Misogyny is thriving in our schools – why aren’t we doing more?

Last night, Hijacking Adolescence aired on the ABC’s Compass, taking a deep-dive into the world of social media misogyny and its effect on boys, young men and the people around them.

Echoing the title of the fictional Netflix series Adolescence, which attracted global attention earlier this year for its representation of the most extreme expression of misogyny-fuelled violence against teen girls, both programs reflect significant public concern about the influence of the manosphere.

Despite this concern, we’ve seen little progress made in recognition of this problem in the two years we’ve been undertaking our research on manosphere sentiment in schools.

While it’s important we continue to document and grapple with the crisis of manosphere-accelerated violence and misogyny, it’s critical that we also turn our attention to various reckonings.

The first is an examination of the structural enablers of manosphere ideologies in schools, including the conditions and complacencies that enable misogyny to continue in these settings. The second asks what is required for us to do something about it, and the third confronts the reluctance to believe women’s accounts of what’s happening.

Until we address each of these, nothing will change.

Confronting the violent histories of Australian schools

Violence is not a rare or new occurrence in schools.

A shocking recent example of ritualised violence in a Ballarat school takes its place among other cases, including targeted sexual harassment in a Melbourne school and incidents of AI-generated image-based abuse. These are contemporary instances of a long history of all kinds of violence and abuse that has taken place in schools.

In a recent paper, we trace the historical roots of violence in school settings in Australia, noting their legacies in colonialism, and how this informs the everyday and unexceptional occurrences of violence in school settings.

We also know that for many young people, schools are places of transformation and optimism – where their talents and interests are encouraged, nurtured and realised. However, we argue that it’s important to recognise that sexism and misogyny, as well as homophobia, racism, transphobia and ableism, also thrive in school environments.

They’re perpetuated and enabled by school cultures, systems, norms and the people who lead them.

Schools are incredibly heteronormative places that police gender through uniform policies, promotion of gender binaries in subject choices and classrooms, and many settings will not accurately name the misogyny experienced by women and girls every day.

They are simply not geared towards the kind of transformation we need if we’re going to truly work towards the prevention of violence against women and girls. And we know schools have a vital role to play in that work.

Until we reckon with the history of schooling in Australia, confront the ways that schools enforce harmful gender norms, and recognise them as places that can actively work to prevent violence, we won’t achieve meaningful action on contemporary misogyny.

Established connections between manosphere and misogyny

Another barrier we face in fronting up to the harms of manosphere misogyny is a lack of recognition of its links to real-world harms and violence. There remains a belief in the separateness between what occurs online and in “real life”, when the reality is that, in many places, the distinction between these locations does not exist.

To legislate and act on manosphere harms, it needs to be understood that what boys are viewing online shapes their views on women, girls and relationships with devastating consequences.

A recent study found that consuming misogynist content online has a negative effect on how men view women. The authors of this paper note the manosphere as “an important arena for misogynistic radicalisation”, a process that we have argued is ongoing among Australian boys and men.

Another draws on accounts from frontline family violence workers in Australia, finding that manosphere content themes, such as anti-feminist sentiment, male victimhood and narrow concepts of masculinity are present among perpetrators of family violence.

What this research suggests is that the manosphere’s ideas aren’t remote and abstract “online” phenomena without influence on the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of men and boys. We cannot diminish the threat of manosphere ideologies simply because they don’t seem as “real” as other factors we might consider as informing violent behaviour.

It’s time we took seriously the process of radicalisation that occurs by exposure to extremist misogynist ideologies online, and its subsequent dangers for women and girls.

Lack of policy action and resistance to recognition

Finally, we’ve consistently encountered a reluctance to acknowledge the crisis levels of misogyny and sexism in schools, and to formulate commensurate policy responses across the education sector.

While we have an excellent curriculum in Respectful Relationships Education, there are an overwhelming number of implementation issues that curtail its impact, including training inadequacies and avoidance of topics deemed “controversial”.

We also come up against a range of attitudinal barriers when it comes to conversations about schools, misogyny, the manosphere and violence prevention.

Recurrent counterpoints to our work include that women teachers’ testimonies do not account as adequate evidence, that their position as knowers of their own experiences and experts in their domains has no bearing, and that we must centre boys’ mental health as a remedy for increasing expressions of violence.

Critics of our work suggest that it represents nothing more than a moral panic, or that the virulent misogyny of young men must be explained in ways considered palatable by, for example, boys’ reckoning with modern masculinities and an uncertain future, mental health issues, or, more distressingly, that boys will be boys.

We argue that these perspectives fail to acknowledge the evidenced, and widely documented experience of, countless women in Australian schools that attest, repeatedly, to several facts – misogyny in schools is getting worse, figures of the manosphere play a significant role, and while not all boys are fans and followers, the ones that are know precisely what they’re doing.

While we continue to advocate for girls’ human right to safety in their education, and women’s right to safety in their workplaces in schools, the focus of most of the conversations regarding the manosphere is the protection and prioritising of boys’ needs.

While we would never deny the importance of this, there’s a glaring gap in research, in funding, and in acknowledgement of the daily harms and injustices experienced by students and teachers in schools who are subject to the misogyny and sexism wrought by boys and young men.

It’s crucial we move past the historical precedent that takes stories of women’s experiences as insufficient proof of something that is really happening.

And lastly, if we want to meaningfully address this problem, we must not do young men the disservice of denying them the accountability they need to change their behaviour.

We now have a wide body of research, media, programs and now a popular Netflix drama capturing a phenomenon that can no longer be denied or diminished. It’s now time to expect more from our ministers, our policymakers and our school leaders who are able to lead a truly transformational response.

We know that schools are ideal places where gendered violence prevention work can occur, and yet we remain resistant to viewing them in this way, to funding them in this way, and to training school staff to do this work properly.

We have to say it as it is. Australian schools are in crisis due to rampant misogyny and sexism, and it’s time we did something about it.