To the organisations, advocates, practitioners, researchers, activists, leaders, funders, policymakers, public servants, educators, health workers, fathers, men’s health leaders, women’s safety leaders, victim-survivor advocates, children’s advocates, and everyone who has given their life, labour, care and courage to this work.
I am writing this letter with deep respect, some frustration, and a great deal of hope.
Over the past 18 months, I have met with many experts across the work of healthy masculinities, men’s health, boys’ wellbeing, gender equity, and family, domestic and sexual violence. I have attended conferences, forums, roundtables, sector meetings and had many more conversations. I have sat with people who have dedicated decades to ending violence against women and children. I have sat with men’s health advocates who have spent their careers trying to keep men alive, with educators trying to respond to the rise in concerning behaviours in classrooms, with researchers trying to build the evidence base, with small community organisations doing extraordinary work without the resources, profile or access they deserve, with people who agree with each other deeply, and people who disagree with each other sharply.
What I have seen is remarkable work happening across this country. But it is fragmented.
That is not a criticism of any one person, organisation or movement. It is an observation about a field that has grown through different histories, different harms, different funding streams, different evidence bases, different political moments and different communities of practice.
Men’s health organisations have worked to address suicide, loneliness, social isolation, fatherhood, help-seeking, chronic disease, mental health and the everyday realities of men and boys. The feminist movements to end men’s violence against women and children have built the architecture that much of this work now stands on. Victim-survivor advocates have asked institutions to listen to what harm actually does to women, children, families and communities. Children’s advocates have reminded us that children are not bystanders to violence; they are victim-survivors in their own right. First Nations organisations have long understood that healing, accountability, family, culture and community cannot be separated. Men’s behaviour change practitioners have carried out difficult and often under-recognised work for decades. Youth organisations have tried to meet boys where they are, in schools, clubs, online spaces, homes and communities. Researchers have tried to make sense of what is changing, what is not, and what evidence can support us to do better.
And still, we are fragmented, and that fragmentation is being named publicly. By politicians, by thought leaders, and by people with lived experiences.
The Australian Government has launched the National Healthy Men Community Conversations, led by Assistant Minister for Social Services and Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Ged Kearney, and Special Envoy for Men’s Health Dan Repacholi. The project is explicitly bringing together the public, organisations working in men’s health and wellbeing, and those working in family, domestic and sexual violence prevention. It is focused on mental, physical and social wellbeing, help-seeking, connection, and respectful relationships.
There is a clear policy window open. But a policy window does not stay open forever.
We are fragmented across prevention, early intervention, crisis response, recovery and healing. That fragmentation stretches across men’s health, boys’ wellbeing, fatherhood, education, mental health, sport, digital safety, workplaces and community development. It extends to women and gender diverse people’s experiences, and the harms caused by men and boys. We are fragmented across large organisations, small organisations, academic institutions, community-led work, government, philanthropy and the corporate sector. With tensions alive around who gets invited into the room, who does not, who is seen as legitimate, who is seen as risky, who is resourced, who is invisible, and who is expected to wait.
Over the next 18 months, there is a rare chance to help shape how Australia understands, funds and organises work with men and boys. This is not about building a new empire. It is not about taking from one and giving to another. It is not about watering down women’s safety. It is not about one organisation leading. It is not about competing for the moral high ground. It is about asking whether we have the will, humility and discipline to organise across difference, before this moment passes.
While we debate who should lead, who should be in the room, who has the right language, who has the best evidence, who has done harm, who has been overlooked, who has been underfunded and who has been over-platformed, the harms continue. Women and children continue to be harmed and killed by men’s violence. Men and boys continue to die by suicide. Boys continue to be pulled into online worlds that offer certainty, status and belonging, while feeding them misogyny, grievance and emotional disconnection. Girls, women, queer people, trans people and gender-diverse communities continue to experience abuse, harassment, violence and hate. Teachers continue to face behaviours in classrooms that are shaped by online misogyny. Fathers continue to be under-supported in systems that say they matter, but often do not know how to engage them.
Many men continue to live without close friendships, without help-seeking pathways, without emotional literacy, without health literacy, without trusted services, and without a sense of purpose or connection. First Nations men, boys, families and communities continue to carry the burden of intersecting systems of harm, including colonisation, racism, family violence, health inequity, incarceration and under-resourced community-led solutions.
This is not a zero-sum game. We cannot say that men’s and boys’ health matters only when it does not make women’s safety advocates uncomfortable. We cannot say that women’s safety matters only when it does not challenge men’s health organisations. We cannot say children matter, and then leave them out of the design of systems that affect their lives. We cannot talk about First Nations leadership while retrofitting mainstream models onto communities. We cannot say we believe in evidence, then dismiss practitioner wisdom. We cannot say we believe in lived experience, then only invite people with formal titles. We cannot say we believe in prevention, then keep funding only response. We cannot say we want men to step in, step up and do the work, and then tell them there is no legitimate way to do so.
