JUSTIN LANGER: Boys are being lured by Andrew Tate toxicity, it’s time to man up on being responsible

Last week, two very different pieces of content landed in front of me.

Both made me reflect on manhood, mentorship, and what happens when young men have no one to look up to.

In a world where domestic violence is escalating, the question of what kind of men we are raising is not just important, but urgent.

In Australia, one in four women has experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner, and on average, one woman is killed by a current or former partner every week.

The first was a speech by the CEO of the Page Research Centre, Gerard Holland.

Titled The War on Young Men (And What To Do About It), it was delivered with the kind of clarity and compassion that stopped me for 15 minutes. Sitting on a team bus in the centre of an Indian traffic jam, I was transfixed by the power of his words.

The second was the Netflix documentary Manosphere, a confronting window into the online ecosystem of self-proclaimed male gurus who have amassed millions of followers among young men and boys.

One left me inspired. The other left me deeply disturbed.

Together, they forced me to reckon with a question I thought I already understood: what does it actually mean to become a man?

Holland’s speech is not a rant. It is a measured, data-rich, emotionally honest account of what has gone wrong for a generation of young Australian men.

He traces the arc from housing unaffordability to fatherlessness. From collapsing mental health outcomes to a culture that has spent two decades telling boys they are toxic by merit of their birth.

The statistics are staggering.

Nearly one in three Australian men aged 16 to 24 meets the criteria for a mental disorder. Suicide is now the leading cause of death for young Australian men.

In the 1960s, around one in 15 kids grew up without their dad. Today, it is between one in four and one in five.

Holland does not ask for sympathy. He asks for honesty. And he asks young men not to retreat into victimhood but to step forward with courage, discipline and purpose.

Talking of his upbringing, and the Hills Hoist in the backyard, the Australian dream, and the male heroes he was inspired by through his parents, was refreshingly honest.

His speech will have its detractors, but I wish every boy in Australia could listen to it.

In contrast, The Manosphere documentary by Louis Theroux offers the other side of that coin.

It profiles the online influencers, the Andrew Tates, the Kevin Samuels, the pick-up artists and red-pill podcasters, who have filled the vacuum Holland describes.

Having never heard of these terms, (maybe I have been living under a rock), pick-up artists are apparently self-styled seduction coaches who teach men to treat women as targets to be manipulated through rehearsed psychological tricks.

Every man reading this has the capacity to be that guide for someone. A son, a nephew, a young teammate, a kid in your community who has no one else.

Theirs is just a game of power and control.

Red pill podcasters are online influencers who preach that society has been rigged against men, using that grievance to sell young boys a version of manhood built on dominance, cynicism and contempt for women.

These men have built empires by telling lost boys what they want to hear, that the world owes them something, that women are conquests, that wealth and dominance are the measures of a man.

The documentary lays this bare without flinching, and what disturbed me most was not the influencers themselves, it was the faces of the boys watching them.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. Looking at these men as heroes.

None of this makes sense to me, and I say that not from some position of moral superiority but from a place of deep gratitude.

I have been surrounded my entire life by positive male role models who taught me what it means to be a man through their actions, not their social media followings.

My dad, my grandfathers, my uncles, my coaches, my mentors, these were men who embodied respect, discipline, humility and a fierce, protective love for the women in their lives.

They taught me that strength was not about domination. It was about service. They showed me that real men stand up, show up, and shut up when it is time to listen.

None of these men are shrinking violets. They are senseis, boxers, magnates, doctors, soldiers, teachers, sparkies, athletes, lawyers, entrepreneurs. Some have the six-packs, fancy sunglasses, Rolex watches or luxury cars. Others don’t.

But, what they all have in common is respect for others, meticulous work ethics and the discipline to do the right things.

I have been blessed to be surrounded by these men. Obviously, others aren’t as lucky.

I was reminded of this in a boardroom last year.

I was making a point about the importance of men behaving with respect and integrity, and I said: “As a father of four daughters, I absolutely understand the need for this.”

Before I had even finished the sentence, I was pulled up by a female colleague who told me: “I am sick and tired of men who say, ‘as a father of daughters’.”

I nearly fell over.

The implication was that my respect for women should not be conditional on having daughters.

And you know what? Maybe she was right. Perhaps I should have said: “As a man who has always respected his mother, his grandmothers, his aunties and his sisters.” Because the truth is, I did not learn to respect women the day my first daughter was born. I learned it from watching the men around me love and honour the women in their lives, long before I had a family of my own.

In this same week, a young Australian cricketer texted me and asked a question that cut right to the heart of everything Holland was talking about.

“I see myself being a leader going forward, but I just wanted to ask, who were the best captains you played under, and why?”

I told him that the best leaders do not talk about standards, they set them at training, off the field, and when the pressure is at its fiercest. That true leadership means looking after your people, lifting those around you, and backing yourself to deliver when it matters most.

And above all, that no one ever earned respect by pretending to be someone they are not.

It is about earning the trust of the people around you through consistency, humility and an unshakeable commitment to something bigger than yourself. A leader protects the vulnerable.

I shared those words with that young man because someone once shared similar words with me.

And that is the point Holland makes so powerfully in his speech. He was blessed, as I was, with parents who told him stories of sacrifice and honour, of knights and Anzacs, of men who served and protected and lived with duty and responsibility.

Sadly, what I am learning is that this is no longer the norm.

Too many boys are growing up without those stories. Without those role models. Without a father in the home. As a result, their silence is taken up by the voices of the manosphere, selling a counterfeit version of manhood built on ego, exploitation and entitlement.

All of which, frankly, I call insecure, fake, disrespectful bulls--t.

What struck me about the contrast between Holland’s speech and the Manosphere documentary is that they both identify the same crisis but offer radically different responses.

Holland calls young men to courage, self-sacrifice and the creation of meaning. The Manosphere tells them to grab what they can, dominate who they can, and answer to no one.

One path leads to the kind of men who build families, communities and nations. The other leads to the kind of men who tear them apart.

The uncomfortable truth is that the boys watching this garbage are not bad kids. They are hungry kids. Hungry for direction, for identity, for someone to tell them they matter.

And when the culture tells them they are toxic, when their schools teach them their history is shameful, when their fathers are absent and their communities have dissolved into screens, they will listen to whoever speaks to them first. And the loudest.

Holland understands this. The makers of the Manosphere documentary understand this. The question is whether the rest of us do.

I do not pretend to have all the answers. But I know this much. The journey from boy to man is not one any young person should have to walk alone. It requires guides. It requires stories worth believing in. It requires men who are willing to show, through the way they live, that respect and strength are not opposites but partners.

Every man reading this has the capacity to be that guide for someone. A son, a nephew, a young teammate, a kid in your community who has no one else.

Holland closed his speech by telling young men to “reject anger, reject victimhood and reject hedonism. To learn their story, tell their story, and not trust the mainstream media or the schooling system to do it for them”.

I would add one thing.

To the men who have already walked that road, who have had the blessing of role models and mentors and fathers who showed up, it is now our turn.

The boys are watching. Let us make sure they see something worth following.