May 19, 2024 • 15 mins
Andrew Tate's harmful ideology is infiltrating schools. Boys, broadly speaking, are big fans, and their behaviour in the classroom is reflecting this.
Dr Stephanie Westcott (researcher and lecturer in the School of Education, Culture, and Society at Monash University) shares her research on the experiences women are having in educational settings across Australia, looking at the influence of misogynistic ideology, how algorithms on TikTok and Youtube direct young boys to these ideas, and what parents, carers, and educators can do to combat the rise of these radicalised masculine myths.
In this episode:
- Andrew Tate
- Misogyny infiltrating classrooms
- Harmful ideology influencing young boys
- Andrew Tate’s extreme views about women are infiltrating Australian schools. We need a zero-tolerance response, Westcott & Roberts | The Conversation
-
Experiences women are having in educational contexts
-
Behaviours of boys in the classroom
- Framing boys and men as victims
- Radicalisation of masculinity
- Andrew Tate Effect in Australian Classrooms | ABC News
- What it means to be a real man
- Algorithms on social media are showing young boys very specific content
- Respectful relationships education
- Zero tolerance
Related links:
- #694 Responding to the Hate from Andrew Tate - Happy Families Podcast
- Helping Our Boys Grow Into Men - Happy Families
- Can We Please Talk About Boys? - A FREE Happy Families Webinar
Leave a voice memo here or email your questions/comments to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers. Now Gooday. This
is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy Families dot com.
Do you thank you so much for joining me today
on the Happy Families Podcast. Lately, it seems that boys
can't catch a break, and in some ways they don't
(00:23):
deserve it, at least some of them because of some
of the challenges that are occurring. My guest on the
podcast today is doctor Stephanie Westcott. Stephanie is a researcher
and lecturer in the School of Education, Culture and Society
at Monash University and just recently wrote a piece for
The Conversation that has I don't know how else to
say it's Stephanie. Would blown up be the right way
(00:46):
to describe what's happened? I mean, you must have been
doing so much media around what you've written.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, we've been doing a lot recently.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Our research was also covered a few months ago by
ABC seven thirty and so that generated a lot of
interest too, which is good because they're necessary conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So we're going to talk about this name that just
keeps on coming up again and again and again Andrew Tate.
I thought he disappeared. I thought with the whole trafficking
issue over in Romania, I thought that was the end.
But he keeps on coming up. You've done this research,
and specifically, I mean Andrew Tate is a symptom of
a larger problem. It's not really a conversation about him
as much as it's a conversation about misogynistic views about
(01:27):
women obviously that are infiltrating Australian schools and the way
that too many teenage boys are being influenced by this
ideology that is so heartful and so bad for them
as well as for the people around them, especially women
around them. Would you tell me a little bit about
the research that you did. What was it, who'd you
talk to? What did you find?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, So we began this research because there was some
news coming out of the UK that Andrew Tate had
infiltrated schools in the UK basically, and that boys seemed
to broadly be big fans of him and he was
actually changing their behavior, and so we were curious about
whether this was happening in Australia. So we put a
(02:09):
call out to speak to women working in schools, and
we were inundated with emails basically from women wanting to
talk to us. We decided to speak to thirty and
we managed to caption only every state and territory except
for ACT, both primary secondary and every sector too, so
(02:29):
faith based, independent and government schools. And we chatted to
those women in depth about what they were experiencing and
seeing in their schools. And our findings confirmed what was
happening in the UK that was absolutely rife here as well.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, so when you say it was absolutely rife, I
presume you're talking about misogynistic attitudes. This is obviously going
to be a little bit sensitive and for parents who
are listening with their kids, depending on the age of
your child, you may want to press pause and come
back to it later. I want to ask you some specifics.
What can you tell us about the experiences that women
(03:03):
are having as they teach or work in other roles
in education contexts, Like you said, primary school, high school,
a whole lot, private and public everything. What are they
telling you?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So the first thing to say, and we say this
in our research papers too, is that sexism and sexual
harassment misogyny have always been part of schooling there's research
dating back a few decades now on this, so we
accepted that. But also what we noticed when we spoke
to women was that the sort of frequency and tenor
(03:36):
I suppose, of these kind of behaviors have increased. That
women were saying to us that boys were sort of
just starting to become quite hostile towards them, challenging their
sort of their authority and position, quite often wanting to
engage in very hostile debates about Andrew Tate and things
(03:59):
that he says, very sexualized comments about women and their appearances,
gendered slurs towards women and girls in the classroom, some
violence too, physical intimidation and acts of violence like for example,
a boy spat in his teacher's water bottling class, but
actually really disturbing and disgusting statements made towards women as well.
