Boys, Power, and the Lie We Keep Selling as Manhood

Boys, Power, and the Lie We Keep Selling as Manhood

...a Shane Warren ramble on rape, the manosphere, and why domination is not masculinity...

There are some stories that make the whole country go quiet for half a second.

Not silent in the useful way. Not the kind of silence where we stop, feel the weight of what has happened, and decide together that something has to change. More like the brief stunned pause before the machinery starts again: the headlines, the outrage, the legal caution, the school statements, the “boys will be boys” undertones, the social media pile-on, the careful language of “alleged,” the parents whispering, the public pretending this is shocking while quietly knowing it is not as shocking as it should be.

The recent arrest of three teenage boys from a Sydney private school over the alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Sydney’s east should trouble us deeply. Police have charged boys aged 13 and 14 over the alleged incident, and the matter is now before the courts. That means we must be careful and lawful in how we speak about the case itself. These are allegations, and the legal process must run its course. But we do not need to wait for a verdict in one matter to talk about the culture surrounding boys, girls, sex, power, entitlement and the increasingly poisonous scripts being handed to young men.

Because the deeper question is not only “what happened there?”

The deeper question is: what is happening to us that boys this young are even appearing in stories like this?

And before someone rushes in with the usual deflection - “not all men,” “not all boys,” “girls can be awful too,” “what about false allegations,” “what about male victims” - let’s breathe. Yes, not all men. Yes, boys can be vulnerable. Yes, men and boys can also be victims of sexual violence, family violence, coercion, bullying and emotional neglect. Yes, false allegations, while rare compared with the scale of underreported sexual violence, are serious when they occur. Yes, complexity exists.

But complexity must not become a hiding place.

When one in five Australian women has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we are not dealing with isolated bad apples rolling dramatically out of an otherwise wholesome fruit bowl. We are dealing with a cultural pattern. The Australian Bureau of Statistics also reports that about 2.2 million women have experienced sexual violence since age 15.

That is not a statistic. That is a national wound with numbers attached.

And we need to say clearly what too many people still struggle to hold: rape is not “sex gone too far.” Sexual assault is not desire with poor manners. It is not intimacy that forgot to ask properly. It is not young male sexuality being “confused” in some charming, awkward, coming-of-age way. Sexual assault services consistently frame sexual assault as an abuse of power; public health resources state plainly that sexual assault is not caused by desire but is about power and violence.

This matters because when we misunderstand rape as sexual hunger, we look for the wrong solutions. We tell girls to dress differently, drink less, travel in groups, watch their drinks, text when they arrive, smile less, smile more, avoid risk, manage male feelings, and somehow become responsible for preventing someone else’s decision to harm them.

But rape is not about the natural expression of physical intimacy. Those of us who understand intimacy as something mutual, tender, playful, ethical, awkward at times, joyful at others, and built on the deliciously human miracle of two people choosing each other, we should know better than to confuse that with violation.

Sexual violence is not intimacy. It is the theft of agency.

It is one person asserting that their desire, status, peer approval, anger, curiosity, entitlement or need to dominate matters more than another person’s body, dignity and humanity; and that is why this conversation has to include power.

Because we are watching too many boys being taught, directly or indirectly, that manhood is something proven through control. Control over women. Control over sex. Control over emotion. Control over status. Control over other men’s approval. Control over the room. Control over the story. Control over the girl… This is the old lie in newer packaging.

The old lie said a man should be the boss, the protector, the head of the house, the one who knows best, the one whose needs matter, the one whose anger must be respected, the one whose pride must not be wounded.

The new lie says much the same thing, but it arrives through podcasts, clips, comment threads, algorithmic rabbit holes, body-count talk, “high value” nonsense, dominance fantasies, fake evolutionary psychology, gym-bro stoicism, money worship, and men with microphones who seem to think shouting in front of a bookshelf counts as wisdom.

Welcome to the manosphere, where too many wounded boys are being sold a counterfeit masculinity by men who have confused attention with authority.

Let’s be honest about its appeal. The manosphere does not reach boys because boys are stupid. It reaches boys because many boys are lonely, insecure, sexually confused, emotionally under-educated, and hungry for guidance. They want to know how to be attractive, strong, respected, wanted, confident, successful. There is nothing wrong with that hunger. It is human. It is adolescent. It is the messy beginning of identity.

