In Focus: Chanel Contos

Content warning: this article discusses themes including sexual assault and violence that may be distressing to some readers.

The woman behind the ground-breaking Teach Us Consent petition, Chanel Contos, talks to Emily Campbell about her experiences at school, acting collectively, and educational change to end gendered violence.

“Be ruthless with systems and kind with people”, are the words of wisdom that open Chanel Contos’s debut book, Consent laid bare: Sex, entitlement & the distortion of desire, published in September 2023.

Now in her mid-20s, Contos has already achieved so much, most notably spearheading the movement for mandatory consent and respectful relationships education in Australian schools through the Teach Us Consent campaign.

Contos was awarded the Australian Human Rights Commissions Young People’s Medal in 2021; is listed among the BBC’s annual ‘100 Women’ series of inspiring and influential women, and in 2023 was named NSW Young Woman of the Year. Contos’s dream is to become a school principal.

Attending Kambala

Kambala Church of England Girls’ School in Rose Bay overlooks picturesque Sydney Harbour and welcomes day and boarding students from preparation to Year 12.

Contos attended Kambala from Year 5 on, and has fond memories of her time there – particularly of late-night study sessions in the library with friends.

“Attending Kambala massively shaped me as a person – I had the best time at school and loved it,” Contos says.

“I met so many amazing friends who remain my friends today, and I had such a good year group who weren’t cliquey.”

Contos says the school staff at Kambala instilled confidence in its young women students and encouraged critical thinking, integrity and feminism.

“I feel like it was ingrained in us from a young age that we could be the best versions of ourselves in various ways,” she says.

“Ms [Jennifer] Crossman was our head of senior school, and she was instrumental in motivating us to be confident and to be feminists.

“When girls were presented with an award at a school assembly, she would make sure every girl went up on stage and shook her hand.

“At the time, it felt awkward and formal, but she said so many men walk into rooms and shake people’s hands, and we should also have the confidence to do that.

“I think even small things like that have gone a long way to helping me feel comfortable as I work in male-dominated spaces like politics.”

Dr Kate Narev and Mr Curtis are also among the memorable teachers who inspired and supported Contos during school. Dr Narev has gone on to work in the gender equality field.

“School is so important in shaping a person, which is why I spend so much time advocating for schools to improve their consent education, because it has the potential to change the whole culture of a country,” Contos says.

Teach Us Consent campaign

In 2021, while she was living and studying in London, Contos posted a poll on Instagram asking followers: “Have you or has anyone close to you ever been sexually assaulted by someone who went to an all-boys school in Sydney?”

Within 24 hours, 200 people had responded ‘yes’. Contos was schocked but not suprised by these responses.

The next day, she created a petition calling for holistic, earlier consent education for school students. The petition attracted 45,000 signatures.

Contos then launched teachusconsent.com, a platform through which victim-survivors could anonymously share their experiences. It has since received 6700 testimonials and submissions.

The Teach Us Consent petition and testimonies were presented to Members of Parliament throughout Australia, with Contos calling for age-appropriate consent education to be mandated in the national Australian Curriculum.

“It was obviously really devastating to read all those stories, but it also felt validating in a weird way because I knew that they existed,” Contos says.

“I found it heartwarming that people were willing to share their experiences with me and the public.”

Seismic shift in reporting sexual assault

Contos’s fierce advocacy sparked an ongoing national conversation about sex education in schools and shone a spotlight on the devastating consequences resulting from the lack of explicit teaching of consent.

Since the inception of Teach Us Consent, monumental changes have been made to the legal and education systems.

In March 2021, Contos helped NSW police launch Operation Vest, which provided an informal avenue for victim-survivors to report sexual assault.

This saw an unprecedented 54 per cent month-on-month increase in the reporting of sexual assault in NSW, as reported on the Teach Us Consent website.

More recently, Contos’s unwavering advocacy has directly led to Queensland and South Australia passing laws to criminalise ‘stealthing’. This means removing a condom without consent, a form of sexual assault which is not widely known.

“Teach Us Consent’s mission is fundamentally about putting consent, empathy and respect at the heart of sex education,” Contos says.