(04:23):
But these aren't just sort of one off raretis sort
of what black they might have been that every single
day for women in schools, and two of the women
out of the thirty who we spoke to have decided
to leave teaching because of this behavior and the sort
of lack of support and thinking to themselves, I can't
come to work and deal with this behavior every day.
(04:43):
It's no one should have to, of course, especially without
institutional support. Step.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
When I'm speaking in schools, I unfortunately consistently hear from
usually female teachers. Sometimes it'll just be whoever I'm talking to,
they'll tell me that they know that it's rife conversations
around boys as young as grade four who are making
sexual sounds, groaning and moaning. Of course, when the teacher
asks them what they're doing or what have they deny
(05:10):
it's not what you think it is, and they've always
got a story. They've got a way of getting out
of it. You're not in your head as I'm saying this.
Tell me a little bit more about what you found.
How young is this happening, What kinds of behaviors are
specifically being reported in those thirty interviews that you did.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In terms of age primary school teachers. We spoke to
that sexual groaning noise is a really common thing that's happening.
It was reported recently, I think in the Sending Morning Herald.
I think that's actually separate though to what we're talking about.
In regards to Andrew Tate, How's that I think that
a lot of boys when they're making that sound, I
(05:44):
would guess that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
A lot of them don't actually know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I think some of them do, But I think some
of these things spread in schools as sort of habits
or provocations that I think specifically can be contributed to
the accessibility of pornography without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
But I think Andrew Tate is separate to that in that.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
What we suggest he is doing is actually almost radicalizing boys,
training them deliberately, very deliberately doing this because it's income
generation for him, recruiting them to share anti feminist and
anti women ideas, to start to see themselves as victims
in the world of the progress of feminism and of
(06:25):
maybe changes to gender power relations in society, and that
sort of victim position and sort of framing yourself in
that way works very well for Andrew Tate. We've seen
him weaponize that since being charged with a range of
things in Romania. But boys are starting to vocalize these
kind of views and beliefs to classrooms as well.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
My contention was going to be, and I was going
to put it to you and ask you if I
was on the right track or not. My contention was
going to be that in the same way that Andrew
Tate promotes a misogynistic worldview, so too, just the explicit
content that young people seeing, whether they're in grade three
or whether they're finishing high school, and both of those
things combining and just creating this horrible melting pot of
(07:08):
I guess, male aggression or dominance or an expectation that
they can get away with this kind of thing. So maybe,
before I go into what you're saying, would you push
against that or you say that's a reasonable position to take.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I would say that's reasonable broadly. But I think what
Angrew Tate is offering is slightly different in that he,
I guess, vocalizers or intellectualizes, not that I'm calling him
intellectual at all, but intellectualizes maybe feelings that boys might
have about, you know, being a little bit disaffected about society,
(07:43):
a little bit confused about how things are going.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Not quite sure where they fit.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And he offers a really neat and prescriptive narrative for
how to show up in the world and how to
be in the world.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that is related absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To very explicit content that feeds into derogatory ideas about
girls and women. They do work together, but slightly in
slightly different ways.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So I think I'm really hearing you say, is that
the Androw tape phenomenon, And if it's not him, it
will be somebody else. He's not the only person out
there with these views. What they're doing essentially is radicalizing
masculinity and turning it into a masculinity is becoming a
victim status in some ways, saying well, hang on now,
the girls have got too much power. We've seen the
(08:24):
sexual revolution change things to a point where there's a
lack of balance and we need to reclaim that. Is
that a better restatement of that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I think that's absolutely what we're seeing, and even that's
what women who we spoke to in our study reported
as well, saying things like boys now view us women
as their oppressence and they have been exposed to sort
of these debates online about things like the gender wage
gap and myths about feminism's goals and aims, and that
(08:55):
is very much a radical or radicalized view about women
and about feminism, And the effects of hearing that narrative
is that you start to treat women and girls with
suspicion and start to understand yourself in relation to them.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Very differently.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I hear this sort of stuff and I'm just I
know that I've got a PhD in psychology and all
the staff, right, but I hear this and I just
kind of think, can't we just be nice to each other.