The tragedy is that bad actors have learned how to meet that hunger with poison. They begin with a boy’s insecurity and then hand him an enemy.

Girls are shallow. Women are manipulative. Feminism ruined everything. Consent is a trap. Vulnerability is weakness. Empathy is soft. Equality is humiliation. If she says no, it is because you are not dominant enough. If she has freedom, you have lost status. If she has a voice, you are being silenced. If she is your equal, you are less of a man.

That is the lie, and it is doing damage.

ANROWS (Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety) has current work focused on the links between the manosphere, gender-based violence and the influence of misogynistic discourses on boys and young men in Australia. Our Watch has also warned that almost all teenage boys now carry access to violent pornography and misogynistic influencers in their pockets, calling this potentially one of the greatest disruptors to young men’s development.

That sentence should stop us, because boys do not become men in a vacuum. They become men inside stories. They learn masculinity from fathers, mothers, uncles, peers, teachers, coaches, porn, platforms, churches, gaming chats, footy clubs, advertising, politics, music, comedy, silence, discipline, neglect and whatever content the algorithm decides will keep them watching for another seven minutes.

So, when boys are repeatedly shown that women exist for male validation, that sex is conquest, that domination is impressive, that humiliation is entertainment, that consent is bureaucracy, that cruelty is comedy, and that emotional tenderness is weakness, we should not be surprised when some boys begin to confuse power with desirability.

This does not excuse them. It indicts us. Because a society that lets boys learn sex from violent porn, intimacy from misogynistic influencers, emotional regulation from peer ridicule, and masculinity from dominance culture has no right to act baffled when harm follows.

The Australian Institute of Criminology recently reported research linking violent pornography use with sexual violence in Australian men, including findings that part of the relationship between intentional violent pornography viewing and self-reported sexual violence perpetration is mediated by emotionally detached attitudes toward sex and hostile attitudes toward women.

Again, this is not about panic. It is not about pretending all pornography is the same or that every boy who sees harmful content becomes violent. That would be lazy, and I am trying to keep us above talkback-radio levels of intellectual hygiene. The point is more serious: what young people repeatedly consume helps script what they think is normal, desirable, funny, powerful, masculine, feminine, negotiable and acceptable.

And the scripts matter…

If the script says sex is something men get and women give, we have a problem.

If the script says a girl’s “no” is part of the game, we have a problem.

If the script says a boy loses status by respecting a girl’s boundaries, we have a problem.

If the script says mateship means covering, filming, laughing, sharing, pressuring or staying silent, we have a problem.

If the script says being a man means never being guided by the love, wisdom, challenge or equality of women, we have a very old problem wearing very new headphones.

This is where we have to speak differently to boys.

Not with hatred. Not with suspicion. Not as if every boy is a predator waiting to happen. That would be cruel and stupid, and we have quite enough of both already. Boys deserve care. Boys deserve guidance. Boys deserve emotional education. Boys deserve older men who can show them that masculinity is not a cage lined with shame. Boys deserve to be told they are more than appetite, more than performance, more than status, more than dominance.

But care is not indulgence. Loving boys means telling them the truth, and the truth is this: you do not become more of a man by making a girl smaller.

You do not become powerful by overpowering someone.

You do not become desirable by ignoring someone’s humanity.

You do not become strong by frightening someone into silence.

You do not become respected by treating consent as an obstacle.

You do not become a protector by controlling the person you claim to protect.

And you do not become free by building your identity on someone else’s submission.

That is not masculinity. That is insecurity with a louder voice.

Real masculinity, if we are going to use the term at all, must be able to stand beside equality without feeling diminished. It must be able to love without owning. Desire without entitlement. Protect without controlling. Lead without dominating. Listen without collapsing. Apologise without humiliation. Be guided without feeling weak. Be challenged without needing revenge.

That is not soft. That is maturity, and maturity is desperately missing from much of what gets sold to young men.

The myth boys are being handed is that women’s equality takes something from them. That if girls are free, boys are weaker. That if women lead, men lose. That if a partner has autonomy, the man is no longer respected. This is spiritual poverty dressed up as alpha confidence.

The truth is the opposite… A boy becomes more when he can receive the strength of girls and women without needing to dominate it. He becomes more when he allows himself to be encouraged, challenged, loved, corrected, stretched and softened by the people around him. He becomes more when he learns that intimacy is not possession, but mutual recognition. He becomes more when he stops seeing equality as a demotion and starts seeing it as the ground on which real relationship becomes possible. Because no human being can be truly intimate with someone they are trying to own.

