An examination bed awaits Jamie Miller at the police station. “Jamie, do you want to just hop on the bed for me? I’m just gonna take some blood if that’s okay,” nurse Erica says. “Um, I don’t really like needles,” the boy stammers.
Jamie is only 13 years old, still a child. The father tries to protect his son: “He’s not good with needles, love.” Jamie’s father is not yet aware that his child might be afraid of needles, but not of knives. Less than 24 hours earlier, Jamie killed his classmate Katie Leonard in a parking lot with seven knife stabs.
The scene is from the first episode of “Adolescence,” the record-breaking British Netflix miniseries that hit 66 million views in the first 10 days after its release. It was even discussed in the British parliament.
Any boy could be Jamie
The four episodes were each filmed in one take, without any cuts, giving viewers the feeling they are right there when Jamie wets himself in his pajamas upon his arrest, when he cries tears of fear in police custody or when he throws a tantrum during a psychological examination.
Jamie is guilty, and this is not a spoiler. It’s clear from the first episode, when the investigators show Jamie and his father CCTV-footage of the boy stabbing Katie from behind. The miniseries doesn’t ask if he did it, but rather why.
Clues can be found in the teenager’s inner battles: the constant social pressure to be , the insecurity of not being attractive enough and the desire for female validation lead him to radicalize.
Any boy could be Jamie today. After school, he didn’t go to dodgy places in dubious company; he went to the safety of his room, closed the door and sat at his computer until late at night. What could he have found there?
Self-hatred and misogyny
The series refers to an online subculture that Jamie might have encountered: Incels, short for “involuntary celibate,” are heterosexual men who blame women for not being able to find a sexual or romantic partner. They often express their frustration with misogynist, degrading and inhumane comments towards women.
The incel community is part of the “manosphere” — a loose of anti-feminist online forums, books, content creators and blogs for male self-optimization. They aim to teach boys and men how to be strong, successful and physically fit in order to be desired by women.
But they also promote misogyny and violent fantasies, as well as advice on how to manipulate women. The most prominent representative of this subculture is the self-proclaimed misogynist , who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania.
“Adolescence” suggests that not only Jamie is familiar with this subculture; it’s part of general culture shared by today’s youth. The kids in the series all know the meaning of certain emojis, such as the “red pill,” which borrows from the science-fiction film “The Matrix” (1999) and refers to misogynist men’s groups awakening to the “truth” behind gender dynamics.
Scaremongering or real danger?
“A lot of what I see on incels in the mainstream discourse is moral panic,” says Shane Satterley, who researches male violence at Griffith University.
According to Satterley, the subculture is not primarily misogynistic, but self-hating and suicidal. , he says, is only a “superficial” interpretation of this phenomenon.
Under its surface are isolation, a lack of male role models, fatherlessness and sexlessness, explains Satterley. In addition to that, society has gradually taken away “male spaces” from men, which is why they are now claiming male-exclusive spaces on the internet.
These sexually frustrated young men are not dangerous for others, but primarily for themselves, according to Satterley. A study by the British government found that incels indeed typically suffer from depression and , and they therefore require help instead of stigmatization. Significantly, suicide rates among men have been on the rise over the past decades. In the US alone, there has been a 37% increase since 2000.
Satterley believes that for young men who are struggling with their identity, the manosphere is helpful rather than harmful. “The manosphere is not dangerous, the opposite,” he says.
But Lisa Sugiura, professor for cybercrime and gender at Portsmouth University, disagrees. “One in three women will experience sexual violence at least once in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. This doesn’t just happen in isolation,” she says.
Men playing victim
In one incel forum, men discuss why they find rape “ethical.” “Rape is just incels’ right to sex that we are denied,” one post reads. You don’t have to scroll far to find this kind of content, neither log in with an account. It’s on the forum’s landing page, publicly available.
“It’s not like you have to go to the dark net to find this content. You can find it everywhere, not just on incel forums, but also on TikTok and Instagram,” says Sugiura.
The idea that men have a right to sex which women deny them is a widespread view in the manosphere. The question is whether the men holding this view should be pitied because they are sexually frustrated and long for female validation.
Is misogyny okay, if it’s “only” a superficial symptom of masculinity in crisis? According to a study by King’s College London, one in four men between 16 and 29 believe it is more difficult to be a man than a woman today.
“The manosphere is all about the victim rhetoric, that it’s men who are abused in our societies at the hands of women, and that they need to fight back for their survival,” Sugiura explains.
But playing victim is problematic when it is used to justify hatred against women.
Misogyny is an institutional problem
The incel community and the manosphere are just one piece of a larger misogynistic puzzle, Sugiura says. The real problems lie deeper. On top of the disillusionment of young men and their , there is also a deep mistrust between the sexes.
A recent survey by British think tank the Centre for Social Justice found that almost two thirds of women between 16 and 24 are afraid of men.
Simply banning for young people, as suggested by “Adolescence” screenwriter Jack Thorne (and already enacted in Australia), would not be a sustainable solution, Sugiura believes. Rather, an integral institutional and cultural change is necessary.
“Jamie is only 13 years old. Before we look into incels, we need to discuss society’s pressures about heteronormative sex and gendered expectations of popularity and success. If we didn’t have those kinds of expectations that are pushed on our children from such a young age, then these groups in the manosphere wouldn’t be able to capitalize on them,” says Sugiura.
According to its makers, “Adolescence” is a wake-up call. Speaking to the BBC, Thorne said: “It’s something that people need to be talking about, hopefully that’s what the drama can do.”
This article was originally written in German.
The post Netflix series ‘Adolescence’ portrays teenage masculinity in crisis appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
