00:00:06
Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast, some very old ideas about women are having a comeback.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: I don't know, she brings like this dominance since the relationship and I want to be the one.
00:00:20
Speaker 3: Essentially, Corn the shots online.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: The manisphere is booming, Louis Theroux's new documentary puts it under the microscope, and reality TV shows like Married at First Sight putting some of these attitudes right into prime time. So where is this coming from and how do we actually fix it? It's the Quickie for Wednesday, March eleven. I'm Taylor Strano for a look at the latest news headlines. Here is Clare Murphy.
00:00:47
Speaker 4: Thanks Taylor. Radio host Kyle Sanderlins has issued his first public statement since being suspended due to an on air relationship breakdown with his co host Jackie Henderson. After accusing Henderson of being unprofessional and off with the fairies due to her obsession with astrology live on air, she walked down on the show and took time off. The radio station's parent company, ARN released a statement just days after, saying Henderson now refused to work with Sandalan's and so they were ending the pairs ten year, two hundred million dollar contract, citing a breach by Sandalans. Sandalans released a statement through his manager yesterday saying of the on air spat, I wish I'd phrase things differently. He went on to say the night of the incident, he sent Jackie a message telling her that he loves and cares for her and that he meant every word. He claimed the idea that their partnership could end like this is devastating, and that he had been told he was not allowed to contact Henderson or speak to any of his radio station colleagues. He said, the truth is that ARN terminated Jackie's contract on the same date accused me of a breach. All of this happened while I was being told to sit quietly and say nothing. That is not a genuine process. He called on Arn to do the right thing, saying he's asking for him to be allowed to do what he does best, entertaining the people who've supported the show for more than two decades. The Nationals will hold a leadership ballot following yesterday's snap resis ssignation of David Little Proud. Mister little Proud will remain in Parliament representing his Queensland seat of Marinoa. After announcing he was stepping down at an emotional press conference alongside his wife Amelia.
00:02:16
Speaker 5: I'm bargain I'll have enough to lead this great party. Would be the wrong thing for me to do. I love the National Party. I grew up in it. I'll beled till the day I die Green and Gold. I love it, and it'd be wrong for me to say that I'm the right person to continue to lead. That's tough for me to say. I think someone better can do it because I don't have the energy.
00:02:37
Speaker 4: Outspoken Queensland Senator Matt Canavan became the first to confirm he was putting his hand up for the job. Deputy Leader Kevin Hogan, the party's leader in the Senate, Bridget mackenzie, and former leader Michael McCormack are other potential contenders. A formal vote to elect the new leader will be held this morning in Canberra. Residents in the central Queensland hub of Bunderberg have been told to leave immediately as a brace for major flooding. Locals scramble to leave before the community's two major bridges were due to close yesterday afternoon, amid fears homes might be isolated for days. Queensland Premier David chris A Fully said more than four hundred homes and businesses were now under threat. The Burnett River threatened to peak at seven point six meters, just slightly below the seven point nine two meter levels of sixteen years ago, when homes and businesses were inundated and hundreds of people were forced to leave the city of more than seventy thousand people. The flood prone town of Gimpi and surrounding communities is also at risk, with a major warning current for the Mery River as water moves downstream. Flooding has also hit the Northern territory hard. The federal and anti governments have announced further disaster assistance funding for Catherine, where overnight rain boosted floodwaters that forced seven hundred people to seek shelter. In Darwin, residents have been asked to reduce water use and boiled drinking water as authorities repair at Darwin River Dam pump station that was shut down by the floods. There are reports that one or two more members of the Iranian women's soccer team did not board the plane from the Gold Coast to set Sidney yesterday as they prepared to return home. There are grave fears for the safety of the departing players after five of their teammates were granted asylum in Australia. The five branded wartime traders on Iranian state television for refusing to sing the national anthem ahead of their first Asian Cup game. The rest of the team departed Australia last night amid fears for their safety, facing threats of their families being taken into custody and their assets seized. They had earlier left a Gold Coast hotel under police guard, with one player appearing to be dragged by a teammate onto the bus. Protesters had tried to block the bus from leaving for the airport. Meanwhile, in Iran, the US has promised that it will be the most intense day of strikes. As the country's Revolutionary Guard threatens to block all oil shipments from the Gulf, the Pentagon renewed threats to hit Iran harder and less shipments can flow through the strait of Humu's off Iran's coast. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsith telling a Pentagon briefing today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes. Inside Era the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence, more refined, and better than ever. The war has already effectively halted shipments through the Strait, where a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes. Middle East oil producers say they've run out of storage and have now stopped pumping.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Thanks clerk Next. No longer a niche corner of the Internet, the manusphere has widespread appeal. So what are we going to do about it? Maybe you've felt it up close a date who jokes about wanting an old school wife, a male teenage relative who suddenly has strong views about submissive women, or a classroom where girls are being told they're too masculine for speaking up. It can feel like these attitudes come out of nowhere. The manusphere is the loose network of online spaces think podcasts, TikTok, reddit threads, discord servers where men talk to other men about how the world really works. Sometimes it's fitness and self help, but a big chunk of it pushes a very specific story that men are the real victims of modern feminism, that women should be obedient and a real man is rich, ripped and in charge. It's where Andrew Tatestyle talking points get endlessly repackaged and served up by algorithms to boys who are bored, lonely or angry. New research out of the King's College, London has put numbers to what parents and teachers are hearing. In a global survey of twenty three thousand people, thirty one percent of gen z men said a wife should always obey her husband, and a third set a husband should have the final word on important decisions at home. Now, if you're thinking you've heard that obedient sentiment lately, well you'd be right. This season of the uber popular reality tele show Maths has put the concept front and center in contestant Tyson, do you.
00:07:03
Speaker 4: Want someone who is obedient? Yes, it's controlling and you want a dog?
00:07:07
Speaker 3: Okay, Well then there you go. Maybe that's what I want.
00:07:10
Speaker 1: Comments like this have made it all the way to Canberra. Social Services Minister Tania Plibersik has accused the show and its network of normalizing coercive control by airing this kind of language, saying it's supercharged by algorithms peddling misogyny for profit.
00:07:26
Speaker 2: This is exactly the sort of controlling behavior that we're trying to combat when we talk about getting rid of coercive control. The fact that this is being mainstreamed and a really popular show is really disappointing. I really do think the makers of this show need to think twice before platforming this sort of misogyny.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: And now documentary filmmaker Luis Tharu is diving straight into this world. His new Netflix film Inside the Mana Sphere lands this week and follows him through Miami, New York, and Mabella, sitting down with some of the biggest Red Pill influencers to ask why their mix of traditional gender roles, outright misogyny, and get rich content is so appealing to teenage boys.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: What would you say?
00:08:11
Speaker 2: Is the message?
00:08:12
Speaker 1: I coach boys?
00:08:13
Speaker 3: How to make money? Oh, this is a nice spot.
00:08:15
Speaker 5: How to be outside the system, how to be proper guys?
00:08:19
Speaker 3: Would you see me?
00:08:19
Speaker 5: Don't we?
00:08:21
Speaker 3: Did you look at my arms? The statue is not saying too much.
00:08:26
Speaker 1: Through has called this project the ultimate challenge after decades of documentary filmmaking, precisely because so much of it lives in private group chats and algorithms that most of us hopefully don't see. And he's right. The hard part is that none of this is just out there online anymore. Teachers say, boys are repeating these lines in class, girls are finding themselves on dates with guys who talk about submissive women, and parents are trying to compete with hours of TikTok and YouTube a day. Experts point to a gap between what most people personally believe, which is slowly getting more equal, and what young men think everyone expects of them. That gap is where the manner sphere moves in, offering clear villains and easy answers to real feelings of confusion, loneliness or loss of status. So how exactly do we fix it, or at least stop it from getting worse? Does the under sixteen social media ban help curb the rise of this retric Australia's just added age verification on sites like porn Hub.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: Surely that'll go away.
00:09:26
Speaker 1: To help too, right, But what else needs to happen in classrooms, at home, in workplaces. Paige Campbell is the co founder and CEO of tomorrow Man. She spends her days in rooms with boys and men talking about healthier versions of being a bloke page. I want to start with getting your explanation, what does and doesn't fall into the manusphere.
