you know, in relationship with each other.

Renee

Yeah. That's such good advice, and so difficult, isn't it for young people. And I mean, this podcast is really designed for teachers and leaders in schools, and you're talking to that. Well, they are the adults, you know, as parents, as teachers. They are the adults that need to create those, those safe spaces for young people to be themselves.

And to be able to identify when young people need support, more support.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

And where that support can come from. So let's ask you this then, Luke. Across the country, and for us in New South Wales, there's a whole lot of classrooms with, let's just imagine, some little Luke Batemans right now.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

They're sitting on the floor, they're playing soccer in the playgrounds, all of those things. How do our schools and our teachers and leaders in schools, how do they go about creating those environments and those cultures that can be supportive for their students and celebrate healthy models of masculinity within that school environment?

What does that look like in your mind?

Luke

I would love for young men to strive for personhood, you know? The expectations that we place on young boys should be to become human beings. And I always love this quote, and it's, 'Give boys a compass, not a cage.'

You know? And I think that that's the kind of environments that we want to create, is giving boys a compass and saying, 'This is sort of the direction that we want you to head in. These are the values, these are the virtues that we want you to embody and uphold. How you do that, that's really up to you, because that will be beautiful and unique in your own way.'

And challenging those misogynistic, homophobic, racial, any sort of language and ideologies or behaviours that sort of reflect that or display that, really challenging that in really healthy ways and saying, you know, 'This is what you said,' or, 'This is what you did. Is there a better way to do that? What values and virtues would actually be better placed here?'

Language is so important to us as human beings, and I think language actually has such a big impact that we really don't see. So how we speak and the language that we use is really important. Not shame-based language. Very invitational language.

Cherryl

I like that message about using a compass and not a cage. We're not caging our kids, but giving them a compass, a tool to navigate through their identity and learning about themselves. I think that's, that's a really powerful, that's a beautiful message

Luke

I think, you know, young boys really, they really wanna live up to something.

They really want direction.

Cherryl

Yeah.

Luke

That's, you know, they crave that. They really want that. So asking them to define that for themselves. What does this look like to you? And then asking them to live up to that and inviting them to live up to that, and not shaming them for being wrong or for doing things, you know, poorly or badly, because that's what kids do.

Kids fail. Kids do, kids mess up. Not shaming children for doing that, actually inviting them to be better.

Renee

Really great advice, Luke, and I know it's hard sometimes to say, you know, to another professional. Here's something you should, you should do.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

And that's what we've just said.

We've just said, 'I'll just tell teachers what they should do,' and we know a lot of teachers and leaders are struggling with this as much as parents.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

But you know, you've given us really strong advice around creating those safe learning spaces for boys. For allowing boys to be challenged and to challenge each other.

Luke

Yes.

Renee

And to challenge others within that, that space, to value difference, you know, and value diversity. And it's really important because challenging those rigid ideas about what it means to be a man is particularly important in the school setting where we spend so much time and some of those peer relationships start to develop. So really important message for our staff.

Luke

Once we get boys challenging other boys and changing peer expectations and changing what receives status amongst their friends that's really when we're going to see real strong change. So getting boys to challenge each other to live up to a certain standard.

Renee

I think one of the strong messages I'm taking away from talking to you, and certainly seeing the content that you're creating, be it through social media or other avenues at the moment, is, like, really powerful reminders about how important positive role models are And even for a teacher and a leader that is showing up as their authentic self is important as well.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

So it's not just about our students sitting in schools, it's about for staff as well, being themselves. Standing up, being the ones that can connect in with these students. If it's not their friends that they can connect with, build those connections and those really strong rapport.

Because it, more often than not, it is a teacher that a lot of students choose to speak to. And unfortunately the home environment isn't where you can have those conversations, and school sometimes is.

Luke

Yeah.

Renee

Luke, we really appreciate your time. We want to thank you just from us, for us working with students and, and with teachers.

We know that you want to do some more work with us, with Department of Education, because you're committed to creating change with young people, and we appreciate that. We thank you for your time today, but also for your courage. You're being vulnerable, you're being yourself, you're sharing your message. You know, it really takes a lot to do that, and you are a very powerful role model for a lot of young people, and a lot of adults right now.

Luke

Thank you.

Renee

So you know, we really appreciate that. So thank you so much for joining us and for, for sharing your story with us today.

Luke

No, my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, really appreciate it.

Renee

So today we've explored the importance of being authentic, challenging narrow ideas about masculinity, and embracing the parts of ourselves that maybe others view as a little different or outside what society tells us is the norm.

For teachers and parents, these messages are a powerful reminder that children and young people need role models who show that being respectful, emotionally honest, and true to yourself is a strength and not a weakness. Luke's reflections encourage us to create learning spaces where students feel safe to be themselves, to question stereotypes, and to value difference.

And that matters because when we challenge rigid ideas about what it means to be a man, we make room for healthier relationships, stronger identity, and more inclusive school cultures.

Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful, and inclusive school communities, one conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREpresentEd the podcast by the NSW Department of Education, exploring gender equality and masculinities and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity.

Together we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal nations across NSW and pay our respects to their lands and waters, to ancestors who have cared for Country and to elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength, and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Renee West

Welcome to RREpresentEd. I'm Renee West and I'm joined today by Melissa Ferrara. We're both members of the Department's Respectful Relationships Education team. Today we're joined by Holly Wainwright, journalist, author, and broadcaster. And a familiar voice to many through Mamamia Out Loud, and Mamamia Mid.

Holly's also one of Australia's most recognised commentators on parenting, family life and the changing expectations placed on women, men, and children. Through her writing and broadcasting, Holly has spent years listening to families and exploring the everyday experiences that shape childhood.

In this episode, we're looking at those experiences through a parent and community lens. We'll talk about the messages that children are receiving about gender and relationships, how those messages influence the way they see themselves and others, and how families, schools, the media, and the wider community can help young people challenge limiting expectations. We'll also explore the important role that adults, particularly men, can play in shaping a more respectful, inclusive, and equitable future.

So, whether you're a teacher, a school leader, a parent, a carer, or simply interested in supporting young people to build healthy and respectful relationships, then this conversation is for you.

Holly, welcome to the RREpresentEd podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you, and thanks for giving up your time to join us today.

Holly Wainwright

Thank you so much for having me, Renee. I am so excited to be here.

Renee

Well, look where we want to start, Holly, is we'd really like to start with your own story because we know that our earliest experiences often shape the way that we see the world. So, when you think back to your own childhood, what did you see as some of the, the gender rules, if we call them, that you, that you grew up with?

Holly

So, I think that in many ways I, I didn't realise it at the time, but my upbringing has set me up very well for the kind of, family that I've ended up having and the life that I've ended up living in that my parents were both working and they're both actually in education. My mum was a, a teacher and then went on to be a head of department.

My dad was a university lecturer. They both were working. So domestic roles were very much shared, which is, I think has stood me in very good stead for expecting the same in my own home. And I always knew that my mum had this whole life beyond our house in terms of her professional career and her friends through that and her ambitions through that.

My dad was quite creative person too. So, he writes poetry and is an English literature teacher. So, I think that, although I didn't realise it at the time, I think I probably got, my mum was a second wave feminist, definitely. She used to be quite strict about like not letting me have baby dolls and ironing boards and fake kitchens and stuff.

And at the time I hated that, and I was really mad about it because I just wanted Barbies like all my friends. But I think I probably have ended up being a bit of a product of exactly that upbringing.

Renee

I'm a parent of twin girls and I know that becoming a parent really changes the way you look back on your own childhood and your experiences.

So, have you had a moment in your parenting or even in, in your work where you've thought, ‘Wow, gender roles are really starting to shape our kids' lives in ways that we don't really see?’

Holly

Oh yeah. I mean, the thing that's interesting, I think that every parent will say this, but I started off with, I've got a boy and a girl, right? So, I've, my daughter's the eldest and, and then I have my son.

And I started off with very much probably because of my feminist mother, even though I spent all my childhood teasing her about it. Like, we're not having pink and blue. We are not having flowers and trucks. Like, we're not doing that. But then my daughter was certainly at an age where suddenly it's like a switch flipped, and she was like 95% tutus and unicorns, and I had nothing to do with it.

You know what I mean? And you realise that that kind of point, and it's not about the clothes obviously, it's about the environment and the roles. You realise at that point that there is a lot more going on than just in your home, and then you work out what you want to do with that. And so, I've always been a bit of a railer against gendered toy aisles and, you know, gendered clothes aisles and stuff in the shops. But I also had to very much accept with my kids that there were things, that were in their world that shaped their view of gender roles that had nothing to do with me. And, work out whether or not to get too upset about that.

Renee

Yeah, so true.

Melissa Ferrara

So, Holly, your work gives you a window into thousands of Australian families and the conversations they're having every day. As a writer and podcaster, what are you hearing most from parents about girls, boys, and some of those gender expectations on them now?

Holly

I hear a lot of conversation about, and this won't be surprising to anyone here about online siloing of boys and girls, right? So given how much of our kids' lives are lived online now, those spaces are almost as important if not as much, if not more so than the physical spaces that they're inhabiting.

Now I've always been a big believer, and this is just for me about, of a co-ed world, a co-ed education, co-ed environments, because I just think the world is co-ed. We've all got to work out how to be with each other and see each other in all our different shades of humanity. But a lot of the statistics show that online boys and girls are more siloed than anywhere else.

You know that we have these very stereotypical views. Girls love social media, boys love video games. Like girls are talking to each other, boys are fighting each other, you know, and that's even before we get to the sort of gendered relationship stuff that I know we're going to talk about. And I think that one of the things that parents are really scared of is that we have a lack of literacy about those worlds ourselves.

So, we're either hyper concerned about it in maybe almost too much panicking that can push the kids to be secretive and push the kids to hide what they're doing. Or we are nowhere near concerned enough. I mean, I think that that's something that parents are trying to wrestle with all the time.

Like if they see their son consuming some content from, you know, a negative male influencer, is that the end of the world? Does that mean that their kid is turning into a bad man? Does that mean they have to step in or does that mean that their kid is learning how to consume that and put it in its place in the world?

I think that parents are really scared of and confused about that. So, we hear that a lot. Obviously, the negative influences from what we might broadly term the manosphere and obviously lots of body image concerns, for girls. And I think it's interesting that, and may be right that we, like most of the concerns we hear are about online world rather than IRL world.

Melissa

That's the world that they're engaging with a lot of the time. We've talked about needing to, to sort of meet them where they live. I don't know about you, but when I think about my own childhood and what children are experiencing today, it feels like some things have changed dramatically and others haven't changed nearly as much as we'd have hoped.

And I guess when you compare your own childhood with what children are experiencing now, and you've sort of flagged that a little bit, what gives you the most optimism and where do you think the greatest challenges and opportunities still lie for us and for children today?

Holly

Look, I'm, generally optimistic because I think we are sort of digging ourselves into a defensive crouch if we are always just, everything out there is terrifying. Our kids are just being bombarded with awful things. There are lots of really great things about the online world too, in that it can give you access to all different kinds of ways of living. People who live around the world, people who live in different ways, find your niche. If you are obsessed with fantasy books, if you're obsessed with football, if you're obsessed with, like, finding your tribe. I don't think that all online interactions are negative by any stretch.

So that's on that side of it. I think it's all about trying to work out the most literate, safe way to use that world and to talk to them about the influencers they're meeting there. But in general, you know what, my kids go to co-ed schools, they go to public schools and generally speaking, there are obvious exceptions to this, the relationships between the genders, there is more literacy around things like consent that was never around when I was young. I think that teachers and the education system has been doing an amazing job in talking about that.

There's much more awareness about bullying. There is much more awareness about negative behaviour. It doesn't mean those things don't happen. Of course they do. But that was not talked about when I was young. Like there was no conversation about respectful relationships, which is obviously what we are here to talk about today. There was no conversation about consent.

Bullying was something you sucked up and put up with. I think that there is so much to be optimistic about in terms of how kids understand each other. I think there's plenty to be optimistic about. I see a lot of diversity in my kids' schools, I mean my daughter is a crazy footballer, for example, right?

Women's sport is a massive part of her life. When I was young, absolutely not. Like it wasn't seen as a serious pathway or a career or something that you might do after the age of 8 when you were, you know, 12 or whatever. I think there's so much to be optimistic about in the loosening of some of those boundaries.

Sometimes I wonder if those boundaries have loosened as much for boys as for girls in some way. I'm sure we can talk about that, but I think there's a lot to be optimistic about.

Renee

All right. So, let's dig into that a little bit – differences. So, thinking about messaging particularly, and you've said you have both a daughter and a son growing up in the current world, and you obviously work at Mamamia, which is the largest independent women's media group.

So, when you listen to girls and young women talking, what do you think are the strongest messages that they're getting about how a girl should look or behave or how to relate to others? What are the strongest messages for girls?

Holly

Okay. The look stuff, the beauty standards stuff is very difficult because the beauty standards have gone nowhere, right?

You know, I think about when I was a young woman, a teenager, yes. Although, because we didn't have so much visibility on many, many other women, we only really saw the models in the magazines and that was it. You know, that was the beauty standard or the actresses in the movies. There's been some great diversity in terms of girls being able to see all different kinds.

But the beauty standards are brutal. The front facing cameras have made all of us feel surveyed at all times. Girls, in particular, I think have a very clear sense of being perceived all the time. Like, what do I look like? Well, I'm doing this. How do I feel when I'm, you know. I think the beauty standards are a scary, scary thing.

I think that that's really tricky. Flip side to that, I would say that, again, I don't want to talk too specifically about my kids, but because my daughter is really into sport and so are a lot of her friends, their focus certainly isn't just on what they look like and what women's bodies look like.

They are very focused on what they can do. And that is great, right? I know that isn't the case for everybody, but I think that broader visibility of that and focusing on what women's bodies can do is so positive. But also, you know, from very young ages, they're doing their makeup, taking it off, putting it on, skincare routine, 12 steps, da, da, da.

The emphasis on what women look like, I feel is getting worse, not better. And that really worries me. I remember when my daughter was little, and I'd say to her, ‘It doesn't matter what you look like.’

And then one day around 11 or 12, she kind of turned to me and said, ‘You need to stop saying that Mum, because it's all that matters.’

Like, and what she meant was, ‘You can tell me that, but the whole rest of the world is telling me something else. So who do I believe?’

You know? The body image stuff I do really worry about. However, I think that as parents, I'm Gen X, I can speak for myself in that terms of, I grew up in a house where even with a feminist mother, diets were talked about constantly.

Everyone was always on one. How many calories are in that? Most of the mothers I know are very mindful about the way they talk about their bodies and themselves around their daughters. So that's really positive.

