3 days ago
Respect Victoria challenges men to question masculinity stereotypes in new ad campaign
Alex Mills feels very comfortable with the kind of man he is.
But it's taken until the age of 40, a serious run-in with anxiety and depression and plenty of introspection to get there.
"I'd just internalised a lot of that, so when I found myself in a really vulnerable space, opening up about that sort of stuff was really hard," he says.
"That experience has always really stuck with me."
Opening up is hard — for men, in particular — because it's in stark opposition to social pressures and stereotypes that expect toughness and stoicism.
These pressures are fleshed out in a new campaign by Respect Victoria that has boiled down 18 months of research and conversations with Victorian men.
It found that men who subscribed to macho stereotypes that included aggression, suppressing emotion and hypersexuality were 17 times more likely to commit gendered violence.
Research manager Dr Stephanie Lusby says the campaign is about showing men it is possible to buck those expectations.
"It's not about calling men perpetrators as a general bloc," she says.
"It's about saying we've all got a part to play in finding avenues to change, resetting the social norms that allow violence to happen."
Alex Mills is one of the 12 Victorian men featured in the campaign.
All of them speak openly and honestly about what kind of man they want to be.
Some have been on the receiving end of violence while others, like Alex, have waded through mental health issues.
"There's lots of men out there who are really wrestling with this stuff, either in their own lives or maybe working with young people, or other men around them," he says.
"A lot of that gets drowned out by the really big, loud, toxic voices.
"I mean, you can't kind of talk about masculinity in 2025 without someone like Andrew Tate or a similar online influencer coming up."
Respect Victoria drew on surveys of 3,500 men aged 18 to 45 about their attitudes and behaviours around masculinity.
Dr Lusby says many men feel pressure to live up to harmful stereotypes, even if they do not personally endorse them.
And that throughout the study, it became clear many men wanted to help prevent gendered violence but were not sure how to go about it.
"Lots of men in the focus groups we were doing were saying that they wanted to do more, but that they weren't perpetrators … and so what was their role?" Dr Lusby says.
"Not wanting to do more harm came out as a theme quite a bit … and so one of the things that we want to show in this campaign is the stories of men who have gone on their own journeys of building relationships that feel safer."
The figures around violence against women in Australia are staggering.
According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, since the age of 15, more than 1 in 3 women in Australia have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a man.
The growing list of murdered women's names feels unrelenting.
Names like Jill Meagher, Aiia Maasarwe, Celeste Manno, and Samantha Murphy stoke rage and grief in the community.
But there has also been some backlash.
A Hosier Lane mural featuring the faces of women who have been killed was recently defaced with graffiti reading "war on men".
Dr Lusby hopes this campaign will help engage men who might see themselves reflected in it and encourage them to push back against harmful behaviour and attitudes.
"Lots of previous campaigns have been about teaching — do this and don't do that," she say.
"This one is about listening and I think that that's a really important shift.
Respect Victoria's campaign, called What Kind of Man Do You Want to Be? launches on Wednesday.
Alex hopes that sharing his experience prompts other men to open up.
"There're so many different ways to be a man," he says.
"You can be strong, but you can also be vulnerable. You can be sensitive, you can be caring, compassionate, you can be scared.
"I really hope this campaign … gets men thinking about how actually there's a whole bunch of ways that I can be. And they're all OK."
