Chanel Contos

Chanel Contos is an Australian sexual consent advocate. Contos became known globally in 2021, following an outpouring of responses to her request for young Australian women to report on their sexual assault experiences. She is the founder of the non-profit research and advocacy organisation Teach Us Consent and chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership's Youth Committee. Her book Consent Laid Bare was published in Australia in 2023, and in the UK and US in 2025.

Early life and education Chanel Contos is of Greek Australian descent. She grew up first in Glenorie, a northern rural suburb of Sydney, later moving to Vaucluse, in the eastern suburbs. before studying at the University of New South Wales for two bachelor's degrees, in commerce and arts.

She holds a first-class master's degree in Gender, Education and International Development from University College London, based on research into "how elite schooling in Australia upholds power structures that enable sexual assault". from at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, after being awarded a Governor Phillip Scholarship.

Advocacy and career Teach Us Consent In February 2021, Contos began an Instagram poll asking for stories from young Australian women who had been sexually assaulted. After an outpouring of responses, she started the website Teach Us Consent, which hosted a separate online petition to ask for sexual consent education in Australian schools. The petition generated a strong response, with over 44,000 signatures within a month of its launch, along with over 5,000 stories of sexual assault. In April 2021, Contos proposed that an anonymous online tip site be set up to enable young victims of sexual assault to report assaults to Australian police.

In May 2021, the then Australian prime minister Scott Morrison pledged to meet with Contos to discuss sexual consent education. This eventually led to the adoption of compulsory consent education in the Australian National Curriculum.

On 1 November 2023, a couple of months after the publication of her book Consent Laid Bare, Contos addressed the National Press Club.

On International Women's Day in 2024, she was on the panel for an UNSW event titled "Consent Laid Bare", along with three other women, to discuss safety for women on university campuses and other places.

On 2 September 2026, Contos again addressed the National Press Club, this time in collaboration with Women in Media, to talk about her the harms of social media algorithms, in a talk entitled "Algorithmic funnels and division: the systematic promotion of outrage, misogyny, and radicalisation online". In her talk, she advocated for an "opt-in" rather than an "opt-out" model on social media, which would require the platforms to revert to their original models, in which people can choose to just see posts from friends and accounts they follow. According to research done by Teach Us Consent, boys aged 16–18 were likely to be fed misogynistic content within 25 minutes after creating an account on social media platforms.

Publications Contos' book, Consent Laid Bare: sex, entitlement and the distortion of desire, was published by Macmillan Australia in September 2023, and in the US and UK in 2025. She was also named one of Marie Claire'''s 2021 Women of the Year; Vogue Australia named her as one of the "21 people who shaped 2021"; and Good Weekend'' magazine listed her in their list of "the influential of the influential" for 2021. She was also a nominee for NSW Young Australian of the Year in the Australian of the Year awards.