High Steaks: ‘Anger’ helps keep consent campaigner Chanel Contos motivated
Consent campaigner Chanel Contos has opened up on porn, social media bans and how internet algorithms are being used in a wide-ranging interview, while revealing she is set to launch a version of her consent book tailored to the USA.
It’s 2.40pm on a Tuesday when feminist, activist, author and consent campaigner Chanel Contos swans in for lunch at high-end French bistro Felix, arms open for a hug hello.
We’re seated in the back corner of the moody Merivale venue at Contos’ request – “My fav steak in Sydney is Felix” she texted the previous week.
She’s only in town for a few days to be with family, before jetting back to her new home in Oxford, England, where she’ll resume her studies for a Masters in Public Policy – her fourth university degree.
Contos rose to prominence in Australia in 2021 at a time when women’s rights to be free from sexual violence were being placed firmly in the national spotlight by Brittany Higgins, among others.
Her campaign to make consent education mandatory in every school in the country started with an Instagram poll in February that year and exploded into a movement that’s now gone international, and resulted in Contos writing a book on the subject.
It’s been four whirlwind years of lobbying politicians, delivering workshops with young people, speaking out in the media and allying herself with fellow feminists around the world, and the 26-year-old has barely slowed down.
We also happen to be sitting down for steak frites and oysters just hours after President Trump’s second inauguration.
Contos worries the fraught political climate in the US isn’t far from reaching our own shores, as young people become increasingly partisan and social media algorithms reinforce the division.
“Some groups in society have gotten into a purist mindset, where if you don’t have 100 per cent of the same opinions as the group, then you’re deemed in opposition to the cause as a whole,” she says.
“What that’s done is push people away from the middle, and particularly away from progressive circles.
“I really worry about the way algorithms are being utilised. They’re a serious threat to democracy.”
Boys and young men are having their view of women shaped by increasingly extreme content “because it’s going to keep there, because it’s going to make them angry”.
“I also find it really confusing that left and right-wing politics is becoming more synonymous with being progressive or not progressive around women’s rights,” she says.
“I think that it’s quite well established in our (Australia’s) political context that violence against women is a human rights issue, not a political issue, and hopefully, fingers crossed, we can avoid that polarisation and politicisation of it.”
Julian Assange’s Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson recently wrote Contos a reference in her application to study at Oxford, after the pair became friends when Robinson interviewed Contos for her own book, How Many More Women.
The young activist is writing again, but she says she’s not ready to write a whole new book – yet. Instead, she’s preparing to release her first title, Consent Laid Bare, in the United States later this year and has been localising the book with more references to frat culture, weaving in US case studies and subbing out high profile Australian figures for ones more recognisable to an American audience.
At some point in our lunch we both realise we’ve been so engrossed in our conversation that our meals – we’ve both ordered the faux-fillet wagyu sirloin, medium rare – are going cold.
Earlier, Contos explained why she wrestled with her own stance on Australia’s world-leading social media ban. Platforms like Instagram were the vehicle for her own campaign, after all.
However, distrust of the social media companies and their unwillingness to self-regulate or be regulated eventually moved the dial for Contos, who is in favour of the legislation.
“There was a billion things that we could do before banning it that I would’ve loved,” she says.
“My qualms with the social media ban are: why are we not banning pornography for children and fining porn companies? Because that’s the main content I’m worried young people see online.”
Here, Contos fires up, becoming twice as passionate as she spoke at length on one of her “wishlist” policies.
“If they’re still able to go to Pornhub with nothing restricting them, then the social media ban doesn’t feel as impressive, inspirational as it could be.”
She believes the stigma and shame associated with pornography is preventing Australia from having an “urgent” national conversation about its effects on young people.
“People aren’t ready to think about their children watching (porn) – no one wants to think about the fact that the average age of first access to pornography is as young as 11 years old,” she says.
“You see an 11-year-old and you can’t comprehend that.
“When people look at their own kids and their own nephews or nieces, it doesn’t make sense – and it shouldn’t make sense, but most pornography is accessed accidentally for the first time.”
Contos is concerned, too, about the risk that unrestricted access to generative artificial intelligence presents for bullying and sexual harassment, “fuelled” by male sexual entitlement – a phenomenon she reckons with at length in her book.
In the past year several high schools in Victoria and NSW have ended up in the headlines after male students were found to have created deepfake nudes and sexual images of their female teachers or classmates.
“It’s really important to remember that they just got caught, and this is happening at a very large scale,” she warns.
“If they’re not understanding those fundamentals of consent and empathy as to why another person might not want to be depicted in that way, it’s very easy for someone to make that sort of content about another person.”
The 26-year-old admits these past few years have been “more overwhelming” than she expected as she attempted to juggle full-time work at Teach Us Consent and full-time study.
In an ironic twist, next year she intends to intern for three months at the organisation she founded to complete the final requirement of her fourth degree.
We end up discussing the resurgence of the abortion debate – the striking down of Roe V Wade in the US was “a stark reminder that we have to not only keep fighting, but hold the ground we have” – and I’m curious to know how she stays motivated, energised and optimistic.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs, pauses for a moment. “I’m also super motivated by anger.”
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Originally published as High Steaks: ‘Anger’ helps keep consent campaigner Chanel Contos motivated
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