The Prime Minister will meet with state and territory leaders this week to address gender-based violence following angry calls for action at huge rallies across the country. Educating boys on consent and how to form respectful relationships is seen as a crucial step towards ending the cycle of gender-based violence. Organisation 'Man Cave' is working with thousands of young men in developing emotional intelligence.
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00:00 We run programs with tens of thousands of teenage boys right across the country and
00:06 they really focus on working with young men through a preventative framework.
00:10 So we work with teenage boys to teach them about emotional intelligence, mental health
00:14 skills, respectful relationships and consent education, delivered through facilitators
00:19 who are that non-authoritative but very highly trained, very engaging source of being a role
00:24 model for them.
00:25 We also do a lot of work around research with young men, so understanding their attitudes,
00:29 what are they thinking, feeling and believing.
00:31 And recently we've started to run our programs on a gaming platform called Twitch, which
00:35 as we know this is a very digitally literate next generation.
00:39 And so we run our programs as like a digital after school care program with thousands of
00:43 teenage boys as well.
00:44 Okay, so you've worked as you say with what 70,000 teenage boys, young men so far.
00:50 What are they telling you about how they see relationships and how they see their own place
00:55 in the world?
00:56 Well, it's obviously a very confusing time for masculinity.
00:59 I'd say that the script that say my father's generation or my grandfather's generation
01:03 inherited around what it means to be a man is changing and in some ways we're in between
01:07 stories.
01:08 And this next generation are definitely, from what we hear from them, they're feeling confused.
01:13 There's definitely a feeling of isolated and loneliness, but also a feeling of frustration.
01:18 It's like they feel like they're cleaning up a mess that they've inherited and didn't
01:22 necessarily create.
01:24 And we're obviously seeing some very toxic online male influences using the power of
01:29 social media to slowly start to appeal to the teenage psychology and radicalize them
01:34 into more extreme content, more extreme points of view, some of them misogynistic and very
01:39 hyper-sexualized.
01:40 And so the real art for us right now, particularly with the crisis that's going on in the country,
01:45 is to think of this, yes, we need some immediate solutions to look at policy change, but also
01:50 we need to look at this as a massive opportunity for generational change so that we're not
01:53 dealing with a bigger issue in 10, 20, 30 years' time.
01:57 In the main then, Hunter, where are they getting their views from?
02:00 Is it from social media, from their fathers or other males in their family group or from
02:05 their mates?
02:07 It's a collection of them all, but without a doubt this generation is spending more time
02:10 on social media than ever before.
02:12 And I often say that this is the first generation raised by social media.
02:16 And what I mean by that is the first generation raised by algorithms and they're spending
02:20 more and more time on multiple devices every single day.
02:23 And with content being so shocking and sensationalized, particularly from some of these more radicalized
02:28 influences, it's really drawing them in through content that originally appeals to their mindset,
02:33 their belief system, working hard, being fit, being healthy, and then slowly that becomes
02:38 a slippery slope into some of the more misogynistic and hyper-sexualized content.
02:43 But at the same time, school environments, the culture inside of schools, but also parents
02:47 or the guardians in these young people's lives.
02:50 It's such a critical time for, as we're hearing in the media now, for men to step up and to
02:55 lead into some really honest and potentially really uncomfortable and awkward conversations.
03:00 But this is the moment to support the next generation of young men to step into healthy,
03:03 well-adjusted, respectful, kind, empathetic young men.
03:07 So from the work that you've done so far then, Hunter, how are you feeling about the future
03:11 and how these boys will behave as they get older and start relationships and families
03:15 of their own?
03:17 Well, we're a small startup charity to put things in the scheme of things.
03:21 So we've worked with about 70,000 boys, but we have many, many schools on the wait list
03:25 who are from very low socioeconomic areas that are waiting for access to our services.
03:31 What we're able to see is after we can create spaces where young men feel comfortable enough
03:35 and psychologically safe enough and respected enough to take off the mask that they might
03:39 be wearing and put down that armor, that absolutely there's this kind, bubbling, empathetic young
03:45 man that's there.
03:46 But then at the same time, we need to create spaces where they can ask the politically
03:50 incorrect, the messy, the potentially conversation that might see them get canceled in the media
03:57 as some of their concerns.
03:58 We need to create the space for those teachable moments where boys can stuff up and they can
04:02 learn and have values-driven conversations.
04:04 So for me at the bottom of it, after working with so many boys, there is definitely a sense
04:07 of hope, but also I don't want to kind of take our feet away from the fire that's such
04:12 a critical juncture and so many advocates or survivors or academics or support workers
04:17 have worked very long and very hard for this inflection moment right now.
04:21 So as I said, we need to balance the immediacy of the short-term fix to support people in
04:28 need, but at the same time, we need to look at this through a long-term generational perspective
04:32 as well.
04:32 as well.
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