The other thing that worries me, well, not that worries me, but that I would love to change not only for girls, but for boys in terms of respectful relationships and how they relate to each other, is that it can be very easy to see how social media communication has encouraged more competition. There's so much kind of, verbal sparring and competition. I feel like that is not helpful to any of them, yeah. If I'm making sense there, we might dig into that a bit more.

Renee

Oh, absolutely. And you know, I'm Gen X too, and I'm a, I'm a hard relate to that – mums discussing and being experts in yo-yo dieting, so completely relate.

We're going to flick over and to consider boys and men. And I know, many years ago you wrote an article about your partner and dads and positive dad culture. If we think about boys and young men, what rules of masculinity do you see pressing on them through their friendship groups and, and families in particular?

Holly

I remember when my kids were really little, my daughter had all those books about like, girls can be everything, ‘Rebel Girls’ storybooks and things. And I really remember my son turning around to me when he was probably about 5 and saying, ‘Can boys be anything too?’

I was like, ‘Oh, it never occurred to me to tell you that you could do anything you want to do.’ Because I thought that boys just did anything they wanted to do. And I didn't know that we had to be encouraging. What I sometimes think, do not misunderstand this as any kind of critique of feminism 'cause that is not what I am saying at all.

But I do sometimes think that as we've broken down a lot of barriers or tried to about what we expect a woman's life to look like and the options she can have in terms of whether she wants to be a parent, whether she wants to work in a male dominated field, whether or not she wants to travel, whether or not she wants to do whatever she wants to do, that sometimes boys are often still trapped in much more basic gender roles.

We talked on the show recently, and I know that you have interviewed Luke Bateman, for example. He used to be an NRL player, and he was playing in that what, what he describes as a hyper-masculine culture from the age of 12.

And the things that he loved that were creative, writing and reading, for example, in his world. He loved to read. He quickly learned that he had to hide that, that that was a shameful thing to be into. That if you like balls, you can't like books, you know, in the most basic way. And also, if you like balls and hanging around with blokes, you don't really like girls, you like them as objects and maybe as trophies and maybe as accoutrements like decoration, but you don't like, like them. You like boys, you know?

And I sometimes see that those roles are harder to shift. And I think one thing that I've really come to understand through parenting perhaps. Like my partner, Brent is a Gen X guy, and he loves his beer and his football and whatever, but he is the most wonderful dad, the most wonderful, engaged dad and he took a step back from work when we had the kids.

I took six months off when the kids were really little, and then he did, and that was what I was writing about when I said, ‘Where's the father's group for him?’ Because I was in a mother's group and then he was looking after the baby and he had nowhere to go. I had a lovely mother's group who embraced him, but that's not always the case.

Fatherhood has been the greatest joy, source of self-esteem, positive experience for him. And, you know, not every man and every boy is an ‘alpha, master of the universe’ type, you know. And I think that we still are very stuck in that, and the manosphere plays on that. The messaging that boys get through social media is everything's a competition.

You know, everything's a competition from whether you can best your friend or shame them, you know, and I just think that that isn't the truth for all boys. I'd love us to have a much more mainstreamed view of the different models of masculinity. Just like it's become more mainstream, not perfect by any means, to have a more diverse view of what femininity looks like.

Renee

What do you think worries you most about those models of masculinity that boys and girls are meeting particularly online and in popular culture? What is it that that worries people most?

Holly

My main concern about online culture, I don't think it's all negative by any means. And, you know, even though I was talking about beauty standards before, I try not to moral panic about that because young girls do like to put their makeup on in front of their computers a lot, which is confusing for many of us, Gen X mums, but it's not all they're doing, you know what I mean? They are all still doing many other things too, and sometimes you shouldn't focus on that so much.

But the biggest concern for me about all online communication, whether it's boys or girls, it's just the dehumanisation of it. The thing that I think is most crucial, and it is why I am a big fan of co-ed education, is that we have to realise that all genders are fully actualised human beings just like we are.

And that is not what the internet encourages. You know, it's not what the manosphere encourages. They encourage that women are notches on the bedpost or people to be conquered or decorations, not humans, not fully realised humans. And sometimes we can do that to guys too. I mean increasingly they're more concerned about their appearance but also very obsessed with status in lots of different ways, whether that's educationally or sporting way or appearance or all these things. We don't see each other as fully realised people.

And that's where every problem stems from, in my opinion. Then it's very easy when somebody isn't really human to you, to treat them terribly online or offline.

Melissa

I wonder, you know, sometimes you think that children today have more freedom. We've talked about that, but do they have freedom to challenge some of those traditional gender expectations?

You know, they might acknowledge that they're there, but when they push back on them, do you think they face new pressures when they do push back against those expectations?

Holly

Yeah, I do think that, and I, and again, I think maybe even more for boys. It's very telling, not that this is the Luke Bateman show, but it's very telling that there are very few men from within that culture, the hyper-masculine footballing culture who will speak out about its problems.

And if they do, they do afterwards. They do it when they're out of it, they'll say that was a problem. Whether that is domestic violence, whether that is alcohol, whether that is gambling, whatever it is. And one of the reasons for that is because it's the most human thing in the world to want to belong, right?

And both in real life and online, we want to find our people to belong to. That's the great appeal, for example, of sport of course, but many other things as well. We want to find our people to belong to and we don't want to be cast out of that. And if we can't be trusted to keep the secrets of that group, then we will be cast out.

So, I think there is a lot of pressure to conform and also not to rock the boat. I think it's interesting that we all are quite well versed because of news stories, the terrible effects of online bullying. And I think that is really a way to try and keep everybody in line, isn't it?

Like, very often you will become a target when you speak up, and I know how hard teachers work and parents work. We say, ‘Say the right thing, speak up, call out bad behaviour, call out your friends if they're doing something terrible.’

But that's easier to say than do, and it's easier to say than do online and in real life. And I do really worry about that, for want of a more elegant word like, tribalism, that can affect kids in that way.

Melissa

I was thinking exactly the same thing, when I was listening to stories about Luke as well. What a shame he couldn't say that at the time. It is always the after. But yes, that connection, that belonging.

So, I guess if you had the chance to take some of the pressure off and change one message boys hear over and over again through some of those platforms about what it means to be a real man, what would it be and why? What would be your key message?

Holly

I'm not an expert in masculinity, but I really admire the people who are speaking on this who will just reiterate many times to boys and men, how possibly the most masculine thing you can do, if that's something that you're bothered about is to be kind and to protect and support. Rather than to attack, to bully, to belittle. One of the greatest things about traditional masculinity should be about making other people feel safer and not less safe, you know?

And so again, I think that it's possible to be, and this is why it's so wonderful when there are male role models who are stepping up and modelling this, if you can model that you can play football and be a sort of traditional masculine guy, but you can also be kind and sensitive and like reading books and help your neighbour or call out somebody when they are calling a girl names or whatever it is.

That's a model of masculinity we should do. But really, I just want boys and girls to know that they can be themselves. There are lots of different shades to all of us. The things that are great about our traditional gender roles sometimes, but we're all interested in a lot of different things and it's fine.

Let's embrace our diversity, rather than try to make ourselves smaller.

Melissa

Yeah. And I guess the same sort of message would be for girls?

Holly

Yes. I think very much what I see around me a lot with young women is that we're pretty good at telling young girls they can be anything they want to be now, but then when they get to a point where they do want to be those things, they realise that they've got a lot of things stacked against them that men don't have.

For adolescent girls, there's very often this moment of realisation of your intense vulnerable visibility in the world. As soon as your body starts to change, as soon as you begin to be perceived differently. And sometimes I wonder, and I wrestled with this in the last novel that I wrote, ‘He would never’, sometimes I think we're lying to girls a bit when we say, ‘You can do anything, you can go anywhere, you can be anybody.’

And then sometimes they realise their vulnerability around boys and men and they go, ‘Hold on. This doesn't seem to be the same playing field that we're on here.’ I wish we could fix that. I think we're trying.

And then the other stumbling block for the girls doing whatever they want to do is that if you want to have a family too, you'll be taking on the load for all of that and whatever you want to do. What I'd love to tell young girls, and I do tell the young girls in my life all the time, like, ‘Family isn't your job. Family is a team sport. Do not buy that stereotype that everything to do with children and a home is on your lap. And like a big career or a big dream or whatever it is you want to do, that's just adding to that plate. It's like, it's a team sport. Team sport.’

That's what I say all the time.

Renee

Yeah, I agree. And, I mean, you've talked about how you grew up and you sort of talked about how that shaped you and now you are shaping your kids in that same way, you know, by passing on not just the messaging, but the modelling.

Holly

Yeah, I hope so. It's funny because even though it wasn't talked about in my house much, but it was just, understood because everybody had a job and a role that, like, of course dad cooked dinner sometimes.

Of course, dad went to the shops. Of course, dad cleaned up. Everybody, did. You know what I mean? They certainly have grown up with a model that their dad and their mum are both equally capable of doing all of the parental and household stuff.

I know that isn't possible for everybody. I don't want to preach that as if it's easy. Part of what made that work in my house, I guess was because, well, a, it's who you picked, so that's the other message I always say to girls is that, I can't remember who said it, but some girl-bossy, feminist type said, ‘The most important decision you'll make if you're a straight woman is who you'll pick as your partner, because that will determine whether or not everything lands on your plate or not.’

And my partner, a, is very capable of that, but also I had a big job that paid the bills. You know, it also makes financial sense. I would have never have expected that I would be with a male who didn't participate equally in home life, I guess.

Renee

Look, let's drill down. We are working with schools. Schools have a really important role in helping young people to build healthy relationships in lots of ways through curriculum, through the cultures that exist within their schools, through the modelling of the staff. From your perspective as a parent of two children who are still in schools, what kind of relationship skills and boundaries do you wish or hope that we’re teaching in primary schools and early secondary schools?

Holly

I have to say, the teachers I come into contact with are amazing at this. I felt very fortunate that the primary school that my kids went to. We used to live in Sydney in the city, and then we've moved to a regional area down the South Coast of NSW.

In both of those primary schools, there were great male teachers. My daughter had male teachers three times in her class years at primary. I was really happy about that. Equally, my son had great male teachers too.

I think that there is much more emphasis on talking about boundaries, respect, about considerate behaviour, all of those things. And now that the high school that my kids go to, the staff are very diverse.

And I think that they're seeing in action every day that these professions are to be respected. I’m really impressed that the teachers that we've come into contact with, they're not afraid to call you if the, if behaviour is, is not where it should be to talk about those things.

And there's just a much greater emphasis on it than there was. I wouldn't presume to understand the challenges that teachers are facing in the classrooms when we know about this blasting of influence from online that we were talking about earlier, complicating everything all the time. But what I see is a lot of really agile, adapting to that and talking about it. And I think talking about it is a really important thing.

Renee

Good segue into a question that I'm going to ask. You've talked about like whole of community having responsibility, and one thing that we support schools with is the role of teachers and leaders and the role of parents and the Respectful Relationships Education can be very value laden, and parents see things in different ways. So, if I said to you if a 10-year-old girl asked the question, ‘How should I be treated by boys and friends?’ In your role as a parent, what would you hope her teacher might say to her?

Holly

Absolute respect, like a human being whose feelings matter.

Like to me, that's the core of everything. I think, it's interesting because obviously we talk a lot to boys about the way to treat girls. I'm not saying that teachers do, but we do in general, and I just keep coming back to the fact that treat them as if they're you in a way like they've got all the same feelings that you do.

I know it gets complicated. I know there are really complex layers when adolescence comes into play and all of those things. One of the reasons I'm a fan of co-ed education is that boys and girls build friendships. That is so important.

Like, I just think that when you are only presented with the opposite sex as being an adversary or a romantic opportunity or whatever it might be. Like, I just think realising how much more we have in common is important. So, with absolute respect would be my answer. But also, as you would treat any human being who you were empathetic about their feelings.

I'm not on board with women are from Venus and men are from Mars. I think we're all from Earth.

Melissa

I like there the human aspect that you're talking about. Yeah, just the simple messages there. Be kind to each other.

So, I'm an English teacher and, and I enjoyed your last book. We're not going to talk about those things at the moment, but they’re so layered with the messages and the characters in there. And we know that schools and families are only part of the picture we're trying to get messages about the world through the stories.

They matter as well, the stories and the characters. But you work in media that often gets accused of fuelling some of those stereotypes. Have you encountered a book or, a character that you think does a brilliant job of modelling more expansive masculinities or girlhood messages?

Holly

I think storytelling is everything. And I think that storytelling is going to increasingly be more and more important as we're in this era of AI and instant knowledge at your fingertips. And being able to communicate story is really the most important thing in getting people to empathise.

I mean hardly preaching to an English teacher about the importance of reading when it comes to building empathy and expanding worldview. Like that is everything about books, right? I was an avid reader when I was a kid, and it's very frustrating for parents now, including myself, even though I'm an author, because our kids have so many other options in terms of where they're putting their eyeballs and it's really hard to get kids to read, right? We are all freaking out about that.

But I would say to my kids all the time, this is where you can stop living in your head for a while and travel into someone else's head. And that's only a good thing. It's only a good thing to holiday behind someone else's eyes. And so, I encourage my kids, I mean, it doesn't work, let's face it most of the time, but I encourage my kids to read really broadly.

And when it comes to media and casting those roles, you're right. Like media does enforce a lot of stereotypes, but we're also swimming in so much content and culture now that you can find the things that reflect your view, to a point.

I also love consuming media that challenges my view. This doesn't fall into that category, but a very current thing right now is that the show, Ted Lasso, which I know we would all probably know, is just coming back and it's the show about the football team in Britain with the male coach and blah, blah, blah.

When I first started watching that show, I was like, ‘Oh, here we go. There's a woman who's bent on revenge for her cheating husband. The other women who are in the show, they're going to be in competition. The men are all going to be like alpha male footballers and whatever.’

And very slowly and with so much humour and gentleness, that show didn't do any of those things. Women being pitted against each other is one of my absolute pet hates. Like, of course it happens in real life. We are not perfect creatures who don't clash and don't have ambition and competition, but the bitchy competitive stereotype of girls is so lazy.

And that show totally worked against that. It also showed the attractiveness of men who were sensitive, and also masculine at the same time. It showed the diversity within the team. I loved how that show did that, and it didn't hit you over the head with it. It wasn't a lecture. So, I think that's great.

When it comes to books, I read very broadly. I mean, my favourite authors would be everything from like a Sally Hepworth, to a Charlotte Bronte, to a Zadie Smith. Like I love women's stories of all kinds from all over the world, from all kinds of different perspectives. I love a meaty zeitgeisty book like ‘Yesteryear’ that just came out about trad wives. That's a discussion I could have for a year.

I like to have my preconceptions challenged. I like to read complicated women who don't conform to all the martyr mums and all that kind of stuff. I just think that stories are there to poke us in all kinds of directions and say, ‘Do you agree? Don't you agree?’

I'm very against the idea of only consuming culture that you fundamentally agree with or see yourself in. You've got to broaden your horizons.

