Peter Dutton Thinks Grand Theft Auto Plays A Role In Toxic Masculinity

Australia is having a massive, national discussion on gender inequality, the way women are treated and the toxic behaviour of men.

There have been many suggestions on ways to improve the situation and the Home Affairs Minister thinks he knows at least root of the problem.

Despite years of evidence claiming violent video games don't create real-world attitudes, Peter Dutton reckons titles like Grand Theft Auto play a part in developing toxic masculinity.

Speaking on Channel 9, the MP directly called out the popular game by saying: "If you're playing Grand Theft Auto, as a 13 year old boy, and lets of teenage boys will do, you can go...in that game, not just, you know, drive cars recklessly, you can go for a lap dance, you can go and shoot police.

"And so we need to have a broader conversation about the influences on those young boys, both in a family setting and a societal setting and particularly online."

But he wasn't finished there.

Mr Dutton also called out other tropes of life in 2021 as possible reasons behind why some blokes just can't seem to treat others with respect.

"I think what we should demand is the same laws that apply in real life apply online," the minister said.

"So if you're flicking through TikTok videos and there is content on there that is unfiltered, going into the minds of young impressionable boys and girls, then we need to think about what happens there."

It's a valid point that some social media sites are unfiltered however, Parliament has been rocked by multiple sex and rape scandals over the past month and virtually none of the people involved, allegedly or otherwise, grew up with the likes of TikTok, social media or Grand Theft Auto.

It wasn't long before people starting talking about the strange reason for toxic masculinity on social media.

A study published last year found violent video games don't make gamers more aggressive.

Researchers over at Massey University in New Zealand put the decades long argument to rest by amalgamating data from 28 other studies on the issue.

It included up to 21,000 young people and gamers to see if playing their shoot-em-ups encouraged more violent behaviour.

Their research led them to the conclusion that there is no link between playing violent games like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto and real-world aggression.

The leader of the team, Aaron Drummond, explained: "Overall, longitudinal studies do not appear to support substantive long-term links between aggressive game content and youth aggression.

"Correlations between aggressive game content and youth aggression appear better explained by methodological weaknesses and researcher expectancy effects than true effects in the real world."

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie