I need guys to kind of have this mindset where it's like you're the leader, You're a sort of you're dominant, you're the dictator of the relationship. What you say goes.
Luis Thearux has spent years making television out of the people polite society prefers not to think about do you consider yourself a misogynist?
No, because massogy would be the hatred of women. I would argue I love women and actually understand them. So since I understand them, I know what's best for them.
You think you know better than they do.
Yeah, so many ways.
Yeah.
It is new documentary on the menisphere. It turns that gaze on a world of male grievance, online swagger and old misogyny dressed up in the language of self help.
And that's how women want it. They want a guy that can lead them and dominate them.
In Australia, research is and educators say that boys, women and girls are bearing the consequences of actions and attitudes turning up far beyond the screen in classrooms, in harassment and intimidation, and in the growing sense among girls that school is becoming less and less safe. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today Misogyny researcher at Monash University, doctor Stephanie Westcott, and while Louis Thereroux's documentary miss is the real story and what happens when we
treat misogyny as fascinating instead of dangerous. It's Monday, March thirty, doctor Westcott, thank you so much for joining us. Louis Thereux's Manus Feed doco is getting a lot of attention right now. But you think it's mister Mark. Why?
I think it's mister Mark for several reasons. The first is that traditionally Louis Thereaux has sought to explore communities that are pretty hidden from mainstream view and mainstream understanding, provided access where perhaps there has not been any before. And we know that the manisphere is no longer a fringe phenomenon. It's pretty mainstream. We've seen it on Married at First Sight recently.
I know exactly what I want in my wife.
Someone that's submissive, someone that's not going to say would you.
Be a house husband? Once again? That gives off. It's sort of it's masculating towards me. I'm not maide, you know, I'm not doing that.
But the other issue that I had when watching it is that, you know, I understand Luis Throu's style, and it works really well a lot of the time. But what it did in this instance, I think was actually just replicate the same position that lots of people are taking when they hear Manisphere type ideas or suggestions, which is just to sort of step back and observe and not necessarily step in to clarify or you know, rebuke. And these ideas have sort of just become so saturated
in our culture that they they are getting mainstreamed. And so the danger I think in this piece is these ideas can seem sometimes pseudo intellectual or pseudoscientific. For example, if we're talking about biology, men's biology, or masculinity and femininity, and I don't think we have broadly interrogated them enough for us to see how they unfold in ways that are harmful. So it very well may just sort of reinforce it their relatively neutral ideas.
As a woman can be stunningly beautiful at twenty years old and get invited to ride in that car, or onto a boat, or be flying in Miami or whatever, because it's pure beauty. Nobody's going to invite him on a trip to Miami. They're not going to fly him out. He has to create value in the world. He has to be valuable to other men.
What do you think of some of the men that were featured in the documentary and their ideas? Because while the menisphere is being talked about for some time, for those who haven't been exposed to it, it came as a shock. Did it shock you, Stephanie?
Oh no, no, so it didn't shock me at all. I've been researching this for three years, and I've seen and heard how it changes boy's behavior, and so I just found it pretty normal, really normal sort of manuspect content. There was I think one figure in the show who was an associate of Andrew and Tristan Tate, alleged rapists
and human traffickers. And while seeing in particular that I was troubled by was when he sort of stood outside his office and gestured towards the buildings around him and said.
Now, men build, build and maintain society. That's a fact, you know, and women do that too, I don't. I look around. Can you name anything that a woman is invent and built in our plain site.
And Luis Thurroux sort of said, is that.
True men built all these buildings, they engineered them, they designed them. Can we definitely know that it is a fact?
And I understand the technique of course that Lui throu he's imagining his audience saying it's particulous.
I mean, what a joke.
But the problem is that we're hearing these messages all the time now, especially in schools in Australia, and they're not easily responded to and challenged when they do come up, because these figures are now being seen as truth tellers and as sources of reliable information. So I think that's what troubled me about that particular exchange. And also as an associate of dangerous men, I thought his inclusion in the documentary was also dangerous proximity to that world.
If we zoom it had a bit, can you tell us a bit more about what the manisphere actually is and who are these men and why are young boys being sucked in by it?
So the manisphere is kind of a term that's come from academia, and it is a classification system essentially that characterizes content YouTubers, podcasters and also a range of online groups who cohere around similar themes, and those themes tend to be anti feminist, anti women. They tend to be focused on male grievances.
I coach boys how to be fucking boys, how to make money, how to be outside the system, how time I have a boss telling you what to do. I teach guys to be proper guys, not these little sawyer boys gimps that walk around in the modern day.
And the reason that they find boys and young men to begin with is because the.
Algorithms are designed that way.
So we've had multiple studies now that have confirmed that you just have to create an account that ostensibly belongs to a boy, and within a really short period of time, say twenty minutes or so, they will see Mattisphere content. So it will find them regardless. It may come to
them during a period of vulnerability. They may be experiencing feelings of loneliness or some mental health issues, and what the matisphere does when it finds them is provides them with a really concrete and certain and neat script for how to be successful. That is why we tend to hear some people say, well, you know, the manisphere actually is useful for boys and men. It can support them, but it always comes with a side of abuse of some sort, whether that is misogyny.
You guys overinflate your own sense of self worth. You guys think you're better than you really are. But the reality is all of you guys bring the same thing to the table virtually because men don't ask for much, So if you don't want to go give it to them, you'll go and find it twenty one year all that well.