Melissa

I really want to dive into the books, but I'm just mindful of what we are doing here.

But I, but I also like the idea that you touched on again too with, ‘He would never’. The ‘wild woman’ and how the ‘wild woman’ is sort of ostracised a little bit, which goes back to your Shakespearean in times, you know, your ‘Taming of the shrew’ and why do you have to not acknowledge that there could be good qualities and protective qualities about that side of yourself as well.

Holly

Absolutely. My daughter's been doing, feminist readings in her school this year in English. And oh my God, I'm so into it. And she just rolls her eyes at me ‘cause I'll be like, ‘So the way that we could do is,’ and she's like, ‘This is not you.’ And I'm like, ‘I know, I know.’ There are lots of boys in that class, and they're all doing the same feminist reading.

Back to my point earlier about how the online world is very siloed, is that it's very difficult to not see that as like, here's this side and this side and they're in combat. What we'd all love, I'm sure to get across more about the whole notion of equality is that it's better for everybody. We can have these difficult conversations, but it's not about you losing and me winning, you know, that's not what that's about.

Melissa

Yeah. We talked about, um, limiting. So, you know, if you've got that attitude, then you're limiting the potential of..

Holly

Yes.

Melissa

Everyone.

Renee

We're moving towards the end and let's come to more of a hopeful conversation. We've talked a lot about the challenges, but I mean, what gives you hope about this generation of kids now and how they might rewrite gender and relationship rules?

Holly

I think they're doing it. I think they're doing it in their own way, in their own style. It might not be that comfortable for us in some ways, it probably shouldn't be for older generations to look at them and think, ‘That doesn't follow the script that I want it to follow.’ And I think they're muddling their way through these complicated worlds.

What gives me a lot of hope? Well, I touched on it before, and it's not about education, although it is in a way, is my daughter's football club gives me a lot of hope. Because every game that I go to of hers, when the girls are gonna run out and play, or the women are gonna run out and play, whether it's the little kids or the big kids, the boys’ team has to line up and clap them out first, show the respect and encouragement to that team going out.

And then when it's the other way around, the, the girls do the same thing, right? I love this tiny gesture of absolute respect and equality, which is just, you are playing, we are playing, we are doing the same thing. It'll be different. Nobody's saying that it has to be exactly the same, the same standard, all those things, the same style, the same intensity, but we support you, you support us. That gives me a great deal of hope.

Obviously the manosphere is very frightening and we're all very well versed in the Andrew Tates of the world. But sometimes I worry that in focusing too much on the thing that you hate is not helpful. I think that you've got to let that be a fringe situation and focus on the stuff that lifts up. So I really enjoy the expansion of different kinds of masculinity that I'm seeing. And as I say, I see my kids have friendships across genders that are very genuine and real.

And I think that that's really, really encouraging. So, I think there's actually lots to be hopeful about. I think that there's lots to be scared of all across society and the world. We are living in very particular and peculiar times, but sometimes I wonder if focusing too much on the negative is just going to dig us further into that pit.

That's what I wonder about. So, I try and stay upbeat and not set my hair on fire every time I see my kid watching something on YouTube and, the guy says something that I'm like, ‘Oh’. I try to be like, ‘Okay, but can we also do this and watch this and be that?’ And, you know, keep putting the, uh, mosaic together.

And as I say, the teachers I see at my kids' schools are very good, at facilitating complicated conversations.

Melissa

So, your focus is sometimes it's the small things like the gesture that you're talking about that can have the big impact. If our listeners are teachers, school leaders, parents, and they just want to change one thing right now to better support our young people with gender and relationships, what would you ask them? Is it something small, like a small gesture?

Holly

You know, what a really small gesture is, and I'm sure that you guys don't do this. Primary schools in particular, don't always call mum. When something happens and everybody calls mum, it's like, don't do that. Everybody should do.

That's a really silly, small thing is like the idea of spreading family responsibility where possible I think is really important. It's really interesting how those conversations come across.

I think that not siloing, it'd be my actual more serious answer. It's not a criticism, but even from primary school, like it's the boys and the girls. It's the boys and the girls and I just think less siloing and more cooperation and more understanding and it sounds like such a bumper sticker thing to say, but that we're all more the same than we are different and that we all win when we're all doing well. And it's such a bit of a Pollyanna thing to say, but I wouldn't ever presume to advise teachers who know a lot more than I do about the realities of working in a school.

But I think the more encouraging the kids to see themselves beyond their gender really is, is what I would love to see.

Renee

Holly, thank you. It brings us to the end of our conversation, and it's been an absolute delight to talk to you, and there's so much that's come out of it. It's really reminded us that, children and young people's understanding of gender and relationships, belonging really is shaped well before they have the words to describe it.

It starts in families. It's reinforced by culture, it's reinforced by media. But we all have a role in shaping our young people. And our young people actually have a role in shaping the culture that we live in right now and in the future. So, you've filled us with hope, and you've been very honest and, and had some great insights today, and we honestly do appreciate that you've given your time to Department of Education and being so positive in advocating for the role of teachers as well.

So, thank you for being so gracious.

Holly

I think that teachers are among, you know, should have the highest status, I really do, in our society. You do an amazing job. I want to thank you all. So, thank you for having me today.

Renee

Until next time. Thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful and inclusive school communities. One conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREpresentED, the podcast by the NSW Department of Education, exploring gender equality and masculinities and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity. Together we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal Nations across NSW and pay our respects to their lands and waters. To Ancestors who have cared for Country and to Elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength, and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Renee West

Welcome to RREpresentEd, the podcast dedicated to embedding Respectful Relationships Education across every corner of the NSW Department of Education. I'm Renee West and I'm joined by Melissa Ferrara, and we're both members of the RRE team in the Department of Education.

Today, we're stepping back to ask two questions that sit underneath everything else we talk about in this series, ‘Why prevention?’ and ‘Why schools?’. And to help us answer them we're joined by two guests from Our Watch, Australia's leading organisation for primary prevention of violence against women and children, Gen Sheppard and Cameron McDonald. Our Watch's work sits behind so much of what shapes Respectful Relationships Education in NSW public schools and other education sectors across Australia, the evidence on what actually drives violence, and what it takes to change it before it starts.

Today, we're going to unpack that evidence together. By the end of this conversation our hope is that RRE stops feeling like a lesson you deliver and starts feeling like a lens you carry with you into every policy, every hiring decision, every resource that you choose. So, let's start at the beginning. Welcome Gen and Cameron.

Genevieve Sheppard

Thanks, Renee. Thanks Melissa. Thanks for having us along today. We're really excited to chat, all things Respectful Relationships Education. My name is Genevieve Shepherd. I'm the Principal Policy Advisor for Respectful Relationships Education at Our Watch.

Before joining Our Watch, I was a primary school teacher, so I bring both a classroom and policy perspective to the work. At Our Watch, my role is to help governments and education systems understand what effective RRE looks like, how it can be embedded across schools, not only in classroom teaching, but through leadership policies, staff practices, and engagement with families. What I'm really interested in is how we translate our large goal, which is preventing gender-based violence, into practical actions that make sense in the everyday life of the school.

Cameron McDonald

My name is Cameron. My pronouns are he/him. I'm a Workforce Development Lead here at Our Watch, and I've been here for almost six years now, and for me, this is a dream job. It brings together everything I've wanted to do my whole life. I went on to study social work and I've worked in men's behaviour change, and I've also worked in high schools with boys doing primary prevention, education work, and healthy relationship work many, many years ago. My first role here was to develop the Men in Focus practice guide, which is all about how to work with men and boys and address masculinities in the prevention of gender-based violence.

And I'm so excited to be here to talk to you today and support your work, because if RRE had been around when I was going through school, it would've made my life a lot more enjoyable and it also would've given me a much clearer avenue into allyship from a young age.

Renee

Yeah, I think a lot of us agree with that, Cameron. Alright, so before we start talking explicitly about RRE or Respectful Relationships Education, why do we need primary prevention and what are we ultimately trying to change or prevent?

Cameron

Yeah, great question, Renee. Sadly, we don't have to look too far to see that there's an epidemic of violence against women and gender-based violence, not just in this country, but globally. What we see in the media is only the tip of the iceberg. What sits beneath the iceberg is still causing so much harm.

It's an epidemic that affects women, it affects children, it affects gender diverse people, and it does affect some men and boys across society because it's such a society-wide issue with lifelong society-wide impacts. It's why everyone in society can and needs to essentially play a role in preventing it from happening in the first place.

Genevieve

We know that violence doesn't come from one single cause, and we know that gender inequality creates the environment to allow it to happen. And that includes beliefs that men should be dominant or in control, that women are less capable or less deserving of respect, that boys and men should prove themselves through toughness, aggression, or sexual conquest, for example.

So primary prevention works to change those attitudes and expectations and the power inequalities across the whole population. When I'm talking to parents or schools, a useful way to think about it is the river analogy. So, response services are essential, they help when people who are already in the water need support. Early intervention notices when someone is moving towards danger. And primary prevention asks, why are people falling into the river in the first place and what can we change upstream so fewer people are placed at risk? It doesn't mean we have only want to do primary prevention, we need early intervention and response. They all need to be operating.

And in terms of schools, they're a really unique environment where that is happening on a daily basis. We're trying to prevent through attitudinal change, we're responding to incidents, we're intervening when we can see that there's potentially risk or someone's at risk of experiencing violence or perpetrating violence. So, schools are really, again, speaks to why they're such an important setting for this work to happen.

Renee

So, staying upstream and talking about schools, Gen, I mean what is Respectful Relationships Education? What are we talking about?

Genevieve

Respectful Relationships Education is the education system, so our Department of Education's contribution to the prevention of gender-based violence. We know that schools are not a panacea for all social issues, but they have a really important piece. We think about a puzzle. RRE is one piece of the puzzle for society-wide change. It's a really big significant piece. And what we're talking about is lots of different aspects to it. It supports students to learn about equality, respect, consent, power, privilege, entitlement, control. It also asks the school to model these ideas through its culture, through its policies, and through its everyday practices.

Schools matter because they are places where children spend a significant part of their lives, but they're also learning environments, they're workplaces, they're community hubs. And we know that young people not only learn from what they're formally taught, but they're watching who leads, whose voice is heard, which behaviours are challenged and what adults model.

Often, I'd say it's around sometimes I'm sitting on the couch eating some snacks and I tell the kids that they're not allowed to sit and eat on the couch eating their snacks, and they see me doing it and that whole lesson is out the window. So, if we can't back up what we're saying in a school, then we know that lesson will be ineffective.

One of the things I always say is RRE is not a one-off lesson or a short series of lessons. It's not a guest speaker, it's not even a programme with a start or endpoint. It's a way of looking at the world and approaching the world. It's that lens that you talked about, Renee. It's about, our school environment is a place where I can feel safe and supported to be myself. I will be encouraged to be myself. I will be supported to be myself, and most importantly, I'll be celebrated for being myself. It's the way we look at the world, and we put that over our school.

Melissa Ferrara

I think that was a really good point that you made, Gen, about the modelling. Really got to reflect on what we are doing as leaders and school teachers.

Cameron

We also do work in workplaces with sporting clubs in government, local government, helping state governments with their prevention strategies. Children are receiving a message. Staff who are working at the school are receiving a message. The parents are receiving and hearing similar messages in their workplaces. When they go to their sporting club on the weekend, when they go to their place of worship, they're hearing those messages that resonate and complement each other. That's how we're going to affect change. We're taking that action across all these really different aspects of society. The education centre isn't the only place where this is happening.

Renee

Yeah, it's a really important point. There's an expectation that schools will address all the social issues that exist, and we know that the life of a young person now is constantly changing and evolving, and it doesn't look the same as when we are all young.

We are one piece of the puzzle, but it means that we do have a key responsibility. We often talk about RRE’s evidence based and evidence informed, but what do we, what do we mean? What does the evidence tell us about RRE? Where does that evidence come from?

Cameron

The problem of violence against women has been a problem for such a long time, and globally. It means there's a lot of evidence out, there's a lot of data, there's a lot of lived experience, which tells us what women and children and gender diverse people's experience of violence is.

And that tells us that that violence is patterned in its nature. There are no one-off causes that we can blame. So that's where the evidence began, was seeing those patterns and saying, you know what, it doesn't matter what socioeconomic background people come from, what race, religion, what country, what suburb people live in.

This is a problem that is across society and so therefore, what are the patterns there? And once those were unearthed, well then we know what needs to be addressed. And that's where Change the Story came in about 12 years ago now, bringing together national and international evidence for this really large scale pattern of gender-based violence, what causes it. And that unearthed what we now call the drivers of violence against women. And these were universal expressions of gender inequality.

As Gen said at the start, there's that really strong and clear link between gender inequality and violence against women. And these expressions of gender inequality we know sometimes operate in isolation, but they often interact and reinforce one another.

And where those gendered drivers of violence against women are present, that's where we know the risks of violence occurring is higher. So, once we know what those drivers are, we can then say that violence is preventable. It's not inevitable. Change the Story provides us with that roadmap, with that evidence for what we need to do.

Genevieve

We know what we need to do in this space. I think that's a really key lesson we want to get across here. This isn't about, oh gosh, what do we need to do about this problem? We know as a country what we need to do, and we have a framework to guide us in this space.

10 years ago, we ran the secondary school pilot in Victoria based on the national and international evidence about what works in schools. And what's always come through consistently, regardless of the country, is that it's a whole school approach. That that work needs to be happening across all aspects of the school. And this isn't just an Our Watch evidence base. I want to be really clear here. This is the national and international evidence about what works in schools.

We know what works and we know that it is addressing those gendered drivers in age-appropriate ways across the school and using the schools the mechanism to do that work. We also led a primary school pilot that built on that. So, both of those pilots have been really the biggest pilots in Australia around what works in primary school and secondary schools.

And we're really fortunate in Australia that we now have really evidenced based approaches across different states and territories. And NSW is in its infancy in implementation here, but it's been really brilliant to see the approach taken by NSW. We know what we need to do. We need to build a workforce to support this work.

This isn't just about saying to schools, here's some lessons, go and do that work. How are they supported to do it? How do we enable them to do that work really well? So, what are the foundations we're developing to be able to do that? And we know from the evaluations that RRE is effective when it's implemented with fidelity and by that, I mean, implemented how it was intended to.

So not just going, let's just do this thing over here. It's about what's the workforce say? How are teachers supported? What does professional learning look like for them? How are they enabled to access that? And we know when that happens, that RRE can improve the understanding of gender equality and respectful relationships.

It can reduce adherence to gender stereotypes. It strengthens student-teacher relationships, which is really, really fundamental to this work. And it also contributes to reductions in gender-based bullying, bullying, and discrimination. So, we’re continuing to build on the evidence, but what's really important is to know that we know what works in this space. We need to now take the step to make sure we're doing that.

