Anna Caldwell: School hate chat groups are no laughing matter

Hate disguised as humour is still hate, writes Anna Caldwell, and the Knox Grammar chat scandal exposes a deeply ingrained disrespect for women and marginal groups in our society.

The Knox Grammar website sets out their noble goal: to develop students of “faith, wisdom, integrity, compassion and courage” with “sure knowledge of who they are and how they should live”.

It’s hard to imagine a mission statement more at odds with the chilling hate chat exposed on the front page of The Daily Telegraph this week.

The jokes about rape and chat that demonstrates outright misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia should chill us all to the bone.

What is even more horrifying are a handful of comments left on the story from readers declaring these types of “chats” are likely replicated at schools around the state.

The insight into the boys’ chat room will be distressing for women, gays, Jewish people and anyone of minority.

It will be distressing for the parents of boys who themselves want to raise kind young men.

But, in truth, it should be distressing for all of us. Because what this shows is a deeply ingrained cultural disrespect for women and marginal groups.

Knox Grammar School. Picture: Tim Hunter

What has been exposed is a fundamental flaw in the way these boys have been socialised in order to believe that a private chat of this nature is funny.

What has been exposed is a damning sense of entitlement. I found myself struck by the parallels on Thursday morning as two major stories on the treatment of women broke seemingly worlds apart.

In Sydney, there was the hate-filled Knox chat which joked carelessly about rape. In Melbourne, the story of AFL hero Dustin Martin reaching around to grope a woman’s breast almost mindlessly as he walked past her sitting on another man’s lap was splashed on page one.

Seemingly unrelated, both stories display a shocking sense of entitlement among young men which often lurks along in the shadows never called out.

Richmond’s Dustin Martin is embroiled in a video scandal.

And then women are left to ­wonder why they get talked over in boardrooms when the young men grow up and end up in suits.

It is likely that the social media age has only magnified this problem.

Platforms like Facebook and TikTok are able to amplify low-level hate speech in ways that cascade and ­indoctrinate.

Last year, a BBC investigation created a fake social media profile to investigate online misogyny, which led them down a rabbit hole to content that promoted and condoned rape and sexual harassment.

In the study, a researcher posing as a man set up fake online accounts. They demonstrated “low level” signs of hostility towards women.

But as the experiment continued, the platforms recommended disturbing memes and content supporting rape, violence and harassment.

Young boys are growing up in an era where they are constantly being desensitised to abhorrent acts.

One of the problems with the Knox group chat is exactly that.

The boys in question will be facing some very tough reckonings now — or at least I hope they are.

But ask yourself this. What would happen if The Daily Telegraph had not exposed the conversations?

The boys, tremendously privileged in their education, would go on to university and into the workforce eventually knowing that their apparent humour is socially unacceptable.

In fact, they know this now — that’s why it’s in a private chat group.

The young men will likely go on to be lawyers, doctors, politicians, leaders of industry. But what opinions and inside jokes will be lurking ­beneath the surface?

Does the group chat of high school evolve into the locker room chat of adult life?

Even as the blatantly unacceptable opinions and jokes are scrubbed out of their repertoire with age, what underlying attitudes do these men carry with them?

This group chat is a wake up call for all of us.

We must shine a light on the way our children are growing up and ask ourselves what’s going wrong.

We think we’ve come so far and discrimination against women, gays and other minorities are behind us, but the truth is these attitudes are just lurking beneath the surface, hidden in group chats and disguised as “jokes”.

You can’t joke about this stuff. Humour will never be an excuse for hate.

It’s time we pay attention.