I'm writing a book at the moment about bringing up
boys and my definition of masculinity, the working definition that
I'm reasonably settled on. It might need some more tweaking
as the book is refined, but the idea is that
if you're a real man, if you hold your masculinity
(09:32):
well and in a healthy way, that you make the
people around you feel stronger and safer. And it's exactly
the opposite of what you're describing. I mean, and it's
not that hard to be nice. Well, it doesn't feel
to me to be that hard to be nice. I've
got a wife and six daughters. I'm nice to them,
do you know what I mean? Just I find it infuriating.
I'm sure that parents are listening to this, going how
(09:53):
is this guy infecting our kids? When you look at
this research, you spoke to all of these women, I'm
sure that it wasn't just explored. Let's understand what's going on.
I know that you've done some really smart work. In fact,
we're going to link to your article that was in
the Conversation, the one that you wrote with Stephen Roberts,
who's a professor of education and social justice at MUNASH.
As you've thought through this challenge, what do we do?
(10:15):
How do you see us moving past this? How do
we combat the rise of these radicalized masculine myths. I
don't know what else to call them.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
They are myths.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
The first thing that I would suggest, there's been some
research that's come out of Ireland that indicates that Andrew
Tate and sort of similar figures online their content. The
algorithm shows their content to.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Boys, whether they search for it or not.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So the first thing for parents is that they need
to be aware that algorithms are changing and influencing how
their children see the world, are informing it at the
very least social media.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh my goodness. Anyway, yeah, okay, So parents need to
be aware of it.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
First.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What the catch is seeing in their feed is not
what Mum and dad are seeing in their feed.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
No. I think it would be very interesting if parents
would have a look at what is coming up in
their children's algorithms on TikTok, especially on YouTube, and just
see what these social media companies think a thirteen or
fourteen year old boy is interested in and whether that
reflects the person that they know. And I'm going to
(11:25):
assume that it doesn't, because algorithms assume very limited and
very narrow things about people in age and gender categories.
So the first thing is to be aware of that
and monitor it as much as you can. I know
that's really tricky. I know that there's tension around parents
and mobile phones, but we do need to take this
(11:47):
really seriously. So I would suggest that our other recommendations
are around conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So asking your kids, hey, do you know about this
guy Andrew Tate? What are your thought thought?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Well, tell me about what you're seeing online? Is there
anything you've got questions about? Is there anything I can
explain to you or help you understand without judgment, without
reprimand with curiosity, and allow an.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Open space for those conversations to happen.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Because we really believe that boys who are seeing this
sort of dangers stuff online really need this content to
be encountered by adults and pushed back on and criticized
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, I fundamentally believe that parenting is a it's a
moral endeavor. Right when you're raising kids, when you're socializing them,
what you're really doing is you're taking them the morality
that's necessary to navigate the world in a healthy way.
And when I hear you say that about conversations, my
mind immediately goes to the idea that silence is the
equivalent of complicity. And that might be an overly harsh
(12:50):
thing to say. It could come across a little bit
shaming or judge. But if we don't have the conversations,
then our kids are not going to get the information
that they need from us. I'm glad you so that
you said there was a third thing.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
The third thing is what we can do in schools.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
And so we've already got respect for relationships education and
that's fantastic and is intended to respond to these sorts
of issues really well. But we need that to be
implemented more comprehensively in schools and in schools all around Australia.
At the moment, it's only mandatory in Victoria and in
government schools in Victoria. The other thing that we're really
(13:26):
pushing for is for the government to acknowledge that we've
got an issue here with what's happening in schools, particularly
around violence towards women and girls. So we want really
firm language around that and a really firm acknowledgment that
there's a zero tolerance approach to this sort of behavior
in schools, and that protects both boys and girls. It
(13:46):
allows boys to have better relationships with girls and women
and to learn how to have really meaningful connections with them,
and it protects girls from experiencing this kind of behavior
but also from expecting it from the men and boys
in their life.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Autonomy is one of those things that I'm hearing more
and more is from parents who were saying, I want
my children to be able to make choices, but they
also need guidelines. They need to know where the parameters are.