Melissa

I know we talk about the gender-based violence, but in plain language, why is gender important to understanding violence against women and understanding that distinction with gender?

Genevieve

We take a gendered approach because we know the problem is gendered. We know that predominantly most acts of violence, regardless of whether the victim is male or female, are perpetrated by men. To then have a solution for that problem, we need to look at it through a gendered analysis. We need to understand that there's something going on in our environment that is socialising or setting up the conditions where young men and boys feel like there's a certain way they have to act. There's a certain way they have to perform. There's a certain way they have to look. There's so many restrictions around what that looks like for them. Young men don't want to be in that box. They tell us this regularly. We don't want to be in that. That's not for us. We want to be able to break down those walls around it. We want to be free to be ourselves. We don't want to be sitting in that situation.

When we talk about the patterns, and Cameron spoke about it a little bit before, it's that we do understand that violence in schools does have an element that is gendered. We do understand that girls and women experience violence in greater severity, on more frequence, and that can look really different depending on someone's identity.

But it is really important to think about, this isn't about blaming and shaming men and boys. This is about gender equality for everyone and that the restrictions are placed on everyone to be certain things. So, this is about breaking all of that down for young people regardless of their gender. We want everyone to feel safe, equal, and happy to be themselves.

Cameron

And what we're hearing in droves right now, aren't we, is women's experience teaching in the classroom, gender diverse people's experience teaching in the classroom, and the kinds of ways in which gender is currently being weaponised. Let's think about how calling someone a woman or a girl or other words that I won't repeat are used as put downs is evidence of that.

And some of these ideas about what being a man, what being a real man constitutes and how that makes you an alpha or whatever, tell us that gender is still being weaponised and gender inequality is still a thing. And that's important too because attitudinal research shows men and boys do believe that women and girls should be equal.

They should have access to equal opportunities, and they should be able to live free from violence. That's the positive and that's the strength that we can work with, is that a majority of men and boys do believe that. Where the problem comes in is that there is some misinformation going around where people think we have achieved gender equality, or dare I say it, some people even thinking that it's gone too far.

The reality is that gender inequality, sexism, misogyny, is still large. So how do we connect with the people that we want to connect with on a heart level, I suppose, about how that is still being used to harm. And that's why we talk about gender-based violence. As Gen said, majority of that is being perpetrated by one gender, which is men. So, there's many reasons why we use that term and why there's many reasons why gender is still at the heart.

Genevieve

A way to understand that approach that Cam talked about then within a school setting is when we think about school-based bullying and harassment, we talk about bullying as being something that a school needs to unpack.

But when we really look at the details of bullying, it's highly gendered in its patterns. And bullying is often experienced by other boys against other boys. We talk about gender policing. So, boys policing other boys, you don't look the right way, you don't act the right way, you don't play sport, you don't do this.

And then if you don't conform to those, there's a social penalty at play there. You'll be ostracised, you'll be targeted. And that is understanding gender-based violence. So, one of the key pieces of work I do when I'm talking to education departments is unpack and understand what are we talking about in gender-based violence and how are we responding to that as a system?

Let's look at all the things that are happening and break down some of these silos. We've got bullying over here. We've got positive schoolwide behaviours. How do we bring all those in and make sure they sit underneath the umbrella that is Respectful Relationships Education and take an approach that doesn't just address the behaviour but goes deeper and looks at the symptoms and what's underlying that.

If we can do that, we are then going to be able to change those attitudes and behaviour because we are not responding to individual behaviour. We're going back and going, what's driving that? I can see what's driving that. As a school, we need to break that down, bring it under the same umbrella, and help everyone in our school community, including parents and families, to understand that these things we're seeing are forms of gender-based violence.

We need to recognise them. Because if we don't recognise them, we are never going to address them appropriately and they're going to be in the same situation. So really fundamental to this work is having a conversation about what we're talking about. And I would encourage anyone who's in this space to say, let's have a think about that. What does that mean? Where does my work sit? That should be sitting across there, that should be sitting underneath that umbrella. Because we take that coordinated approach, we are definitely going to see better system change and outcomes for young people.

Melissa

One of the key things for me was really having a look at and using that gender lens when you're looking at the whole school approach. It's not just in terms of the curriculum. And I think when you see that, you realise that there's some embedded things that maybe unintentionally had a gender bias attached to them. And they're sort of things that leaders can look at and modify.

But I just want to go into gender stereotypes a little bit more and just knowing that they can seem harmless to some people.

What is it about gender norms and stereotypes that can be harmful for boys, girls, and gender diverse people specifically? For example, when we hear things like, boys will be boys, why does it matter that we challenge them, particularly when it's some of those behaviours that we might see in school?

Cameron

This work is about addressing those rigid gender stereotypes because those rigid gender stereotypes do harm everybody. There’s this idea of the Man Box, rules that are expected of boys, at least if they want to be seen as the kind of boy that gets looked up to, that gets put on a pedestal, that gets admired and revered.

And many young people are rejecting these rules because they can see how much harm they cause, but they are still hanging around and they're still pernicious in their impacts. The research does clearly show that the more rigidly people adhere to the idea of what a man needs to be considered a man, and how a woman should behave and what she should be, the more likely they are to support violence-supporting attitudes.

The research shows that these gender stereotypes are harmful for the people who hold them for themselves as well. The problem is the rigid gender binary. This idea that men and boys should be like this, women and girls should be like that. What is really central to breaking that binary down and opening up possibilities to people of all genders so that people can be who they truly are, who they truly want to be, free from these stereotypes, which just limit people.

Genevieve

I'd say with that, it's not about swapping those boxes, it's about taking the walls away for young people, and that's what RRE is about. It's about removing the walls, and that can be really simple and easy to do. We need to give more kudos to teachers to the way that they are able to do this work every day within their school.

They might not call it primary prevention, but teachers are experts in the students within their class. They hold the relationships, they see behaviours, and they unpack this on a daily basis. Questions that are like, what do you mean by that? Would we say the same thing if that was a girl or that was a boy? That word's being used to put someone down. Can we think of another word that we could use to describe that? Everyone gets to choose different activities, whatever interests them.

There's really great ways that teachers do that work on a daily basis. Just about reflective questioning. That’s an interesting statement. Where did that come from? I wonder why we think that? Let's unpack that and have a chat about it. Bang, you are not getting a class or any student, regardless of if they’re 5 or 6 or 15 or 16, that don't want to talk about what the world looks like for them.

So, teachers are really skilled at that. We might not call it unpacking gender stereotypes as a lesson, but that's essentially what we're doing when we give those spaces to young people to have conversations, and that's what RRE does. It provides the space for safe conversations, to explore, to ask questions, to have a little bit of role play, to understand what that looks like. So, RRE provides that space for them to do it.

Renee

Talking about some of these conversations, how do we talk about masculinity and gender inequality in ways that invites our boys and our men into the conversation? That doesn't make them feel blamed, but also it doesn't diminish the experiences and voices of girls and women. What's your advice around that? How do we have these conversations?

Cameron

It is a balancing act, but it is possible. I’d always go back to the idea that we invite men and boys to reflect on the fact that these issues are historical. They're structural. As someone who was born a boy and grown into a man, I can and do benefit from the way that our structures have been set up historically. So, I can stay blind to that, I can stay ignorant to that if I want, or I can say, you know what? This actually isn't fair. This system was set up to privilege some people over others and if I do really believe that the women and girls in my life should have equal access to opportunities like I do, then I need to take steps to challenge those.

That could just involve calling out sexist jokes or attitudes. It could be not privileging the boys and letting their voices always dominate in the classroom. It might be small acts that challenge that gender privileging. We say not all men are violent, but all men can and ideally should be part of the solution.

There is a growing number of programmes working with men and boys around mental health issues, which is so important, but it needs to be called for what it is. If it's about social and emotional wellbeing, that's great, but it's not preventing gender-based violence until it is actively addressing those gendered drivers. If it's not addressing those gendered drivers of violence and it's not taking this whole of approach, so doing more than just working with individuals, then we say it's not actually preventing gender-based violence.

We also have to expect the best of the men and boys that we work with and in our lives. We shouldn't say that men and boys aren't ready to learn about male privilege, for example. Learning about male privilege really opened my eyes up to this set of rules that I was born into, that impacted my relationships, and the more that I was aware of them, the more I could have better relationships with people of other genders in my life.

Melissa

I like that, Cameron, you've realised there's benefit to be gained from acknowledging the privilege, in that you've had stronger and better relationships.

Genevieve

Often, we hear this word privilege and power, and it can feel overwhelming to people, and I think there's really simple ways that we would do that in a school. We might read a storybook, and at the end of the book we will say, let's have some questions. Who's telling the story? Who benefits from the story and who's missing from the story? That's three simple prompts that you could use with a 5-year-old or a 15-year-old to think about whose voice is being privileged in this book. Who's telling the anecdote or the narrative? And how do we unpack that? What would we do if we told that a different way? Or what have we read that from someone else's perspective?

So, I think power and privilege can get caught up in this big academic conversation, but we unpack power and privilege daily in schools and we do that in age-appropriate ways. So, we just want to be really clear that that's something that has to happen.

And as Cameron spoke to around men's health, of course it's essential and important, and there's obviously an opportunity to invest in both men's health and prevention. Because we know that strong mental health support for boys and evidence-based prevention, the problem arises when we describe the first as though it automatically delivers on the second.

We need funding and investment for both mental health and prevention, but we need to be really clear about the outcomes, the purpose, and what they're aiming to achieve. So, without that distinction, we risk diluting primary prevention to the point we're no longer addressing the gendered drivers. So that bit around social-emotional learning, absolutely, help-seeking, problem solving. We need to normalise that for everyone. We also need to unpack power, privilege, and entitlement. And that's where the rub is. We need to make sure that we're doing both. And it is essentially what RRE a hundred percent does.

Renee

Let’s for a second think about some level of resistance. Cameron, you just talked about that statement. When we first started this work and we did one of our first presentations as an RRE team, we had somebody in the audience call out ‘But it's not all men.’ It's not all men. We're still hearing that statement. I know people in schools have told us they've heard ‘Are you saying boys are the problem?’ That sort of statement coming up.

So how could someone respond in a way that keeps that conversation going and keeps the conversation open while still addressing issues of gender inequality? What's a response that could be used?

Cameron

Not all men are violent, but all men can be part of the solution. So, do you want to be part of the solution here? Boys aren't a part of the problem, unless they are. Unless they are being bullies. Unless they are coercing girls to do things that they don't want to do. Boys are capable of being the problem, but they're much more capable of being part of the solution, being allies if they want to be. And if you want to be, here's how.

Genevieve

Here's how is a good one, because again, teachers do this work so beautifully and it's unpacking the work and questions like, what part of this conversation feels unfair or uncomfortable to you? Let's unpack that as a classroom with boys and girls and gender diverse people in the one room. Let's unpack that and have a conversation about it.

Can we distinguish talking about the things that we see, like we've talked about, the gender stereotypes that impact you and the individual behaviour. Let's separate those out. Let's have a talk about what are the big pieces that underline it? How can we discuss it without making assumptions about anyone in the room?

But it's just leading in with those questions. Why do you feel so uncomfortable? Let's have a conversation about that uncomfortable and unpack it. If we're able to do that with young people, it's not just the person who's asking the question, everyone else is always listening to those answers. We're absorbing what's happening in the classroom.

If we can create the spaces to go, I hear you, but what about this perspective? It's the empathy component of it, isn't it? It's empathy and understanding what this looks like for others, what feels uncomfortable and unfair to you. Let's get into the weeds on this conversation. Ultimately too, let's talk to the girls. What feels unfair and uncomfortable in your world to you? Bring them together and they will tell you the solutions. They'll tell you the problem, but the young people will tell us the solutions as well.

Melissa

Tapping into that whole idea about ‘in your world’, we know that young people are more and more encountering strong messages online about what men and women should be like. How can we, as educators, help students critically examine these messages without shaming them or telling them what to think?

Genevieve

We know that the online environment is having a significant impact on all young people and all aspects of their life at the moment. We want to make sure that those conversations and work to address that comes underneath the RRE umbrella. Again, it is not separate. We are looking at tech-facilitated abuse, behaviours that happen online, the use of AI. That, again, is part of RRE, so how do we bring that into the tent and have those conversations? And it's never about don't watch that or don't do that. It’s again let's have those conversations. Let's give them the space to have the conversation.

And I think here we're talking a lot about the manosphere and what the manosphere looks like and how that is impacting young men and boys, in particular, about ways that they think they need to act or behave or perform in certain aspects of their life. But it also is having real time effects on the safety and wellbeing of women and girls.

We talk about the manosphere, we're talking about that broad collection of online communities and influencers that talk about men, masculinity, dating, and gender are generally the themes in that space. No, it's not one single group, but it's every piece of content that builds up.

We're starting by talking about going to the gym and looking buff, and then all of a sudden, we're on that algorithmic path. If we can have conversations in classroom and unpack some of that, I'm not saying let's bring up some of those influencers and increase their views, but let's have a conversation about what's the message, what's in it for them, not for you, but what's in it for them?

It's generally financial gain. What message are you taking away from that? What's missing from the conversation? Again, it's those critical literacy skills. It's having those four, five questions that can open up that conversation with young people, trying to help young people to unpack what it is they're seeing online.

And not all of them are seeing that content, but we know huge rates and that the impact of algorithm is sending a lot of messages, particularly to young men and boys, who has the power? What is the power saying? And do we believe that message? Because often it isn't a belief of young people. It's thrown out in a classroom as a bit of a rage bait, click bait conversation.

The response is important, because everyone's hearing, let's have those conversations in respectful ways. And again, I would go back to that whole school approach because as women teacher in a classroom, if that's coming at me from 3 out of 5 periods a day, I need leadership support to step in and recognise it's fundamental for that whole school approach, is that school leadership have a commitment to gender equality and Respectful Relationships Education and will hold the line with accountability. Because we need to make sure that those women teachers in particular feel safe.

It's their workplace. They have a right to feel safe within their workplace. Yes, happy to say, let's have a chat about that. What does that message tell us? But also, let's make sure that they're safe in their workplace, because we are losing too many teachers and too many women teachers early in their career because of this.

So, we really need to step in as a department and as an education system and make sure that environment is safe and supportive for women teachers, particularly our young women teachers who are starting out.

Renee

You've both talked really positively about the role that teachers play and how much work they're already doing. So, lots of practical tips. Let's drill into narrowing it down for a teacher. So, for teachers listening to this now they're on their way to school, on their way home from school, doing something active. They're thinking, I understand why this matters, but what can I actually do tomorrow? Where would you suggest they start? Give teachers a starting point.

Genevieve

First thing I would say is thank you. Thank you for keeping on driving and turning up and the amazing work you do. Teachers actually make our worlds better places. If you are listening to this podcast, then you are probably already halfway there. You are doing these things on a daily basis.

