How To Teach Boys To Reject Misogyny And Speak Up For Girls

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that, in the UK, a woman is killed by a man every three days, and violence against women and girls makes up almost 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales.

“Misogyny is everywhere, and our boys are encountering it much earlier than many parents realise, particularly through social media, gaming and the internet,” Joeli Brearley, founder of Growth Spurt and co-host of the To Be A Boy podcast, told HuffPost UK.

“What starts as a joke, a meme or a misogynistic influencer’s video can gradually normalise ideas about women and girls, and those ideas can have very real consequences.”

Earlier than you might think, according to experts. Lee Chambers, founder of gender equity consultancy Male Allies UK, said education can start as early as the toddler years.

Obviously, we’re not going to be talking to them about misogyny at the ripe old age of two, but we can talk about the importance of kindness, boundaries, bodily autonomy and listening to other children’s voices.

“As they get older, grow the conversation with them,” said Chambers. “Tie it to fairness and friendship, respect and stereotypes, consent and relationships.

“And with those foundations, you can explore things such as pornography, harassment, coercion and violence.”

It needn’t be a “big talk”, the expert added, noting that it would likely come across as a lecture for most teenagers, which would prompt them to switch off.

“Little and often is the way. A news story, comment from a friend, song lyrics, a football chant, there are lots of moments in everyday life that can enforce a quick two-minute conversation,” he said.

Teaching critical thinking skills is also crucial.

“We cannot monitor everything our children will eventually encounter online,” Brearley said. “We need to give them the critical thinking skills to recognise misogyny, question what they are being told and understand that something being popular online does not make it true.”

If your son says something sexist, the key advice is to not immediately shut him down. “Ask him where he heard it. Ask him what he means. Ask him whether he thinks it would be acceptable if someone said the same thing about his sister or his mum,” suggested Brearley.

“Challenge the idea without making it impossible for him to talk to you about it.

“The goal isn’t to create boys who are frightened of saying the wrong thing in front of their parents. It is to raise boys who can recognise when something is wrong, think critically about it and change their minds.”

Role-modelling can also be powerful. Parents can show their kids what healthy relationships and respect look like through their own friendships and relationships. Brearley noted that in families with male-female parents in particular, “fathers have a particularly important role to play in modelling respect, equality and shared responsibility”.

“Boys need to see men listening to women, respecting their boundaries, sharing domestic and caring work, and never using power or aggression to get their own way,” she said.

“We know that the gender roles children see at home can influence the relationships they form themselves. So this isn’t just about having a conversation with our sons about misogyny. It’s about showing them, every day, what equality actually looks like.”

While we mustn’t demonise boys and young men (experts stress the environments and influences shaping them must be addressed to tackle misogyny), it is clear that parents can play a key role in raising boys who respect girls, and ultimately, women.

Chambers stresses that while these conversations are crucial, we do need to ensure we bring positivity into them to keep engagement up. “Explore what kind of men they want to become, and talk about body confidence,” he suggested.

In Male Allies’ own research, many boys expressed a desire to step up and support gender equality, but also said “they didn’t always feel equipped to do so and worried about the social cost”. This is why teaching them to speak up when they witness misogyny in action is also key.

“We need to ensure messaging for boys isn’t just about them not doing something or being the problem. It needs to be about them having a role beyond the problem,” said Chambers.

Ask them: “What do you do when someone else is disrespectful of girls?” and help them to understand how they can and should act.

“Raising boys who don’t perpetuate harm is important, but it’s raising boys who challenge it in others that will create cultural change,” Chambers continued.

It’s what child neurologist Dr Shilpa Dass refers to as “moral courage”. She explained in an Instagram reel that it’s “not just knowing right from wrong, it’s actually doing what’s right, even if it’s the unpopular choice”.

She shared some key ways to teach this including educating children on why something’s right or wrong (what impact do your actions have? How do they make someone else feel?), as well as encouraging kids to question rules respectfully, as “one day the person that’s telling them what to do may be the person that’s actually doing something [problematic]”.

“Speaking up is a skill, it’s a core skill of allyship,” Chambers continued. “We need to give boys the words and phrases they can use in pressured situations, e.g. ‘That’s not funny’ or ‘don’t talk about her like that, mate’ or ‘that’s not okay’.

“Encourage them to practice it so it feels they have the words before they need them.”

It’s also important for parents to try to teach their sons judgement, rather than heroism, he said.

“Being an active bystander doesn’t always involve jumping in with physicality. It can be getting adults involved. Creating a distraction. Documenting and reporting appropriately. Checking the safety of others,” he explained.

“It’s not about being the tough guy who jumps in, it’s being responsible for doing something safely that makes a difference.”

Another key talking point is peer groups and pressure, as “it’s much harder to challenge a friend than to believe something is wrong, and this can breed silence”.

Chambers recommended asking them whether they’d find it hard to say something if one of their mates said something disrespectful to a girl. “It helps them reflect on peer dynamics, and what might stop them, and then talk about ways that they can challenge that behaviour,” he said.

If parents don’t have these conversations, “boys will still learn about relationships, sex and masculinity from somewhere”, said Dr Tim Shand, a global health and gender equality advocate from Men and Policy, whether that’s friends, pornography, influencers, social media or wider culture.

Chambers added that low-level behaviours and attitudes could become even more normalised if caregivers don’t intervene and educate – “everyone ignores the sexist joke, the intimate image being shared, the controlling behaviour is framed as jealously. And the step to violence becomes easier,” he said.

Boys can be agents of change – and that is the thing to focus on.

As Brearley says, ultimately, this is about power. “We need to raise boys who understand that being a man does not give you power over women, and that strength isn’t about having power over someone else,” she said.

“It’s about knowing what to do when you have power: share it, use it responsibly, and speak up when someone else is being harmed.”