You can make choices in this space, but you can't
step out of it, and that's a perfect example of
why that matters. Stephanie. Really appreciate your time, Thank you
for joining me on the podcast. Good luck with your research,
(14:21):
and hopefully this moves the needle and makes a noise
in the areas where it needs to most.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Thank you so much for having.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Me doctor Stephanie Westcott is a lecturer in the School
of Education, Culture and Society at Monash University. We will
link to her article on the Conversation so you can
read more about her research in our show notes. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Craig Bruce is our executive producer, and if you'd like
(14:48):
more information about how you can make your family happy,
we'd love for you to check out our resources at
happyfamilies dot com, dot a yu
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Just
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers. Now Gooday. This
is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy Families dot com.
Do you thank you so much for joining me today
on the Happy Families Podcast. Lately, it seems that boys
can't catch a break, and in some ways they don't
(00:23):
deserve it, at least some of them because of some
of the challenges that are occurring. My guest on the
podcast today is doctor Stephanie Westcott. Stephanie is a researcher
and lecturer in the School of Education, Culture and Society
at Monash University and just recently wrote a piece for
The Conversation that has I don't know how else to
say it's Stephanie. Would blown up be the right way
(00:46):
to describe what's happened? I mean, you must have been
doing so much media around what you've written.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, we've been doing a lot recently.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Our research was also covered a few months ago by
ABC seven thirty and so that generated a lot of
interest too, which is good because they're necessary conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So we're going to talk about this name that just
keeps on coming up again and again and again Andrew Tate.
I thought he disappeared. I thought with the whole trafficking
issue over in Romania, I thought that was the end.
But he keeps on coming up. You've done this research,
and specifically, I mean Andrew Tate is a symptom of
a larger problem. It's not really a conversation about him
as much as it's a conversation about misogynistic views about
(01:27):
women obviously that are infiltrating Australian schools and the way
that too many teenage boys are being influenced by this
ideology that is so heartful and so bad for them
as well as for the people around them, especially women
around them. Would you tell me a little bit about
the research that you did. What was it, who'd you
talk to? What did you find?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, So we began this research because there was some
news coming out of the UK that Andrew Tate had
infiltrated schools in the UK basically, and that boys seemed
to broadly be big fans of him and he was
actually changing their behavior, and so we were curious about
whether this was happening in Australia. So we put a
(02:09):
call out to speak to women working in schools, and
we were inundated with emails basically from women wanting to
talk to us. We decided to speak to thirty and
we managed to caption only every state and territory except
for ACT, both primary secondary and every sector too, so
(02:29):
faith based, independent and government schools. And we chatted to
those women in depth about what they were experiencing and
seeing in their schools. And our findings confirmed what was
happening in the UK that was absolutely rife here as well.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, so when you say it was absolutely rife, I
presume you're talking about misogynistic attitudes. This is obviously going
to be a little bit sensitive and for parents who
are listening with their kids, depending on the age of
your child, you may want to press pause and come
back to it later. I want to ask you some specifics.
What can you tell us about the experiences that women
(03:03):
are having as they teach or work in other roles
in education contexts, Like you said, primary school, high school,
a whole lot, private and public everything. What are they
telling you?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So the first thing to say, and we say this
in our research papers too, is that sexism and sexual
harassment misogyny have always been part of schooling there's research
dating back a few decades now on this, so we
accepted that. But also what we noticed when we spoke
to women was that the sort of frequency and tenor
(03:36):
I suppose, of these kind of behaviors have increased. That
women were saying to us that boys were sort of
just starting to become quite hostile towards them, challenging their
sort of their authority and position, quite often wanting to
engage in very hostile debates about Andrew Tate and things
(03:59):
that he says, very sexualized comments about women and their appearances,
gendered slurs towards women and girls in the classroom, some
violence too, physical intimidation and acts of violence like for example,
a boy spat in his teacher's water bottling class, but
actually really disturbing and disgusting statements made towards women as well.
(04:23):
But these aren't just sort of one off raretis sort
of what black they might have been that every single
day for women in schools, and two of the women
out of the thirty who we spoke to have decided
to leave teaching because of this behavior and the sort
of lack of support and thinking to themselves, I can't
come to work and deal with this behavior every day.
