Careless Bravado? Or does the Manosphere Strike Again?
Once upon a thesis journey I would spend my Sundays at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ). Having not done this for some time, my colleague and I decided we needed to reconnect and booked our usual space; this time to mark student drafts.
Level four is the quietest level in the library and has meeting rooms where you can work as a team. It allows collaboration without disrupting the individual study of others. It is popular with some inner-city high school students. The challenge is that the walls are not sound-proofed. We have heard some interesting commentary from others during our time at the SLQ.
This Sunday, even with my fancy studio headphones playing the drafts of developing musicians’ compositions - some quite dissonant and atonal as you might imagine - I could hear the group of young men next door. This group of young men, by what we overheard of their conversation, were Senior students in Year 12.
At one point both my colleague and I stopped what we were doing, disrupted by the volume, tone and content of their discussion. Their discussion was marked by three things:
Disrespect for a female teacher
Disrespect for the arts as a subject
Inappropriate language including derogatory and defamatory comments, and swearing
Despite having researched and produced a thesis about the impact of the sex of the teacher and gender-stereotypes in all-boys’ schools, I was surprisingly shocked to overhear their discussion. Thankfully, they did not name their school, and the teacher was only referred to as “Miss”.
I began to wonder…
Is this just an act? Is the language and ideology that spewed from their mouths what adolescent males think is necessary to be masculine? Did we just experience a real-life example of how the manosphere is influencing sexist and misogynist behaviour and beliefs (Gilmour, 2025)?
What we heard felt like a stark disconnect between the relationships of respect schools seek to cultivate, and the reality that can emerge when adolescent males are left unsupervised in unstructured spaces.
It raised a series of unsettling questions:
What happens when students leave their school environment?
Are we cultivating a culture of respect that students truly internalise, or one they perform only while under our supervision?
Are we missing the mark in how we teach and model respect?
Who is challenging this behaviour when it emerges?
If we are reluctant to do so, what happens when behaviour and language is left unchallenged?
Whilst I was in my own little world of questioning, my colleague had had enough. Sure enough, she was out of her seat and knocking on the door to their room in no time. This is my recollection of her extremely succinct, calmly spoken, yet assertive statement:
“Excuse me gentlemen. You need to know that the walls to these rooms are paper thin and we can hear everything you are saying. I ask you not to disrespect women, the arts, and to watch your language”.
It was not unexpected to hear the boys snickering when she returned to our room, but her message had landed. For boys who had chosen to spend their Sunday at the library, they were clearly capable of focus and self-discipline. The volume dropped immediately, and their language shifted from careless bravado to something far more academic and study orientated.
I had the sense that they did not appreciate being called to account for their behaviour, particularly by a woman who had overheard the content of their conversation.
The moment reaffirmed the importance of what teachers do. How do we, as male and female teachers, respond to the influence of the manosphere in our daily work with boys? And in subjects such as music and the arts, where research has long documented the influence of gender stereotypes (Armstrong, 2017; Harrison, 2007; Imms, 2003), are we now seeing that pressure amplified by the manosphere? Or might some of this disrespect for music and the arts also reflect the way these subjects are scaled by tertiary admissions centres?
Perhaps the point is that these moments remind us that the work of teaching respect, challenging stereotypes, and valuing subjects such as music and the arts cannot end at the classroom door. If the language of the manosphere is shaping how some boys speak, think, and enact masculinity, then our response must be deliberate, courageous, and consistent. What happened at the library was unsettling, but it was also a reminder that what adults say, model, and challenge still matters deeply.
What are your thoughts? I’m keen to have a discussion.
References
Armstrong, V. (2017). Gendered Perspectives. In The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education (pp. 93-102). Routledge.
Gilmour, J. (2025). Narrative Matters: Adolescence in The Manosphere–A perfect storm?. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 30(3), 320-322.
Harrison SD. A perennial problem in gendered participation in music: what’s happening to the boys? British Journal of Music Education. 2007;24(3):267-280. doi:10.1017/S0265051707007577
Imms, W. D. (2003). Boys doing art: negotiating masculinities within art curriculum (T). University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0054888