Mental health and the manosphere

Forces acting on young men

0:00ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

0:07Measles cases are climbing to levels that we have not seen in decades. A suspected case of a deadly strain of bird flu. Diseases can feel like they're coming from all angles. But we've faced deadly threats before, and every outbreak has taught us something. I'm Belinda Smith, and in Outbreaks, the new series of science fiction, we uncover the courage and detective work that helped Australia respond. Outbreaks. Search for Science Friction on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:39If you have been tuned in to the cultural zeitgeist at all this year, you'll have seen that the forces battling to influence how boys and young men look and act are more fractious than ever. Do you consider yourself a misogynist? They want a guy that can lead them and dominate them. Look-smaxing, maximizing your physical attractiveness, has had a moment. Do you think that your face changed at all by bell smashing? Yeah. The U.S. military is testing the testosterone of its soldiers. I'm authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our servicemen.

1:12And the social media forces fueling grievance churn on. There's a lot at stake in this contest for the minds of young men, including the health and safety of women. Fraternity gang rape at Cornell University. Australia has recorded the largest annual increase in family and domestic violence. And men. Men are three times more likely than women to take their own life. Then there's how young boys make sense of their inner lives and their futures. These conversations need to move to an action-oriented approach,

1:45which means sitting alongside our boys and co-creating a world for them that they really want to be in. Ask them how they feel. What do your friends think about all this stuff that's going on? You know, it's inquiry. It's curiosity. You're listening to All in the Mind from ABC Radio National. I'm Sanaa Kadar. Today, we speak to two experts in masculinity about the forces acting on our young boys and how we can better equip them for the future.

The manosphere in the mainstream

2:17I spend my time in the dark, grimy, muddy pools of the manosphere. Dr. Zach Seidler is a clinical psychologist. He's also the global director of men's health research at Movember, which is a men's health charity. And he's a principal research fellow with Origin at the University of Melbourne. And there has been a lot written and said about the manosphere this year. And in a sense, that's not surprising because this is a lot of fringe stuff that's now hitting the mainstream.

2:48This began in fringe subreddit 4chan threads. It's the idea of, like, inceldom, incels, men going their own way, pick up artists. This notion of, like, men's rights has been around for a very long time. And that's the basis of much of the manosphere. And now, because of the algorithm, because of the way in which our technology works, it's kind of pulled this stuff, which was very fringe, and pulled it into the mainstream. Because young men are going in and they're seeking pretty innocuous aims here,

3:20which is, like, how do I talk to a girl? How do I go on a date? How do I go to gym and get a bit stronger? All of this stuff is kind of pretty healthy. And they get fed pretty normal stuff. But the leap between, you know, something around going to gym to get a bit fitter and steroid use, the jump between talking to a girl and dangerous misogynistic pick-up artistry, used to be a very long leap and is now a step. And so the innocuous becomes toxic very, very quickly. And so that's kind of what our research showed,

3:52is that we've got, you know, 63% of guys who are watching these influencers. That figure, 63% of guys watching masculinity influencers, it comes from a research report published by Movember last year. They surveyed a representative sample of more than 3,000 young men who lived in Australia, the UK, and the US. And they asked them about their health and their behaviours, their relationships, attitudes, and the influencers that they followed. Many of whom actually have some OK things to say.

4:24It's just that they flirt with really dangerous ideologies. And the more you watch that type of stuff, the more the algorithm pushes you into more dark, dangerous places. Zach says many young men are often quite aware of the problems with that darker content. But at the same time, parts of it appeal and seem attractive to them, like the humour or the lifestyle that's portrayed. I wouldn't undermine or dismiss young men's critical insight. Like, when we talk to lots of them and we say, you're watching a lot of tape content, what do you think about this?

4:56They're like, he's pretty funny, I like the Bugattis, I like the girls, but I leave the misogyny at the door. Like, lots of them will say that. They're like, some of the stuff that he says is whack, it's disgusting, I don't agree with it. Now, if they're watching hours and hours of that, my concern is that that becomes a mirror of a norm. And so, while they might not at the start believe that that is how they should behave or act, the more of this they watch, the more they think that this is how men are. And that's, that's my, my concern.