00:09:52
Speaker 6: It's an umbrella term to describe a collection of platforms that are promoting misogynistic and anti feminist belief I think the scary thing about the manispee content is that there's you know, what they call gateway manisphere content.
00:10:05
Speaker 3: The outset.
00:10:06
Speaker 6: It can look quite positive, so it might be fitness content or self development for men, and so when it's just that, not manisphere content, but that content can quickly start to turn into this kind of more misogynistic, anti feminist belief content, and then that falls into the manisphere.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: So you regularly run these workshops with men and boys, what are you hearing from them? What draws them to this kind of content?
00:10:34
Speaker 6: Now more than ever, we would say that young men are confused about what it means to be a man today. Like with gender equality kind of growing over time, which is a great thing, women really have a blueprint of what that looks like, whereas the old school.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: Gender stereotypes or traditional stereotypes just don't fit for men anymore.
00:10:53
Speaker 6: And so young men really are searching, like what does it mean to.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: Be a man. They're nervous to get it wrong.
00:10:59
Speaker 6: And confused, and so they're seeking belonging and understanding, and unfortunately the Manisphere content kind of fills that void at the moment and shows up quite charismatically for them.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: I want to ask about some practical or useful tips of how we help quash this in a moment. But can you explain to us why we can't simply ignore it or minimize it to this patch of crazy bros on the internet? Why is that the wrong approach?
00:11:28
Speaker 6: If we just shut it down, our young people are going to stop talking to us about it, and that's the last thing that we want. We're seeing now more than ever that it's entered the mainstream. So there's a man on maths at the moment that is literally using Manosphere language. It's become very mainstream. The King's University study is showing that as well, and so we need to enter the conversation. We can't just quash it because it's there, we can't avoid it.
00:11:54
Speaker 3: It's growing rapidly.
00:11:56
Speaker 6: As parents and educators, we need to be able to engage in the conversation so that we can help our young people critically think about what they're observing too.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: So does it hurt them? We have shows I've married at first sight beaming into No doubt, you know, hundreds of thousands of televisions every single night, You've got Ossie viewers there who are actively consuming that rhetoric as it's playing out live from people like Tyson. Is that dangerous? Does that just add feel to the fire?
00:12:24
Speaker 3: I think so.
00:12:25
Speaker 6: I think that that you know the fact that that's mainstream and people are watching that, and you know they're already kind of absorbing that content and maybe starting to take on those beliefs, and then they're seeing someone represented in mainstream media.
00:12:39
Speaker 3: It's only promoting that misogyny.
00:12:41
Speaker 6: It's disappointing that's on mainstream media. The only positive I see in that is that the moments where people in that show are challenging his thinking around that is really important. But the fact that it's being promoted on mainstream is terrifying.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Really, are you hoping that maybe there's a world where reality TV can still exist? We can still get, you know, our kicks from watching a bunch of randoms marry each other, but it doesn't have to lead down that particular vein.
00:13:10
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:13:12
Speaker 6: I think one of the things that we notice more than ever is that young men are seeking these aspirational role models of what it means to be a man. And when you've got people like that that are like, I'm successful, I'm ambitious, I'm driven, you can see.
00:13:26
Speaker 3: Why young men might be pulled towards that.
00:13:29
Speaker 6: Whereas if we can show them men that are aspirational, that have real range and their masculinity, that you know, arna scared to show vulnerability or their emotion and show up in different ways, that's a great thing, and I'm sure it can still come with some trauma.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: Well. On the counter to maths being in the mainstream, Luis Thuru's got a new documentary out Inside the Manisphere, and he's putting it sort of front and center, really interrogating what that concept is and what harm it brings potentially to young people across the globe as well. So while you've got people maybe showing off the manisphere and that kind of behavior in one light on reality television, at least there's another sort of counterpoint to that doing hopefully some help not harm.