Keep noticing the things, keep raising Respectful Relationships Education at your school, in your staff room. What are we talking about here? What are we going to do about that? What does that look like? How are we prioritising it in your classroom? Continue to, as you already do, build those foundational relationships with young people.

Because we know when we do Respect Relationships Education in schools, that there's often an increase in disclosures, and teachers will hold those disclosures because they are the safe adult for young people. So how do we support and make sure teachers can recognise when they see or how do we respond appropriately? And a hundred percent, that is about, I believe you. Thank you for telling me. Let's work on this together. It doesn't have to be a complicated process here. It's listening to our young people and building those relationships, which they are doing on a daily basis. They know them best. So as a teacher, I would say keep doing the work you are doing.

Have a think about the gender lens across, regardless of what you teach. You don't have to be an expert in prevention. You can be teaching maths, you can be teaching economics. You can be teaching history and go, well, actually, whose voice am I prioritising here? Or if we look at economics, let's have a look at superannuation and the pay gap. Let's unpack those as something we could look at.

So, everyone can do this work. It's not a prevention expert or not. It's let's have a look at the gender lens. So, I would say keep noticing what's happening in your classroom. Apply that gender lens and keep building those relationships with young people because they see you as a trusted adult in their life and they need you to help them steer through a lot of these conversations and actions that are happening in the school environment.

Cameron

This is generational change that we're talking about. That work applies to ourselves too. Reading the works and listening to the voices of women and people from different racial backgrounds with different life experiences to us, so that we can build our empathy for what the world is like for other people and how it isn't fair for everyone and how we can use our position. Especially if you have any position of power or leadership, how you can use that to set the tone for the kind of culture that we want to see in the school as a workplace. We can be challenging and transforming the gender unequal society that we currently live in.

Renee

And before we do wrap up, I just want to throw out there, is there anything else from your perspective, Gen or Cameron, that you haven't had a chance to talk to that you'd really like to get across before we wrap up?

Genevieve

I think one of the pieces I would is around the role of leadership and commitment in this space. And we do have the most brilliant teachers, but they need to be supported by principals. And that's a really important piece of the puzzle. And when they do, we can see real shift. And I think often about, again, it's that whole school approach, but thinking back to a story that a principal told me when he had two grade six girls came to his office and reported that they experienced sexual harassment in the playground.

And sometimes I share that story with people and they say, oh, Gen, grade six is young to be learning about sexual harassment. And my response to that is always that the school or RRE did not teach those girls to experience the behaviour. It just gave them the language to recognise and name what was already happening.

And that's a really important distinction. Giving children the language to introduce the harm helps them make it visible. And when our school leadership can recognise that and understand it, we are then going to see those shifts, because we are understanding what it is that it's at play, and we are making sure that we're creating an environment where young people’s voices are heard, and that they're actionable and that're believed and listened to.

There's a link there to families, because families are a really important piece of this puzzle. They are partners in this work with us. We need those messages reinforced at home. If you're a parent listening to this podcast, my call out to you would be, please send an email to your school as soon as you get out of the car that says, thank you very much for embedding Respectful Relationships at our school. It is vital. Or, hi, are we doing Respectful Relationships, whole school approach to Respectful Relationships at our school? If not, why not? As a parent, you have a really important voice in schools, so please don't downplay the importance of your role and what that one line that you send to a school principal can do.

We need to call out the good. It's easy to write an email when my child doesn't make the grade, get the teacher they want, or there's a problem with school parking. But how about we write an email that says, thank you. Thanks for doing this work. It's really important. It's really important for me and it's important for my young person.

Renee

Gen and Cameron, thanks again. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for your expertise. Thank you for your ongoing advocacy. You've brought some real clarity to some genuinely difficult questions today, and I think it's a conversation that a lot of teachers and school leaders will want to sit with and probably listen to again.

If there's one thing to take from the episode, it's that Respectful Relationships Education is not one lesson, it's not a guest speaker, and it's not a programme with a start and an end date. It's a way of looking at the world. It's a lens. And once you start noticing who gets interrupted, which jokes get laughed at, whose toughness gets praised, once you see that, you can't stop noticing it.

And that's exactly the point. And a whole school approach means that lens shows up everywhere in the policies that we write, in the behaviours and expectations that we model in schools, in the resources that we choose for our classroom. In the same way that glitter gets into everything and never quite disappears.

So, if you are listening to this and wondering what to actually do tomorrow, start small. We had some great advice from Cameron and Gen today. Notice one moment. Notice one thing, name one thing, ask one better question the next time. Do what you're already doing. Keep expanding on it and spreading the word across the school.

When students start disclosing more, remember, that they're naming things they couldn't name before. That's not a sign that something's gone wrong. It's actually a sign that you've created a space that's safe enough to speak and that they trust you to listen. Schools can't carry this alone. School leaders, parents and carers play an important part, and so does the wider community, all have a part to play in reinforcing what's taught in the classroom and what's embedded within the school. Because prevention only works when it's everyone's job, not just one lesson or one teacher's job.

So, thanks again for joining us. Thanks for listening to the Department's Respectful Relationship Education podcast. You'll find more resources that the Our Watch team have talked about within the show notes.

Until next time. Thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful and inclusive school communities. One conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREpresentED, the podcast by the NSW Department of Education, exploring gender equality and masculinities, and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity. Together, we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal Nations across New South Wales and pay our respects to their lands and waters. To Ancestors who have cared for country, and to elders past and present whose knowledge, strength, and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Renee West

Welcome to RREpresentED, the New South Wales Department of Education's Respectful Relationships Education podcast, made for the teachers and school leaders who are building cultures of safety, respect, and belonging in schools right across New South Wales. I'm Renee West, and with me today is Cherryl Martinez.

We are from the Respectful Relationships Education team and supporting NSW public schools across the state. Today's guest is someone who has spent more than three decades listening to the questions young people are too embarrassed to ask out loud. Dr Melissa Kang is a professor of adolescent health, a primary care physician, a researcher, and the author, alongside Yumi Stynes, of the Welcome To series, including Welcome to Consent and Welcome to Sex.

But I'm sure many of you will know her by another name. For 23 years, from 1993 to 2016, Melissa was the Dolly Doctor, the person a generation of Australian teenagers turned to when they needed honest, compassionate answers about their bodies, their feelings, and their relationships, and they had nowhere else to turn.

What Melissa learned in those years is something that should matter deeply to every educator in this room. Young people are not disinterested in these conversations. They're desperate for them. What they need are trusted adults who are willing to go first. They need adults who treat their questions with respect rather than embarrassment, and who understand that talking honestly about bodies, consent, and relationships isn't a risk. It's a form of protection.

Today, we're going to talk about what great consent and Respectful Relationships Education looks like in a school, the kind that builds real skills, real confidence, and a school culture where every student feels seen. We'll talk about what teachers get wrong, what they get right, and what the research tells us makes the difference.

Because as Melissa has always said, there are no silly questions. There are just questions that haven't been given a safe enough place to land.

Renee

Dr Melissa Kang, welcome and thank you for joining us today. You have spent many years working with young people and supporting those who work with them, and it's a real privilege to be able to connect directly with you and connect you with educators in our system.

Many people know you as Dolly Doctor. But your work and research goes back further than that, and for teachers who only know you in that role, what has 23 years of answering teenagers' private health questions taught you about what young people need from the adults around them?

Melissa Kang

Thanks so much Renee and Cherryl. It's delightful to be here. I'm really happy to talk to you both.

What 23 years of Dolly Doctor taught me was it really reinforced what I had learnt as a medical student and as a junior doctor about adolescence. And what that was, was that it was a period of time obviously when there was a lot of change happening. But there was a real increase in self-consciousness, self-awareness, and what we might call a self-centeredness, but in a positive way.

So, this real focus on the self and what was happening. What the Dolly Doctor letters showed me was how incredibly intricate and detailed some of that self-awareness was. So, questions about body parts that maybe I'd never thought about before or heard about in medical school, symptoms and experiences that again I…you don't learn that in medical school.

So, I got this really incredible insight into the changes that were happening, the way that the writers were thinking about those changes, and about their real self-consciousness about that.

Cherryl Martinez

A lot of the questions that you've had, they don't really change across that generation.

I was, you know, one of the millennials that read everything and engaged with all of the things that people were asking, because they were so relatable. All the things that we were really embarrassed about ourselves with you answered and made us all feel really normal. They were always about bodies, and they were always about feelings and belonging.

In that time, did anything change, and what does that tell us about the world today that students are growing up in?

Melissa

The main thing I noticed was in relation to what I'm going to call genital body image. So, those earlier, probably the first decade of questions I was answering, were very much about body image.

But it was always, ‘This is how much I weigh’, ‘This is how tall I am’, ‘Am I overweight?’. Or, ‘I am overweight,’ or, ‘I'm underweight.’ Or it was questions around the whole body, and often about weight and shape.

What started to creep into the questions was, ‘This is what my genitals look like.’ And that was put down to, and I'm certainly not the only person to say this, I think there was research being done at the time as well, but it coincided perhaps with the increased visibility of pornography, the removal of pubic hair so that the vulva and the labia became much more obvious to that young person.

A lot more questions about, ‘Are my genitals normal?’ So that was, probably the main change or increase I saw. I think there was over that period of time an increase in the number of questions about mental health concerns. So, anxiety, depression, feeling socially awkward, things like that. We saw more of those questions over time.

Cherryl

I talked about this with you earlier about how in that sealed section of Dolly Doctor, which, you know, Dolly was a girls' magazine. It was a teenagers' magazine. Boys started asking questions, and obviously people's brothers were getting into our magazine. So, I wonder when you were getting those questions that you were just talking about, was there a gender difference with what was being asked?

Melissa

I think there was a gender difference. The context in which the girls expressed their concerns or their anxieties, or their worries were very often in their social context. So, they might be concerned about their weight or their shape or their breast size or some asymmetrical part of their body. And that was often in the context of, ‘Will I be attractive to a potential partner?’, ‘Will boys find me attractive?’, ‘I don't feel attractive or normal compared to my peers.’

Whereas the questions from boys tended to be, ‘Just tell me the facts. What should my penis size be?’ or ‘How do I shave?’ or ‘How do I deal with my sweat?’ That's all they wanted to know. There was no context around, ‘Will I be attractive to a potential partner’, or ‘I'm comparing myself to this other boy or that other mate.’

You know, it wasn't like that. I would say that was the main difference.

Renee

And Melissa, your research I know has found something that maybe would surprise teachers, and that's that young people actually want adults, so you know, their GPs, we'd probably argue teachers as well, to bring up these difficult topics first.

What does that mean for schools in the sense of creating space for those conversations?

Melissa

You know, I've thought about how lucky in a way I've been. As you know, Renee, I wanted to be a teacher before I wanted to be a doctor. One of, I think, the easier things about being a doctor is that, that space is created in a one-on-one environment, and I think it's much easier to perhaps set a scene or to say, ‘Can I ask you about this?’

I think in a classroom situation it can be unsafe, it can be difficult, it can be very awkward to know how to do that as a teacher, I imagine. And therefore, my answer is really I think teachers are the experts, not me, in creating those safe spaces for students in the classroom. Teachers can give messages about there are no dumb questions, normalise the curiosity of an adolescent and what they're going through in their bodies, but also in their social context and within their families and amongst their peers.

Normalising all of that and saying, ‘A lot of young people, or a lot of teenagers, or a lot of year eight or year nine students,’ or however you want to put it, ‘wonder about X, Y, Z, and that's okay. It's okay to wonder about anything at all.’ So that can sort of make it perhaps feel like it's a safe space to bring awkward issues up.

And the other would be, and we teach this actually to health professionals as well, is using that third person way of questioning. So, having a hypothetical person that this is happening to and bringing the class into discussion about that hypothetical person so it's not really about them. I think those would be my two thoughts about how to create those kinds of spaces that allow young people to feel like it is safe to have questions.

From teachers I've spoken to as well, it's a bit of a Dolly Doctor kind of tactic in that you have a question box that's anonymous in the same way that the questions to Dolly Magazine were anonymous. So, I think that's another way to do it.

Renee

Yeah. And you talked a little bit earlier about some of the anxieties that were showing up in the questions that were coming in to Dolly Doctor.

Outside of the research work that you do, you have been a clinician for many years and working with young people. I guess from your letters, your research, and your clinic work, how do some of those gender rules maybe shape what young people feel safe asking?

Melissa

There was a definite gender difference in my clinical work.

My experience was that boys and young men are far less likely to show any vulnerability, and that is a problem. So obviously in a one-on-one context I could try to engage them to feel that they could trust me and that they could show their vulnerability.

It was incredibly hard, I found, for young men who might feel attracted to other young men to be able to disclose that. That was particularly so if they were from a particular cultural background or a particular religious background, that that was really hard. Whereas I found with girls and young women, even if they were experiencing incredible disadvantage or vulnerability in their lives, that they were much easier to engage in those kinds of conversations.

Again, once they had gained trust. So, I think that would be the biggest thing. And I think it probably in a way was reflected in those Dolly Doctor questions, as I said earlier, even though there were far, far fewer questions and letters that came from young men and boys. There was still no vulnerability shown around those at all.

Renee

From a teaching perspective, when you're using the question box, I'm sure a lot of teachers that are listening know the same. The questions that are coming in are very much about, ‘Am I normal? Where do I, where do I fit?’

Cherryl

That's all we wanted, right? When we were teenagers, was to make sure that we all felt normal.

I like when you were saying normalise it by saying, ‘Some people’. I think that's a nice safe way that teachers can use when we answer those question boxes in the same way that Dolly Doctor did. So, we could all be a little bit Dolly Doctor, I think, in our delivery there.

One of the big things that we do in our work, and that a lot of teachers are talking about at the moment, is consent.

Your book, Welcome to Consent, has become a go-to resource for a lot of educators. And the core argument that we have is that consent isn't just about sex. It's a life skill, and it starts the moment a small person says, ‘Don't hug me.’

Can you walk us through that broader definition and why it matters for schools?

Melissa

So, the book Welcome to Consent, which Yumi Stynes and I co-wrote, it does move on to sexual consent, and I think it's important to put sex into sexual consent. This is what we're talking about. However, the book is broader than that in a way. It's about bodily autonomy, I would say, and the right to decide who can view or touch or change your body. That's really what it's broadly about, and how to apply that in everyday life.

So, I think at the beginning of the book, we use an analogy of borrowing a T-shirt, which isn't exactly about bodily autonomy, in fact, but it is about learning to respect what belongs to someone else and learning to ask permission to access that thing, whatever it is.

From there, the rest of the book flows into how we give permission or ask permission to engage with someone else's body or some other part of their body. And there are lots of examples that are not sexual that still relate to bodily autonomy.