Distress behind the optimism

5:29Now, if you had to conjure an image of the typical audience for this kind of masculinity content, you might imagine someone along the lines of this. A young guy in a basement who is disenfranchised, who's, you know, low education, like low SES. But Zach says Movember's research has found a way more complex picture than that. Like, that is not what our report showed. We actually found that it was often partnered men, white men, educated men,

5:59wealthier men who are more likely to be engaging with lots of this content. And this content was doing something to the way they thought about their futures, as well as doing something to their present mental health. You know, our research consistently, Sanna, shows that lots of these guys who watch masculinity influences are more likely to believe that they have optimism for their future. They will tell us that the future looks bright for them. So, the more they watch, the more they believe that there is potential, that there is scope for them to succeed.

6:30And yet, those guys, the very men who watch that content, are far more likely to be highly distressed, are to be risk-taking, are to be anxious. Can you talk about that relationship there? Because I'm wondering if that is partly because people, young people who are in distress are more likely to seek out these types of influencers who then make the distress worse? Or, like, what is the relationship there? The causal pathways are pretty complex to disentangle. I think that this content makes people more distressed. And I think that those who are more distressed are more likely to watch this content.

7:03So, I do believe that young men who are on the edge, who are very anxious, depressed, angry, substance-using, I think that this content offers them a lifeline. And that's something that we're trying to challenge at Movember, which is trying to actually deal with the emotional upheavals of those years of a young man's life and realising that there are much better long-term gain ways of sitting in that discomfort and finding, you know, pipelines for connection.

7:35That's going to help them much better than quickly buying something and, like, testosterone as if that's going to help everything right now. So, I am really concerned about this idea that the more they watch, the more distressed they become. Because what it's doing is creating these goals, really, this treadmill of goals that keep moving further and further away. And so, we end up in this very dangerous success-failure dichotomy

8:06where the vast majority of guys are failing and feeling worse, as I said, because the influencers benefit from that financially. And you're just creating this cycle of upheaval and grievance. So, that is where we are at right now. About two-thirds of young men surveyed across Australia, the UK, and the US are engaging with masculinity influencers. The ones who are watching the most Manosphere-related content are feeling surprisingly optimistic about their futures,

8:40but they can still be pretty despondent about the present. And it seems that the more they watch, the more they consume, and the worse they feel.

Workshops inside Australian schools

8:48On the ground, in schools in Australia, it's a mixed picture as well. I think that the language is shifting and changing. And yes, there's been an escalation in some of the behaviours, particularly sort of misogynistic or homophobic. But ultimately, what we are seeing is boys being more curious and prepared to challenge the language and challenge the content that they see online. Ben Vassloo is a youth worker and the CEO of The Man Cave,

9:19a mental health charity for teenage boys. One of the things they do is send expert facilitators into primary and high schools to run intensive workshops. The goal is to give boys the tools to express their emotions, manage their mental health, and create healthy relationships. I've been super impressed, and there's so much hope where young boys are actually coming forward and being like, I don't watch that, I don't agree with that. Really? Calling out that type of content. Yeah, it's actually been really amazing to see, particularly in the first term this year,

9:50where boys are actually standing up saying, I had a conversation with a 17-year-old, year 12 teenage boy the other day, who was like really quite distressed. He called me asking for advice and support because he'd seen what Clavicular, the kind of current trending manfluencer online, was doing around this kind of looks maxing, making sure you've got the tight jaw and the best bod. By like smashing a hammer to your facial bones? Yeah, yeah. These trends, he was really concerned. I should say that since Ben and I spoke, Clavicular, whose real name is Brayden Peters,

10:22has been charged with rape and drugging a woman for sex. So even more to be concerned about. And he's like, we're seeing this, we're watching this, and I'm just distressed, and I'm really heightened about it. So he was seeking out help, but he'd been through three Man Cave workshops and had our connection and the phone number, so that was really cool. But that also has to be balanced with, we are hearing reports, particularly from teachers about concerning behaviours, particularly from younger boys as young as sort of 10, 11 and 12. A lot of our work now is reaching into primary schools

10:52to help young boys kind of express, but think critically about what they're seeing online. So we're trying to walk this kind of really fine balance of like, not blaming and shaming, but saying yes to accountability and consequences, but also encouraging boys to have these sometimes politically incorrect, messy conversations in the spaces that we hold to ask questions like, is this content actually real? Is it helpful? Is it harmful? Like, is what I'm seeing the type of things that I should be looking up to? Are these the role models I should be exploring?

11:23I'm so curious what you're hearing with those youngest boys that you're seeing in primary schools or 11 years old. What are they saying? Yeah, so they're parroting and repeating what they're hearing online. Let's be honest, the social media ban hasn't quite worked just yet. The eSafety Commission is doing some great work, but we've still got a large number of young people finding ways around it. So using language that you would hear particularly from alt-right influencers around, you know, get me a sandwich, get in the kitchen. It's not, I don't want to seem alarmist.

