Positive Masculinity (2024) - Monty Badami, Tarang Chawla, Michael Flood & Anna Krien

Positive Masculinity (2024) - Monty Badami, Tarang Chawla, Michael Flood & Anna Krien

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas November 6, 2024 Duration: 1:01:51

Masculinity has become a battle ground. From the gender pay gap, to domestic violence and rape, the idea of what it means to be a man has been heavily scrutinised in recent times. 

Meanwhile the gender wars fuelled by mainstream conservatives, technology and social media – has shifted society's ideas in a dangerous direction. Has the recent focus on women had a negative effect on masculinity? Are men and boy's feelings of shame and exclusion contributing to a crisis? And is masculinity necessarily toxic? 

Tarang Chawla is an award-winning keynote speaker, writer, advocate and recovering lawyer. He serves as Commissioner at the Victorian Multicultural Commission where he works to bring the voices and lived experiences of culturally diverse people to policymakers. He is also the co-founder of Not One More Niki, a grassroots non-profit working to end men's violence against women.

Professor Michael Flood is an internationally recognised researcher on men, masculinities, and gender, violence against women, and violence prevention. 

Anna Krien is an author and regular contributor to The Monthly magazine and The Saturday Paper. 

Chaired by anthropologist and the founder of Habitus, Monty Badami.

 


For more than a decade, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas has curated a space where provocative thinking isn't just welcomed, it's the entire point. This podcast is a direct line to that stage, offering an archive of talks that deliberately unsettle comfortable opinions and interrogate the stubborn problems we often agree to ignore. Each episode captures a live conversation from Australia's original disruptive ideas festival, presenting arguments that can be exhilarating, uncomfortable, and vitally important. You’ll hear from a compelling roster of festival alumni-including leading experts, intellectual troublemakers, and visionary authors-who share perspectives that conventional discourse frequently sidelines. The discussions here aren't theoretical exercises; they grapple with the pressing and difficult issues shaping our society and culture right now. Tuning in means granting yourself access to a decade-long tradition of intellectual courage, where the core assumption is that some truths are only reached by first entertaining a dangerous idea. It’s a chance to listen as boundaries are pushed, not for shock value, but for clarity. The result is a consistently challenging and refreshing audio experience that complicates simple narratives and expands what feels possible to talk about.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Podcast Episodes
Tariq Ali (2015) | The Twilight of Democracy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:25
What is the purpose of democracy when it's become more challenging than ever to tell the left and right apart? Journalist and filmmaker, Tariq Ali says Western democracy has failed and we are now seeing the emergence of…
Dennis Glover (2015) | Winners and Losers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:23
In modern Australia, productivity is all that matters, or so our leaders tell us. However the way we have pursued economic growth in the last 30 years has prevented many people from sharing the rewards. We now create wea…
Molly Crabapple (2016) | From the frontline [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:55
In a time of turmoil, what happens when art and politics collide? From prisons, refugee camps and war zones, artist and journalist Molly Crabapple has documented the astounding courage of people living in the worst possi…
Drawing Truth to Power (2022) | Badiucao, Dan Ilic & Cathy Wilcox [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:05
Drawing truth to power is more dangerous in some parts of the world than others. The combination of satire and anger can make the best political cartoons lethal to politicians, unveiling truths around human rights, leade…
Steven Pinker (2022) | Enlightenment or Dark Age? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:04
Are the ideals of the Enlightenment – reason, science and humanism – and the progress they can deliver being undermined by a cynical desire to burn it all down? Pre-eminent psychologist Steven Pinker explains why problem…