By Gavin Sinclair
Managing Director, Venture Trust
The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government puts greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention, including the need to challenge misogynistic attitudes among boys and young men before they become entrenched.
That matters.
If we are serious about preventing violence against women and girls, we need to think about where attitudes are formed, who is influencing them and whether young men have enough opportunity to question what they are hearing and seeing.
Social media, algorithms, online personalities and peer groups can all shape ideas about masculinity, relationships, status and power. Often, those influences are constant.
So perhaps part of prevention is creating something increasingly rare: space away from them.
Creating space to think
At Venture Trust, we have seen what can happen when people step outside their familiar environment.
For decades, we have used Scotland’s outdoors as a catalyst for personal development. Our Wilderness Journeys combine challenge, reflection, trusted relationships and time away from the pressures of everyday life.
The outdoors is not a solution to misogyny.
But it can create the conditions for different thinking.
Away from the phone and the group chat, there is space to reflect.
Away from familiar peer dynamics, there is less pressure to perform or conform.
And away from the constant flow of online opinion, there is an opportunity to ask some important questions.
Where have my ideas come from?
Do I actually believe them?
What kind of man do I want to be?
A different reference point
Young men should not simply be treated as a problem to be solved. But harmful attitudes cannot go unchallenged either.
The opportunity lies in creating environments where young men can be challenged without immediately disengaging.
Many are looking for belonging, identity and certainty. Online communities can offer all three, sometimes alongside very narrow ideas about women, relationships and masculinity. When those messages are repeated by friends, influencers and algorithms, they can quickly begin to feel normal.
Telling young men what not to think is unlikely to be enough.
We need to give them the confidence to think for themselves.
To question what they see online.
To challenge assumptions within their peer group.
To discover that strength does not have to mean dominance, aggression or emotional silence.
A different environment can provide a different reference point.
It can show that resilience can sit alongside vulnerability. That leadership can mean listening. That belonging does not require following the loudest voice in the room.
Prevention starts earlier
Ending violence against women and girls is not the responsibility of women and girls.
Prevention means engaging men and boys before harmful attitudes become harmful behaviour.
It also means recognising that attitudes are rarely changed by a single lesson, campaign or conversation.
Sometimes people need to step outside the environment reinforcing those attitudes before they can properly examine them.
That is where organisations like Venture Trust can contribute.
Our work has shown us the power of challenge, trusted relationships and space to see yourself and the world differently.
As Scotland puts greater emphasis on prevention, we should be ambitious about what that can mean.
Perhaps one of the most important journeys we can help young men make is not simply through Scotland’s wilderness.
It is away from the noise, towards a clearer understanding of themselves, of others and of what strength really means.