11:55It's not necessarily, you know, happening at full scale escalation right across the country, but it is in pockets emerging. To ultimately tackle this kind of behaviour and thinking, the Man Cave runs its workshop in stages, or levels, with the first level focusing on the boys getting in touch with their own feelings and mental health. It goes for the whole school day, and we send in two very highly trained and skilled diverse facilitators that work with the boys in a group work model and talk them through a range of different challenges that they might be facing,

12:29but also give them the opportunity to talk about how they feel about their mates, how they feel about their family, the world around them. And then the facilitators guide them through different practical tools, like a check-in, for example, how to actually check in on your mate, see how he's feeling. We also do, we give them different concepts and analogies, like how to manage their emotions and seek help before it becomes a really big behaviour or a really big emotion. And we also talk a lot about gender equity,

12:59how to treat the other sex, how to form healthy relationships. We talk about consent. We talk about the sort of modern things that boys really need to know in those formative years. With the check-in in particular, I'm wondering if you can explain that. Like, what do you actually say to them about how to check in on a mate? Yeah, sure. It's something that we practice at the Man Cave. It can seem a little awkward at the start, but we actually role model a check-in. And a check-in really is about letting go of the outside world, what's happening outside of the classroom. Let's be present and let's focus on each other.

13:31And a check-in is about checking in on your physical self, your mind and your heart. And I can role model for you now. So I'll be like, hey, my name's Ben, checking in. I'm feeling a bit exhausted today, actually. I had to get up really early this morning. So I'm feeling like my body's a bit crunchy. I'm feeling a bit exhausted, but glad to be here. Yeah, something that's really bothering me at the moment is like my daughter's down in Tasmania. I'm not there. I'm a bit nervous. It's the first time we've been away from each other in a really long time.

14:03But yeah, I'm looking forward to having a conversation with her later tonight. Everything else is pretty good. I'm looking forward to the weekend, footies on. And that's, yeah, that's me checked in. It might sound really simple, but Ben says every now and then, these check-ins lead somewhere deep. Well, we definitely see a number of boys then being like, you know, me checking in. I haven't really shared this with anyone, but, you know, we lost my grandmother recently. Or this happened to me recently. Or this is happening with my parents.

14:34What we're doing is facilitating the conversation. So the facilitators will be like, let's go over to your mate over here. What is it like for you to hear your mate share this? Have you heard this before? Or we're then getting around into a group conversation where boys are feeling healthy to check in and they're not feeling judgment. So some of them are lighter. Some of them are a bit heavier. We've seen big disclosures in those groups before where boys just, you know, were shocked and like, I didn't know my mate was going through that. Like, I need to be there for you. I need to help you. And the teacher's also in the room. And the teacher's often not aware of some of the things that are happening that these boys are carrying in with them.

15:07So in a primary school, we call it a backpack. Like, what are all the rocks you're carrying in your backpack when you get to school that no one knows about? And people open up. They actually say. Every single day. Every single day. How do you facilitate a conversation around gender then? Like, because you said, you know, you're not being didactic. You're not saying you must think this and not that. How are you holding that conversation and carrying it along? Yeah. So, I mean, it's sort of embedded in all of our curriculum around making sure that we're amplifying the need for positive role models, male, female, all genders.

15:42But we also embed into the conversation the importance of female relationships in all that we do. We steer more towards that at level three. So we take the boys through a sense of safety and confidence in level one and level two. And we actually sit down and talk about gender equity. We talk about what it means to have equality. We talk about what it means to have healthy relationships. We talk about consent. We actually get the boys to talk about, like, what they believe is appropriate. What are some good examples of appreciating the women in your life as well as the men in your life?

16:13So by the time you get to level three, we're having more direct conversations. The boys are prepared. They've built their confidence. They've built their language. And they're ready to hold those types of conversations. As you might expect, sometimes there is pushback. Ben and the facilitators who run these programs say they're clear from day one about what is acceptable and what isn't. There is a bit of banter and a little bit of fun. But a couple of things. So if we hear, see or observe behaviour or language that we know is out of bounds, we call it out immediately. Right. And then we call the boy back in.

