I hope every parent has the courage to watch the compelling Netflix drama, Adolescence. Sure, it will be a painful if not frightening experience; to see up close the brutal impact of the manosphere on boys, girls, schools, and families. But it will also be a very timely wake-up call. As I will explain, Adolescence should be compulsory viewing in every school in the UK and every teacher training programme.
Adolescence, written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, may be fiction but it could also pass as a documentary on 21st century gender politics, notably the tragic consequences of allowing social media to run amok with the minds and imaginations of our children.
One person who most definitely should watch Adolescence is Professor Becky Francis, Chair of the UK Government’s Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment. And the timing is perfect, because the very week that Adolescence impacts our screens, so does Prof Francis and her team present their Interim Report ‘Working Towards an Inclusive System’.
The next stage in the C&A Review will apparently focus on ‘four key areas’, one of which will be:
‘Responding to social and technological change. Examining how education can better prepare students for the demands of the modern world, including everything from AI use to climate change.’
Put aside, if we can, assessment, subject-specific challenges, GCSE pathways, standards and all the usual if not ritual concerns of the UK education system and focus only on ‘inclusivity’. Because right now we are a long, long way from that. As Adolescence so powerfully shows, ‘responding to social and technological change’ is the massive issue confronting schools and parents today – our schools are not just crumbling physically, they are crumbling socially. There is no longer a gap between male and female students there is a yawning chasm – a gender divergence that is undermining schools as ‘learning communities’, and which if left unchallenged, will come to negatively inform the structure and culture of future British society. There are equally large chasms between the teachers and the students and between parents and their children.
And at the heart of these three chasms is ignorance and fear. (spoiler warning)
Ignorance:
There is a scene in Episode 2 of Adolescence when a senior school leader asks “what is an incel?”. A subsequent scene shows the incredulity and bafflement of the Detective Inspector, when his son, a student at the school, attempts to explain to him the ‘manosphere’, the meaning of the ‘red pill’ emoji, and the ’80-20 concept’.
Can it be true that professionals such as these still have little or no idea of the world of young men, and young women? Or is this an unfair portrayal? Today there should be no teacher or school leader who cannot answer the questions: What is an incel? What is gender identity (masculinities and femininities)? and what is the ‘manosphere’?
What will most definitely be an accurate portrayal is the shock, horror and confusion of the parents, when they realise their son, Jamie, is a killer and that he has some very toxic attitudes towards females, attitudes which they unwittingly enabled by buying him a computer and allowing him to spend much of the night alone in his bedroom, eyes glued to the screen. At some point in Jamie’s adolescence, he stopped listening to his parents and instead started listening to Andrew Tate and similar toxic influencers. His parents had no idea.
Fear
Everyone in this series is, understandably enough, fearful of something or someone, but I’ll keep this brief and focus only on Jamie, his psychologist, and the teachers.
First, the teachers: Having taught in a North of England so-called ‘sink school’ situated on a deprived and impoverished council estate, and in inner-city FE colleges, I recognise the fear of the teacher when confronted with a class of near out-of-control children. For me, that was nearly 40 years ago – the world is a whole lot more tense today. The teachers, at least in the school portrayed in Adolescence, are barely in control. And the main reason is that they have little or no understanding of the student sub-culture which exists in the school and which is a whole lot more compelling and threatening than whatever disciplinary systems the teachers can deploy. The students are fearful, not of the teachers but of each other.
Jamie, superbly portrayed by Owen Cooper, is a classic example of youthful masculinity in progress. He is uncertain as to his masculine essence; overwhelmed by his heterosexual urges; fearful of rejection by both his mates and the female students; and desperately anxious about is worthiness as a male. Having absorbed the manosphere message, he believes himself to be ugly and facing a future as an incel. He is also short-tempered, emotionally immature, and lacking empathy. Despite his father’s desperate but failed attempts to ‘make him more masculine’ by getting him to play football and take up boxing, Jamie persists in being a clever but socially inadequate outsider. Fear of not belonging leads him to violence and eventually to murder.
One person on the receiving end of Jamie’s violence, frustration and anger is the clinical psychologist assigned to his case, Briony Ariston, played by Erin Doherty. In episode 3, Briony begins her interview with Jamie feeling professionally superior and calmly confident. By the end of the interview she is a shaking, fearful mess. Jamie’s 13-year-old toxic masculine identity has beaten down her 30-something professional feminine identity. Not through physical violence but simply through emotional bullying and threatening behaviour. Watching that episode, I couldn’t help but wonder just how more toxic, and threatening, Jamie will be in ten-year’s time, while reflecting that the UK prison system is full of old and not-so-old Jamie’s and getting fuller by the day.
Which brings me back to Prof. Becky Francis; a close friend and sociological colleague from the late 1990s. Becky will be only too well-aware of incel culture, the manosphere, and the poisonous masculine discourses being spawned on social media. She is an expert in gender and education. Unfortunately, her C&A review will be limited by constraints imposed by the government, one of which is that ‘the review will be evolutionary not revolutionary’.
Sorry Becky, but you and I both know that what is needed in education today, not just in the UK but globally, is revolution not evolution. And these are my suggestions for moving that forward:
- Create mobile community learning centres to visit every town and city explaining to parents all about adolescent gender identity work, especially masculinities and femininities; explaining the workings of the manosphere and incel culture; and advising on restricting smartphone and computer use and the impact of social media on young people. Use libraries, schools and colleges as freely available social learning centres for parents.
- Ban social media use and smartphones for under 16s.
- Ban smartphone use by children in all schools.
- Treat the manosphere as big a threat to society as we did AIDS and COVID; Set up committees to actively fight it, limit its toxic impact, and provide every citizen with information on how to recognise it, avoid it, deal with its symptoms.
- Ensure the curriculum from kindergarten onwards, provides progressively developmental learning and guidance on gender identity work; being and becoming a female and a male; gender stereotyping; consent; sexualities; emotional intelligence; developing positive self-image, self-worth, self-management; healthy friendships/relationships; listening and communication.
- Ensure all teacher training programmes, both in universities and schools, include modules on gender identity work and social media use by children, including the rise of the manosphere and how to recognise its manifestation in schools.
- Create mobile learning centres for schools, colleges and universities: to visit each establishment and provide advanced professional guidance and development on gender identity work, the manosphere, the impact of social media use on children and young adults, and changing gender identities, all based on the latest research.
- Fund more research into the manosphere, contemporary gender identities, and the impact all this is having on schoolchildren and schools.
Becky and her committee are not responsible for what goes on in the UK judicial system, or the health and social care systems, but every arm of government, both local and national, must become alert to the threat now in our midst and co-operate with the educationalists to ensure that in the future we can watch programmes such as Adolescence comfortable in the knowledge that it is pure fiction.
Dr Stephen M. Whitehead is a prominent international sociologist and expert on men and masculinities, gender identity, and education. His forthcoming book, The End of Sex: The Gender Revolution and its Consequences, will be published later this year.
