India, Oct. 4 -- Rahool Goswami has been talking to boys and men about gender, equality and consent for the last 10 years. Patriarchy, he tells them, harms not just women but also men by squeezing them into strait-jacketed gender roles: the strong provider who doesn't show his feelings. How's that been going, I ask the Kolkata-based community assistant for Swayam, a non-profit working to end violence against women. The answer is not encouraging. Over half of the men and boys ask, "What's in it for us? Why should we give up our dominance over our world?" In the last few years, we've focused on talking to girls, teaching them how to stay safe and tell good from bad touch. We have dedicated phone lines to report crimes, a Nirbhaya fund to make cities safer, one-stop centres to lodge complaints and fast-track courts for speedy justice. And, yet, we've not been speaking enough to the perpetrators of sexual violence. "Not all men" is a neat hashtag, but somehow it is always a man. There is evidence of growing male aggression: A gym-owner is so offended by a woman on a motorbike that he runs her off the road - and is then supported by other men after he is arrested. This violence does not exist in a vacuum. It is a part of patriarchy and its pushback against girls who are trying to assert some degree of autonomy. Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta says we need to talk to the boys. We do. But beyond consent and protection, we need to talk about gender roles imposed by patriarchy; we need to talk about equality, independence and rights. It's not an easy conversation. There is peer pressure and the lack of male rolemodels. Ideas of toxic masculinity have reached everywhere, even in villages, thanks to digital connectivity. So much abuse and denigration of women comes from politicians and political parties on their official social media handles. And in the name of "protecting daughters" governments are busy moral policing citizens by passing laws that make interfaith marriage virtually impossible. The video from Jamui, Bihar is instructive in how a mob of young men assault a teenage couple, also under the guise of moral policing. Young men need to know that gender roles imposed on them by patriarchy harms them too. With increasing competitionin the labour market and unemployment, the role of the provider is becoming harder to fulfil especially within a worldview where a woman's job is not to earn but to carefor her family. Dhruv Kumar, a trainer at Cequin, a non-profit that encourages girls to play football as a way of claiming space, has just completed conducting a two-day bootcamp for boys near Patna. Some have seen their fathers hit their mothers. Others worry that if their sisters get too much freedom they will become equal to them. "If they have the same rights, then where will male privilege go?" says Dhruv about their anxieties. Cequin's Mardon Wali Baat engages boys and men in Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan in a bid to make them more gender sensitive and more reflective. Breakthrough India, another non-profit with a focus on shifting gender norms, has in the past yeardeveloped a formal curriculum for schoolsand communities in four states, including Haryana. They hold classes twice a month in 125 government schools. For years we've taught our daughters how to stay safe - don't go there, don't wear that, don't come home late. Now, we need a different conversation, this one with our sons: Don't harass her, don't police her, don't laugh when your friends do, don't look away. Nobody said it would be easy, but a much-needed conversation has begun....