16:44So it's call out, call in. You know, this is not the type of language that we think is appropriate. It's not respectful towards women. We're really keen to understand why you said that. If you're keen to have the conversation now in front of the group, we'd like to. If it's a no, let's talk on the recess break. So consequences and accountability underpins our framework. The type of checking that we're looking for where you check your mate is around that type of behaviour and giving them the courage and the confidence, but also the safety. Like, hey, mate, I still love you. You're my mate.

17:14But that was really inappropriate. I don't think you should do that again. That's the type of authentic conversation we need to be having as men. So if we can teach the next generation as teenage boys to practice this now, that will become, you know, an empowered generation of healthy men. From ABC Radio National, you're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Kadar.

Certainty in uncertain times

17:36Clinical psychologist Zach Seidler says there are systems factors that need to be tackled if we're going to give young boys better models of manhood. And when we spoke, one thing we talked about was the Louis Theroux documentary from earlier this year called Inside the Manosphere. There was one scene in particular we talked about. It involved a fan of a Manosphere influencer who was a young man who'd just lost his brother to suicide.

18:04There was a moment in the documentary that really stuck with me when one of the young guys was asked, you know, what's going on in his life? And this was a viewer, one of the fans on the street in Miami. And he said, you know, I was down in the dumps, my brother killed himself, and I realized I had to turn my life around. And it immediately went to optimize, to empower, to suppression. And I thought that that moment was so telling of the pain and suffering that so many of these guys who are watching and looking up to these caricatures of manhood, they are going, all right, my really rich and nuanced internal experience is not safe.

18:48It is not safe for me to express this, and so I'm going to push it down, and I'm going to find a way to work out literally my body, my mind, and avoid, avoid, avoid. Yeah. You're so right about that moment because that felt like a real, almost like a sliding doors moment where he had this chance to really reevaluate everything and, like, rebuild everything in a really healthy way. And it just went completely sideways, not to his mind, he thinks he's fine, but, you know, the way he described it was like, oh, yeah, this is all suppression and warped.

19:22But I don't think that he should have responsibility heaped on him either, you know, because this is where the lack of empathy and compassion is not going to benefit us. Like, putting him in a box and saying he's toxic and harmful is the worst way to try and engage someone like that who is going through grief, really. And so, I actually don't judge him for what he did because for guys who are socialized in a certain way whereby their internal experience is foreign to them, it's dangerous, they get bullied, there's violence, whatever it might be.

19:55You know, the intolerance of uncertainty, which is the easiest psychological mechanism to understand why young men behave the way that they do, which is that ambiguity is very anxiety-provoking and certainty is a great solve for that. And that's what the manosphere does. It provides certainty in uncertain times. And so, when you're promising this very clear trajectory, these 12 rules for life, this idea of do this, get ripped, get rich, get a girl, this is how it will work, the simplicity of that is extremely entertaining.

20:31It's extremely addictive, really, when you are feeling like shit, when you don't know who you are. And so, when you are a 16, 18, 21-year-old man in a world that does not seem to have value for you as you see it, the best way is to kind of try and pull yourself up the hierarchy and push others down. And it fuels grievance politics. It fuels gender binaries and misogyny. And to understand that guy's experience as a case study and to go, what were the other options that he had at that moment?

21:04And to be honest with you, those other options are not as clear to him. And they're really, our society doesn't do very well at offering them to those guys. Yeah, he'd need, like, a really good therapist to help him through that, perhaps. Sure, for just $250 an hour. Exactly. Zach Seidler argues we need to change the conversation around Manosphere influencers and introduce a whole lot more nuance into how we speak about the space. The ones that are actually gaining the most traction are the most egregious. Like, people like Clavicula, who's a very famous Lux Maxxer.

21:37He is outright very vocal about using meth. He says the N-word. He's like, there are no consequences for his actions because he believes himself to be above social norms. And that's really what I'm witnessing at the moment. Like, the people like Rogan are not of concern to me. Right. And I think that this is where we're in a dangerous space, where if we are unable to delineate the difference between these voices and these ideologies, and we lump them all together, that's a surefire way to disengage a young guy by saying something.

22:16When someone like Rogan, who says 50% of the stuff he says makes complete sense, and lots of people would agree with, it's just that he's been boxed in with all of the others, and ergo, no more conversation. So, this is bad for social cohesion, it's bad for actually solving the problem, because you're not understanding the problem, which is that it's nuanced and it's getting more and more problematic with time, because the more you say, this is bad, this is bad, as I said before, the punitive measures lead to more problematic behaviour.

Advice for parents of boys

22:48So, what's a parent to do in this situation? Thankfully, both Ben and Zach have some advice for the parents of young boys and men. Well, firstly, replace your worry with action. Like, young men can smell worry from a mile away, and they don't really have any interest in being worried about. It's like, the more you say careful to a young guy, the more he's likely to go and, like, go cliff jumping. So, I think that we need to embed ourselves in their lives.

23:19So, my main aim is to promote curiosity. There's lots of different advice about how to hold conversation, do it in the car, do it in the car. No, I'm going to give you some straight up, real honesty for parents. This is Ben Vassloo from the Man Cave again. Know thy enemy. Know thy beast. To really understand the world of the Manosphere and these Manfluencers, you need to go in and do your research. Because asking your kid, are you in the Manosphere, they're automatically going to be no, and also defences up.

23:55So, get in there and understand the language, understand the trends. Ask them, did you see this? Did you see that? You need to be sitting alongside him, trying to see what values he's pulling from, you know, various content. What entertains him? So, we're eliciting an open, safe space. We can be like, you know, what's happened with Clavicula recently is that it was live streamed on a platform to millions of people that he was overdosing. I wouldn't suggest going to your teenage boy or teenage girl or your teenage child and being like, I hope you're not watching the Manosphere.

24:30I'd be like, hey, did you see what happened with that Clavicula guy? Can you explain that to me? Like, I don't really understand. Like, what happened there? What did you feel about that? Is there many other guys out there like that that you watch? If so, why? Yeah, interesting. What sort of stuff would they do? We're having a conversation. Punitive measures with young guys is not helpful because it suggests to them, firstly, that they should be ashamed about things. And what that does is it breeds silence. If he feels like he's going to show you an Andrew Tate video and you're going to say, red flag, phone gone, how dare you, rather than you sitting there and going, what about this is funny?

25:09Like, why? What do you think he's trying to say? Don't try and educate. Try and understand. And we're also having to remove our own fear and anxiety from being able to get an immediate change in behaviour or answer right then and there. It needs to be over multiple conversations and you need to be setting up safe conversations, honestly, over a period of time to make sure that you can see any potential concerns or shifts in your own child. You know, the headlines can make things feel really bleak when it comes to gender relations right now.

25:45What's giving you hope in this moment in time? I think if you spend enough time in schools or in a clinical room with young men and realise that when they feel safe, they have rich, beautiful, heartfelt internal worlds that they feel policed out of expressing. So, my hope comes from what I've actually witnessed, which is that we have a generation of men who have great emotional spectrum, great ability to express what they are feeling, but that muscle has atrophied.

26:22They have buried it out of fear, out of a sense of shame or out of a belief that that is what is necessary to succeed. So, I think we are on a precipice, where the conversation that we're having right now is very much deficit-focused. We are focusing on all that is wrong and dangerous and bad, and I think what follows from that is an inflection, a gender reckoning of sorts, where we say, actually, we are not okay with men and boys floundering.

26:55These conversations need to move to an action-oriented approach, which means sitting alongside our boys and co-creating a world for them that they really want to be in.

27:08That is Dr. Zach Seidler. He's a clinical psychologist, the global director of men's health research at Movember, and a principal research fellow with Origin at the University of Melbourne. You also heard from Ben Vassloo, a youth worker and the CEO of The Man Cave, a mental health charity for teenage boys. Now, we mentioned the Louis Theroux documentary, Inside the Manosphere, in this episode, but the ABC's own Mark Fennell has a doc series out on the topic right now.

27:38It's called The State of Man, and it goes further on the topic, and it also looks at potential solutions. All three episodes are available on iview right now, and they are definitely worth your time. I'm curious to know, how far down does this rabbit hole go?

27:55It doesn't look like society is going in the right direction. Men are being feminised. And real men have had enough.

28:03To be desirable and willing to do whatever it takes. Are you suffering from decreased morning erections? Do you want to help me pick an outfit?

28:14Are you high-value men? My knowledge count, happy, I know it's public knowledge, 41, right? Okay? You guys are all f***ing insolves. Oh, we are? Are we all insolves? I don't think a single woman might do a chocolate and you're literally a f***ing idiot. Ma'am, ma'am, why don't you come over here? How did we get here? The companies are manipulating young men's loneliness. Once you indoctrinate them, you've got customers for life. And who is really paying the cost? This is a whole-of-society problem.

28:44We will link to that series in our show notes. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Tegan Nichols. I'm Sana Kadar. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time.

29:07You've been listening to an ABC podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio, and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.