If asked to identify the face of Australian feminism, I’d probably say Chanel Contos. A Kambala girl in her late 20s, Contos epitomises the cool girl of our time: hyper-progressive, media-savvy and ingratiated into the halls of power.

Contos rose to prominence in 2021 after an Instagram post asking her followers whether they had ever been sexually assaulted by a student from an all-boys school. An overwhelming number said yes.

The media picked up the story and Contos soon wrote in The Guardian that we live in a rape culture and that “everyone is sexist”, even going as far to call herself “inherently misogynistic – I grew up in a world that has deep-rooted sexism in all of its structures”.
...

In April, Merlin Strategy polled 2000 British 18 to 30-year-olds for The New Statesman. It found that, contrary to popular belief, young women actually held a more negative opinion of men than men did of women. Half of young women viewed men positively, against 72 per cent of young men who viewed women positively. The pollster’s conclusion was that the manosphere story was the less accurate half and that it was young women moving to the radical left that was widening the gender divide.

The poll also found that university-educated and professional-class women were considerably more left-wing and more negative towards capitalism and men than working-class women, and that white women were likelier than black and minority ethnicity women to say Britain was a racist country.

One finding in that poll ought to trouble anyone who takes Contos’s mechanism seriously. Young women online more than five hours a day believe abortion access is under attack in Britain, a country whose parliament recently voted to decriminalise abortion up to birth. That is a feed manufacturing a belief flatly at odds with reality. These hyper-online women were also more concerned about climate change and more supportive of environmentalism and wealth redistribution.

The same poll found young women 21 points less likely than young men to expect to out-earn their parents, in a cohort where women aged 16 to 24 are more likely to be in full-time work and earn 9 per cent more than the men.

In fact, in Australia, data from the e61 Institute shows full-time working young women earn roughly 7 to 8 per cent more an hour than their male counterparts.

One omission that stood out to me was that while Contos mentioned far-right extremism at least four times, she didn’t mention far left or Islamic extremism. As a woman who criticises the left, I can tell you that I have been called many of the horrible words Contos lists by men with hammers and sickles and Palestine flags in their Instagram bios. When asked directly about Islamic extremism, Contos moved the conversation to consumer law.


Contos is quick to criticise the privileged white boys who clearly left a bad impression on her as a teenager, but to suggest they represent the most dangerous men in Australia is remarkably myopic. For example, a 2019 study found that 60.9 per cent of Muslim Australian men wanted classical sharia family law to be recognised under Australian law. She also doesn’t mention the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are heavily over-represented as both domestic violence homicide victims and offenders.

Improving gender relations is an existential risk. Australia’s fertility rate was just 1.48 babies per woman in 2024 and is expected to remain well below the 2.1 replacement rate.

I struggle to see how Contos’s focus on men behaving badly, while giving so little attention to women’s agency, helps us understand why young people are increasingly struggling to form relationships and families. If we genuinely want to improve the lives of young Australians, we need a science-based and empathetic approach that takes the agency of both sexes seriously.


Zoe Sankey is content director and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast.

Belgarion wrote on Sep 21^st, 2026 at 9:19pm:


Pretty much.

Edit: Meanwhile the femosphere is A OK. Just look at loonies like Clementine Ford and her ilk, of which there are far too many. Have you killed a man today? If not, why not?

Brings to mind "Four legs good, two legs bad". One vag good, one dick bad.

Men have a unique opportunity  to shine.
They squander that opportunity if they, in any way, play the victim , express self pity, shy away from pressure, want life to be easy.


An attractive 18 to 30 yo woman has enormous value and clout
Value she never had to earn.
This is a set back.

An 18 to 30 yo man has little value.
He has to embrace the suck of his position.
He has to embrace the pain, learn to push through. Learn to face rejection, learn self belief, learn He can do hard things, learn emotional control under pressure.

Done right He emerges with a deep deep core confidence in himself around 30.

This is about the time the value of the attractive female begins to wane.

Now if she has embraced the brutal pressure of childbirth, of getting up twice a night to breast feed, of pushing through pain, of never giving up. She is well placed to move forward and grow , just as the superior man is able to push forward and grow.

To challenge each other, to climb the mountain , to experience the peaks.


This is the true manosphete.
A man who has done the hard training, embraced that life is difficult,
A man who looks into every situation, every relationship and asks

" how can I add a stack of positive emotions into this situation
How can I penetrative it with my power.".


The quality woman recognises such a man and longs to be penetrated

Such men are rare.

Most men now are sooky, pure takers, weak, do not want to lead, seek the safety of the herd. Seek pleasure, complain and feel butt hurt.

No woman wants to recieve such seed


And so women resent men.

And so they bloody well should.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/welcome-to-the-femosphere-the-late...
https://wentworthreport.com/2026/04/20/angry-young-women-the-toxic-femosphere/

mothra wrote Yesterday at 7:31am:



Very clear, concise, accurate to the point of the disaster that is modern Western society and civilisation.

My daughter shines in her own right, as fully expected without all the trappings of the eight million cubic miles of feminism that can never be shut down, Morbius.

"The manosphere is an umbrella term for a collection of online communities, websites, and social media spaces that focus on men, masculinity, and gender relations, often promoting anti-feminist and misogynistic views"

I warned you about AI and its propensity to side with new city hall - the new self-appointed educated elite of intellectual Nazis who can justify anything with the 'correct' words but never have the actual answers - and to change history and reality one bit at a time under the guidance of those who - in all seriousness - consider themselves superior enough to actually input this rubbish into it and onto humanity... a job I refused because I suffer not that level of hubris ...

The toxic femosphere, of course, has placed itself AS new city hall...

Setanta wrote on Sep 21^st, 2026 at 9:25pm:


Let us not forget the right to murder your children with impunity....

mothra wrote Yesterday at 6:36am:


yes, it's almost impossible to have a good conversation with many men.
one where you all laugh