I think I give this example in the book, but my mother had bright orange hair her whole life, really pretty much until almost the end of her life. And I grew up in Malaysia, where my father was from, and people would come up to my mother in the street and touch her hair because she stood out so much, and she found that extremely uncomfortable, understandably.

We hear stories about that, you know, in all sorts of places. Many years ago now, when I was pregnant, people felt this automatic right to come and touch my pregnant belly. I think we now do not do that, but I think back, going back 30 years, that was not uncommon that people thought that was, it was their right.

In fact, I saw someone do this in the street, crossing the street the other day, thinking, ‘Yeah, it's not okay to do that.’ Touching a person's wheelchair, you know? That is part of their bodily autonomy. So those sorts of examples come up in the book, and I think that that's the broader meaning of the Welcome to Consent book.

But obviously it also ties into gender-based violence, to sexual harassment, sexual assault, and it's really important that we build the skills and the understanding of what consent and bodily autonomy mean before we even get anywhere near that point.

Cherryl

With bodily autonomy, it should begin in early childhood.

This idea of micro skills, having self-awareness, emotional literacy, the ability to name feelings. How should a primary school teacher build those foundations before a student even reaches high school?

Melissa

There's a lot to do with language, and naming and understanding what the words mean that match certain feelings.

So, I think those things can happen very much as a factual exercise in a way. I also think teachers, parents, adults, health professionals can role model their own emotional literacy. Role modelling the ability to express those emotions verbally is a really common and simple way to do it that we don't often think about. We just kind of shortcut through that.

Renee

And so, you're talking about vulnerability, and I think that's one of the challenges in the classroom is sometimes there's a few things that are difficult with this content. We hear, and you've done a lot of research and work in this space, Melissa, where we hear teachers talking about, like, how far is too far? What's appropriate to teach?

And we know that the curriculum sits there as age-appropriate, but within our program we do quite a bit of work around creating the environment. And what do you think, regardless of whether it's a, a parent or a teacher, but just in the sense of with an adult, what, what are some of the characteristics that a young person wants to experience within the space and also within the person that they're talking to when they're talking around this sort of content around bodies, around consent?

What does it look like for a young person? What would they like to see? What would bring out that level of safety, do you think?

Melissa

I think it starts with understanding your own body, and that's why we talk about learning correct terminology for body parts, learning about what those body parts are for at an age-appropriate level. Being able to say those body parts without feeling embarrassed.

I can think of examples from my own childhood where you didn't say the word, didn't learn the word for breast, actually. Just that sort of, it's wrong to say those words. Or it's wrong to look at that body part. So, I think trying to, as much as possible, teach children and young people in an age-appropriate way that this is what this is called and this is what it does.

I think then as we progress into early adolescence, and all sorts of stuff is going on. Bodies are changing. They look different. They smell different. They function a little bit differently. And in the kind of, I guess, in a sexualised culture that we grow up in, those body parts and then new sensations in the body start to have very different meanings, and they get applied in different ways, and they are very gendered. So, I think if it's at all possible, pre-empting that. So, trying to sort of pre-empt and anticipate change before it happens or as it's happening is another really important thing to do.

And I think the great sadness about the opposition to sex education is this myth, this belief that by pre-empting and anticipating what a young person or their cohort might start to go through is somehow going to put ideas in their mind.

There's absolutely no evidence that that is the case. And that if it does put ideas in their mind, it is good information, safe information, sensible information, rather than this feeling of either this is shameful or this is somehow thrilling and risky, and it's just sort of all calm down. There's Taylor Swift lyrics, just got to calm down or something like that. I think we should all live by that.

Renee

Well, so maybe while we're on that topic then, so and you raised it earlier, but pornography is now shaping a lot of young people's first understandings of sex. Often that is years before they're engaging in a real relationship or engaging in any sexual behaviours.There's an evidence base to that, and the National Sexual Health Survey gives us that information.

But let's concentrate on the school environment. I mean, how could school teachers and leaders, how can we address that reality without the, I guess, the moral panic and outrage that you're kind of alluding to that?

How do we calm down, but address the fact that porn is becoming a sex educator for a lot of young people?

Melissa

It is a real concern when you read some of the research that talks about how pornography is shaping young people's sexual scripts. In other words, you know, how one should play out in a sexual context, that young people might be thinking that this is how it's done.

And I wonder sometimes if that is overriding what I think young people have a lot of, which is common sense. The first thing to point out is that a pornographic film or movie or video of any sort, or image, is acting. It's not real. It's scripted. What young people might see in pornography not only is sort of acting and fake in a sense, but it's extremising some practices.

And that's not to dismiss all sorts of sexual practices that consenting adults might want to engage in, but it's pointing out to young people that it's all exaggerated for the sake of entertainment. And I think that because we do have really good data on young people's access to pornography, the average age at which that happens, I think those things can be presented as facts in the classroom without it causing any sort of moral panic. And doing it in a non-judgmental way.

We know that adolescents, as their bodies are changing and their brains and their social lives are changing, some are going to start to become interested in romance and sex and having intimate relationships.

Pornography is not education. The bodies that you see are not representative, even the average. If you've got a whole classroom of young people with some who have zero interest or experience to those who might have had some or a lot, it's about sort of finding that common platform to say, ‘This is what the research shows. This is what it is.’

Teachers have had a lot of experience over decades and changes in society around things like media literacy in general and advertising.

Cherryl

I'm just going to say thank you for trusting teachers to do the right thing around media literacy there. That's very empowering in a place where sometimes teachers feel like we're doing the wrong thing. So, I think we all appreciate hearing you say that.

Having taught students who have accessed pornography for a range of reasons, as you've mentioned, and some of it is based around curiosity, some of it is based around learning things. And I feel like a lot of students can open up and talk about romance or talk about, ‘Miss, I have a boyfriend,’ or, ‘Miss, I have a girlfriend. This is what's happening.’

But the topic around sex can be really hard to talk about and, you know, even as an adult sex can be very hard to talk about. But in the school, where do you think sex ed is failing?

Melissa

I wouldn’t say that any of it's failing overall. I think any sex education is good. I think, though, I guess we know from national surveys that a lot of young people say that their sex education wasn't relevant or it wasn't enough.

But I also understand from research I've done, and Renee's been involved in some of that, the difficulties and barriers are, I think, that we have to be careful in sex education. That we are talking to all the students in the room, and beyond actually. So, I was thinking about the need to involve everybody.

So particularly young men, boys and young men need to be brought along in that conversation around consent, sexual violence, all that sort of thing. It's all right to tell someone, it's another thing for them to actually take it on board. But vulnerability and, the fact that it, actually we're all vulnerable at different points in time, and that's okay.

We need to acknowledge not only sexuality and gender diversity, but cultural diversity, diversity of values and morals and religious affiliations. All those things are really important to acknowledge and say, regardless of all of that, you will figure that out for yourself. But you need the initial building blocks in order to get there. Which is to understand yourself, your body, your attractions, your feelings as you're figuring out your identity and who you are in the world, this is a part of that journey.

Cherryl

You mentioned all students and diversity and inclusion. I feel like sometimes our narratives, I guess, and the things that we are fed and the things that we unintentionally feed our students represents one type of person.

And your Welcome To series is inclusive. It speaks to all young people, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds. So how important is that inclusivity to the effectiveness of consent and relationships education? And what happens to students who can't see themselves in that material?

Melissa

It can be hard to know. I mean, I still kind of think, gosh, I've forgot to think about this particular scenario or that particular scenario. We need to sort of ask, I suppose, if you see yourself or don't see yourself, but that's not something you can expect an individual young person to own up to.

I think it's just about understanding that there is constant shifting and movement around identities. And that one identity at one particular point in time for one individual might change over time. And that that's okay. And we just need to always remain open to that change. It's okay if we get it wrong. I think we need to have some humility around that, that no one knows everything.

I certainly don't know everything. I certainly have made mistakes in the consulting room by misunderstanding or not asking the right questions at times, and I apologise for that when I find out.

So, I guess it's about creating also not only a space where one feels safe to ask, there's no dumb questions, that sort of thing. But also, for the adult in the room, whether it's a teacher or a doctor or whoever it might be, a parent, to also be able to say, ‘Look, I don't actually have all the answers, and I actually don't know everything, and I don't understand everything. I'm happy to learn, and I need to learn from you as well.’

Renee

And that's a nice little segue to thinking about in schools who our audience is. Let's come back to it. Melissa, your research has evaluated youth-led consent education programs where young people themselves are part of the co-design process and also co-educators.

Through that research, what have you found and what is the place for student voice in how we teach this material in NSW?

Melissa

I think increasingly we have to start looking at co-design and co-production and co-teaching in the way we think about education or anything.

So, I think the study that you're referring to was process evaluation of a particular set of workshops that were done around consent. And that's not the most robust form of evaluation in that it doesn't demonstrate change in behavioural or even change in attitude over time. But what it did show was how well-received those youth-led workshops were. And they were peer-led or near to peer. So, I think, you know, that's a great starting point.

I'm reluctant to be really definitive about this. I believe that the best education around sexuality and respectful relationships and health comes from teachers who know how to deliver that, how to handle tricky situations.

Some surveys have shown that school students say that they actually like having an expert, a guest expert, someone to come in and talk about stuff, and that's fine too.

I think what I think is important there is that teachers are present or they're sort of engaged in some aspect of that even if they're not delivering the content itself. Having teaching delivered by young people or by an external expert I think is part of the mix, but not necessarily the most important because I actually think school teachers are the best educators for those students.

Renee

Confirming your advocacy for teachers coming through really strong, which we really appreciate. You've spent really more than three decades listening to young people. Arguably, you may have spent more time than any other adults in Australia listening to young people.

What is it you think this generation of young people most needs from us right now that possibly we are not giving them? What are we not listening to? What might we be missing?

Melissa

That is such a good question and such a hard one to answer. This is not up to a school or a teacher, but one thing at the moment I think is sleep. I think there is a crisis in sleep deprivation for adolescents who are going through those enormous changes of puberty.

I think the other thought that came to mind with that question was this idea of kindness. I'm not sure how much kindness is being experienced or kind of named and discussed, what it actually means, and it's a different entity to consent and, you know, respect. So, these are very general and non-sex education ideas, but I do think that that's what our young people are not getting enough of at large.

It’s not a school's job to fix any of that. I think that I'm answering that question more from a very general point of view.

And the other thoughts that come to mind to that question is like just safety and openness and no dumb questions and, you know, celebrating diversity. Talking with young people in the classroom about what diversity looks like to them. Because I think we have fairly rigid ideas at the moment about what we mean by diversity, but there's diversity in everything.

Renee

So then listening to you talk for the last half an hour or so in this engaging conversation that we're all having here together, knowing that we want our young people to be safe, to be respectful, to show kindness and to experience kindness, to have, to feel they can be vulnerable, that they have emotional literacy, that they can access help. These are the sorts of things that we're talking about.

So, Melissa, maybe just to finish, I mean, what's one shift that you would like to see, knowing you have family coming through the schooling system still to come, what's one shift you'd like to see within schools so that, so that all children and young people can grow up curious and safe and maybe even free from gender boxes and aspects of discrimination?

Melissa

I would say it's not down to one teacher or one department, it's the whole school, and in fact the community surrounding that school that needs to shift. It's not fair and it doesn't work to expect this culture change or this creation of safety and openness and kindness to just come from a health class or a health teacher. It's got to be everyone. Everyone's got a stake in this.

The expression ‘whole school approaches’ and health promoting schools and all those sorts of things are well known. I think we really need to see that enacted, and that I'm guessing that needs to come from the school leadership and their connection or the school's connection with its surrounding community of parents, carers, and others.

Thinking about the whole system rather than the best lessons or the best lesson plans or the best teaching resources. Those are important, but it's actually the whole system that needs to be part of that change.

Renee

Well, Dr Melissa Kang, thank you. There's so much in what you've shared with us that we can take back to our schools, to our classrooms, to our conversations with young people.

What stands out for me the most is that it's not just the importance of honest and age-appropriate teaching, but the power of creating spaces where young people feel safe to ask, to reflect, to learn without shame. It's a whole school approach, it's a community approach and responsibility sits with all of us.

And I think for educators listening, your message is really clear that when we avoid these conversations, we leave our young people to be able to piece together answers from others, from peers, from social media, or just from silence, as, you know, you've talked about. But when we do engage with care and with confidence and with respect, we give them something much more valuable.

We give them a vocabulary, we give them language, we give them understanding. And we give them the sense that their questions actually do matter, and they do matter. So, Melissa, thank you for your time, for your insight, and for your decades of work supporting young people. We really appreciate you sharing your morning with us.

And I know that everybody listening to this episode is going to take a lot from it. So, thank you.

Melissa

Thank you so much. I'm so grateful that you invited me, and it's always a pleasure to chat with you, Renee. And lovely to have met you too, Cherryl.

Renee

Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful, and inclusive school communities, one conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

[End of transcript]

Introduction

Welcome to RREPresentED the podcast by the NSW Department of Education, exploring gender equality and masculinities, and how they shape the lives, relationships, and experiences of young people. We sit down with experts, educators, and advocates to unpack the invisible scripts of gender and masculinity.

Together we'll explore the ideas, evidence, and everyday experiences that challenge stereotypes, promote healthy relationships, and support the next generation in rewriting the rules.

We acknowledge the many Aboriginal Nations across NSW and pay our respects to their lands and waters. To ancestors who have cared for Country and to Elders past and present, whose knowledge, strength, and leadership continue to guide and support communities.

Cherryl Martinez

Welcome to another episode of RREPresentED, a series made for teachers and school leaders who are doing the important, often difficult work of building safe, fair, and respectful school communities. My name is Cherryl Martinez, and with me is Renee West. We are from the NSW Department of Education's Respectful Relationships Education team.

We're joined today by two researchers from the University of Technology Sydney, whose work is genuinely changing how Australia thinks about online harm. Associate Professor Marian-Andrei Rizoiu leads the behavioural data science labs at UTS where he heads a multi-million dollar research programme into how misinformation spreads and why ordinary people believe it.

And Dr. Emily Booth is a research fellow whose work sits at the intersection of youth, digital culture, and radicalisation, exploring how teenagers get drawn into fringe online communities. And crucially what helps them find their way out. Together, they've produced research that turns a lot of our assumptions upside down.

Misinformation they argue isn't really about bad facts. It's about unmet human needs, the need to belong, to be seen, to make sense of a world that can feel chaotic and unfair. And the manosphere that sprawling online world of incel forums, alpha male influencers and anti-feminist content is extraordinarily good at meeting those needs, especially for boys and young men who are already feeling lost.

That matters deeply for every one of us in a school because it's shaping how they treat the people around them, including in our classrooms. So today we're going to talk about what's actually happening, what the research tells us about why it works, and most importantly, what we as teachers and leaders can do about it.

Renee West

Emily and Andrei, welcome and thank you for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. And thanks for sharing your expertise to everybody that is listening.