This work must hold more than one truth. Men’s violence against women and children is real. Men’s and boys’ challenges are real. The harms of rigid gender norms are real. The structural drivers of violence are real. The health and social systems failing men and boys are real. The backlash against gender equality is real. The fear of centring men at the expense of women and children is real. The concern that boys are drifting further behind is real. The exhaustion of feminist and women-led movements is real. The frustration of men’s health practitioners who feel misread or dismissed is real.
The question is not which of these truths wins. The question is whether we are mature enough as a sector to hold them together?
The field is already telling us what is needed
Equimundo and Dalberg’s Rapid Landscape Assessment on Caring Masculinities in Australia describes a landscape in which violence prevention, men’s health, caregiving, education and economic participation are shaped by the same gender norms and power dynamics. It recognises the long-standing work of gender-based violence organisations across primary prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery, and notes that the broader ecosystem focused on healthy masculinities has been building momentum more recently. The same mapping found that work across and within sectors is fragmented, that the evidence base on what works in the Australian context remains limited, and that there is a need to define and capture what diverse, Australian, healthy masculinities looks like. It also found that social services organisations are the engine of direct engagement with men and boys, but that competition for funding and limited coordination are driving unnecessary tension between different entry points, such as violence prevention and men’s health.
This matters. It tells us fragmentation is not just a vibe. It is a structural feature of the ecosystem. It tells us the answer is not simply “be nicer to each other”, though that would help.
The answer requires coordination, trust-building, evidence-sharing, funding reform, shared language, and a way for different parts of the sector to work together without collapsing into sameness.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) recently hosted a Healthy Masculinities Roundtable, connecting senior government representatives and academic experts to bring evidence closer to policy. The roundtable focused on how concepts of healthy masculinities are being used, what the evidence says, and where further collaboration is needed to support the health and wellbeing of boys and men. This matters too. We need evidence. We need longitudinal data. We need research on health literacy, social connectedness, fatherhood, help-seeking, intimate partner violence use, boys’ development, digital lives, loneliness, school belonging, men’s relationships, and what actually shifts attitudes, behaviours, norms and systems.
But evidence must not sit above practice like a judge. It must sit beside practice like a partner.
Researchers need to understand what frontline organisations are seeing in schools, homes, clubs, communities, workplaces, behaviour change programs, fatherhood programs, youth services, women’s shelters, DFSV services and health settings. Practitioners need to be open to scrutiny, evaluation and learning. Policymakers need to hear from both. Funders need to resource both. Lived experience must be included in ways that are ethical, safe and meaningful, not tokenistic.
There are real tensions in this work. We need to name the tension without being consumed by it. Some of these tensions are necessary. A contest of ideas is healthy. Debate is healthy. Disagreement is healthy. Evidence should be tested. Practice should be challenged. Power should be questioned. Nobody should be beyond critique. But fragmentation is not the same as healthy tension. Backroom swipes are not the same as accountability. Gatekeeping is not the same as safeguarding. Dismissal is not the same as critique. We need to make room for principled disagreement without allowing distrust to become the organising logic of the field.
This cannot become a men’s rights project
Let me be clear. This is not a call for men’s rights activism. This is not a call to recenter men at the expense of women, children, victim-survivors or gender-diverse communities. This is not a call to minimise men’s violence. This is not a call to pretend that power, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism or colonial violence are side issues. This is not a call to make boys and men the victims of gender equality. This is not a call to soften accountability.
Quite the opposite.
This is a call to take men and boys seriously enough to hold them in the work. To care enough to challenge. To support enough to expect more. To engage early enough that crisis is not the first intervention. To build systems that help men and boys live well, relate well, care well, seek help, build friendships, take responsibility, share power, reject violence, and participate in the safety and flourishing of everyone around them. Healthy masculinities work, at its best, is not about making men feel comfortable. It is about helping men and boys become safe, connected, accountable, caring and well. Well men. Men who do no harm. Men who can receive care and offer care. Men who can build relationships without domination.
