By MICAIAH BILGER – The College Fix
cholars at Monash University just launched a project aimed at tackling “toxic masculinity” in high school classrooms, blaming famed Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson in part for promoting “harmful ideologies” online.
The project goal is to create “early intervention programs” to help high school teachers “identify and tackle the harms of online misogyny and gender-based violence” in the classroom, according to a news release from the Australian university.
“Toxic masculinity and misogynistic gender narratives are gaining traction online and in Australian classrooms, threatening gender equality and contributing to gender-based violence,” the university stated.
Education Professor Stephanie Wescott said in the release she has seen an “alarming increase” in reports from female teachers about “sexual harassment and other harmful behaviours by boys in classrooms, often linked to narratives and ideologies unmistakably derived from manosphere content.”
The university blamed “notorious masculinity influencers or ‘manfluencers’” including former University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson for “perpetuating harmful ideologies around sexism and misogyny which are filtering through to boys’ and young men’s behaviour in the classroom.”
Peterson is a popular author, public speaker, and psychologist who rose to fame while advocating for free speech rights in Canada.
The project’s lead researcher, Naomi Pfitzner said she, Wescott, and others plan to conduct research over the next two years to craft workshops that help teachers create “safer, more equitable classrooms.”
“We need effective strategies for teachers to challenge this harmful masculinist ideology that reinforces violence supportive beliefs online, in the classroom and beyond,” Wescott said in the release.
“Toxic masculinity” has been a common subject in academia in recent years.
In 2021, Rhode Island College offered a first-year seminar class called “The Rhetoric of Toxic Masculinity” that delved into what it described as a negative “outcome” in the male psyche, including habitually suppressing fear or sadness and the idea that “violence signifies power,” The College Fix reported.
Scholars also have linked “toxic masculinity” to climate change, college drinking culture, and men’s reluctance to wear masks during the COVID-19 outbreak.