Dr Marian-Andrei Rizoiu

Thank you for having us.

Renee

Your research at the University of Technology Sydney or UTS has really shaped national policy on misinformation. For a teacher in say a regional NSW school who might not have heard some of the terms before that we're going to talk about what exactly is the manosphere and why should it be on every school leader's radar right now.

Dr Emily Booth

The manosphere is an online trend on social media that has roots going back into the late 20th century with men's groups and organising around social issues there. But it's splintered in the early 2000’s and has become a far less progressive movement than the origin was. At the moment, it's this conglomerate of various groups that included pickup artists and various kinds of productivity figures, and they've all centralised in on ideas of promoting a particular idea of masculinity and really strong gender roles, which are often quite out of step with where we are as a society now.

Sometimes this messaging can become quite dangerous and threatening with the messaging that it promotes. And this applies to both the messaging about women and ideas that women shouldn't have a place in the workplace or bodily autonomy or the legal right to vote and various things. But it also applies to ideas that men need to behave in really particular ways, and they need to look a particular way. They need to be repressed in particular ways to be a traditionally, quote unquote, masculine figure.

The impact on men is that it is triggering quite a lot of mental health issues. If anyone's come across the name, Andrew Tate, a really notorious influencer who was recently arrested again on various charges related to the kinds of things that the manosphere promotes. He's kind of this quintessential example and figurehead of the manosphere.

Cherryl

Talking about Andrew Tate, research involving Australian teachers found that manosphere figures like him are shaping how boys view and treat women in classrooms at the moment. For some people who may not be in a classroom, can you explain what teachers are seeing within their spaces and on the playgrounds and how widespread is that problem?

Emily

Sexism in schools is not particularly a new thing, but what we're seeing now is a real increase in this behaviour. Some of the things that have been reported in research and anecdotally include really sexualised behaviour in the classes, moaning, groaning, grabbing at teachers, asking really personal questions of them, or saying derogatory things directly to the teachers or female students often to try and get a rise out of them by bringing up manosphere talking points in ways that are very upsetting.

It can be referencing things that are illegal, and it led to an increase in physical harassment in the schools. Trying to intimidate or grope female teachers, as well as more severe consequences that we're seeing in terms of assaults of female students in the schools. And this is something that is not just reported in Australia but is actually a worldwide phenomenon.

These are the kinds of attitudes and behaviours that are promoted by the manosphere in terms of their gender messaging and ideology. Unfortunately, it's exacerbating existing kind of patterns of sexism into this really aggressive behaviour that is quite traumatising, I think for a lot of the female teachers and students.

Cherryl

I've got to say, I've had some of my students say some pretty jarring offensive things to me in my experience as a classroom teacher. It can be really confronting having a student that maybe you've taught for one or two years saying or parroting some of that Andrew Tate messaging back to you. But what is that appeal that they have?

What is the choke hold that these manosphere influences have on these young boys? What does it tell us about the unmet needs of our boys and our young men?

Emily

It is not wrong for boys and young men to want role models for how they should grow up in the world. This is a really fundamental thing. Everyone needs this regardless of your gender. You want someone who gives you an idea of what you should aspire to and what might be possible for you.

These figures in the manosphere space put themselves forward as these lifestyle gurus, of which the gendered messaging is only one component of the overall package that they're selling of how to be a man. So, they are not necessarily going and finding the manosphere content because they're like, wow, I really hate girls. I want to find someone who will make videos about hating girls. They're probably going there for advice on food, health, social relationships in a very general sense, male bonding as well.

What are some ways that I can relate to my friends as I'm getting older? Work advice and that sort of thing, which may not be practical, but is certainly appealing for the kind of lifestyle that they promote of this sort of get rich, quick, entrepreneur, self-made man type approach. They can be drawn in by all of these other things, and it's actually for a lot of those things not wrong for them to want those role models.

There are a lot of factors that have contributed to why this content in particular is resonating. And I think one of the factors has to be that young people are growing up in a really different information environment to what we saw even 20 years ago. A lot of the content that used to be made for young people, like lifestyle magazines and things that you'd pick up from the newsagent that would be really targeting this adolescent audience.

For girls that would be something like Dolly or Total Girl or things like that. And for boys, you'd have various kinds of sports magazines and science-based things and that sort of thing. Those don't exist anymore. You can't just walk into a newsagent and have a whole section that is dedicated specifically for young people that will give them that advice.

Even the kind of materials that have survived have moved into a more digital space anyway. It may be more accessible in the sense that it's online, but now it has to compete with the much more attractive, engaging, algorithmically promoted content that the influencers can put out. There's a real gap in sort of access to that age tailored lifestyle advice.

And this is where some of these influencers are coming in and filling that void and making use of new technological affordances that make it a lot more competitive against picking up a magazine for people who've grown up in a much more digital era in the first place.

Renee

And we know that one of the biggest issues with the online space is misinformation, and you've both written about misinformation.

You've talked about how misinformation is not really an information problem; it's a human problem. So, can you unpack that idea a little bit more for our listeners and what does that shift in thinking mean for how our schools need to respond as well?

Marian-Andrei

The big finding that misinformation is not an information problem took us by surprise.

Misinformation is essentially information which is false spread without a particular intention. Malinformation, which is information that is true, but it's spread to hurt or to produce a harm. For example, exposing private information, which is true, but it's put publicly to hurt. And then finally, we have disinformation this information which is false and spread with the purpose of harming.

This would be like putting out a rumour about the political candidate, for example. It's false and you're doing it to harm the person.

We make a difference really between misinformation and the other two based on the intent. When we say misinformation, we typically think conspiracy theories, right? Flat earth society, anti-vaccination. People come up with this in their own group. There is no mastermind they just spread it around the globe to influence how people feel as far as we know. Whereas disinformation is really set with a purpose. So, you will have either a company spreading disinformation about the rival, or you could have a country spreading disinformation about their rivals in order to achieve a particular goal.

We always thought that misinformation actually arises because people don't have access to the correct information. So, they are misinformed. Misinformation misinformed, which actually led to quite a bit of a rabbit hole in our profession by thinking that the correct approach to solve misinformation is to expose people to the right information.

So essentially tell them what is correct and then they'll see the error of their ways, and they'll just miraculously snap out of it. And it turns out that was wrong. It doesn't work. And we've found this via trial-and-error multiple times. You can't just go to someone who believes that vaccines are not good.

You can't just go and tell them and show them result after result of scientific experiment. It just doesn't work.

So, this is something that Emily and I have been doing for the better part of the past 5 years, is trying to understand what really is misinformation if it is not an information problem. We started with the classical assumption, it's an information problem. So, we started exploring the information environment, the producers, what's being produced out there by the fringe, the left leaning, the right-leaning, the extreme right type of publications, and what is it contained and how much we can trust it. Deploying both qualitative and pretty fancy computational tools.

And you know what we found? Nothing. We couldn't believe our eyes, no matter how we split it, no matter how we looked at the problem, there was nothing there. There was no signal. It almost felt like it doesn't really matter what you read, in general terms as long as you go to the main page of a certified news producer, you will get a pretty good coverage of what's happening in the world.

So, it is not about the producers of the misinformation, although they do have their biases, but beyond the biases that raw information exists there. It is well represented. But things changed significantly when we started looking into what the consumers, the people themselves share. When we started looking at consumers, everything was different. Everything was what we call statistically significantly different.

Consumers cherry pick what they share. It is not that what you read shapes your views, but your preexisting beliefs shapes what you read. It doesn't end there.

People are social beings. So, we seek company of people and then there is a phenomenon called homophily, where we seek the company of people similar to us. We tend to gather in groups with people that have similar views. So, then we form these groups where we can start discussing about this. So suddenly there is now a forum where we can start talking about these topics. And no matter how fringe and extreme the ideas that we're discussing, there will be a place, a safe place where you can take them and you can discuss them and people are encouraging and supportive.

Suddenly these communities form around these ideas, but they start to fulfil proper social functions, right? Which are coming from our own needs; our need to be appreciated, our need to be approved, our need to be valued. But the groups themselves, they spread the toxic information and really it doesn't end there.

They act like a filter mechanism of the information which flows inside. In our society, in our digital society, our information comes from the social media we are embedded with, which is extremely biased by these homophilic behaviours and also the recommendation engine. And that is a different beast on itself, which then adds on top of it to recommend more of the same.

What that does, creates a bubble around the users, online users, and then that bubble can drift as extreme as you want without the users ever even knowing that there is an alternative reality. So that leads to a number of these phenomena, like polarisation. We stop talking to the other people because we even don't comprehend them anymore, right?

We are not in situations where we interact with them. We only interact with our online bubble. There's an online bubble for every single thing. You asked me why misinformation is not an information problem, but the answer was probably a lot bigger than what you are bargaining for. But this is the mechanism.

It's not about the information itself, it's about the purpose and how it hijacks a mechanism that we as humans having built in ourselves, the need to seek shelter safety and form groups.

Cherryl

So, you've got these people and they're looking for a sense of belonging, and then they're taking not falsehoods or lies from the internet. They've cherry picked, as you said, the parts of it that resonate with them. Then they're found a group of people who also believe in the same sort of thing.

If they're then in the classrooms saying that to each other and saying those things to their teachers and talking about that with their peers, but they're also using information that they found on the internet that may be credible. What are we meant to do with that?

I'll put my hand up and say that I've probably been wrong there because I am very much like, no, this is real, and what you are saying isn't real. And I think most of us have tried to combat misinformation with facts. We're always trying to myth bust with our kids.

What should I have done in that space when these kids will be like, but I got it from here? And they've noted a reputable source of information on the internet. What should a teacher be doing instead of waving fact in these kids' faces?

Emily

And just to endorse that response. That is exactly the same academic response that we have where we're like, can we interest you in a fact? You know? And I completely understand that instinct. I teach at the tertiary level, so sometimes you have those kinds of similar things come up. So, I've had that exact same situation just to reassure anyone.

I might sort of narrativise that story a little bit. Imagine a kid called Ben, he's 13, he’s just started high school, doesn't have a lot of friends yet at his new school, he's feeling a bit worried about how to fit in, trying to figure things out.

And maybe he sees some things online that are sort of interesting to him about, isn't it really irritating when girls laugh at you or whatever. Like you fall over when you're playing a sports game and all the girls laugh. It's so embarrassing. Girls are so mean, they just don't respect men like they used to.

Maybe he's had something like that happen since he started at the new school and it was embarrassing and it was kind of mean for some of the girls to laugh that he fell over. That kind of speaks to him with his experience. So, he's at school, he's trying to fit in and next time something like that happens, he responds to the girls and he says, ‘Girls don't respect men like you used to. You should be more respectful of me as a man,’ and that sort of thing.

And all the girls that are there are like, ‘Whoa, buddy, who are you?’ And they laugh at him even more and then say, his teacher is like, ‘We don't talk like that Ben. That is not the right way to behave.’

But all the other guys around him are just like, ‘Oh yeah man, I agree. Same thing happened to me. Hate when they do that and that sort of thing.’

And so now he's got his community that's a little bit more on his side. He’s had it a little bit reinforced. He's got some social approval for it, but he is also had a really strong negative reaction. But the negative reaction has reaffirmed that negative experience, right? The fact that he had more embarrassment put on top of it has enhanced the feelings he already had.

And so that guy who posted that thing online, that was really useful advice that helped me make a couple of friends at school and it spoke to my experience. He watches it more and he starts to see this influencer going, ‘The reason why women don't respect men anymore is because of feminism’.

And he is like, ‘What's this?’

And so, you get pulled more into that. The potential sad ending for that is that he might get more and more pulled into that even more so than his friends at school would even approve of. But if they eventually turn around to him and they're like, ‘Look, you're going a bit too far with some of these comments,’ that will then have the same effect of pushing him further into that group. It's like, now you've betrayed me. You are on the other side.

I do want to reaffirm that this doesn't mean that teachers shouldn't be disciplining students for behaviour that is in breach of school codes of conduct and is disrespectful to people around them. If a student has a really particular bond with their PE teacher or with their maths teacher or whoever, that might be time for someone to have a bit of a conversation and be like, ‘Hey mate, you've said a couple of these things lately and we're interested in why you said them’, and that sort of thing.

And so not necessarily tunnelling directly for where did this come from and try and stop it. Why have you said these sorts of things? And if you can kind of dig a little bit to what the grievance is underneath. He's just had a really hard time adapting to school and this has given him a way, a framework of processing some of these experiences.

I really want to acknowledge it's a lot of emotional labour to put on teachers. There are obviously people who need to make sure that they have the resources in schools to support them in doing that, but I think that that is really the most effective way of coming in and responding to some of those things.

Renee

There's a couple of really key things there that sort of touch on some of the messages we build into our programme as well. For a teacher, knowing your students is key to everything. And you talked a lot about that. Seeing the signs, recognising changes in language, changes in behaviour. So, knowing your students is a key part.

And then on top of that, we use that phrase, be curious, not furious, knowing there's a human element, there's a health element here. So, coming at it, not from a hitting the consequences, but asking the questions and having some level of curiosity. I feel like you're touching on it, but can you tell us a little bit about radicalisation?

Let's use that term because it's used a lot, and your joint research identifies a step-by-step radicalisation pathway. Can you talk to us a little bit about what do we mean by radicalisation? What is that journey from say as you were just talking about then Emily, a curious teenager through to someone that's deeply embedded in fringe communities.

Emily

Radicalisation is a term that has been applied for things that are explicit violence like terrorist groups and particularly religious motivated terrorist groups. But the kind of principle behind it is an escalating investment in a particular ideology, potentially also community ties, training mechanisms, probably culminating in some kind of violence.

People who go on to commit terrorist attacks or promote them and that sort of thing. Recognising that people can radicalise for ideologies that are not necessarily religiously motivated or politically motivated. So not necessarily about taking down a particular government or political leader, but rather that these fringe ideologies, what you'd see in the manosphere can also be radicalising in that they are still promoting how society should be organised and how you should punish people who don't conform to that social norm.

It's a really useful concept for understanding the idea of how people can be pulled into different degrees of depth. And the ideas can be made more extreme. And what we're seeing from groups like the manosphere is that the violence that comes from that is not necessarily going to look like what we typically understand radicalised violence to look like.

It does not necessarily promote doing terrorist attacks, but instead what we're seeing is the kind of violent messaging that is associated with it is violence against women. And I think this is reflected in a lot of the reports that we're seeing socially, not just in Australia, but around the world of things like domestic violence going up and various crimes against women, murders and sexual assaults and rape appearing to be on the increase.

That is the kind of violence that we're seeing come from this particular kind of radicalisation. Manosphere is not at the moment declared a particular kind of ideological or terrorist group because they don't fit that kind of traditional model. But for us as researchers, it is a concept that applies and something that we would actually push for more recognition because it is still putting out this violence, which is terrorising, but it is terrorising in a really particularly gendered way.

