Canavan’s bizarre manosphere comments show he should check his own algorithm

September 6, 2026 — 5:00am

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When asked this week about the dangers of “manosphere” content being served up online to our boys, Nationals leader Matt Canavan started off well.

“We’ve got to have a deep hard look at why young boys are attracted to this stuff online,” he said. “It is terrible. It is toxic.”

But then he veered off into a verbal internet rabbit-hole. He wound up sounding like he’d been trawling the comments sections of the very social media accounts being scrutinised.

“But the reason … a big reason,” he continued, “is they’re sick and tired of getting lectures on how bad men are at school … They’re sick and tired of the feminisation of our curriculum and the lack of direction and leadership they’re given. Maybe we should look at getting more male teachers.”

Perhaps Canavan needs to check his own social media algorithm.

He may have been influenced more than he knows – a fundamental principle of the manosphere is that society has been “feminised” to the point where it is hostile to men, and that gender equality has come at the expense of men’s rights.

In the manosphere, women and feminism are to blame for the problems of men and boys. And the concept of personal responsibility, once seen as a cornerstone of masculine identity, is traded away for a victim agenda where men complain they are passed over and demonised for the crime of being male.

But the Coalition has never been more desperate for relevance, and Canavan’s comments do hit the zeitgeist. Many parents of boys (Canavan is a father of four boys) are anxious that their kids hear a balanced message about masculinity. They know that boys are sweet and vulnerable, just as girls are, and they understandably want to shield them from unnecessary, generalised broadsides on their........

© The Sydney Morning Herald