An apology is not accountability.

The headlines have kept coming these past few weeks. Boys and young men across Australia allegedly assaulting, sexually assaulting and raping women. And this is just what’s reported.

We are not going to make excuses. There aren’t any. Whatever a young man has been through, whatever is going on at home, none of it justifies putting his hands on a woman or girl.

Plenty of blame is flying about and some of it lands. The parents. The schools. Algorithms. But we must address the culture that still measures a young man by how much control he holds over the people around him.

We want to empower boys to become great men in their communities. A great man is built on respect. Being able to sit with the discomfort when someone says no, without arguing or lashing out. Holding himself to account when he has done wrong, and changing the behaviour rather than just talking about it. Continually learning, growing and doing better.

We would be lying if we said misogyny was not in the classrooms we work in. It is. We hold these conversations with the boys, and we hold it long enough for boys to start thinking it through themselves and to see what their behaviour is doing to the people around them.

Sometimes it doesn’t land. There is pushback and nothing seems to get through, and that is when our facilitators say: you might not agree with me, but this is right, and that behaviour is not okay. This is accountability.

Boys need more men saying that to them, even when it feels like it is going nowhere. Those boys are men in a few years. Saying nothing now tells them this belongs to someone else.

Sit down with the boys in your life. Talk about control, about entitlement, about anger, about consent and what you do when you have hurt someone. If it will land better from someone else, ask another adult that you trust in your life to have the conversation.

Women and girls in this country deserve to feel safe. Nobody gets there while the men raising the next generation stay quiet because speaking up is uncomfortable.

We are not staying quiet.