The work must be personal, relational and structural
If this next phase of work focuses only on individual attitudes and behaviours, it will fail. If it focuses only on systems and structures, without engaging men and boys as people, it will also fail. We need both. We need to address the individual attitudes and behaviours that show up in relationships, classrooms, workplaces, sporting clubs, homes, group chats, online platforms, and public life. We also need to address the systems and structures that shape those attitudes and behaviours. That means health systems that do not engage men early enough, or in ways that men trust. It means schools that are expected to teach respectful relationships, digital literacy, emotional literacy and gender equity without consistent training, resourcing or whole-school implementation. It means family services that still too often treat fathers as optional, absent, risky or secondary, rather than as caregivers who need to be engaged safely, intentionally and accountably. It means workplaces that say they support care, but still punish men who take parental leave, work flexibly or challenge male-dominated cultures. It means sports systems that have enormous influence over boys and men, but often respond to violence and sexism after the harm has already occurred. It means digital platforms that profit from attention while misogyny, humiliation, pornography, deepfakes, harassment and extremist recruitment travel faster than safeguarding.
We must honour the people who built this moment
This policy window did not appear out of nowhere. It has been made possible by decades, and in some cases generations, of people who fought before many of us arrived. From the advocates, to the activists, to the practitioners and the people with lived and living experience. To the senior leaders, executives, researchers, organisers, public servants, corporate leaders and politicians. The philanthropists, donors, and community volunteers. We are on the shoulders of giants. People who ran groups in church halls, community centres, men’s sheds, prisons, schools, sporting clubs, hospitals, council buildings, refuges, universities and Zoom rooms long before “healthy masculinity” became a policy phrase. Some of these people have been ignored. Some have been attacked. Some have been underfunded. Some have been proven right after being dismissed for years. Some have made mistakes and kept going. Some are tired. Some are grieving. Some are angry. Some are hopeful. We should honour all of that. But honouring the past cannot mean protecting fragmentation into the future. The best way to honour those who built this moment is to use it well.
We must pick up the pace on technology
One driver for coming together is the pace in at which the digital landscape is changing. Artificial intelligence, synthetic intimacy, deepfakes, algorithmic radicalisation, online pornography, influencer economies, gambling and digital loneliness are moving faster than our current systems are ready for. If we stay fragmented, we will keep responding late.
So what do we do?
I do not believe this letter should prescribe a single answer. It is not for me, or any one organisation, to decide what the structure should be. But I do believe we need to organise. We need a way for this field to see itself as one that can come together. There are many options. We could consider a national coordination mechanism, be that through a community of practice, a network, or a peak body. It could be leveraging the existing infrastructure and wisdom, both from the feminist lens and the men’s health lens. Is there an avenue where we can lead this work from two perspectives and two working groups, and then combine at a national level? Whether it be formal or informal, we have enough expertise and collective wisdom, and I believe respect, to share power, share resources, and bring government, philanthropy and corporate Australia to the table. Whatever we can agree to, we should not let the perfect structure become the reason we do nothing. We can start with a commitment.
A call to the sector to create a shared agenda
I am hoping we can come together. Not to agree on everything. Not to erase our differences. Not to collapse our missions. Not to pretend the tensions are not real. But to organise. To build a shared table. To make the work bigger than any one organisation. To make the opportunity bigger than our egos. To bring the backroom conversations into the light. The next 18 months matter. The consultation process for the 2nd Action Plan under the National Plan to end violence against women and children is here. We are halfway through the national Men’s Health strategy. The National Healthy Men Community Conversations are underway. Equimundo is expanding its work in Australia. Leading organisations from the men’s health perspective, and the feminist lens, have structures and plans underway.
What might a shared agenda include?
A serious national agenda for healthy masculinities, men and boys’ wellbeing, and the prevention of violence could include at least ten streams of work.
1. A shared national map of the ecosystem
We need to know who is doing what, where, with whom, with what evidence, with what funding, and with what gaps. A national map would not solve everything, but it would help us understand the field as a whole, not just the parts closest to us.
2. Shared principles for working with men and boys
We need principles that can be held across the field, even where practice differs. They might include:
– Safety for women, children and gender-diverse people is non-negotiable.
– Men’s and boys’ wellbeing matters.
– Accountability and care belong together.
– Children and young people must be included in age-appropriate, ethical and meaningful ways.
– Healthy masculinities must be plural, diverse and culturally grounded.
– First Nations leadership, knowledge and self-determination must be central.
– Work with men and boys must be gender-transformative, not gender-neutral, where gender is driving harm.
– Men and boys must not be framed solely as risks or solely as victims.
– Systems must change alongside individual attitudes and behaviours.
– Evidence should guide action, but practice should shape evidence.
3. A national evidence and practice agenda
We need to know what works, for whom, in what settings, at what intensity, and over what time. There is plenty of great work already done, or underway, in this space. We need stronger evaluation of programs working with boys, men, fathers, schools, sports clubs, workplaces, online spaces and communities. We need to understand which interventions shift attitudes, which shift behaviours, which shift peer norms, which shift systems. We need to invest in longitudinal work. We need to connect universities, frontline practitioners, community organisations and lived experience. We need to translate evidence into practice quickly enough to be useful.