00:14:11
Speaker 6: It's a great thing I think now that the Manisphere is entering the mainstream, and like I said, we're seeing it more. You know, we're hearing manisphere language in our workshops. It's definitely more in the ether. Having people like Luis throw kind of show the opposite and show have some critical thinking around it is really important.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: And then what about for the rest of us page. I mean, we can't possibly sit there and respond to every single comment and call every single person out every time we hear some language or a comment that's not quite up to the pub test. So what do you suggest?
00:14:45
Speaker 3: How do we.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: And this is such a big question, how do we fix the manisphere? How do we dismantle it? What do we do?
00:14:52
Speaker 6: I wish I had a simple just do this answer. Unfortunately I don't. But we can't avoid young people being online. We can't stop that. We can't dismantle the manisphere. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take small acts every day. And I think that some of the things that we see is really important is just like every small day acts of people challenging those really harmful gender stereotypes, making sure that you've got equal responsibilities being shown at home if you do hear a comment. I know it's difficult, but being able to you know, girls shouldn't do these, men should do this.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: Just challenging thinking around that is really important.
00:15:28
Speaker 6: Also giving young people an opportunity, like we do in our workshops, to actually unpack this stuff, giving them a chance to understand where did these stereotypes even come from and why do we have to live up to those And giving them real world opportunities to have human connection and conversations, show vulnerability, show a different way to be can have a huge impact so that when they go back online, they know that there's another way. We can't do this work in silos like going in and just talking to the young men is not the solution. What we noticed three years ago is that in every tomorrow Man workshop women just simply didn't feature. And so we've really been active in making sure the female lens is always in that work now.
00:16:18
Speaker 3: But also we can't just work with.
00:16:21
Speaker 6: The young men like you have to work with the young men, and we have to create space for young women, the parents, teachers, the sporting clubs, like we all need to have a universal understanding and kind of tools and agency in this space.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: And I just think that's really important.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with us today. Hey, before your head off, make sure you're following the quickie in your favorite podcast app you've got your notifications turned on so you don't miss further news updates, and also come and hang out with us over on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and all those places we're at the Quickie. This episode is produced by me Taylor Strano, Georgie Page, and Claire Murphy, with audio production by lou Hill.
00:17:09
Speaker 4: Momma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast, some very old ideas about women are having a comeback.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: I don't know, she brings like this dominance since the relationship and I want to be the one.
00:00:20
Speaker 3: Essentially, Corn the shots online.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: The manisphere is booming, Louis Theroux's new documentary puts it under the microscope, and reality TV shows like Married at First Sight putting some of these attitudes right into prime time. So where is this coming from and how do we actually fix it? It's the Quickie for Wednesday, March eleven. I'm Taylor Strano for a look at the latest news headlines. Here is Clare Murphy.
00:00:47
Speaker 4: Thanks Taylor. Radio host Kyle Sanderlins has issued his first public statement since being suspended due to an on air relationship breakdown with his co host Jackie Henderson. After accusing Henderson of being unprofessional and off with the fairies due to her obsession with astrology live on air, she walked down on the show and took time off. The radio station's parent company, ARN released a statement just days after, saying Henderson now refused to work with Sandalan's and so they were ending the pairs ten year, two hundred million dollar contract, citing a breach by Sandalans. Sandalans released a statement through his manager yesterday saying of the on air spat, I wish I'd phrase things differently. He went on to say the night of the incident, he sent Jackie a message telling her that he loves and cares for her and that he meant every word. He claimed the idea that their partnership could end like this is devastating, and that he had been told he was not allowed to contact Henderson or speak to any of his radio station colleagues. He said, the truth is that ARN terminated Jackie's contract on the same date accused me of a breach. All of this happened while I was being told to sit quietly and say nothing. That is not a genuine process. He called on Arn to do the right thing, saying he's asking for him to be allowed to do what he does best, entertaining the people who've supported the show for more than two decades. The Nationals will hold a leadership ballot following yesterday's snap resis ssignation of David Little Proud. Mister little Proud will remain in Parliament representing his Queensland seat of Marinoa. After announcing he was stepping down at an emotional press conference alongside his wife Amelia.