You can possess a thing. You can control a thing. You can dominate a thing. But you cannot love a thing as an equal while also treating it as property. And that is the line.

So much violence against women begins long before the violence. It begins in the little permissions: the joke that makes girls objects, the silence when a mate crosses a line, the group chat that turns humiliation into currency, the father who controls the mother and calls it leadership, the coach who excuses aggression as passion, the influencer who teaches contempt as confidence, the adult who says “boys will be boys” because apparently boys are the only demographic we insult while pretending to defend.

Boys are not animals.

Boys are not helpless before their impulses.

Boys are not biologically destined to dominate.

Boys are not improved by being left emotionally feral and then congratulated for not crying.

Boys can learn. Boys can grow. Boys can be decent, courageous, tender, sexually ethical, emotionally honest and strong enough to respect a boundary without treating it as rejection of their entire existence. But they have to be taught.

Most of all we have to stop outsourcing that teaching to algorithms, porn platforms, wounded men with microphones and peer cultures where the worst boy in the room often gets to set the standard because everyone else is too afraid to challenge him.

This is also why we cannot separate sexual violence from domestic violence. They are not the same thing, but they often grow from the same soil: entitlement, control, disrespect, gender inequality, rigid masculinity, objectification, and the belief that women’s bodies, time, labour, loyalty, attention and obedience are things men can demand.

Our Watch’s national framework, Change the story, identifies gender inequality and the social context surrounding it as key drivers of violence against women. Its work on masculinity also points to the need to challenge norms that make aggression and disrespect toward women seem like natural parts of being “one of the boys.”

This is not theory floating above life. This is life.

It is the woman who watches her partner’s mood before she decides whether to speak.

It is the girl who laughs off a joke because pushing back might make things worse.

It is the teenage boy who knows something in the group chat is wrong but does not want to lose status by saying so.

It is the woman killed after leaving.

It is the ex-partner who decides if he cannot have her, nobody will.

It is the child who learns love as tension.

It is the police report, the funeral, the public grief, the promises, and then the next headline.

Australia keeps counting dead women because we keep producing the conditions in which women are killed. ABC reporting in July noted Counting Dead Women Australia had recorded 27 women killed so far in 2026, while other reporting has cited Australian Femicide Watch recording higher totals depending on counting criteria. The federal government’s 2026 Status of Women Report Card states that 28 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2025, and that one in four women have experienced intimate partner violence since age 15. The actual number is not the story, the story is that there is a number at all.

These are not numbers we should be able to read calmly. Each one is a person. A daughter, mother, sister, friend, colleague, neighbour. A woman who had appointments in the calendar, messages unanswered, clothes in the wash, someone waiting for her to call back, a life interrupted not by fate but by violence.

And every time we say, “another woman has died,” we should also ask: what did the man believe he was entitled to?

Entitlement is the thread.

Not always loud. Not always obvious. Sometimes it wears politeness. Sometimes it wears romance. Sometimes it wears protection. Sometimes it says, “I just love her too much.” Sometimes it says, “She made me angry.” Sometimes it says, “She embarrassed me.” Sometimes it says, “She was mine.”

She was not. No woman is a man’s possession. No girl is a boy’s proving ground. No partner is a prize for good behaviour. No body is a territory. No “no” is a negotiation. No silence is consent. No fear is intimacy. No domination is love.

This is the education young men need and not once, not as a dusty health-class unit everyone giggles through because the teacher is mortified and the worksheet uses the word “intercourse” like it is 1978. They need it repeatedly, developmentally, relationally, emotionally, culturally.

They need consent education that is not just legal risk management. They need to learn the beauty of mutuality. The pleasure of respect. The confidence of being trustworthy. The strength of being safe. The emotional intelligence to handle rejection without converting it into rage. The humility to understand that desire does not create entitlement. The courage to intervene when a mate crosses a line. And they need men to say this.

Not only women. Women have been doing unpaid public safety education since the dawn of time and frankly the invoice is now Biblical.

Men need to speak to boys. Fathers, uncles, coaches, teachers, supervisors, youth workers, older brothers, grandfathers, faith leaders, community leaders, and men who have done enough work on themselves to understand that authority is not the same as domination.