Cherryl

Earlier you were talking about the grievances that some of our younger people might experience, and that really aligns well with those early stages of radicalisation in your research. Those things are driven, you mentioned, by anxiety, loneliness, and wanting to belong.

If I'm a teacher in my classroom or a teacher in my school or a leader in a school and I'm looking at my students, what am I looking for? If I'm looking for my most vulnerable students who may go into that, what should I be looking for?

Emily

I think one of the things that we can be aware of is seeing that they actually have some social networks. They're not sitting by themself all the time. Seeming like they might be developing a kind of hostility towards being around other students is a really classic sign. We want to make sure that people have these strong connections.

What we're seeing with the manosphere is that because it can interestingly promote this kind of group bonding, that may not necessarily be a signal for the manosphere ideology anymore because it may be something that they're doing as a group in a kind of social way, so that you might not necessarily have the same signals.

For this particular behaviour listening out for those sorts of things that they could not possibly have come up with for themselves as adolescents, right? You can hear someone else's words coming through with what they're saying. Feminism is cancer. Real common phrase that you might hear from some of those groups or similar messaging there.

You're not going to develop that political articulation by yourself as a teenager. It's like that has come from someone else. So, I think listening out for something where you can hear that echo of someone else coming through.

I think also heavy device dependence is something that we also really need to be aware of. Really strong protective form that you can have in the home, the computer stays in the central area, not in the bedroom. There is an opportunity there for engaging parents in that conversation as well. It's a lot harder for people to access content online that they shouldn't be accessing when you have a parent in the room, and that also gives an opportunity for them to intervene.

Heavy use of device dependence, repeating things that is not their own formulation. I think that that is something that you'd see as signs for someone getting invested in these groups.

Renee

Andrei, let's talk a bit more about algorithms and platforms. Your research detects misinformation through behavioural patterns. In practical terms, what does that mean and how are these recommender algorithms somewhat actively funnelling students towards some of this more extreme content? What does that look like?

Marian-Andrei

Let me start by unpacking a little bit, what is the recommender engine. We've all used it and we all use it every single day. The recommender engine is pretty much an algorithm, so it's a computer programme that recommends new content to consume. When you are on YouTube, you're listening to a video, and on the right-hand side it says, oh, you might also like, or the next video is. Those videos were selected by a recommender engine.

You are doing your online shopping. At the bottom of the screen it says, oh, you might also like these items. And I know at least myself, I ended up buying things I never used just because they really sounded good in the moment of time. Anyone in the audience is also finding themselves in the same situation? You are not alone.

The reason why this works is because of the recommender engine. We established that it works by giving you a response to what you want, but how does it do it? Well, it looks into two sources of data. One is your prior behaviour and your prior taste, and the other one is the behaviour of people similar to yourself.

It's actually turns out to have a dark side. The online platforms wants to sell me objects, things to buy. What does the social media platform want? Well, their currency is attention. Why? Because they monetise it. Having eyeballs on a particular page of people's attention means that now when you put that little ad on the side, that ad gets more clicks.

They monetise online attention via the ads, and that's how they make the money. Platforms always maximise attention. For them it translates directly into money. Have you ever noticed how being on TikTok feels like being at the pokies? It's exactly the same mechanism, right? That you swipe over and over and over and every now and then you see a content, which is nice.

You go like, whoa, I like this. And then you swipe, swipe, swipe. It is known in literature as intermittent reward mechanism, and it's been shown that this is the most addictive type of behaviour that can be achieved. Some of these modern platforms, they don't just emerge. They’re designed … it is built to keep people hooked to them so that they get milked for their attention. The recommender engine is one of the ways of keeping people hooked on the platform by recommending content that people are likely to consume.

So how do they do it? By recommending me the content, which is similar to what I watched in the past, makes sense, right? I like cooking shows, so why not give me more cooking shows. If they switch to a history channel video, I may just get bored and turn off, right? We don't want that. No, no. We want attention, right? So, cooking shows, it is.

Another source of information, is content is being consumed by people similar to me. Remember when we talked a bit earlier about the homophily and people with the same interests? Well, if you keep recommending the cooking shows that I watch, I may get bored because I watch them all. But you can tap into what my community or people similar to me watch, and they recommend that to me.

And really what the recommender engine does is try to look explicitly for things which are being consumed by people similar to me, but who are not my friends, because that is the gold they could actually recommend to me. Something positively new and cool that I've never encountered before, and I'll get hooked again and spend my time there.

Now recommender engines by themselves, they're not bad. They've been deployed successfully in so many applications, which help us by providing options which are actually relevant. So, in themselves, there's nothing wrong with a recommender engine. I've discovered a lot of music just by following the recommendation.

Here's where the dark side comes in. The moment when you have, say, content like toxic masculinity that enters a particular rule. Teenagers, they spend a lot of time on this content. The recommender engine picks on it. It's been shown in our literature that a fresh account of a young male that enters platforms such as TikTok does not take longer than 30 minutes before it starts being served toxic masculinity content.

It's not that boys go and hunt for it. If the recommended engine identifies you as a young boy, it'll start serving you toxic masculinity content. According to its statistical distributions inside the tool, it's the most likely content that boys want to consume. You may have heard about toxic team challenges, these young people performing all sorts of very dangerous procedures on themselves, sometimes ending up in deaths and other tragic incidents. These, again, are being promoted also to the same public.

So toxic masculinity is just one piece of harmful content, which is being bombarded to our young audience. There's a lot of really nasty, harmful content which the recommended engine just sends at them simply because it has no understanding of morality. It has no understanding of safety, and it has no guardrails because it does one thing, optimise engagement. And if it needs to throw the nastiest content at the young person just to maximise, to scotch them onto the platform, that's exactly what it will do.

It's an algorithm.

Cherryl

The recommender engine that you're talking about can easily send our students into content around toxic masculinity and the manosphere. The NSW RRE programme emphasises a whole school approach to gender equality and respectful relationships. So how does addressing the matters sphere fit within that framework?

Emily

Just in case anyone is feeling really terrified and overwhelmed by the power of recommendation algorithms, if you access your platforms via the web browser rather than via the application on your phone, you can get web browser extensions that will block the recommendations from showing up. So, this is a really good way for preventing people from being pipelined into watching stuff on YouTube that might have a darker turn than you expected.

Coming back to your question there about the whole school approach, if I can just draw on a paper, I published a couple of years ago where we were looking at attitudes towards online safety and misinformation. One of the most effective forms of education that we found from a teenage participant's response in an interview was actually her English lesson.

They had a text that they were studying that had opened up into a stronger discussion that the teacher had facilitated around your identity and how you present yourself to the world. And this student who we spoke to said this was the most impactful lesson when it came to thinking about the online environment for her.

It made her think about how are these influencers presenting themself and why are they presenting themself in this way, and how should I conduct myself when I'm online? There's a lot of opportunities for some of these subjects to engage in indirect ways in some of this messaging. I can see it having an opportunity in application in things like science, where you have a chance to understand the difference between biology and social roles and making distinctions about the things that influence human behaviour at a biological level.

I can also see it as, and that can come indirectly in maths lessons. If you have more descriptive problems reflecting kind of social dynamics that might be more progressive. It's not just like Mary buys 10 hair clips or something like that. Maybe Mary buys 10 monster trucks because she's just really into them or something. So, you have a chance to, at a really young level, actually push back at some of those things.

If teachers are given the time and resourcing by their school leaders to sit down and work through how they might want to integrate some of these things into their resources. And I know teachers are so overworked and have so much to do, but if they can actually have that structural support to have that reflection time, make some of those updates or changes, or maybe speak to their colleagues. Oh, this is what you're doing in in science. Oh, that's cool. Well, I could do it in this way. Share those skills. Then you kind of achieve that more cohesive thing rather than everyone trying to do something individually.

Cherryl

Both of you have touched on this in our conversation, critical digital media literacy. You've mentioned that in your research. It is a protective factor, so what does that look like in a classroom?

What can teachers do? What's an example of a lesson or a conversation that might build that skill?

Emily

It needs to be something that goes beyond simply digital, online safety skills. There are definitely practical skills that need to be learned about being on the internet, about how much information you give out about yourself and privacy.

I think also an important thing that is understanding how platform algorithms work. Promoting that critical engagement with the platforms, interpreting the content, what the meanings behind it is, the motivation behind the person who's promoting it there, what they're getting out of it, what is the platform getting out of it by sending you stuff that is upsetting all the time.

Well, it keeps you on there and you keep interacting because you're unhappy.

Marian-Andrei

But I want to just take a step back and just link it to critical thinking skills, which they help not just with this and not just in the platform and not just with the manosphere, but with misinformation in general. We find over and over again that thinking slowly asking questions is what is working the best in countering it.

There is one aspect that we haven't really touched. I wanted to put it out, is the power of the peers. Often the first people to understand and see changes in behaviour are their friends, their peers. They start seeing these, these changes in behaviour. This is something that Emily and I are currently exploring is can we actually teach and train the peers themselves to recognise the early signs?

Because they are usually the first to see, the parents probably a bit later, and the teachers, they see it obviously, but the first one to see that something has changed. There's a new word that they're using, there's a new remark they're putting out there, or it seems a bit more off here, so I just wanted to put it out there that they could be enlisting as a line of defence.

Emily

Things like that are really important to promote for boys and young men in particular because we know that vulnerable conversations are a lot more common with young girls and young women. Unfortunately, it is something that is not as common in male to male friendship because of the pressures that we have as a society around masculinity and not being able to share vulnerability, weaknesses, fears.

Unfortunately, that is also something promoted by the manosphere. If we can counter that influence, even with the indirect thing of you should be able to talk about your feelings with your mate. That's another way where the peers have an opportunity to do these interventions and feel that they're not going to compromise themself by asking if their friend is okay.

Renee

It's a really great point, and when we've done any research work with young people and focus groups with young people, what has always come out is that what young people want to learn more about is how to recognise things, how to support their friends, and how to do it effectively, but to feel confident and capable that they can do that.

So young people themselves want to understand that in a range of situations. I think it's a really important call out, the important role that peers play. So, we've talked a lot about what can happen within the classroom situation, within the school environment. We've talked a lot about just then you bringing up the role of friends and peers and the influence that we can have to build those healthy peer relationships with all our students.

I know your work has been used to brief and influence government agencies and really inform national policy. What's one or two things that you wish that policy makers would prioritise that maybe you think they currently aren't?

Emily

Regulation of platforms. Regulation of these features that are called persuasive design, but are addiction mechanisms.

If we're concerned about the social influences that this technology is having on us and our young people, they can just take it out. I cannot stress enough that the platform does not have to be addictively built in order to exist. You can regulate that stuff away. You can regulate a recommendation algorithm to make sure it's not pipelining to extreme political content.

You can regulate a platform to not be addictive. We wouldn't accept it with food packets like this might make you really addicted and depress you and give you mental health problems and possibly turn you into a terrorist. I think we should have the same standards for platforms, and we should all be looking to government more broadly to bring in some of that regulation.

There's already a lot of work going on with the Respectful Relationships Education programme, and I would like to see a more organised response about the harms that digital content can have or overuse of screens, particularly on the neurology of young people.

Marian-Andrei

I would add to that the harm does not come exclusively from the platform. When we were briefing government agencies and policy makers, we were trying to make it clear. This is also, something for our audience today, this is not yet a completely known phenomenon. We are learning as we go.

Some of the impacts that Emily was mentioning on the mental health, on the wiring of the brain, these are very brand new developments. We don't necessarily yet understand exactly why they happen. We are quite early on some of our understanding. Recommendations that we made is building with the communication campaigns and how you communicate around it. We were mentioning how a teacher dealing with a student that started this idea and the recommendation there was do not shame them in front of the class but rather forming the bond, trying to understand.

It's as simple as don't treat young boys as the future criminals. I mean it sounds logical, but you'll be surprised how often the default attitude is around containment of the problem. So, prosecute, trying to understand why, address it with a more compassionate approach. And the same happens with the parents.

We've seen communication campaigns out there where the parents were essentially told about their children being the future criminals. Some of the recommendations we're making. So, building communication campaigns that are adequately built, they are contextualised to the platforms and to the target audiences. There’s a range of intervention that we can do even as early as communication.

There is no silver bullet. I'm sorry to report. I don't think that it exists because a digital communication environment hijacking all the processes and ways that we humans behave. We might need to build communication campaigns, some of it we might need to regulate, as Emily was saying. Some of it might be even just as simple as building all sorts of incentives for the platforms to actually introduce the guardrail. Why isn't the platform regulating the content that they are putting in? And the answer is simple because any self-regulation would lead to a loss of income.

This is the complex environment that we are in, and we are observing what is happening and then we are adapting our responses to it.

Renee

Andrei and Emily, thank you both so genuinely. What is sticking with me most from our conversation is that the manosphere isn't some far off internet subculture that our students might stumble into.

It's actively, deliberately meeting needs that so many of our boys are walking into our classrooms with every day. That need to belong, the need to be seen, to make sense of a world that can feel really confusing and sometimes feel quite unfair. And if we don't meet those needs first as parents, as teachers, as humans, then somebody else absolutely will.

And it sounds like that exposure to this content is seemingly expected for any of our young people who are online. Your work is so vital to us supporting our school leaders and our teachers, and we want to continue to work with you. We will put links to your work in the show notes and share that for any of our teachers or leaders or parents or community members that are listening to this episode.

But thank you again to Associate Professor Marian-Andrei Rizoiu and to Dr. Emily Booth. Thank you for your generosity of time and your research, and thanks for being so honest with us today. We really appreciate it.

Marian-Andrei

Thank you for having us and for giving us the opportunity of bringing our research into the real world where we can make a difference. That is the most that the researcher can request and having their research make an impact into the society.

Emily

Likewise. Thank you so much.

Cherryl

We hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr. Emily Booth and Dr. Marian-Andrei Rizoiu. What I'll be sitting with after today is that this isn't a technology problem we can fact check our way out of. And it isn't a discipline problem we can punish our way out of either. It's a human problem, which means the answer has to be human too.

A trusted adult who notices early. A classroom culture where boys can be vulnerable without it costing them their sense of masculinity. A school that names what's happening explicitly, rather than hoping it stays outside the gate. To every teacher and school leader listening, you don't need to become an expert in algorithms or online subcultures overnight. But you do need to know that this is happening in your school right now, whether you can see it or not.

And you are one of the most powerful protective factors a young person has. That’s not pressure, that's genuinely good news. Building a critical lens, critical media literacy, and a critical inquiry approach are all important across each KLA. Thank you again to Associate Professor Marian-Andrei Rizoiu and Dr. Emily Booth for the generosity of their time, their research, and their honesty.

Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep building safer, more respectful and inclusive school communities. One conversation, one relationship, and one everyday action at a time.

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