Adolescence spoilers ahead.
How can a 13-year-old boy become a murderer motivated by misogyny? Do you really know what the men in your life are looking at online? Can we do anything to turn the tide on incel culture? Netflix’s new TV show, Adolescence asks these timely questions and encourages everyone to urgently address misogyny among boys — and indeed all men — before we lose the lives of any more women at the hands of gender based violence.
If you haven’t seen the limited series yet, Adolescence follows the story of 13-year-old Jamie (played by Owen Cooper) after he is accused of murdering a teenager from his class. At first, in the eyes of his parents, Jamie has to be innocent and they can’t imagine their son could be capable of such a violent act, until they face the evidence.
Netflix
Later in the series the parents question if they could have done more to curb his bubbling anger and keep him, and others, safe. As Jamie’s father (played by the show’s co-writer, Stephen Graham) says in one poignant scene whilst talking about how they seemingly lost their son after buying him a computer, “maybe I took my eye off the ball a little bit, but he was in his room, weren’t he? We thought he was safe, didn’t we? What harm can he do in there? We thought we were doing the right thing.” The suggestion in Adolescence is, without his parent’s knowledge, Jamie committed murder after viewing misogonystic content from the incel groups and manfluencers online, like Andrew Tate, that make up a toxic manosphere, which then affected the way he perceived and treated women and girls in the real world.
Adolescence is not a true story, but what is real is that it takes just 23 to 26 minutes for a boy to be recommended misogynistic content on TikTok or Youtube — even when they aren’t actively looking for it. So, within this fictional family lies the problem we as a society need to urgently address: under our noses in our homes, offices and schools boys, and men across generations, are being indoctrinated by misogynistic narratives online which are having damaging and tragic effects on women offline. Jamie is an ordinary teen from an ordinary family — AKA the least likely suspect — but Adolescence suggests in this climate anyone can become a radicalised misogynist capable of murder.
In another episode, we see Jamie in conversation with Briony (Erin Doherty), the child psychologist tasked with creating a profile on Jamie ahead of his murder trial. Throughout the conversation Jamie flips between being a child and an aggressive force, doing everything within his power to intimidate her, including erupting into aggressive rages. “Are you alright? You look a bit red?,” he asks her. “Did I scare you when I shouted? I am only 13, I don’t think I look that scary. How embarrassing is that, getting scared of a 13 year old?”
The stark reality is that we should be scared of 13 year olds, or anyone for that matter, who has been indoctrinated by the toxic manosphere. In the show Jamie talks about real manosphere theories such as that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men, how he feels, “ugly” within this context and he is questioned about emojis left by his victim, Katy on his Instagram page, suggesting he is part of a truth group, which in the words of Jamie are, “the ones that say that women don’t want us and don’t care.” He says he is not part of them – the overall narrative arch suggests otherwise – but he admits “everyone keeps going on about them.”
This fictional narrative is very much reflective of our dark reality: we have an increasing number of disgruntled men. A recent King’s College London survey of more than 24,000 men across 30 countries revealed 57% of Gen Z boys and men thought as a society we had, “gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men.” This means a majority of young men believe what misogynistic influencers are telling them online, that with attempts to move towards gender equality, their social privileges are under threat and exhibiting misogynistic behaviours is the way to resist this change.