4. A serious digital and AI strategy
The manosphere, online misogyny, deepfakes, pornography, influencer culture, gaming and gambling platforms, algorithmic amplification, AI companions and extremist recruitment pathways are already shaping boys’ and young men’s lives. Schools and parents are already feeling this. We need more digital literacy, but we also need more emotional literacy, relational literacy, sexual ethics, media literacy, platform accountability, parent education, teacher support, youth-led counter-narratives, and technology regulation.
5. A national approach to boys and education
Boys are not a problem to be managed. Nor are they a special interest group to be centred at the expense of girls. They are children and young people growing up inside gendered systems, digital systems, family systems, school systems, peer systems and economic systems that are changing rapidly. Schools are one of the most important sites for prevention, but we cannot keep asking teachers to solve every social issue without proper training, resourcing and support. Respectful Relationships Education, consent education, social and emotional learning, critical digital literacy, bystander work, healthy masculinities, help-seeking, peer relationships and teacher wellbeing should not sit in disconnected silos. We need whole-school approaches and recurring interventions.
6. A fatherhood and care strategy
Fatherhood is a powerful yet underutilised cross-sectoral lever, with fathers representing one of the few universal repeat touchpoints across health, education, workplaces and community services. This should be a major national focus. Fathers interact with maternal and child health, hospitals, early childhood systems, schools, workplaces, family services, sport and digital communities. Yet too often, systems still engage fathers inconsistently, or only when there is risk. We need father-inclusive health systems and parenting supports. We need workplaces that make caregiving normal for men. We need early childhood systems that recognise fathers. We need school communities that engage dads and father figures. We need to treat caregiving as central to healthy masculinity, not as an optional add-on.
7. A men’s health and mental health strategy connected to gender equality
Men’s health cannot sit apart from gender equity. And gender equity cannot ignore men’s health. Men’s suicide, loneliness, chronic disease, low help-seeking, violence, substance use, addiction, social disconnection, fatherhood, relationships, workplace cultures and digital lives are connected to gender norms. We need ways that support the safety and wellbeing of women, children, men, boys and gender-diverse people together. Men’s health work should not be defensive. Violence prevention work should not be dismissive of men’s health. There is a bridge here, but it needs to be built deliberately.
8. A stronger focus on prevention, early intervention and the full continuum
We need the whole continuum. Primary prevention. Early intervention. Crisis response. Men’s behaviour change. Justice responses. Victim-survivor support. Healing and recovery. Community accountability. Long-term wellbeing. Too often, these parts of the system compete instead of connecting. Prevention cannot be used as a reason to underfund crisis response. Crisis response cannot be the only place we invest. Men’s behaviour change cannot be separated from prevention. Children cannot be invisible in adult systems. Healing cannot be an afterthought. If we want fewer people harmed, we need to work earlier, deeper and longer.
9. A funding approach that rewards collaboration, not competition
We need to be honest about funding. Funding shapes behaviour. If funding is short-term, competitive and siloed, the sector will behave accordingly. If government and philanthropy want coordination, they need to fund coordination. If they want evidence, they need to fund an evaluation. If they want community-led work, they need to fund community-led organisations directly and fairly. If they want intersectionality, they need to fund the time, trust, partnerships and governance required to do it properly. If they want collaboration, they need to stop designing grants that force organisations into performative partnerships and hidden competition. We need funding models that support backbone infrastructure and shared learning.
10. A way to speak publicly without feeding the culture war
The public discourse around boys, men, masculinity, gender equity and violence is volatile. There is a risk that this work gets captured by culture war narratives from all perspectives. We need to speak with moral clarity and practical nuance. We need to say that violence against women and children is unacceptable. We need to say men and boys are not disposable. We need to say feminism and men’s wellbeing are not enemies. We need to say boys need guidance, not shame. We need to say girls’ experiences matter. We need to say safety is the floor. We need to say healthy masculinities are not about making one new “right way” to be a man, but expanding the possibilities for boys and men to live well without domination, violence or disconnection.
I know this letter will not capture every nuance. I understand that some people will disagree with parts of it. I know some will feel it does not go far enough. Some may feel it goes too far. Some may feel hopeful. Some may feel defensive. The call to action is not to agree on everything. Nor is the call to action for The Man Cave to play any sort of coordinating or organising role. We want to walk alongside you all in whatever it is we create. I am not writing this because I think I have the answer. I am writing this because I care.
With hope,
Ben Vasiliou
CEO, The Man Cave
P.S Please share this open letter with whomever you feel is appropriate. This letter is not designed to be for private consumption or a specific group of people. If we have missed anyone in the distribution of this letter we apologise, please know we hope this reaches everyone who cares about this work.