Publications

While consent forms part of the Health, Wellbeing and Relationships strand of the New South Wales (NSW) Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in Australia, it is not consistently or effectively delivered within schools. The recent e-campaign, Teach Us Consent in NSW, drew attention to the alarmingly high rates of sexual assault experienced by young women during their school years or shortly after. The campaign called for mandatory, inclusive and comprehensive consent education in schools. This paper presents research from a case study of an elite, same-sex, Catholic boys’ school in NSW, Australia, examining the types of knowledge and attitudes young men and their PDHPE teachers had about sexual consent and the types of consent pedagogies mobilised. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with the five male PDHPE teachers, and a focus group was conducted with five Year 11 male students (aged 16–17). The findings highlight that while participants recognised the importance of sexual consent in intimate relationships, consent pedagogies were grounded in individualising discourses of risk, responsibility and care, which rearticulated hegemonic gender norms. Findings from this study contribute to discussions of how schools approach consent education, and the limitations presented by outsourcing relationships and sex education.

This special issue has been compiled to suggest that there is much to gain from affirmative feminist approaches to boys: from problematizing the categories of boy and boyhood; examining the multiplicity of boyhoods through historical, comparative, and intersectional lenses; and examining boys’ social and emotional lives as boys, rather than for the adults they will become.

This paper considers some cultural and intellectual problems arising from these dominant ideas about the relations between feminism and boyhood.

This paper explores the discursive construction of boys in two Australia domestic violence primary prevention advertisement campaigns.

This article argues for a revised understanding of ‘complicity’ as a undertheorised position and relationship within the social organisation of gender.

The group known as ‘incels’ (involuntary celibates, usually men) has become a spectacle for feminism as well as for mass media.

Transkids is a documentary on gender transitioning children in Israel. My interest is in the quotidian lives of the three transmasculine youths portrayed in the film

This critical commentary considers the significance of Connell’s The Men and the Boys in the development of an affirmative feminist boys studies.