Stop auDA’s Policy Changes: Protect Australian Domains & Small Businesses

**If we want to dismantle misogynistic ideas, restricting the circulation of harmful content is a start, but it’s only one part of the solution, writesStephanie Wescott, _Monash University_ ; Jane Gilmore, _Monash University_ , and Naomi Pfitzner, _Monash University_ in this article republished from The Conversation.** The federal government recently announced a suite of new laws designed to address harmful content on digital platforms. Following campaigning organised by activist Chanel Contos’ youth-led organisation Teach us Consent, the government has pledged to create an opt-out model that would allow users to return their feeds to a timeline-based setting. The proposal forms part of broader digital duty of care legislation. It aims to place greater responsibility on tech companies to protect users from abusive and harmful content. The proposed laws have been broadly celebrated as a win, particularly in light of growing evidence about the harms associated with manosphere content. These harms are being seen in Australian schools as well as in concerning attitudes and beliefs about gender roles, women and violence among Australian adolescents. But while there’s no doubt allowing people to opt out of algorithms would help, the technology itself only partially explains why the manosphere is appealing in the first place. The theme that unites all the manosphere’s disparate content is misogyny. As important as social media regulation is, no amount of it will meaningfully address the manosphere unless we also do the hard work of dismantling the misogyny that underpins it. ## Chicken or egg? As awareness of the manosphere has increased, so too has its use as a single and isolated explanation for the rise in misogynistic behaviour among boys and men. But the manosphere did not create misogyny. It just capitalised on it. Misogyny has been a historical feature of many societies for thousands of years, built into institutions such as legal systems, medicine and education. The fact it continues today, despite our efforts to work towards gender equality, means we are missing part of the equation when it comes to preventing its spread. ## Not just victims of the algorithm Accountability for men and boys subscribing to misogyny and sexist beliefs often goes unmentioned in this conversation. Instead, explanations such as poor mental health, loneliness and unmet needs have become more acceptable, even when the evidence for these connections is not clear. While these are all worthy of attention, they do not account for the historical and ongoing presence of misogyny among some boys and men. Nor, given poor mental health and loneliness are slightly higher among women than men, do they explain why boys and men are more likely to hold misogynist beliefs and significantly more likely to commit sexual violence than girls and women. Grievances related to the economy, job prospects and other future concerns are actively promoted by manosphere creators as justifiable reasons for misogyny. While grievance can make something feel true, it does not make it reality. It’s essential we also examine why hate and violence against women and girls remains an appealing choice, and hold men and boys to account when they make that choice or engage with those views. They are not just passive victims of tech companies’ algorithms. Regulation of harmful content will not comprehensively prevent violence against girls and women, nor will it give them the support to recover and heal from these gendered harms. ## Will people use the off switch? This new legislation follows the Australian government’s previous intervention in online harms. Social media age restrictions introduced in December last year placed the responsibility on platforms to ensure children aged under 16 were not account users on their platforms. Early assessment of the effectiveness of the ban has found that circumvention tactics are common among young users. There has been little evidence of a reduction in use by children under 16. This gives us some evidence that if users want to access content regulators have determined is harmful to them, they will find ways. For the men and boys engaging with the manosphere, it’s therefore unlikely they’ll choose to opt out of the algorithm at all. ## So what do we do? If we want to dismantle misogynistic ideas, restricting the circulation of harmful content is a start, but it’s only one part of the solution. We need to intervene before these ideas take hold, preferably in early childhood education. We know high-quality, sustained education can shift the attitudes and beliefs that underpin violence against women. This needs to be holistic and ongoing – one-off lessons and short-term campaigns don’t work. In Australia, Respectful Relationships Education, implemented across the whole school, is the best prevention measure we have. But, we need the government to resource schools to do this work properly. This means providing the time, training and specialist support required. Because misogyny also drives domestic and family violence, we need more resources for parents escaping violent partners. This includes “all-of-family” programs that have a joint focus on perpetrator accountability and victim-survivor recovery and healing. It’s both unfair and unrealistic to expect traumatised parents, most of whom are single mothers, to manage their children’s recovery as well as their own while resources to support them remain so dramatically underfunded. This makes the current policy action concerning. Regulation and education are complementary, not competing, approaches. We need both measures that reduce the amplification of manosphere content and sustained investment in helping young people critically understand the content they consume. Only then will we start to tackle the misogyny fuelling the manosphere, and thereby reckon with the manosphere itself. **Stephanie Wescott, Lecturer, _Monash University_ ; Jane Gilmore, PhD Candidate, _Monash University_ , and Naomi Pfitzner, Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Hub and Senior Lecturer in Criminology Monash University, _Monash University_** **This article is republished fromThe Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.