Or it is also interlaced with all other forms of bigotry as well, And you would viewers of the documentary would have seen that anti Semitism is a really common sentiment among these creators too, and homophobia and transphobia.
My son come up gay, We seriously be gay nowadays is considered quite normal.
Not my son? Why just not my son? In it to say like you disowned him, that's a big statement.
So there is always a cost to the way that these figures, the way that these men sell the type of success that they are promoting, and the cost is usually to others, but also to the men themselves because the type of masculinity or type of self food that they promote is extremely in Darrow and extremely rigid, and they can actually be financial exploitation that occurs as well.
How much are they going to pay? It's like.
A month and then you get a small segn up fee.
That's part of the model, Yes, sir, coming up how the manisphere is impacting women and girls, Stephie. One thing that wasn't covered and doesn't get spoken about enough in relation to the Manisphere is its impact on women and girls. What do we actually know about the impact of the manisphere on women and girls?
Yeah, so we actually have some data to draw on here. About three years ago, we did a study on Andrew Tate's impact in Australian schools and we spoke to women working in Australian schools for that study and they told us the most disturbing and troubling set of stories that were despite them being in different locations around Australia and different school sectors, they were remarkably the same. And the story was that boys' attitudes of behavior towards girls and women have changed.
Female teachers being circled in playgrounds, even being asked to perform domestic tasks.
The idea of asking a teacher to make a sandwich is a reflection, particularly to a female teacher that really should should be at home in the kitchen.
And there's not just concern for teachers. Young girls are reporting feeling unsafe.
There was a two and twenty four survey of girls in Australia by Yugov and Tomorrow Women, and in that survey, one in four adolescent girls said that they were feeling unsafe in school because of boys' behavior. So we know the really popular trope of if you've got the naughty boy, you put the good girl next to him to keep
him in line. And that dynamic is indicating that you're willing to make a certain sacrifice so that a good outcome can be achieved for one student and the possible harms for the other student don't really factor into consideration. So this is an issue that I would love to see more, more interest in and more conversation about, because we know broadly in Australia that there is a huge gender based violence issue and these are not separable issues, they're the same.
We saw a shocking example of some of the behavior girls and teachers have been talking about in Wa this month.
So now deleted video was shared to TikTok and shows children at Baldivers Secondary College, causing chaos. They walk on the desks. One student even puts his hands in the teachers here despite her asking him to stop.
What did you think when you saw that video?
So when I saw that video, I had a visual response to it, and I think a lot of educators would. But what I thought was disturbing about that video was the hair touching her, hair touching her body, the smoke in her face, and her she's asking them to stop and they keep going.
That is a consent problem.
And we you know, we've had a lot of progress on consent education nationwide in Australia. But this is another example of where a woman's no is not actually a no, it's an invitation to keep going. And because of the talking points that the Manisphere will provide, it can be really hard to counter. It's a very difficult dynamic to enter into as a teacher and try to correct.
So the boys become very well versed in the language or the manisphere and use that as a way to combat change.
Yeah, they bait teachers, so they will take Manisphere talking points all concepts or ideas that they know are provocative or controversial. The talking points that they might to raise are things like I mean it used to be what do you think about Andrew Tate? And then if a teacher tried to shut that down, the response might be, but I have free speech, I'm allowed to say these things. Or I don't actually need an education. You you know this is useless. I'm going to become an entrepreneur. Or
girls don't need an education. They can just make an only fans account and make their money that way. So this beliefs that aren't just among boys. We know that girls are also taking on some of these ideas from the state home girlfriend or tried wife sort of area of the internet.
And finally, Stephanie, how do we combat these kinds of attitudes and protect our boys and girls from them?
So we can do a few things, and a lot of it we already have in schools in Australia. The first thing is we have a respectful Relationships curriculum to mandated in Victorian government schools. It's also part of the Australian curriculum. But as part of that we also need to think about how we are going to equip students young people with the skills they need to critically examine
the information they're consuming on the internet. So there's a teaching approach or seat of teaching strategies known as critical Digital literacies, and what those approaches do is teach young people to ask a set of critical questions about what they're seeing, who made it, what's their motive, is it real, who's benefiting from it? We also need, as well as the education approaches, we need to take these things really
seriously when they do happen. We've got lots of data from women in school saying that they're not taken seriously, their harm isn't understood, or they are gas lit by school leaders. They will still hear, boys will be boys when they report problematic behavior. So we need to take that seriously as a workforce safety issue. We need to have mechanisms in place for reporting and responding, and we
need to be really clear that it's never acceptable. And if we are company that's strong approach with an education approach, I think we've got a better chance of supporting all young people than we do at the moment.
Doctor Wescott, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, thanks very much.
Also in the news, the alban Ezi government will today introduced legislation allowing Export Finance Australia, the government's trade finance agency, to underwrite extra imports of petrol, diesel, fertilizer and other essential supplies affected by the war in the Middle East. Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi announced the new fuel security powers on Saturday, saying the plan will let the government cover
some of the financial risk for private importers. The move comes after weeks of higher fuel prices and shortages at some service stations, especially in regional Australia and Yemen's Iran back who SEE rebels have claimed responsibility for two missile attacks on Israel as the war in the Middle East
marks its one month anniversary. The strikes for the first time the Whosis have attacked Israel since the start of the war, was the spokesperson for the rebel group, saying they will continue to carry out military operations in the coming days. The move could put further pressure on the global economy if the group attacks civilian shipping in the Red Sea. I'm Daniel James. You've been listening to seven Am. We'll be back tomorrow.