Brolga man on mission
Skipper travels breadth of state tackling toxic masculinity
The sexual assault of a close friend by a member of his extended social circle was the sliding doors moment that set Townsville Brolgas rugby union captain Curtis Rayment on a mission to tackle rape culture and toxic masculinity in young men.
Rayment, 24, is balancing the final year of his medical degree at James Cook University with a starring role for Townsville and District Rugby Union ladder leaders Teachers West and his work as a masculinity educator for It’s A Man’s Issue, a program he founded in 2021.
Since then Rayment has travelled the breadth of Queensland delivering workshops to male and female high school students about healthy relationships, consent and what it means to be a man.
His age and position as one of Australia’s most talented country footballers grant Rayment a legitimacy and rapport with students that older educators and teachers struggle to match.
“That’s one of the advantages of being a young man, you get to cut through to other young men,” Rayment said.
“I remember getting talks from people about this stuff and I would instantly disregard them. If an older person talked to me about sex or alcohol my belief was that they just didn’t like sex or having fun. Because I am having sex and I am going to parties I use that sort of language to talk about these experiences to say, not that these things are bad, but I want to talk to you guys about what goes wrong and why it is wrong.
“Being young and coming from the bush I talk about going away on bucks weekends and footy trips and they realise that I’m just a young, normal guy. Hopefully they’re thinking that if I can have these opinions and talk about it, they can as well.”
As a hospital worker, rker, uni student and prolific local athlete Rayment is at the coalface of masculinity ity among young men.
It took an assault t close to home to snap p Rayment out of the e worldview that con- sent and masculinity y were not issues that hat would ever effect him.
“I was always like e the majority of young dudes where I didn’t think k it was real,” Rayment reflected.
“It wasn’t until a close friend of mine got raped by another guy essentially in the same social circle, seeing the experience that she had and the way it was dealt with around our social circle really frustrated me. That was the moment that made me start questioning what I was doing, my attitudes and beliefs, that contributed to a society that allowed that to happen.
“That was the light bulb moment where I thought I needed to do something about this. I couldn’t channel the anger I felt towards the man into any direction other than trying to make a change for other young men and women.”
Those insights have informed the two-part work
shops he now shares with impressionable audiences from Cairns to the Sunshine Coast.
Rayment stresses that although he discusses toxic masculinity he is not “attacking” men but confronting the expectations men place on themselves that are toxic, and the consequences that follow.
He uses an exercise with students to differentiate healthy masculinity from its counterpart. It is based on an Australian Men’s Project study entitled ‘ The Man Box,’ where students are invited to fill a box with ideas of what it is to be a man.
“They came up with a list: heterosexual, independent, financially stable, dominant, tall, angry, and that’s what their view is of being a man,”
Rayment said. “I say to the kids that being dominant, being financially independent, even being angry, I’m not saying any of that is bad.
“What am I saying is if all you can be is inside the man box then it is bad, because what the study shows is that men who are inside the man box are 50 per cent more likely to have committed suicide. They were 70 per cent more likely to have sexually harassed a woman, and a man inside the man box was around 20 per cent more likely to have died in a car crash.
“So there are certain behaviours that are inside of the man box that men are doing that are not just bad for women, in terms of sexual assault and rape, but also for men.”
The value of Rayment’s work has been noticed even outside of the school system.
As captain of the North Queensland representative team Rayment was engaged by the TDRU to deliver his workshops to the region’s under-16 rep team.
“Because I’ve been the senior men’s captain for the past two years, all the boys have seen me play. The fact that the Brolgas captain has these opinions, they see it’s okay for me to have this opinion,” he said. “It is super powerful because it showed me that this culture we live in is a leadership issue. If your leader makes it clear these behaviours are not okay the rates drop significantly.
“The fact that Dan Withers, as head of Townsville rugby, wants me to come in and talk about these big issues is a message to the community as a whole that I think is so powerful.”