Nationals leader Matt Canavan has ignited a national argument over boys, schools and the online “manosphere” after blaming what he calls the “feminisation” of education for helping drive some young males towards toxic internet influencers.

Canavan says boys are increasingly tired of being lectured about men, lack strong male role models in schools and may be looking online for voices that appear to offer them respect, direction and a clearer version of masculinity.

He has called for more male teachers and challenged the way consent and Respectful Relationships education is delivered in Australian classrooms.

The comments have been strongly rejected by teachers, education experts and consent advocates, who argue the growing influence of misogynistic online communities is being driven far more directly by social media platforms and recommendation algorithms than by lessons about gender equality.

The evidence presents a more complicated picture than either political camp’s simplest argument.

Australia unquestionably has a heavily female teaching workforce.

There are also genuine questions about how schools can talk to boys about masculinity, consent and violence without leaving them feeling collectively blamed for the behaviour of men.

But there is currently little evidence establishing Canavan’s central causal claim — that the “feminisation” of school curriculums is itself driving boys into the manosphere.

What Canavan actually said

The controversy began when Canavan was asked about the growing exposure of boys and young men to online manosphere content.

The term “manosphere” is commonly used to describe a loose collection of online influencers, communities and subcultures focused on masculinity, dating, male grievances and gender relations.

Not every piece of content aimed at men is misogynistic.

But parts of the manosphere promote hostile attitudes towards women, rigid ideas about male dominance and claims that feminism is responsible for many of the problems confronting young men.

Canavan said some of that content was terrible and toxic.

He then argued Australia needed to ask why boys found it attractive in the first place.

In his view, one major reason was that boys were tired of hearing messages at school that they interpreted as criticism of men.

He blamed what he called the “feminisation” of the curriculum and said some boys lacked direction and leadership.

Canavan suggested putting more male teachers into classrooms could form part of the solution.

He later hardened the criticism, describing what he regarded as an “anti-boy ideology” and arguing some Respectful Relationships material risked becoming a recruitment ground for influencers such as Andrew Tate.

At the same time, Canavan has said children should be taught consent and respect for women.

His argument is therefore not that those subjects should disappear altogether.

It is that schools should reconsider the framework through which boys are being taught about gender and relationships.

The official framework does not call boys privileged

One important factual distinction has been blurred during the political fight.

Australia does have a national Respectful Relationships Education Framework.

The Albanese government released the current framework in March 2026 after consultation and research involving education experts and jurisdictions around the country.

It is designed to support age-appropriate education about consent, healthy relationships, gender equality and the prevention of violence.

The national framework does not contain a direction telling teachers to lecture boys about their “male privilege”.

It applies to all students regardless of gender and asks schools to help young people understand how identity, inequality and power can affect relationships.

It specifically recognises the importance of helping boys and young men explore masculinity in healthy ways.

That makes a blanket description of the national framework as “anti-boy” difficult to sustain from its text alone.

But Canavan’s criticism did not emerge from nowhere

There is, however, a separate document that helps explain what Canavan is responding to.

Our Watch, the national organisation focused on preventing violence against women, has produced a Respectful Relationships Education toolkit used as guidance in the education sector.

That toolkit says work addressing masculinity should provide opportunities for men and boys to reflect on their personal male privilege and power and examine assumptions about gender roles and stereotypes.

That wording is real.

It is also important not to mislabel it.

An Our Watch toolkit is not identical to the Australian Curriculum, nor does every teacher in every school deliver its wording directly to students.

Australian education is administered across states, territories and school sectors, and the way Respectful Relationships programs are implemented varies considerably.

The national government’s own rapid review acknowledged significant variation between schools and jurisdictions.

The more precise debate is therefore whether resources influenced by this theory of gender are the best way to engage boys — not whether every Australian classroom is officially instructing boys that they are individually responsible for male violence.

The shortage of male teachers is real

Canavan is on firmer factual ground when he points to the gender imbalance in teaching.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows almost three in four full-time-equivalent school teachers were women in 2025.

Of 325,190 teaching staff, about 234,000 were female and 91,000 male.

The imbalance was especially pronounced in primary schools.

Only 17.6 per cent of primary teachers were male, compared with 38.5 per cent at secondary level.

The trend is not new.

Men accounted for 20.2 per cent of primary teachers in 2006, meaning their share has gradually fallen over two decades.

There are legitimate reasons to consider that imbalance.

A more diverse workforce can expose children to a wider range of adults and demonstrate that teaching, caring and nurturing children are not exclusively female roles.

Some boys may also form particularly important relationships with individual male teachers, coaches or mentors.

But those observations are different from proving that female teachers are causing poor outcomes for boys.

Do male teachers actually improve boys’ results?

The research remains uncertain.

A 2026 academic review of evidence on male teachers and boys’ education found some studies showing modest benefits when pupils were taught by a teacher of the same gender, including improvements in particular grades or test scores.