(04:43):
It's no one should have to, of course, especially without
institutional support. Step.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
When I'm speaking in schools, I unfortunately consistently hear from
usually female teachers. Sometimes it'll just be whoever I'm talking to,
they'll tell me that they know that it's rife conversations
around boys as young as grade four who are making
sexual sounds, groaning and moaning. Of course, when the teacher
asks them what they're doing or what have they deny
(05:10):
it's not what you think it is, and they've always
got a story. They've got a way of getting out
of it. You're not in your head as I'm saying this.
Tell me a little bit more about what you found.
How young is this happening, What kinds of behaviors are
specifically being reported in those thirty interviews that you did.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In terms of age primary school teachers. We spoke to
that sexual groaning noise is a really common thing that's happening.
It was reported recently, I think in the Sending Morning Herald.
I think that's actually separate though to what we're talking about.
In regards to Andrew Tate, How's that I think that
a lot of boys when they're making that sound, I
(05:44):
would guess that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
A lot of them don't actually know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I think some of them do, But I think some
of these things spread in schools as sort of habits
or provocations that I think specifically can be contributed to
the accessibility of pornography without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
But I think Andrew Tate is separate to that in that.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
What we suggest he is doing is actually almost radicalizing boys,
training them deliberately, very deliberately doing this because it's income
generation for him, recruiting them to share anti feminist and
anti women ideas, to start to see themselves as victims
in the world of the progress of feminism and of
(06:25):
maybe changes to gender power relations in society, and that
sort of victim position and sort of framing yourself in
that way works very well for Andrew Tate. We've seen
him weaponize that since being charged with a range of
things in Romania. But boys are starting to vocalize these
kind of views and beliefs to classrooms as well.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
My contention was going to be, and I was going
to put it to you and ask you if I
was on the right track or not. My contention was
going to be that in the same way that Andrew
Tate promotes a misogynistic worldview, so too, just the explicit
content that young people seeing, whether they're in grade three
or whether they're finishing high school, and both of those
things combining and just creating this horrible melting pot of
(07:08):
I guess, male aggression or dominance or an expectation that
they can get away with this kind of thing. So maybe,
before I go into what you're saying, would you push
against that or you say that's a reasonable position to take.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I would say that's reasonable broadly. But I think what
Angrew Tate is offering is slightly different in that he,
I guess, vocalizers or intellectualizes, not that I'm calling him
intellectual at all, but intellectualizes maybe feelings that boys might
have about, you know, being a little bit disaffected about society,
(07:43):
a little bit confused about how things are going.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Not quite sure where they fit.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And he offers a really neat and prescriptive narrative for
how to show up in the world and how to
be in the world.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that is related absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To very explicit content that feeds into derogatory ideas about
girls and women. They do work together, but slightly in
slightly different ways.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So I think I'm really hearing you say, is that
the Androw tape phenomenon, And if it's not him, it
will be somebody else. He's not the only person out
there with these views. What they're doing essentially is radicalizing
masculinity and turning it into a masculinity is becoming a
victim status in some ways, saying well, hang on now,
the girls have got too much power. We've seen the
(08:24):
sexual revolution change things to a point where there's a
lack of balance and we need to reclaim that. Is
that a better restatement of that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I think that's absolutely what we're seeing, and even that's
what women who we spoke to in our study reported
as well, saying things like boys now view us women
as their oppressence and they have been exposed to sort
of these debates online about things like the gender wage
gap and myths about feminism's goals and aims, and that
(08:55):
is very much a radical or radicalized view about women
and about feminism, And the effects of hearing that narrative
is that you start to treat women and girls with
suspicion and start to understand yourself in relation to them.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Very differently.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I hear this sort of stuff and I'm just I
know that I've got a PhD in psychology and all
the staff, right, but I hear this and I just
kind of think, can't we just be nice to each other.
I'm writing a book at the moment about bringing up
boys and my definition of masculinity, the working definition that
I'm reasonably settled on. It might need some more tweaking
as the book is refined, but the idea is that
if you're a real man, if you hold your masculinity
(09:32):
well and in a healthy way, that you make the
people around you feel stronger and safer. And it's exactly
the opposite of what you're describing. I mean, and it's
not that hard to be nice. Well, it doesn't feel
to me to be that hard to be nice. I've
got a wife and six daughters. I'm nice to them,
do you know what I mean? Just I find it infuriating.
