HOW TO RAISE MEN WHO DON’T RAPE WOMEN!

Whilst most contemporary men and teenage boys are compassionate, empathetic and ethical, recent examples show us that toxic masculinity remains an urgent problem.

From a young woman being raped in Parliament House to the recent petition by thousands of schoolgirls in response to a culture of casual sexual assault, it’s clear we need a new approach to sex education where it matters most - in the formative years of high school. Although, I would go so far as to say that the conversation really needs to start even earlier than that.

We live in a world where women and girls have to police their behaviours, feelings, thoughts and their choices on where to go, what to wear and who to be around. The concept of a “rape schedule” is used to describe the conscious and subconscious ways women place restrictions on themselves and alter their daily behaviour as a result of their constant fear of sexual assault. The fact that men don’t have to think about this at all is a privilege; a privilege that few men are even aware of.

But that’s how privilege works isn’t it? 

The idea of “mental Load” and “emotional labour” have recently been introduced into the common lexicon, and we are finding that these gendered norms shape women’s behaviours, they shape their thoughts, their dispositions, their beliefs and their hopes. It even shapes their brains! 

We know there is no significant biological difference between male and female brains, but the neural pathways that are forged and strengthened during key moments of plasticity as our brains are gendered mean that women become more empathetic…because they have to. That is because in our society, it is up to women to understand men, women are expected to see things from a male perspective, and rarely the other way around. People in positions of power don’t have to see things from others’ perspectives; they don’t have to constantly justify their actions, and can therefore afford a blinkered view. 

Now I want to be clear, whilst it may not look like it, I do not want to reduce this to a male vs female thing. The truth is that we need systemic change. This is not a question of being a good man or a good woman…it is about being a good human; or at the very least its about not being a shit one.

Even the idea that women are better at multitasking is a gendered myth that we take as gospel. In reality the reproduction of this myth is just another way of suggesting that men’s work is more important (thereby needing more focus) and justifying the idea that women are responsible for doing everything else to “look after” us men. 

When we actually drill down into the function of our brains, no-one can really multitask in the manner we imagine. Our brains are wicked fancy, but they can only do so much. The fact is that even the best of us can only “task switch”, but some people have had to develop the skill of task switching at such a rate that it appears they are doing everything at the same time…and it is exhausting! It is just another example of the “mental load” disproportionately lumped onto women. 

This whole thing helps me see how even the “learned incompetence” of domestically dependant, bumbling old males is just another subtle form of misogyny. In fact it reminds me that women are not only expected to see things from a male perspective, they are expected to live, thrive and survive within a man’s world that actually stands on the foundation of the theft of women’s labour, knowledges, bodies and abilities.

But we don’t live in this world because it is full of bad, evil and oppressive men. Precisely the opposite, and this is why the problem is so insidious…why there is so much plausible deniability! 

We live in this world because we are complicit in accepting the gendered status quo that is given to us. Even if we don’t agree with it, when we do nothing about it then we make a choice to actively reproduce it. We live in this world because we tolerate, normalise and excuse behaviours that are clearly harmful, but that are dismissed as just “boys being boys”. In doing so, we unwittingly condone more extreme behaviours of gendered violence, humiliation, degradation, dominance and control.

The scary thing is that even convicted rapists frequently do not believe they committed rape. They deny, obfuscate, excuse, justify and victim-blame to escape the reality of their crimes - and this is taken from a study of men who are in prison after they have been convicted of at least one rape. Imagine the mental gymnastics of the men who aren’t convicted, and how they justify their actions?

It is like the elephant in the room, the butt naked emperor, and bystander effect, all wrapped into one.

But it is not a secret. We all know it is happening…and we can’t expect other people to address the problem anymore.

The fact is, as Steve Biddulph so clearly put it, “we know what it takes to raise men who don’t rape, so why don’t we act on it?”

And don’t get me wrong, my head is not so far up my own arse that I can’t see the friction points. I know that the word masculinity has somehow become synonymous with toxicity. As such, there are a lot of men who are experiencing what can only be described as a “crisis of masculinity”; they don’t really know who they are, how to be, or how to connect with people in healthy ways. I know that in this much needed disruption to the status quo, people in positions of power have no incentive to change…and people who didn’t even realise they were in power, even people who want to make a difference, will find that change to be quite hard.

