What is happening to Australia's young men? A young man explains

Blatant sexism and misogynistic behaviour would appear to be all the rage on university campuses around Australia. A video has surfaced of young men from Baxter College at UNSW singing an incredibly offensive and vulgar chant about women and less than 48 hours later a sexist and offensive Facebook site run by young men at the University of Melbourne was found.

What is happening to our young men to have them behave like this?

I would argue that nothing has happened.

The contraversial Baxter College chant. (Post continues after video.)

There is no new influence fuelling this behaviour, rather I would suggest that this behaviour has been going on for years behind closed doors and swept under the rug for fear of reputational injury to universities and the individuals involved.

Everyone has heard of this type of behaviour occurring in the Greek Letter Societies or Fraternities that are so common at universities in the USA, but increasingly we are hearing stories of sexist behaviour coming out of colleges at Australian Universities.

You would be forgiven if all this publicity is leading you to believe that all young men are misogynistic and sexist. This I am glad to say in my experience, is not the case. A lot, and I would argue most, of the young men I work with have a high level of respect for women and would never actively seek to harm women by using misogynistic or sexist language when addressing someone.

The problem is that young men, like who were involved in the boy’s night chant at Baxter College, don’t understand that their words have power regardless of if they are directed to an individual or not. In this particular case, when you couple this ignorance with alcohol consumption and the pack mentality often found at college, you have a recipe for disaster.

It is surprising how many young people fall victim to peer pressure even at university age and lack the skills and confidence to think consciously about their behaviour when in a situation like a boys night. It is interesting to watch young men change their behaviour, ethics and values when on a boys night, especially when alcohol is involved, compared with their behaviour in everyday life.

Some young men involved in the chanting have come out in the media and apologised for their behaviour, admitting it was appalling. They have even stated that they had no idea why they participated in the chant at all and citing that they had been indoctrinated into this behaviour over their time at the college.

Other fall back positions for excusing this behaviour has been that there were women involved in the chanting. This does not ease off the responsibility of the men involved, it only highlights that women too can fall victim to this thoughtless behaviour.

We all need to remember that victimisation and sexism, regardless of the sex of those conducting the behaviour, is never ok and we all need to recognise the power in the use of our words.

You don’t always get a chance to rectify the emotional or reputational damage done by behaviours fuelled by alcohol or pack mentality and the repercussions of these actions can’t always be predicted.

I have no doubt these young men did not expect that their actions would be in the national spotlight this week. I do applaud any individual who can recognise that their behaviour was inappropriate and apologise, irrespective of the media coverage. We need to equip all young people with the skills and understanding to think independently, critically and empathetically in all situations.

This education needs to start well before university and it needs to come from all fronts, the education system, within their families and in the media. If we want real change on this, we need to invest in social education programs to engage young people in understanding the power of language, the power of themselves and build their empathy towards individual inequalities. Only then, will we see misogynistic behaviours like these stamped out for good.

Bailey Risorto is a senior youth worker at Top Blokes Foundation.