"Petitions, protest and unionising allow people who don’t traditionally hold significant power in their own daily experiences to band together."

Consent education in the curriculum

In April 2021, Teach Us Consent began work with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) to update and incorporate consent education nationwide.

Shortly after, the Victorian government announced a statewide mandate of consent education, and the NSW and Queensland governments quickly followed suit.

Later that same year, Contos hosted a roundtable event to discuss the need for compulsory consent education on a national scale. The event was attended by politicians, influential human rights and education stakeholders, and young victim-survivors of sexual assault.

By February 2022, Contos had accomplished her goal. At a meeting of the Ministers of Education, Teach Us Consent was again presented to policymakers, who unanimously agreed to mandate consent education in the Australian Curriculum from 2023.

Collective power for change

Contos says the Teach Us Consent campaign’s success was made possible through people power, with tens of thousands of voices supporting the movement, along with the countless hours of volunteer support.

It’s one way Contos’s personal values and work intersect with the union movement’s core values. “Collective action is so important because it is the fundamental way we redistribute power,” she says.

“By signing petitions, attending a walkout or protest and unionising, it allows people who don’t traditionally hold significant power in their own daily experiences to band together.

“Through strength in numbers, we can create policy changes that people want.”

In 2023, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard appointed Contos as Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership’s (GIWL) Youth Advisory Committee (YAC). This opportunity has given her valuable insights into how young people engage with politics and activism.

“The point of the YAC is to create a two-way relationship between young people and the research, policy and advocacy that GIWL does,” Contos says.

“We hosted a Youth Summit at the end of 2023, which was attended by a group of phenomenal young people with incredible experience across many fields.

“Traditionally, political engagement would’ve been thought of as running for a seat, whereas for young people, the way they engage with politics is much more about petitions and protests and collective action, which is interesting,” she says.

Education alters attitudes

In the years since Contos launched her petition, the need for high-quality consent and respectful relationships education is more pressing than ever.

“The rates of sexual violence and family and domestic violence in Australia are some of the most shameful issues for our country, because it is preventable and we haven’t managed to achieve that yet,” Contos says.

“Education is the largest transformative tool that we have, and we need all hands on deck, especially the education institutions that have so much power in creating culture and, therefore, norms.”

Contos says it is vital for all schools to do their part and she believes that there are many delivery models and approaches that could be impactful.

“My absolute ideal scenario would be an expert consent educator who would come into schools to deliver this content explicitly, but also that all teachers are adequately trained and equipped to have these conversations in an ongoing manner, even if not explicitly,” Contos says.

Contos says humanities subjects present numerous opportunities to teach students about respectful relationships and consent.

“For example, I always think that the History and English curriculums are some of the best ways to teach these topics in a non-sexual way,” she says.

“History – what a wonderful way to discuss power dynamics and evolving trends, gendered norms and expectations and changes in those.”

“In Year 9, my English class studied Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – we could have had a one-sentence explanation about the age gap between a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old, and discuss the power dynamics in that.

“We also studied Atonement [by Ian McEwan] in Year 11, which is literally about a rape, yet we never had a single conversation about anything to do with consent or sexual assault whilst reading a book which revolves around an act of a violation of consent.

“There needs to be explicit, holistic consent education in an age-appropriate way at all levels as part of the curriculum, but also we should see where else in the curriculum we can embed these concepts so it becomes commonplace.”

Protesters at the March4Justicei n Sydney, 2021, one of numerous rallies nation wide calling for better consent education and an end to gendered violence following Chanel Contos’s Teach Us Consent petition and Brittany Higgins’s allegations of assault in Parliament House.

Combating misogyny

With teachers concerned about the rising impact of toxic, misogynistic social media influencers such as British-American former kickboxer Andrew Tate, Contos says it is more important than ever to counter the messaging and ideologies that are brainwashing and harming impressionable young men and women (see The influencer infiltrating classrooms, p22).

“These are tough conversations to have,” she says.