I'm sure that parents are listening to this, going how
(09:53):
is this guy infecting our kids? When you look at
this research, you spoke to all of these women, I'm
sure that it wasn't just explored. Let's understand what's going on.
I know that you've done some really smart work. In fact,
we're going to link to your article that was in
the Conversation, the one that you wrote with Stephen Roberts,
who's a professor of education and social justice at MUNASH.
As you've thought through this challenge, what do we do?
(10:15):
How do you see us moving past this? How do
we combat the rise of these radicalized masculine myths. I
don't know what else to call them.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
They are myths.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
The first thing that I would suggest, there's been some
research that's come out of Ireland that indicates that Andrew
Tate and sort of similar figures online their content. The
algorithm shows their content to.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Boys, whether they search for it or not.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
So the first thing for parents is that they need
to be aware that algorithms are changing and influencing how
their children see the world, are informing it at the
very least social media.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh my goodness. Anyway, yeah, okay, So parents need to
be aware of it.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
First.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What the catch is seeing in their feed is not
what Mum and dad are seeing in their feed.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
No. I think it would be very interesting if parents
would have a look at what is coming up in
their children's algorithms on TikTok, especially on YouTube, and just
see what these social media companies think a thirteen or
fourteen year old boy is interested in and whether that
reflects the person that they know. And I'm going to
(11:25):
assume that it doesn't, because algorithms assume very limited and
very narrow things about people in age and gender categories.
So the first thing is to be aware of that
and monitor it as much as you can. I know
that's really tricky. I know that there's tension around parents
and mobile phones, but we do need to take this
(11:47):
really seriously. So I would suggest that our other recommendations
are around conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So asking your kids, hey, do you know about this
guy Andrew Tate? What are your thought thought?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Well, tell me about what you're seeing online? Is there
anything you've got questions about? Is there anything I can
explain to you or help you understand without judgment, without
reprimand with curiosity, and allow an.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Open space for those conversations to happen.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Because we really believe that boys who are seeing this
sort of dangers stuff online really need this content to
be encountered by adults and pushed back on and criticized
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, I fundamentally believe that parenting is a it's a
moral endeavor. Right when you're raising kids, when you're socializing them,
what you're really doing is you're taking them the morality
that's necessary to navigate the world in a healthy way.
And when I hear you say that about conversations, my
mind immediately goes to the idea that silence is the
equivalent of complicity. And that might be an overly harsh
(12:50):
thing to say. It could come across a little bit
shaming or judge. But if we don't have the conversations,
then our kids are not going to get the information
that they need from us. I'm glad you so that
you said there was a third thing.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
The third thing is what we can do in schools.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
And so we've already got respect for relationships education and
that's fantastic and is intended to respond to these sorts
of issues really well. But we need that to be
implemented more comprehensively in schools and in schools all around Australia.
At the moment, it's only mandatory in Victoria and in
government schools in Victoria. The other thing that we're really
(13:26):
pushing for is for the government to acknowledge that we've
got an issue here with what's happening in schools, particularly
around violence towards women and girls. So we want really
firm language around that and a really firm acknowledgment that
there's a zero tolerance approach to this sort of behavior
in schools, and that protects both boys and girls. It
(13:46):
allows boys to have better relationships with girls and women
and to learn how to have really meaningful connections with them,
and it protects girls from experiencing this kind of behavior
but also from expecting it from the men and boys
in their life.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Autonomy is one of those things that I'm hearing more
and more is from parents who were saying, I want
my children to be able to make choices, but they
also need guidelines. They need to know where the parameters are.
You can make choices in this space, but you can't
step out of it, and that's a perfect example of
why that matters. Stephanie. Really appreciate your time, Thank you
for joining me on the podcast. Good luck with your research,
(14:21):
and hopefully this moves the needle and makes a noise
in the areas where it needs to most.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Thank you so much for having.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Me doctor Stephanie Westcott is a lecturer in the School
of Education, Culture and Society at Monash University. We will
link to her article on the Conversation so you can
read more about her research in our show notes. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Craig Bruce is our executive producer, and if you'd like
(14:48):
more information about how you can make your family happy,
we'd love for you to check out our resources at
happyfamilies dot com, dot a yu
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Just
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