** Share this manospheresexismsocial media by Women's Agenda 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Email * Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ ## Latest news ### The people building AI say it might kill us. 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**_In the same week that Family Planning Australia marks its 100th year of operation, there will be an attack on women’s health and the doctors and nurses who provide this care, writes FPA CEO Sue Shilbury._** The resurgence of anti-abortion rhetoric not only in NSW, but across the country, has grown into a concentrated and calculated campaign to recriminalise abortion across the nation. In NSW, this comes in the form of the Abortion Law Reform (Sex Selection Prohibition) Bill 2025, which is expected to return to the Upper House on Wednesday [24th June]. We know abortion policy in NSW already mandates against sex selective abortions for non-medical reasons. The proposed Bill is needless and harmful and pushed by those who oppose all abortions and a woman’s right to choose. The NSW Bill goes a step further, citing flawed and dated research to further marginalise and typecast some migrant communities as supporting sex selective abortions. Outdated, vague and racist rhetoric is being referenced to support this unnecessary Bill, which suggests fines of up to $44,000 and five years in prison as part of its criminalisation push. It’s frustrating to see previously debated – and debunked – arguments against abortion resurfacing as a tool to police women’s bodies and rob them of their rights to safe and accessible healthcare. Despite the noise, the push to make abortion a crime again is a minority view. In fact, repeated polls tell us that around 80 per cent of Australians support a woman’s right to choose. However, recent developments demonstrate that wins for women’s healthcare cannot be taken for granted. Around Australia, the state parliaments of South Australia and Queensland have been facing similar attacks on healthcare, and many of us watched aghast and in disbelief as rights were taken away in the US in 2022. Many Australians mistakenly believe that the battles for access to abortion care have been fought and won. The reality is that uber-conservative US-style politics have landed, and the incessant lobbying is well-funded and working to claw back hard-won gains. Ill-informed legislation comes to parliaments like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Across the country this includes South Australia, which last week had a Bill aiming to severely restrict late-term abortions pass through the upper house by a slim margin before being immediately debated and voted down in the lower house 36 votes to 9. In Queensland, similar attacks came against medical abortions in early June, with an attempt to prevent an update to legislation allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe the necessary medications mifepristone and misoprostol. This happened despite a ban on debating abortion in the Queensland Parliament. In 2019, after 119 long years, abortion was recognised, officially and rightfully, as essential healthcare in NSW and removed from the Crimes Act 1900. Before this, for over a century, the threat of prosecution loomed for health workers and women until the passage of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019. At Family Planning Australia, we’ve been advocating for women’s rights to safe and accessible reproductive healthcare for almost as long. We opened our doors in 1926 with 500 pounds and a goal to improve sexual health outcomes for women. Since then, we have walked alongside a changing society, opening Australia’s first birth control clinic in 1933, beginning sex education in the 1940s and helping bring the Pill to Australia in 1961. So, it is galling that in 2026, doctors, nurses and women’s advocates are still forced to push against anti-choice campaigners with no experience or interest in women’s wellbeing, and who seek to wind back access to healthcare. For all of us, the alarm that hard-won rights for women’s healthcare are once again under attack is ringing. This latest fight in our 100th year should be a clarion call to all that those who oppose your right to access sexual and reproductive healthcare see these attacks on women, doctors and nurses as history-making, pro-life progress. All Australians need to know and be concerned that they will relentlessly pursue your healthcare rights. The alarms are ringing. How will you respond? Share this Family Planning Alliance AustraliaFamily Planning Australiareproductive health by Women's Agenda 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Email * Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ ## Latest news ### ICC wants more mothers supported to return to cricket ### Climate action doesn’t work if it doesn’t work for girls ### English fans boo Ghana vice-captain Thomas Partey at World Cup amid ongoing rape case ### Nothing ‘courageous’ in Karl Stefanovic platforming a far-right extremist ### Australia’s most underutilised policy resources don’t sit in a Think Tank ### How an International Court judge thinks about hope

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