Toxic turnaround: Inside the fight to bring positive masculinity to teen boys in Aussie schools

By Kate Uren, Herald Sun

Digital feeds are full of violent and pornographic content that’s fuelling toxic behaviour in teenage boys. Now experts reveal how they’re fighting back for positive masculinity.

Digital feeds are full of violent and pornographic content that’s fuelling toxic behaviour in teenage boys. Now experts reveal how they’re fighting back for positive masculinity.

When Paige Campbell enters all-boys’ classrooms, she knows they’ve probably already been schooled in the misogyny and provocative “manosphere” narrative of their social media feeds.

They’ve had violent or pornographic ads pop up in their video games or maybe taken part in schoolboy chats that rank the attractiveness of their female peers.

But in just an hour or so, the experienced counsellor works to change that negative script and give boys and teens a fresh perspective.

Lining herself next to the students, she asks a series of questions, with those who answer ‘yes’ taking a step forward.

“It’s things like ‘have you ever felt unsafe walking alone at night, have you ever felt self-conscious or judged about your body’ and essentially what it does is it puts me, the female facilitator, at a huge gap away from the men and boys,” said Ms Campbell, co-founder of Melbourne-based Tomorrow Man, which holds workshops in schools to help break down “outdated and harmful stereotypes and expectations”.

“It shows the discrepancy of equality and then from there that starts a conversation. The boys are lapping that up.”

That workshop, which Ms Campbell calls In Her Shoes, is just one of many that Tomorrow Man is bringing to classrooms in more than 300 private and public schools across Australia, starting in Year 9.

Ms Campbell said regressive trends on social media had taken their toll on boys and young men, who were being assailed by a constant influx of extreme online content.

“If you’re already feeling vulnerable and disenfranchised, that manosphere algorithm can come up (on social media feeds) pretty quick,” said the counsellor, who also co-founded Tomorrow Man’s sister organisation.

“The work that we do is trying to kind of disrupt that algorithm to show men a different version of masculinity.

“We provide kids with the tools to shape their own tomorrow. We expand their idea of what it means to be a man and expand their range emotionally and socially.”

The Foundation for Positive Masculinity – headed by Ray Swann, deputy headmaster at Melbourne’s prestigious, all-boys Brighton Grammar – is also exploring what it means to be a man in a society where women are taking their place as equals in the workplace and at home and boys are being preyed on by toxic influences.

Working at Brighton Grammar and at schools around the country through a federally funded program, Common Ground, the foundation’s classes take boys through three phases to promote healthy masculinity – “learn”, where teachers connect with the boys, “unlearn” that shows boys real information that contrasts with the narratives they see online, and “relearn”, giving boys the power to making their own, empowered choices about gender equity.

In small sharing circles, Dr Swann said boys and teens were encouraged to explore what masculinity means.

“Boys will perform what success looks like and at the moment that’s dominant masculinity,” he said.

“You get a group of boys … and they’ll make inappropriate comments in class or they’ll do a rating (of girls) or one of these things that is completely inappropriate.

“If you ask them as an individual, ‘do they think that’s right?’ they would most likely say no.”

Dr Swann said one worried boy had asked him if it was okay to open a door for a woman.

“He was saying ‘I don’t want her to think that I’m putting her below me’. This is the huge confusion at the moment about gender,” he said.

Sydney-based youth educator Daniel Principe is going into classrooms all over the country – starting in Year 5, when exposure to harmful gambling, dating or porn ads while playing games online has already begun – and challenging the way boys and teens think.

In class-based groups, he addresses the toxic masculinity that “preys on their insecurities and anxieties” about body image, relationships and their future. It is also feeding a disdain for women, who are derided as “gold diggers” craving a credit card over meaningful connection and care.

But Mr Principe said the change he saw in those classroom forums was giving him hope.

“What’s online is horrific. It would be easy to be discouraged but I guess I get to see the very best of young people and so that’s what keeps me going,” he said.

“I ask young people to imagine what is a healthy man and a healthy human. I ask them to tell me what’s missing from pornography. I ask them to tell me how they would deal with rejection from a friend, a job or a romantic interest. And it’s wonderful to hear them thinking through these topics, to hear how they have these conversations with their friends.

“Every day, I’m just meeting so many wonderful young men who are wanting more for themselves. They’re up against their mates who are apathetic and trying to drag them down … who punish them, judge them, snigger at them for wanting to offer up a voice and counter-narrative to what it is to be a good and decent man in 2025.

“They have the guts and the courage to participate in a hostile environment, they want better for themselves.”

It’s a similar story at Man Cave, a Melbourne-based not-for-profit that has helped thousands of boys reset what it means to be a man.

Lucy Barrat, a former teacher who is now Man Cave’s product and education manager, said its program of three whole-day workshops for boys aged 12 to 18 was helping “young boys become great men”.

The organisation – which is planning an upper-primary program in response to reports that “some attitudes, beliefs and behaviours are starting to creep in earlier” – measured its success in how boys felt after taking part in its workshops, Ms Barrat said.

“If anybody were to say to me like ‘what are you seeing in your workshops?’, the No. 1 thing that I’d say is hope,” she said.

“Let’s choose to see the greatness in boys because we inherently believe that they actually, deep down, are wonderful, excellent, beautifully, emotionally rich people who want to contribute to community.”

Ms Barrat said that came with a qualifier that boys and men were “causing a lot of harm in our communities at the moment”, with growing disrespect towards female teachers and peers and damaging attitudes and behaviours towards women.

Boys were feeling “worthless” and struggling to know their place in society, fuelled by a feed of conflicting narratives.

“Be a provider for your family but women don’t need you to provide for them, protect others, but women don’t need your protection, be a leader but make space for others to lead, be physically strong but don’t be violent, be emotionally expressive but don’t be weak. It’s like ‘well, I can’t get it right’,” she said.

“They just feel lost – where’s their role in society at the moment? It used to be a lot clearer. In the modern world, there’s conflicting gender norms around masculinity and roles and things like that so it’s contributing to their sense of purposelessness.

“Young men are really looking to male role models to show them how to do things. That’s the essence of what we’re trying to do – put positive role models in front of boys because they can’t be what they can’t see.”

This article was first published on the heraldsun.com.au on 22 August 2025