“It’s not enough to simply tell students not to watch it. We need to be able to embed empathy in boys and to effectively explain the underlying concepts and consequences of this messaging and how it harms people, including the women and girls in their life.

“I’m an expert in this field and even I sometimes struggle, because when you’re speaking to a 14-year-old boy, it’s not enough to know it yourself – you need to be able to communicate it in a way that lands with them, which is why we need so much teacher support, training and education,” she says.

Government funding expands

In the 2023 federal budget, Teach Us Consent was allocated $3.5 million to expand its work in reducing sexual violence among young people.

This crucial funding, Contos says, was part of a broader package of measures to eliminate gendered violence, and she aims for more breakthroughs for sexual violence prevention and consent education.

“I’m excited to be able to amplify the work of experts and educators to build on the positive messages around consent and sexual violence that young people will receive in more formal settings,” Contos says.

“Teach Us Consent has always been about bringing the voices of youth to the desks of policymakers, so creating a youth-led, expert advisory group will take this aspect of our work to the next level.

“It means there will be a direct line between the government and young people interested in making a difference,” she says.

Contos says young people must have their voices heard and reflected in the messages they receive about what consent means and what behaviour is acceptable, particularly on social media.

“The resources and content we are developing target people aged 16 years and above, and hopefully will be able to counter some of that Andrew Tate messaging,” Contos says.

"History – what a wonderful way to discuss power dynamics and evolving trends, gendered norms and expectations."

Chanel Contos at a book signing for Consent laid bare. Photo supplied by Chanel Conto

Game-changing work

Contos is now a published author, with her debut book, Consent laid bare: Sex, entitlement & the distortion of desire published in September 2023.

The work is an adaptation of Contos’s research dissertation, which she completed as part of her Master’s degree in Gender, Education and International Development at University College London, where she graduated with distinction.

Consent laid bare has been lauded as a game-changing work that explores whether consent is possible in a world in which female sexuality has been hijacked by forces such as pornography, patriarchy and male entitlement.

“When I was writing my thesis, I knew it was going to be a book at the end,” Contos says.

“It’s honestly been the biggest privilege of my life to write this book, and I think these topics require so much depth and nuance that a book is the only medium through which you can truly communicate the message,” she says.

In Consent laid bare, Contos uses colloquial language to ensure the academic research and complex concepts in her thesis are digestible, captivating and widely accessible.

“I wanted Consent laid bare to be a tool people can use to educate themselves or to give to someone else if they can’t articulate these things or find them too emotive to discuss.

“I wanted a 15-year-old girl and a 40-year-old woman to both be able to pick it up to read and gain something valuable from the book,” she says.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with responses from all kinds of people demonstrating its relevance and practicality.

“Readers have said many of the concepts and situations in the book are instinctively felt, particularly by women, but they have never had the language to describe them before,” Contos says.

“Quite a few men have also read it, with many saying it has really opened their eyes to things that they or their friends have done.

“The book’s final chapter is called ‘Dear boys and men’. It’s adapted from a speech I gave at Sydney Grammar School which got positive feedback from the boys and their teachers.

“The tone is deliberately very approachable for young men and the point of the chapter is because when you read this book, you want all the men in your life to read it too.

“If they won’t, just ask them to read this single chapter, which hopefully has an impact,” she says.

Ambitious and inspiring

A diligent and industrious Contos has big plans for Teach Us Consent and hopes to eventually share her work overseas.

“Australia now has a world-leading consent education curriculum which I think should be expanded to other Western countries that are culturally similar to us,” she says.

“I have big ambitions, and you never know what’s going to happen, but we’re aiming high.”

With her lifelong love of learning, Contos is about to embark on yet another round of postgraduate study – this time, a Master of Public Policy at Oxford University.

“Then, hopefully, my next degree after that will be teaching,” she says. “My dream job is to be a school principal, I’ve always said it.

“I want to be a principal who teaches as well, because I think the opportunity to lead and shape a school would be incredible.”

References

Teach Us Consent: teachusconsent.com

Win a copy of Consent laid bare: Sex, entitlement & the distortion of desire by Chanel Contos

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Published by Pan MacMillan.

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