Men need to say: I will not laugh at that.

Men need to say: we do not talk about girls that way.

Men need to say: consent is not weakness.

Men need to say: if she is too drunk, too scared, too young, too pressured, too frozen, too confused or too silent to freely choose, then you stop.

Men need to say: your mates do not make you a man if they require you to harm someone to belong.

Men need to say: if the only way you feel powerful is by controlling a woman, you are not powerful; you are unfinished.

That is a hard truth, but a necessary one.

The other hard truth is that schools cannot solve this alone. Families cannot solve it alone. Police cannot solve it after the harm. Courts cannot prevention-program their way backwards from trauma. Respectful relationships education matters, but it cannot compete with a whole culture that teaches boys the opposite everywhere else.

We need a full ecosystem response.

Platforms must be held accountable for what they amplify.

Porn literacy must be part of sexual education, not because all sex is shameful, but because young people need to understand performance, coercion, fantasy, consent, bodies, power and the difference between entertainment and ethics.

Parents need help to talk earlier and less awkwardly.

Schools need serious resourcing, not one-off assemblies where everyone sits cross-legged and half-listens.

Sporting clubs need cultures where respect is not a poster in the change room, but a standard enforced when nobody’s mother is watching.

Boys need spaces to talk about loneliness, shame, rejection, body image, fear, sexuality, anger and tenderness before the manosphere gets there first.

And girls need to stop being positioned as the safety managers of male development.

This is not about teaching boys that masculinity is bad. It is about teaching boys that domination is a poor substitute for selfhood.

It is about saying: you do not need to own women to know who you are.

You do not need to control girls to feel strong.

You do not need to be feared to be respected.

You do not need to perform hardness at the expense of your own humanity.

The boys most vulnerable to misogynistic recruitment are often not boys with too much self-worth. They are boys with too little. Boys who feel invisible, rejected, confused, humiliated, economically uncertain, sexually anxious, socially clumsy, emotionally unsupported. The manosphere finds that ache and tells them the cure is dominance.

We have to offer a better cure...

Belonging.

Purpose.

Mentoring.

Emotional literacy.

Respect.

Skill.

Accountability.

The experience of being valued without needing to conquer someone. The experience of being challenged without being shamed. The experience of being loved without being told love means control.

Because young men can become more than they believe. They can become more thoughtful, more grounded, more courageous, more loving, more sexually ethical, more emotionally alive. But they cannot become that if the only masculinity we hand them is a performance of dominance and a fear of equality.

This is where we have to stop being shy to shout: It is not manly to dominate.

It is manly to empower.

It is manly to accept.

It is manly to listen.

It is manly to honour another person’s full humanity.

It is manly to be strong enough that someone else’s strength does not threaten you.

It is manly to stand beside women and girls as equals, not above them as manager, owner, protector, judge or boss.

And yes, protector needs a word here. Protection can be beautiful when it is invited, mutual and grounded in care. But “I protect you” can become a velvet leash when it is really about control. If protection requires obedience, it is not protection. It is possession with better manners.

The goal is not to raise boys who “protect women” because women are weak. The goal is to raise boys and men who help create a world where women do not need protection from men in the first place. That is the true measure, and it is a very different project.

So, after these recent allegations, after the shock, after the headlines, after the school statements, after the court process does what the court process must do, we still must face the wider question: what are we teaching boys about girls before harm happens? Are we teaching them that girls are people?

Not symbols. Not trophies. Not temptations. Not reputational risks. Not bodies for approval. Not future wives. Not emotional service stations. Not mothers-in-training. Not objects of conquest. Not problems to be solved.

People. Whole people. Equal people. People whose ‘no’ matters. Whose ‘yes’ must be free. Whose pleasure matters. Whose fear matters. Whose ambition matters. Whose voice matters. Whose body belongs to them.

If that sounds basic, good. It is basic. And yet here we are.

A society should not have to keep explaining to boys that girls are human. But apparently, we do. So, let’s do it properly, loudly, repeatedly and without embarrassment.

Let’s stop treating sexual violence as a women’s safety issue alone and start treating it as a men’s development issue, a boys’ education issue, a culture issue, a platform issue, a family issue, a pornography literacy issue, a peer accountability issue, and a national character issue.

Let’s stop asking girls how to avoid being harmed and start asking boys why harm became thinkable.