00:02:16
Speaker 5: I'm bargain I'll have enough to lead this great party. Would be the wrong thing for me to do. I love the National Party. I grew up in it. I'll beled till the day I die Green and Gold. I love it, and it'd be wrong for me to say that I'm the right person to continue to lead. That's tough for me to say. I think someone better can do it because I don't have the energy.
00:02:37
Speaker 4: Outspoken Queensland Senator Matt Canavan became the first to confirm he was putting his hand up for the job. Deputy Leader Kevin Hogan, the party's leader in the Senate, Bridget mackenzie, and former leader Michael McCormack are other potential contenders. A formal vote to elect the new leader will be held this morning in Canberra. Residents in the central Queensland hub of Bunderberg have been told to leave immediately as a brace for major flooding. Locals scramble to leave before the community's two major bridges were due to close yesterday afternoon, amid fears homes might be isolated for days. Queensland Premier David chris A Fully said more than four hundred homes and businesses were now under threat. The Burnett River threatened to peak at seven point six meters, just slightly below the seven point nine two meter levels of sixteen years ago, when homes and businesses were inundated and hundreds of people were forced to leave the city of more than seventy thousand people. The flood prone town of Gimpi and surrounding communities is also at risk, with a major warning current for the Mery River as water moves downstream. Flooding has also hit the Northern territory hard. The federal and anti governments have announced further disaster assistance funding for Catherine, where overnight rain boosted floodwaters that forced seven hundred people to seek shelter. In Darwin, residents have been asked to reduce water use and boiled drinking water as authorities repair at Darwin River Dam pump station that was shut down by the floods. There are reports that one or two more members of the Iranian women's soccer team did not board the plane from the Gold Coast to set Sidney yesterday as they prepared to return home. There are grave fears for the safety of the departing players after five of their teammates were granted asylum in Australia. The five branded wartime traders on Iranian state television for refusing to sing the national anthem ahead of their first Asian Cup game. The rest of the team departed Australia last night amid fears for their safety, facing threats of their families being taken into custody and their assets seized. They had earlier left a Gold Coast hotel under police guard, with one player appearing to be dragged by a teammate onto the bus. Protesters had tried to block the bus from leaving for the airport. Meanwhile, in Iran, the US has promised that it will be the most intense day of strikes. As the country's Revolutionary Guard threatens to block all oil shipments from the Gulf, the Pentagon renewed threats to hit Iran harder and less shipments can flow through the strait of Humu's off Iran's coast. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsith telling a Pentagon briefing today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes. Inside Era the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence, more refined, and better than ever. The war has already effectively halted shipments through the Strait, where a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes. Middle East oil producers say they've run out of storage and have now stopped pumping.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Thanks clerk Next. No longer a niche corner of the Internet, the manusphere has widespread appeal. So what are we going to do about it? Maybe you've felt it up close a date who jokes about wanting an old school wife, a male teenage relative who suddenly has strong views about submissive women, or a classroom where girls are being told they're too masculine for speaking up. It can feel like these attitudes come out of nowhere. The manusphere is the loose network of online spaces think podcasts, TikTok, reddit threads, discord servers where men talk to other men about how the world really works. Sometimes it's fitness and self help, but a big chunk of it pushes a very specific story that men are the real victims of modern feminism, that women should be obedient and a real man is rich, ripped and in charge. It's where Andrew Tatestyle talking points get endlessly repackaged and served up by algorithms to boys who are bored, lonely or angry. New research out of the King's College, London has put numbers to what parents and teachers are hearing. In a global survey of twenty three thousand people, thirty one percent of gen z men said a wife should always obey her husband, and a third set a husband should have the final word on important decisions at home. Now, if you're thinking you've heard that obedient sentiment lately, well you'd be right. This season of the uber popular reality tele show Maths has put the concept front and center in contestant Tyson, do you.
00:07:03
Speaker 4: Want someone who is obedient? Yes, it's controlling and you want a dog?
00:07:07
Speaker 3: Okay, Well then there you go. Maybe that's what I want.
00:07:10
Speaker 1: Comments like this have made it all the way to Canberra. Social Services Minister Tania Plibersik has accused the show and its network of normalizing coercive control by airing this kind of language, saying it's supercharged by algorithms peddling misogyny for profit.