In fact what I see in schools (and in the Army, and in the construction industry, and in sporting clubs) is that there is so much pressure around what it means to be a man. The challenge is that in this moment of disruption and change, many young men are doubling down on a rigid “traditional” concept of masculinity. And we know that men who are anxious about their masculinity are more inclined to support aggressive politics and extreme ideologies.

Put simply, the boys I work with are picking up the messages that young men are supposed to show no emotion, be hyper aggressive and controlling, disrespect women, and avoid help seeking behaviour.

And I need to clearly state that this narrative no longer serves us…It doesn’t serve any of us!

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner. One in four women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner since the age of 15. One in five women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, and 85% of Australian women have been sexually harassed (although I would argue that the actual number is significantly higher).

But the effects of toxic masculinity don’t just hurt women, they hurt everyone!

One in five young men experiences anxiety or depression before the age of 18. Men have higher rates of dependance on illicit drugs or alcohol than women. Suicide is the leading cause of death for young men under the age of 25. And the majority of violence enacted agains women and men is perpetrated by males.

When I talk with young people about consent and porn and sexual relationships, the biggest thing I notice is all the anxiety…often only thinly veiled under a mask of bravado or ambivalence. They are anxious about what they assume they are supposed to look like, feel, think and do. And this is the moment where young men are actually able to empathise with the gendered pressures of women…because it is the precise moment where a gendered world is forcing them to police their own bodies, choices, desires, practices and performances…and its hard.

And so what we need is a different model of sexual education…one that is not delivered only once to hundreds of year 10 kids in an anonymous hall, with a dude and powerpoint presentation telling us not to make people drink tea.

You see, consent is not about seeing what you can get away with until the other person says “no”. It is not about knowing what you can and can’t do before you get in to trouble. It is about seeing each other as human beings, first and foremost.

We need to support young people to develop more insight into their own feelings, needs, boundaries and options. We need to help them to connect sex education to personal experiences, personal pleasure, and emotional validation, rather than a purely biological approach that focuses on reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases. 

By re-humanising this process, young people will be better able to identify when they are coerced or forced to do something that does not feel pleasurable or right, and therefore speak out about it. Moreover, by re-humanising the process and making it a part of our culture, the hope is that those young people will also be heard.

This way, we can develop a more empathetic and ethical understanding of how other people feel, and would like to feel, in consensual relationships. We can support young people to understand that informed, continual and enthusiastic consent is not just a box to tick, but central to any healthy and meaningful sexual relationship.

The goal is to help people understand the shift from a transactional and punitive approach to consent, towards a more transformative and empathetic approach that focuses on healthy sexual connection. And so rather than thinking about what we can get away with, or what will get us into trouble, we think about how we want to feel and how our sexual partner wants to feel….as a human being!

By doing this more openly we can take healthy sexuality out of the “taboo” basket where dark and destructive behaviours are left to fester. By embracing the value of healthy sexuality and healthy relationships as a function of our humanity, hopefully we will have the ability to identify, call out and intervene in unacceptable, yet seemingly innocuous behaviour that contributes to the normalisation and tolerance of misogyny, humiliation, degradation, gendered violence and abuse.

But this must begin with the willingness to have brave conversations, where we challenge the norms of our gendered society and actively make a choice for ourselves about what kind of man, woman or human we want to be. Put simply, we need to have more robust, intimate and honest conversations…and we need to have them more often (as opposed to just a 45 minute talk in year 10). We need to empower teachers, and parents and friends to keep this conversation alive as, just like consent itself, it is not a one time thing.

Dr Monty Badami has a PhD in Anthropology and has taught university level subjects on Human Rights, as well as Gender, Health and Sexuality. He is a member of the Centre for research on Men and Masculinities. Runs a transformative workshop titled “Men after #metoo: What’s a Bloke Supposed to do?” For Macquarie University’s Global Leadership Program, St Andrews College Sydney, The Department of Education, and in the Australian Army. He works closely with men and boys, running Rites of Passage programs, as well as running a series called “Brave Conversations”, where he uses his anthropological knowledge to challenge the norms of toxic masculinity as well as other stereotypes of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and race.