Let’s stop confusing silence with consent, dominance with desire, control with care, and cruelty with confidence.

Let’s stop leaving decent boys without language while the worst voices in the room offer them scripts.

Let’s stop pretending the manosphere is just silly online noise when it is actively teaching some boys that women’s equality is their humiliation.

And let’s stop saying “what is happening to young men?” as if the answer is not partly that we left too many of them alone with a phone, shame, porn, anger, loneliness, and men who profit from turning confusion into contempt.

The task is not to hate boys. The task is to love them well enough to refuse the lie. The lie that domination is strength. The lie that women are territory. The lie that consent is optional. The lie that equality makes men smaller. The lie that power over someone is better than connection with someone.

A better masculinity is possible. Not perfect. Not polished. Not the kind that requires a rebrand, a podcast and a monochrome photo of a man looking thoughtfully at a mountain. Just better. More honest. More tender. More accountable. More human.

And it begins with a simple sentence boys need to hear from the adults around them: You do not become yourself by owning someone else.

You become yourself by learning how to stand with others - fully, respectfully, courageously - without needing them beneath you. That is not weakness. That is manhood with a spine.

References and suggested further reading

The Guardian. “Three private school students charged after alleged sexual assault of 14-year-old girl in Sydney’s east.” This source provides reporting on the recent allegations, charges and ages of the three boys involved.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Personal Safety, Australia, 2021–22.” This source reports that one in five women, or 22 per cent, have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. “1 in 5 women have experienced sexual violence.” This release reports that an estimated 2.2 million adult women have experienced sexual violence since age 15.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. “Sexual violence.” This source summarises ABS Personal Safety Survey findings, including that over one in five women have experienced sexual violence since age 15.

Better Health Channel. “Sexual assault.” This public health resource states that sexual assault is not caused by desire and is about power and violence.

Sexual Assault Services Victoria. “Understanding sexual assault.” This source frames sexual assault as an abuse of power.

Our Watch. “Change the story framework.” This national framework identifies gender inequality and the broader social context as drivers of violence against women.

Our Watch. “Masculinity and violence against women.” This resource discusses engaging men and challenging social norms that excuse aggression and disrespect towards women.

ANROWS. “Supporting secondary school teachers to address online spaces as pathways to gender-based violence for boys and men.” This project focuses on the influence of the manosphere and misogynistic online narratives on young Australians.

Our Watch. “Prevention is key to turning off the pipeline of men choosing to use violence.” This source discusses the role of disrespect, gender inequality, violent pornography and misogynistic influencers in young men’s development.

Australian Institute of Criminology. “New study links violent porn to sexual violence in Australian men.” This source reports on research linking violent pornography use with self-reported sexual violence perpetration among Australian men.

Australian Institute of Criminology. “The relationship between pornography use and sexual violence in Australian men.” This research report explores associations between pornography use, hostile attitudes towards women and sexual violence perpetration.

ABC News. “Safety of women and girls under national spotlight again after four alleged murders in four days.” This source cites Counting Dead Women Australia reporting 27 women killed so far in 2026.

The Guardian. “Every 11 days a woman in Australia is killed by someone she trusted. How can this keep happening?” This commentary notes the lack of a complete official list and cites Counting Dead Women and Australian Femicide Watch figures.

Australian Government. “Status of Women Report Card 2026.” This report states that 28 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2025 and that one in four women have experienced intimate partner violence since age 15.

For support in Australia, 1800RESPECT provides 24/7 national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support on 1800 737 732, by text on 0458 737 732, and through online chat. Full Stop Australia also offers free, 24/7 confidential trauma-specialist counselling to people of all genders affected by sexual, domestic and family violence.

My Rambles: sometimes soft, sometimes sharp, always trying to tell the truth without pretending it’s tidy.

www.shanewarren.com

Discussion - Parent & Family Life Circle | Shane Warren Coach

A warm, grounded and practical space for parents, carers and family-minded humans trying to raise children, support teenagers, survive school terms, care for aging parents and not lose themselves completely in the process. Here we talk about family life as it actually happens: messy mornings, anxious teens, study stress, big feelings, sibling chaos, parent guilt, communication breakdowns, and the tiny moments of love that keep us going. This group shares reflections, parent coaching ideas, simple psychology, discussion prompts and practical strategies for helping families grow with a little more confidence, patience and humour. No perfect-parent nonsense. Just real conversations for real families.