00:07:26
Speaker 2: This is exactly the sort of controlling behavior that we're trying to combat when we talk about getting rid of coercive control. The fact that this is being mainstreamed and a really popular show is really disappointing. I really do think the makers of this show need to think twice before platforming this sort of misogyny.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: And now documentary filmmaker Luis Tharu is diving straight into this world. His new Netflix film Inside the Mana Sphere lands this week and follows him through Miami, New York, and Mabella, sitting down with some of the biggest Red Pill influencers to ask why their mix of traditional gender roles, outright misogyny, and get rich content is so appealing to teenage boys.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: What would you say?
00:08:11
Speaker 2: Is the message?
00:08:12
Speaker 1: I coach boys?
00:08:13
Speaker 3: How to make money? Oh, this is a nice spot.
00:08:15
Speaker 5: How to be outside the system, how to be proper guys?
00:08:19
Speaker 3: Would you see me?
00:08:19
Speaker 5: Don't we?
00:08:21
Speaker 3: Did you look at my arms? The statue is not saying too much.
00:08:26
Speaker 1: Through has called this project the ultimate challenge after decades of documentary filmmaking, precisely because so much of it lives in private group chats and algorithms that most of us hopefully don't see. And he's right. The hard part is that none of this is just out there online anymore. Teachers say, boys are repeating these lines in class, girls are finding themselves on dates with guys who talk about submissive women, and parents are trying to compete with hours of TikTok and YouTube a day. Experts point to a gap between what most people personally believe, which is slowly getting more equal, and what young men think everyone expects of them. That gap is where the manner sphere moves in, offering clear villains and easy answers to real feelings of confusion, loneliness or loss of status. So how exactly do we fix it, or at least stop it from getting worse? Does the under sixteen social media ban help curb the rise of this retric Australia's just added age verification on sites like porn Hub.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: Surely that'll go away.
00:09:26
Speaker 1: To help too, right, But what else needs to happen in classrooms, at home, in workplaces. Paige Campbell is the co founder and CEO of tomorrow Man. She spends her days in rooms with boys and men talking about healthier versions of being a bloke page. I want to start with getting your explanation, what does and doesn't fall into the manusphere.
00:09:52
Speaker 6: It's an umbrella term to describe a collection of platforms that are promoting misogynistic and anti feminist belief I think the scary thing about the manispee content is that there's you know, what they call gateway manisphere content.
00:10:05
Speaker 3: The outset.
00:10:06
Speaker 6: It can look quite positive, so it might be fitness content or self development for men, and so when it's just that, not manisphere content, but that content can quickly start to turn into this kind of more misogynistic, anti feminist belief content, and then that falls into the manisphere.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: So you regularly run these workshops with men and boys, what are you hearing from them? What draws them to this kind of content?
00:10:34
Speaker 6: Now more than ever, we would say that young men are confused about what it means to be a man today. Like with gender equality kind of growing over time, which is a great thing, women really have a blueprint of what that looks like, whereas the old school.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: Gender stereotypes or traditional stereotypes just don't fit for men anymore.
00:10:53
Speaker 6: And so young men really are searching, like what does it mean to.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: Be a man. They're nervous to get it wrong.
00:10:59
Speaker 6: And confused, and so they're seeking belonging and understanding, and unfortunately the Manisphere content kind of fills that void at the moment and shows up quite charismatically for them.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: I want to ask about some practical or useful tips of how we help quash this in a moment. But can you explain to us why we can't simply ignore it or minimize it to this patch of crazy bros on the internet? Why is that the wrong approach?
00:11:28
Speaker 6: If we just shut it down, our young people are going to stop talking to us about it, and that's the last thing that we want. We're seeing now more than ever that it's entered the mainstream. So there's a man on maths at the moment that is literally using Manosphere language. It's become very mainstream. The King's University study is showing that as well, and so we need to enter the conversation. We can't just quash it because it's there, we can't avoid it.
00:11:54
Speaker 3: It's growing rapidly.