Other studies detected no meaningful benefit.

Evidence on long-term outcomes remains particularly limited.

That suggests recruiting more men into teaching can be supported for reasons of workforce diversity and role modelling without claiming it is a proven cure for boys’ educational problems.

Teacher quality, classroom relationships, family circumstances, socioeconomic disadvantage, student behaviour and school environment all matter.

Gender alone cannot explain the enormous variation among boys.

A boy in a well-resourced household doing exceptionally well academically and a disadvantaged boy at risk of disengaging from school technically belong to the same gender category while facing completely different educational circumstances.

The manosphere problem is already visible inside classrooms

While politicians argue about its origins, evidence that misogynistic online culture is reaching schools has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Monash University researchers released a major national survey in August involving more than 2,600 Australian Education Union members.

Seventy-eight per cent reported observing or experiencing sexism or misogyny in their schools.

Half reported an increase in gendered violence among students.

Ninety-five per cent believed at least some of their students accessed manosphere content, while 70 per cent said they had noticed its influence on student attitudes or behaviour during the previous year.

The survey records teachers’ perceptions rather than directly measuring the browsing histories of every student.

But it is consistent with qualitative research in which teachers have described boys repeating terminology, attitudes and talking points associated with online misogynistic influencers.

Researchers have reported a noticeable change since around 2022, including more overt hostility towards women teachers, challenges to gender equality and sexualised comments.

That makes the argument over causes more than an abstract culture war.

Schools are already dealing with the consequences.

Algorithms provide another explanation

Consent advocate Chanel Contos has directly challenged Canavan’s explanation.

Her argument is that boys do not necessarily seek out increasingly extreme misogynistic material because a teacher offended them.

Recommendation algorithms can deliver it automatically.

Social platforms build profiles around what users watch, click, pause on and share.

A teenager interested in fitness, dating, sport, money or conventional masculinity can therefore be recommended adjacent content without searching for explicitly misogynistic material.

Once engagement begins, increasingly provocative posts can be recommended because outrage and controversy hold attention.

Australian eSafety research shows online exposure to potentially harmful material is already widespread.

In a survey of children aged 10 to 17, almost three-quarters said they had encountered content associated with harm at some point and 63 per cent had encountered it during the previous 12 months.

That category included sexist, misogynistic and hateful material as well as other forms of potentially harmful content.

This evidence does not prove algorithms are the sole explanation for every boy who embraces manosphere ideology.

Family relationships, social isolation, economic anxiety, peer groups, dating experiences, mental health and a search for identity can all play roles.

But research demonstrating algorithmic exposure is substantially stronger than evidence showing Respectful Relationships classes themselves cause boys to become misogynistic.

Boys’ alienation still deserves to be taken seriously

Rejecting Canavan’s causal claim does not require dismissing the concern beneath it.

Young men can experience loneliness, uncertainty and anxiety about what is expected of them.

Some boys struggle academically or disengage from school.

They may feel that public discussions of masculinity focus overwhelmingly on violence, privilege and harmful behaviour while offering less attention to the positive roles men can occupy.

Online influencers are extremely skilled at exploiting those feelings.

They can tell an insecure teenager that his frustrations are legitimate, that mainstream institutions despise him and that they alone are willing to speak in his defence.

If schools communicate badly with boys, that can create an opening for such messages.

That possibility deserves research rather than ridicule.

But the solution also cannot be to abandon teaching about consent, harassment and respectful relationships simply because some students may find those conversations uncomfortable.

The challenge is how to teach them effectively.

The strongest approach may not require choosing between the two sides

Australia does not necessarily need to choose between recruiting more positive male role models and teaching respectful relationships.

It can do both.

Schools can encourage more men into teaching without implying female teachers are responsible for boys’ difficulties.

They can teach boys about consent and violence without framing masculinity itself as a defect.

They can discuss power and gender inequality while also recognising boys’ vulnerabilities and giving them constructive models of adulthood.

And governments can address school culture while simultaneously confronting recommendation systems that place extreme online material in front of children.

Canavan has succeeded in forcing an uncomfortable question into national politics: are Australian institutions speaking to boys in a way that brings them into conversations about respect and responsibility, or in a way some experience primarily as accusation?

That is a legitimate question.

His answer — that the “feminisation” of the curriculum is a major cause of manosphere attraction — goes further than the evidence currently supports.

The more defensible conclusion is that boys need strong relationships, clear expectations, respect, positive models of masculinity and adults willing to take their concerns seriously.

They also need protection from online systems capable of turning ordinary adolescent insecurity into a profitable pathway towards grievance and extremism.

Getting that balance right will require more than another political fight about whether schools are too male or too female.

It will require understanding what boys are actually experiencing — in classrooms, at home and on the screens that increasingly shape their view of the world.