Articles

Sport plays a major part in shaping the nature of Australian men, aided and abetted by the way the media reports it. Greg Marston has the story.

Australian sport is an institution of enormous significance, particularly in relation to the construction and maintenance of gender patterns. The culture of Australian sport perpetuates ideologies which systematically oppress women and certain groups of men. This process is not always immediately obvious. For instance, the mass media 'naturalises' domination as an inevitable consequence of the male athlete's superiority, skill and strength.

The mass media's treatment of sport has contributed to idealising and institutionalising competition, domination, toughness and aggression as unquestionable and sacred masculine values. The combination of media and sport represents a powerful ideological and cultural force which deserves immediate and critical attention.

 

A sexist, violent culture exists in some sports, writes Michael Flood.

Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 2004

The men who make obscene phone calls or harass women aren’t all wearing team colours, says Michael Flood.

Making boys anti-sexist will soon be on the curriculum of many school systems. "We can do even better," claims Nick Sellars.

Jeremy Ludowyke examines the gender equity debate in education.

Stephen Fisher assesses three approaches to boyswork. Please see below for the attachment, in PDF.

From boyhood comic books to soldier games to his dad's tales of combat, Tony Switzer recounts his path into the military.

Sam Pullen describes the training in privilege he received in the Boy Scouts.

These workshop notes include useful questions for discussion, brief writeups on elements of ‘good sex’, further reading, and a handout for young people on “Tips for Good Sex”. I have also included a lengthier discussion of working with boys and young men on ‘doing consent’, as I think this is a critical issue. The materials on consent easily could be turned into a workshop on their own, for boys and young men.

For increased inclusion of men into violence prevention efforts to work, we need to educate them about consent. Real consent.
We're still missing the mark when it comes to teaching consent. We have heard "No means No", and I think we're finally clueing in on "Yes means Yes" - in other words that the absence of a "No" is not in itself consent. But the problem is that we are still stuck in the old paradigm. It's still based on the idea of permission: there is this line that once crossed can't be un-crossed, and the woman is just going to have to live with the consequences of her actions (emphasis HER actions). As a culture, we still blame male arousal on women.