Last week multi-award-winning journalist Jess Hill spoke to hundreds who gathered at the Star Court Theatre in Lismore. Hill spoke about gendered violence, and some of the things she has uncovered in recent years are truly shocking.
One of the things she spoke of was children and the rise to power of social media. ‘We had attitudes and values that were shaped largely by our mainstream culture. Homogenised news media and the friends, family, and peers in your local orbit was such a key part of shaping your attitudes.
‘Now, obviously the people in your local orbit still play a big role. But in the past 15 years, these points of influence have fragmented exponentially, and social media and smartphones have globalised everybody’s sphere of influence, mainstream, and as I said, often aggressive porn has become virtually ubiquitous, and the so called “manosphere” has become adept at exploiting the aspirations of men and boys in order to feed them disinformation about women and feminism.’
Ms Hill says the scariest end of this is that we see young Australian men increasingly espousing attitudes that would likely have shamed their grandfathers.
‘In 2024, 20 per cent of Australian men aged 18 to 29 agreed that, if necessary, feminism should be violently resisted. And as the ASIO Chief Mike Burgess said late last year, “In one generation we have allowed our children full access to alleyways, content, and people, that they would not be able to access in the physical world”.’
What is also shattering is the increasingly lowering age of perpetrators. Ms Hill said that the most stark and alarming statistic comes from The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS), a landmark study of the prevalence of child maltreatment, that surveyed more than 8,000 Australians on whether they had experienced various types of abuse before they turned 18. The survey found that 65 per cent of Australians had experienced child maltreatment – that’s the vast majority of us, and I’m going to paraphrase the great late bell hooks here: “the vast majority of us have grown up in environments where we felt shamed, missed, where we were physically, sexually, emotionally abused or neglected, or grew up with family and domestic violence”.
Kids offending against kids
‘That’s the nation that we live in. But more alarmingly, for the cohort of Australians now aged 16 to 24 the rate of adolescent sex offending against other kids – 18-year-olds offending against other under 18-year-olds has shot up. They are the first generation more likely to have been offended against by another adolescent or child, not by an adult and in intimate partner relationships. Adolescent sexual violence has doubled in a single generation, and yet this is the same generation that grew up with vastly improved education on respectful relationships and harmful gender norms.
‘So why are more young people perpetrating sexual violence against each other? Now, sexual violence services for years, have said that the victims seeking their help are getting younger and the sexual violence is becoming more severe. Anal rape and strangulation are now everyday experience.’
Ms Hill says she doesn’t really talk publicly about what it is that made her become obsessed with decoding coercive control, largely because she doesn’t want to hurt or embarrass people…
‘But I have my own reasons, like so many people who are dedicated to this work. One of my big motivations in life, that I’m more than happy to talk about, is my seven-year-old daughter, Stevie.
‘I do this work now with a sense of urgency, because I want the world to be better for her, and I want the better the world to be better for her classmates and her friends and for all the kids across Australia.
‘I want their intimate relationships to be better. And I want the girls to grow up without that implicit fear of gender-based violence around which they should organise their behaviour.
‘I want boys to hold on to their tenderness and affection for each other, and that glorious thing you see in seven- and eight-year-old boys, where they’ll still hold hands together, where they’ll hug each other, that slowly starts going missing as they get older and have to put on that mask of toughness.
‘I want all children to feel like this is a world that sees and hears them and appreciates them for who they are, a world that is attuned to them. And I want their parents to be able to help their kids interpret their experiences and the world around them. And I want those parents, including myself, who grew up with harm and misattunement, to be cycle breakers for this generation. And I know that’s what we all want.’
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