Consent advocate Chanel Contos warns of ‘uphill battle’ against sexual violence as Australian femicides surge

Consent classes have “little hope” in curbing widespread sexual violence among Australian teens if addictive online ecosystems are not addressed, consent advocate Chanel Contos has warned.

The Teach Us Consent founder will address the National Press Club on Wednesday, just days after a 16-year-old died following what police suspect was a consensual choking sex act.

It also comes two women and two girls were killed in the first few days of July, bringing the total number of women killed in 2026 to 42.

In her speech, Ms Contos will warn that despite believing consent education “was the best way we as a society could prevent widespread, normalised, teen-on-teen perpetrated sexual violence”, she now believed it was “an uphill battle”.

“A yearly class on consent has little hope of effecting change when an addictive content producing machine (targeted at teens, who ingest it for hours a day) is preaching a contradictory message,” she will say.

Ms Contos will warn young men online seeking community, belonging, and self-improvement were being “targeted with content that blames women for their misfortunes” and reinforced archaic and harmful gender roles.

“Boys and men have valid concerns about the economy, and their relationships with partners and friends,” she will say.

“From these concerns, an industry has jumped onto a market opportunity, and unfortunately, misogyny is at the heart of its business model.”

Ms Contos warned boys were often taken into the “manosphere” by what begins as “something as harmless as a work out video”, but that quickly merges with communities promoting “the idea that emotional control, material wealth, and physical appearance and dominance, especially over women, are markers of male worth”.

A 2025 Movember report has found 2/3 of the young men surveyed regularly engaged with men and masculinity influencers, and that those men were more likely to believe women should fulfil more “traditional” roles.

“This is harmful to the individual man consuming this content, and then anyone else close to him in life, including other men, but disproportionately women and girls,” she will say, noting a study found men who engaged with such beliefs were more likely to binge drink and gamble.

They were also 17 times more likely to hit their partner, she will say.

Teach Us Consent has been advocating for Australians to have greater control over their social media by affecting potentially harmful algorithms.

Ms Contos congratulated the government after Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek this week said it would probe “opt-out algorithms”.