As Australia mourns the violent deaths of another five women, a growing chorus of experts has called for our attention to shift from the actions of young girls, to those of boys and young men.
Pikria Darchia, Yixuan Cheng, Jade Young, Dawn Singleton and Ashlee Good – and security guard Faraz Tahir – were murdered by Queensland man Joel Cauchi in his stabbing rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.
While a motive has not been stated, police on Monday morning said it was “obvious … the offender had focused on women and avoided the men”.
The tragedy came on the heels of a vigil on Friday night for Hannah McGuire, the third female to be allegedly killed by a man in the Ballarat region in as many months, amid a “national crisis” of violence against women that has claimed 28 lives this year, according to journalist Sherele Moody’s Australian Femicide Watch.
The 23-year-old’s body was found in the wreckage of a burnt-out car on April 5. Her ex-boyfriend, Lachlan Young, 21, has been charged with her murder.
Weeks earlier, Patrick Stephenson, 22, was arrested and charged with the murder of Ballarat East mother-of-three Samantha Murphy, who disappeared on February 4.
What is confronting, aside from the obvious, in the deaths of Ms McGuire and Ms Murphy, and that of Sydney water polo coach Lilie James – who in October last year was killed by Paul Thijssen, 24 – is the relative youth of their alleged perpetrators.
Until you consider, as Our Watch CEO Patty Kinnersly told news.com.au, “the sad reality that when men of any age hold unequal and sexist views about women, women are not safe”.
“We need to take care to state that youth is not the key factor here. (But) it is no surprise that young men also murder women,” Head of Monash University’s School of Education, Culture and Society, Professor Steven Roberts, told news.com.au.
There has been consistent debate in recent years over whether Gen Z (and, to some degree, its successor Gen Alpha – those born from 2010 onward) is the most progressive generation in history, or the most conservative.
“While they are arguably a generation of more liberal attitudes and higher awareness of gender equality, a significant minority – around a quarter – remain committed to and driven by the same harmful masculine norms of men of any age,” Professor Roberts, an internationally-renowned expert in the changes and continuities in boys and men’s masculinity practices, said, referring to the February findings of the biggest-ever Australian study of attitudes about what it means to “be a real man”.
Conducted by Jesuit Social Services in partnership with Respect Victoria, the Man Box 2024: Re-examining what it means to be a man in Australia report evidenced the link between men’s adherence to harmful beliefs and rules about needing to be dominant, aggressive, not show emotion, and use violence to gain respect – and the perpetration of violence against women.
Thirty-seven per cent of men aged 18 to 45 – nearly four in 10 – said they feel pressure to conform to these rigid male norms. Those who most strongly endorse them are not only 31 times more likely to believe “domestic violence should be handled privately” and 17 times more likely to have hit an intimate partner; they are also eight times more likely to have thoughts of suicide on a near-daily basis.
“Being hurt or insulted by women is deemed unfathomable in this logic, and violence is the reminder and re-establishment of the normative power relation,” Prof Roberts explained.
“Men’s violence against women becomes socially endorsed by the idea that men should be in control of the women in their lives and discipline them.
“Women thus become a ‘legitimate’ target – consider this in contrast to other relations, such as work, where it is highly unlikely that a man would hit his boss to regain control (in a situation), or as a response to feeling humiliated.”
How masculine cultures of sexism and stoicism remain so deeply entrenched among boys is, in part, “due to the legacy of past generations, where men were conditioned to be … providers, detached from healthy emotional expression”, a spokesperson for Victorian youth organisation The Man Cave, told news.com.au.
“While progress has been made in recent decades to increase understanding of mental health and emotional wellbeing, many men still find themselves adrift in a changing world, grappling with shifting expectations and unable to identify a healthy form of masculinity to embody.”
Enter Andrew Tate – the bald, cigar-smoking former professional kickboxer who is facing extradition to the UK over rape and human trafficking claims. A leading voice of the manosphere, Tate is one of, if not the main misogynistic influences young men speak about, and whose ideas and phrases they regurgitate.
While it’s crucial to recognise that many men don’t subscribe to Tate’s harmful ideologies, “the fact that young men are drawn to him is something we should be concerned about”, The Man Cave spokesperson said.
“From our work, we know many boys feel disconnected from the world around them. We know they are desperate for positive stories and examples of what it means to be a man of character, conviction and clarity. This is the void that men like Tate seek to fill, and right now, it’s working,” they added.
Prof Roberts rejects the notion young men’s “turn to Tate” is due to a shortage of male role models; this is “a social myth”, he said, and “the idea that men need male role models serves to perpetuate the very problem it claims to ameliorate”.
Instead, their gravitation toward him “reflects a broader Zeitgeist that alleges ‘feminism has gone too far’”, he said.
“(Tate) is the backlash to the MeToo movement, and his promise is to re-establish the old privileges that men formerly had gained unchecked, and he sets out to radicalise young men into such beliefs.”
While the most recent National Community Attitudes towards Violence Against Women Survey (NCAS) Youth Report “showed young people’s attitudes are slowly improving, the horrific recent deaths clearly show why this change is too slow”, Chair of Respect Victoria, Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon, told news.com.au.
“(The) government needs to accelerate current efforts,” she said.
“This includes significantly increasing the funding committed to tackling the whole spectrum of this crisis from prevention, to early intervention, crisis response, as well as recovery and healing. Education is (also) a critical component of prevention and early intervention work.”
Research – and the efforts of the likes of Teach Us Consent’s Chanel Contos – has shown us that the conversation shouldn’t be corrective or punitive, but rather, “preventative”.
“But, we must all work together to change the culture that allows this violence to thrive – and the way we support boys and young men is a big part of the solution,” Ms Kinnersly said.
We also, Dr Fitz-Gibbon said, “must name this violence for what it is – men’s violence against women”.
“For too often, we have focused on women to solve this problem. And while prioritising victim-survivors’ safety must always be the priority, ultimately if we are going to eliminate men’s violence we must focus on the actions and attitudes of men and boys.”
Until we do – until this “national crisis” comes to an end; until “boys will be boys” is no longer considered an acceptable excuse, and a man’s sense of entitlement no longer outweighs his capacity for empathy – women will continue “to be careful”.
“We’ll continue to clench our keys between our fingers. Track our friends’ journeys home. Walk or run, one earbud out … just in case. All the things women do every day to ‘stay safe’,” Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan told reporters last Wednesday, in the wake of Ms McGuire’s alleged murder.
“It’s an exhausting burden – and one that, to put it bluntly, doesn’t belong to us.”
It is well past time for men to help shoulder it.