00:11:56
Speaker 6: As parents and educators, we need to be able to engage in the conversation so that we can help our young people critically think about what they're observing too.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: So does it hurt them? We have shows I've married at first sight beaming into No doubt, you know, hundreds of thousands of televisions every single night, You've got Ossie viewers there who are actively consuming that rhetoric as it's playing out live from people like Tyson. Is that dangerous? Does that just add feel to the fire?
00:12:24
Speaker 3: I think so.
00:12:25
Speaker 6: I think that that you know the fact that that's mainstream and people are watching that, and you know they're already kind of absorbing that content and maybe starting to take on those beliefs, and then they're seeing someone represented in mainstream media.
00:12:39
Speaker 3: It's only promoting that misogyny.
00:12:41
Speaker 6: It's disappointing that's on mainstream media. The only positive I see in that is that the moments where people in that show are challenging his thinking around that is really important. But the fact that it's being promoted on mainstream is terrifying.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Really, are you hoping that maybe there's a world where reality TV can still exist? We can still get, you know, our kicks from watching a bunch of randoms marry each other, but it doesn't have to lead down that particular vein.
00:13:10
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:13:12
Speaker 6: I think one of the things that we notice more than ever is that young men are seeking these aspirational role models of what it means to be a man. And when you've got people like that that are like, I'm successful, I'm ambitious, I'm driven, you can see.
00:13:26
Speaker 3: Why young men might be pulled towards that.
00:13:29
Speaker 6: Whereas if we can show them men that are aspirational, that have real range and their masculinity, that you know, arna scared to show vulnerability or their emotion and show up in different ways, that's a great thing, and I'm sure it can still come with some trauma.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: Well. On the counter to maths being in the mainstream, Luis Thuru's got a new documentary out Inside the Manisphere, and he's putting it sort of front and center, really interrogating what that concept is and what harm it brings potentially to young people across the globe as well. So while you've got people maybe showing off the manisphere and that kind of behavior in one light on reality television, at least there's another sort of counterpoint to that doing hopefully some help not harm.
00:14:11
Speaker 6: It's a great thing I think now that the Manisphere is entering the mainstream, and like I said, we're seeing it more. You know, we're hearing manisphere language in our workshops. It's definitely more in the ether. Having people like Luis throw kind of show the opposite and show have some critical thinking around it is really important.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: And then what about for the rest of us page. I mean, we can't possibly sit there and respond to every single comment and call every single person out every time we hear some language or a comment that's not quite up to the pub test. So what do you suggest?
00:14:45
Speaker 3: How do we.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: And this is such a big question, how do we fix the manisphere? How do we dismantle it? What do we do?
00:14:52
Speaker 6: I wish I had a simple just do this answer. Unfortunately I don't. But we can't avoid young people being online. We can't stop that. We can't dismantle the manisphere. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take small acts every day. And I think that some of the things that we see is really important is just like every small day acts of people challenging those really harmful gender stereotypes, making sure that you've got equal responsibilities being shown at home if you do hear a comment. I know it's difficult, but being able to you know, girls shouldn't do these, men should do this.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: Just challenging thinking around that is really important.
00:15:28
Speaker 6: Also giving young people an opportunity, like we do in our workshops, to actually unpack this stuff, giving them a chance to understand where did these stereotypes even come from and why do we have to live up to those And giving them real world opportunities to have human connection and conversations, show vulnerability, show a different way to be can have a huge impact so that when they go back online, they know that there's another way. We can't do this work in silos like going in and just talking to the young men is not the solution. What we noticed three years ago is that in every tomorrow Man workshop women just simply didn't feature. And so we've really been active in making sure the female lens is always in that work now.
00:16:18
Speaker 3: But also we can't just work with.
00:16:21
Speaker 6: The young men like you have to work with the young men, and we have to create space for young women, the parents, teachers, the sporting clubs, like we all need to have a universal understanding and kind of tools and agency in this space.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: And I just think that's really important.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with us today. Hey, before your head off, make sure you're following the quickie in your favorite podcast app you've got your notifications turned on so you don't miss further news updates, and also come and hang out with us over on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and all those places we're at the Quickie. This episode is produced by me Taylor Strano, Georgie Page, and Claire Murphy, with audio production by lou Hill.
00:17:09
Speaker 4: Momma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on
