JUSTIN LANGER: ‘Manosphere’ for young males is toxic, but women face daily reality most men never think about

Last weekend I wrote about boys becoming men and about the crisis facing young Australian males today.

The theme surrounded the vacuum being left by absent fathers, failing institutions and the toxic influencers rushing to fill the space.

The response was overwhelming.

But one message stayed with me all week. A woman wrote: “That was powerful. Now write the same piece about our girls.”

So here I am.

And I’ll be honest; this one is harder. Not because I care less, but because I care so much that I’m scared of getting it wrong. Not for the first time.

I am a man writing about the experience of women. A subject no words I can write can really do justice to.

But as a husband, a son, a grandson, a brother, a colleague, and a father of four daughters, I have spent my whole life surrounded by extraordinary women. And what I have learned from them is worth sharing, even imperfectly.

Let me start with what the numbers tell us.

In Australia, 84 per cent of girls’ experience depression or anxiety symptoms at least once during adolescence, compared with 61 per cent of boys.

By Year 10, girls have depression scores 88 per cent higher than their male peers.

Almost two thirds of young Australians say social media makes them feel dissatisfied with their body, and that figure has jumped 12 per cent in just two years.

Eating disorder presentations among young people have risen 86 per cent since 2012.

Meanwhile, women still earn 78.9 cents for every dollar men earn, a gap that adds up to more than $28,000 a year.

And as I wrote last week, one woman is killed by a current or former partner every single week in this country.

Last week I talked about boys being told they are toxic. The parallel for girls is just as insidious, though it wears a different mask.

Our girls are not told they are unwanted. They are told they are not enough. Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not successful enough, not agreeable enough.

The manosphere tells boys the world owes them dominance. Instagram and TikTok tell girls the world will only love them if they are perfect.

Both are lies. Both are devastating. And both find their way to children who are far too young to know the difference.

I think about my own daughters and the world they are navigating. They are smart, tough, funny, compassionate young women. But they are also growing up with a phone in their hand that delivers a relentless stream of filtered faces, curated lives and algorithmically served content designed to make them feel inadequate.

I watch them wrestle with it. I see the moments of self-doubt that no amount of fatherly or motherly reassurance can fully erase.

And I know that what I am witnessing in my home is playing out in homes across Australia.

Last week I wrote of how I was pulled up in a boardroom for saying “as a father of daughters”. That lesson was not just about me. It was about how we frame the entire conversation.

Women should not need to be someone’s daughter or sister or mother to deserve respect. They deserve it because they are human beings. Full stop.

But this has given me a front-row seat to the pressures women face in ways I might otherwise have missed. It has made me listen more carefully, watch more closely, and confront my own blind spots with more urgency.

Just as I have been fortunate to have irreplaceable male mentors and guides, the same can be said for the women in my life.

My mum taught me what resilience looks like long before I ever walked onto a cricket field or into a boardroom. Not only did she raise her own four kids, but she worked as a nurse and theatre sister, well after my brothers and sister all left home.

Her tireless, selfless life as a loyal loving wife, extraordinarily creative mother, and provider for our family still has me in awe.

My grandmothers showed me that quiet strength is still strength. Their wisdom and humility are etched into my soul.

My wife Sue teaches me — daily — that partnership means carrying the load together, not dividing it into jobs, but doing whatever needs to be done with grace and without keeping score.

The way she looks after our girls is like a lioness looking over her cubs; her fierce loyalty and understanding of life’s challenges is inspiring.

The female teachers and headmistresses who shaped my education held me to standards that had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with character.

My Grade 4 teacher Robyn Tippett taught me about the cruelty of being a bully. Her insistence on fairness and kindness left an indelible mark on my life. The way she described poor behaviour was like a fire burning a hole in my hand. A lesson I will never forget and will eternally be thankful for.

The women I have worked alongside in business and sport have been every bit as driven, as capable, and as courageous as any man in the room, often more so, because they have had to fight twice as hard to be heard.

In the corporate and sporting world their compassion, empathy, intellect and resilience have, at times, left me mesmerized.

And yet, for all that strength, women still face a daily reality that most men never have to think about.

Walking to their car at night, white-knuckled with keys between their fingers. Being talked over in meetings, then watching a man repeat their idea to applause. Being judged simultaneously for being too ambitious and not ambitious enough. Being told to smile. Being told to calm down. Being reduced to how they look before anyone considers what they think.

As I was silenced in the boardroom, I was humbled by another woman after I did a speech at a women’s leadership conference about five years ago. Whilst my sentiment was pure, I ended my speech with a plea for these strong female leaders to help young women/girls to be nicer to each other.

It has struck me as a dad that the form of bullying often witnessed by girls and their friends can be different to the stereotypical male version of push and shove, sticks and stones.

I have noticed that exclusion can be the bitterest form of bullying. My point was that “if only girls could be nicer to each other”, this exclusion might not be as brutal.

Straight after the event, I was told in no uncertain terms that, telling women to be ‘nicer’ was a typical male view of telling women to be subservient and just paper things over with a smile and a bow.

Despite the context and meaning of my words, I was handed another burning lesson in the reality of the challenges women face.

What strikes me about the parallel between last week’s piece and this one is that the crisis facing boys and the crisis facing girls are not separate problems. They are two sides of the same broken coin.

When boys grow up without healthy models of masculinity, girls pay the price. When girls are reduced to objects by a culture saturated in pornography and performative perfection, boys lose the chance to see women as equals and partners.

The manosphere does not just damage boys. It teaches them to damage the women in their lives.

I have learned that the greatest gift I can give my own girls is how I treat their mother and every other woman in my life. When they see me treating women with love and respect, this is how they will expect to be treated by the men in their personal and professional lives.

I have also observed that the beauty industry’s relentless war on female self-worth does not just hurt girls, it robs boys of authentic connection with women who feel free to be themselves.

Not for a second do I pretend to fully understand what it is like to be a woman in Australia today.

I have never been told to dress differently for a job interview. I have never been asked how I plan to balance a career and raise children. I have never been afraid walking home. But I have listened. I have watched, and it’s sad that this is the world women and girls are now find themselves living in.

Last week I said that the journey from boy to man is not one any young person should walk alone. The same is true for girls.

They need role models as much as the boys, women who show them that strength comes in many forms, and men who show them what respect looks like in practice, not just in speeches. They need mothers and fathers who are present, not just providers. They need brothers and teammates and colleagues who see them, hear them, and stand beside them.

Doubling down on last week, to every man reading this, the way you treat the women in your life is a lesson your children are learning every single day.

Your sons are watching how you speak to their mother. Your daughters are learning what to expect from a partner.

And to the girls and young women out there, including my four extraordinary daughters and loves of my life who are navigating this noisy, filtered, impossible world, you are more than enough.

Exactly as you are. Do not let anyone with a screen, a platform, an algorithm or an ignorant view of the world convince you otherwise.