Monash University’s Professor Steven Roberts says Trump’s win has further re-ignited the influence of the ‘manosphere’, a term used to describe those individuals, forums and groups who espouse anti-feminist and anti-women ideas online.

The election outcome, Roberts says, has essentially green-lighted sexist trope and is further entangling young men in damaging ideas about women and masculinity.

“I think the key thing about the election was who kind of aligns themselves, and what kind of masculinities and men align themselves, with the rhetoric that Trump espouses,” Roberts tells EducationHQ.

“And very quickly it became clear that Andrew Tate and (far-right leader and activist) Nick Fuentes, and a bunch of other people quickly started saying the kinds of very sexist things that we expect them to say, but that this had a really strong traction.

“I think it was something between a 600-800 per cent rise in the phrase, ‘go make me a sandwich’ and ‘get back to the kitchen’ [online].”

Fuentes’ post on X ‘Your body, my choice. Forever’ on the night of the election became a viral meme that spread across social media.

In response, pro-Trump men have reportedly got behind the slogan ‘en masse’ to troll women online.

This might present as ‘facetious misogyny’, but it’s absolutely a concern, Roberts warns.

“Maybe it’s tongue in cheek, whatever, but it’s harmful and it’s dangerous.

“And then very quickly, there’s the language of ‘your body, my choice’.

 “It’s really crushing women's autonomy and actually leaning into very, very harmful tropes as well around rape denial and so on, and rape culpability.

“And these are very graphic, strong markers of misogyny and unapologetic.”

Roberts has previously investigated the ‘rising tide of misogyny’ in Australian schools, and the role of ‘manfluencers’, such as Tate, as teachers report language and behaviours aligned with ‘masculinist supremacy’ playing out in classrooms.

He says the current collection of influential figures dominating the manosphere rely on shaming young men and boys to drive their charged message.

“First of all, telling them they are the contemporary losers, but there [is] a solution to losing economically and sexually in this contemporary climate.

“The particularly ‘successful’ fashion is to tell boys and men that they are losers because they don’t have fast cars … and access to women, and at the same time offering them a solution for that.

“And this solution is a retreat to old-school, traditional, dominance-driven masculinity.”

A large proportion of young men in Australia support Trump, or at least indicate ‘some notion’ of support for him over Harris, Roberts flagged.

He notes pre-election polling found some 43 per cent of Australian men under 30 indicated their support for Trump.

We would be naive to think an iteration of the political situation in the US could not happen here, too, he says.

“My concern here is that as the Trumps, the Tates, the Elon Musks, Joe Rogan-styles of masculinity become emboldened, then it emboldens other people to enact the kind of politics and ideals that they celebrate, and that’s going to hurt people.”

Roberts says his fears are not based on mere speculation or hypothesis, either.

“As I said, we do have very quickly the growth of this sexist sentiment and it’s really accelerating very quickly.

“So, it’s a politically difficult moment, because we know in our own country that [opposition leader, Peter] Dutton’s ‘angle’ looks like it will already lean into Trump’s kind of language.

“We might very well, in a year’s time, have a similar situation in terms of the colour of the government …  but I want to be careful in saying it, because we can’t just signal that Trump is entirely problematic and that it’s something ridiculous and would never happen here, because it might very well happen here.”

So, what should be the response of our school systems and policymakers?

Roberts, for one, would like to see a doubling down on the knowledge that will foster students’ critical thinking and digital literacy skills.

“The role of the school here, hopefully, is to try to cultivate an enhanced level of critical thinking, because that’s what we need, right?

 “This politics isn’t going anywhere, this sentiment isn’t going anywhere.

“So, how do we prepare our boys and young men, and people of all genders, actually, to engage with the (manosphere) content in such a way that they can see through it and definitely see its problems for others?

“Because that’s going to happen, it’s going to be harmful to others. So can educators, can all of us, work towards upping the critical thinking skills that are needed to be able to see through the often conspiracy-theorist kind of logic that are used by these figures?”

We must seize the opportunity to educate students on where contemporary masculinity and misogyny stems from and how it harms people, Roberts says.

But be wary – it’s a ‘hugely politically loaded’ space, he warns.

“And even discussions of it … there are arguments now around whether or not we should use the term ‘toxic masculinity’, for example, which isn’t really an academic concept anyway, but [a stance held by] people trying to engage boys and young men in conversations to be better boys and young men.

“It’s a huge debate around even the kind of language you can use. So, it’s a very volatile landscape.

“And the fear, I guess, at all times is whether or not we should use language and ideas [that could feed] into this discussion [and] just further alienate young men.”

Drew Hanger, education prevention coordinator at The Men’s Project, has overseen a pilot program that’s helped 58 Victorian schools to challenge unhealthy, but often stereotypical, ideas and behaviours about what it means to be a man.

Hanger is not a fan of the ‘toxic masculinity’ term. 

“We’re really clear on how we talk about this work, we don’t use the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ anywhere at all, because we don’t believe that men and boys are toxic or that masculinity is toxic," he says.