It’s a Man’s Issue: How two young Aussies are revolutionising what it means to be a man
Defying the likes of Andrew Tate and the manosphere, these two Aussie mates are determined to prove speaking out against men’s violence doesn’t demonise masculinity – it enhances it.
Toowoomba
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As young man growing up in rural Queensland, Dr Curtis Rayment was completely blind to the realities of the sexual violence faced by women daily, until a close friend was raped.
“That created a cascade of events that led me to realise that a lot of my behaviours and the small things that I was doing contributed to quite a big problem,” Dr Rayment said.
Frustrated, angry and feeling hopeless, Dr Rayment decided to channel his passion into preventing other women from facing the same horrifying pain.
Backed by good friend and fellow Toowoomba doctor Jack Bryant, he started It’s a Man’s Issue – a movement teaching school-age students across Queensland about consent, rape culture and toxic masculinity, led by powerful young, male voices.
“We take a very direct approach, we’re pretty blunt and honest about what’s going on, what’s happening in our lives, and maybe some instances in our lives where we look back and wish we’d done better as young men,” Dr Bryant said.
While the pair’s work impacts students across the board, their focus remains on young men.
“We kept coming back to one point, it always seemed to be a man that was involved in these issues, that was perpetrating these issues, and when we had a deeper dive into the statistics, we just became more and more aware that this was definitely a man’s issue,” Dr Bryant said.
Latest statistics from the Personal Safety Survey showed male victims of sexual violence were still more commonly abused by men than by women with 13% of all people surveyed reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a male perpetrator compared to only 1.8% at the hands of a woman.
The recent Australian Child Maltreatment study found peer on peer sexual assaults among children and teens were on the rise with 18.2% of 16 to 24 years olds reporting being abused as a child compared to 12.1% of adults aged 45 and over.
The same national survey also found increased instances of male adolescents known to their victims perpetrating sexual abuse against children.
“Some teachers are genuinely terrified of groups of young boys; groups of young girls will completely avoid going to certain areas of the school because they know that they will be sexually assaulted or sexually harassed on the school grounds,” Dr Rayment said.
“It’s the very early stages of coercive control, behaviours within relationships and often young people not understanding what the aspects of consent are,” he said.
“It’s those little things that I think, especially boys at that age, don’t realise they’re perpetuating and that almost give men permission to escalate their behaviours.”
On top of this, influencers like Andrew Tate flood young people’s social media, promoting misogynistic messages and extremist concepts of what it means to be a man.
“People like Andrew Tate are very good at getting those insecure vulnerable people and turning their problems around and giving them a ‘reason’ for why those problems exist – and he often blames women,” Dr Rayment said.
“Young men typically haven’t experienced sexual assault in their own life directly but most young men know somebody that has killed themselves or have thought about suicide at some point or had those big dark thoughts.
“People like Andrew Tate, the stuff that they promote, he talks about the fact that these men are weak … (when) these are really big problems affecting men.
“I find that we can draw parallels between the role that toxic masculinity has on men’s mental health to why it’s important for us care about sexual assault and consent and gender stereotypes.”
In the fight to end men’s violence against women, Dr Rayment and his team target the silent majority, shining a light on the power of speaking up, even without words.
“Usually there is a ringleader who is considered a ‘cool dude’ in some way and then what happens is you get lots of his friends being the silent bystanders,” he said.
“Often you don’t need to do anything heroic, you just need to not laugh and not give that person the platform or the space.
“Being an active bystander doesn’t have to be going in guns blazing, committing social suicide, it’s the small things that you can do.”
For the team, open and honest communication is crucial to combating false narratives of “male bashing”.
To them masculinity is not a dirty word, rather it is something to be celebrated.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with masculinity,” Dr Bryant said.
“One of the biggest challenges is getting the boys to realise that they will have the support if they voice their opinion and stop this behaviour.
“There’s this social stigma and the social fear that they will be rejected by their friend group for having those opinions; meanwhile, we know that the majority of men do have these opinions.
“I think one of the most powerful things, especially seeing Curtis do this presentation for many years now, is just showing that men can be passionate about this issue, showing that it’s normal for men to talk about these things, to open up about these things and show passion and show support.”
Learn more about It’s a Man’s Issue and their work across Queensland at www.itsamansissue.com
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Originally published as It’s a Man’s Issue: How two young Aussies are revolutionising what it means to be a man
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