I haven’t watched Adolescence — the instantly ubiquitous new series about young men and misogynistic rage — and I have no opinion on its merits. None of what follows should be taken as criticism of the series.
I understand right-wing complaints about the young misogynistic killer being a white northern boy. Recent misogynistic murders by schoolkids were perpetrated by young black men like Axel Rudakubana and Hassan Sentamu. The casting of Adolescence could fit in with a trend of filmmakers who believe that casting ethnic minority actors as antagonists perpetuates racism. The creators of Coronation Street, for example, cast white men in a grooming gang storyline so as to avoid “racial stereotypes”. Readers might remember when, in 2006, the TV series Spooks eccentrically featured a group of evangelical Christian terrorists.
Still, it is not as if there are no white misogynistic killers. The grotesque Kyle Clifford was just jailed for murdering three women. In 2001, Jake Davison killed five people in an act of anti-woman rage. The plot of Adolescence, then, hardly strains credulity.
Yet it is annoying how the series is being framed. The creators of Adolescence want it to be shown in Parliament and schools. A Labour MP has echoed calls for it to be shown in schools, with her comments being endorsed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In a revealing slip of the tongue, the PM described Adolescence as a “documentary” before correcting himself.
It would take blatant philistinism to deny that fiction can shine a light on social issues. Charles Dickens and Émile Zola would be spinning in their graves like Catherine wheels if one suggested that the imagination cannot reflect reality. Still, we should not confuse fiction with the facts. Adolescence might well be an insightful look at extremes of young male behaviour but it says nothing about the prevalence of misogynistic indoctrination online. It might teach us something about the subject but as information it has fundamental limits.
This matters because it is being used to promote policies. Jake Thorne, the writer of Adolescence, has called for teenagers to be banned from social media to “stop [the] pollution” of misogyny online. The government, meanwhile, is using the series as a means of justifying its deeply censorious Online Safety Act.
Before we exclude teenagers from most of the internet, perhaps we need a little perspective
Look, I very much agree that misogynistic influencers are a menace online. I have written at length about how they fuel narcissism, resentment and hypocrisy as a means of getting rich off young and old men’s alienation. They encourage men to be at their most embittered and self-entitled worst and their influence should be resisted.
Still, before we exclude teenagers from most of the internet, perhaps we need a little perspective. Most British boys have either never heard of Andrew Tate, the most notorious of the influencers, or dislike him. A lot of the young men who have expressed a positive opinion of the likes of Tate, meanwhile, are acting out — expressing the same sort of inchoate rebelliousness that made young men like gangster rap and shock rock. This is not to excuse them — teenage boys can be very unpleasant — but it should affect our analysis. I suspect that a young Andrew Tate fan is no more likely to be violent to women than a young UK drill fan is to stab somebody.
British schools have become more violent. Teachers have been beating the drum about this for years. In 2022-23, for example, suspensions of students for physically assaulting an adult rose by 33 per cent compared to the previous year. How much did this have to do with misogynists online? Nothing, as far as I can tell. Of course, many things can be a problem at once — but politicians and schools should be careful not to focus on the young man buried in his phone at the expense of the young man who is about to throw a chair at his head.
When it comes to tackling the problem of online influencers, meanwhile, adults need the right approach. Handwringing moralism didn’t help Tipper Gore to stop Americans from listening to Judas Priest and I doubt it will help teachers to stop young British men from listening to androcentric YouTubers. Parents and teachers are rarely cool at the best of times, and certainly not when they are hectoring stubborn adolescents about how dangerous and transgressive their choice of entertainment seems to be.
As I have said before in these pages, I suspect a better move is to harness young people’s aversion to being told what to do and ask them why they are subordinating their individuality to a bunch of weird angry men online. Listening to the likes of Andrew Tate — porn mogul turned moralist and Muslim convert who LARPs as a defender of the West — is more pathetic than it is dangerous. Handwringing gives such voices and their listeners too much credit. They should feel embarrassed before anything else. You think that girls are icky because an oddball on the internet said that you should? Come on, man. You’re better than that.
