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The Netflix series Adolescence has become the new talking point for the progressive liberal Left, aghast at the message of this drama: the danger that a 13-year-old, white middle-class boy from a caring family can be so influenced by internet misogyny and “hate” that he stabs a girl to death.

The Spectator pointed out: “Violent boys do not usually resemble Jamie. They tend to come from broken homes, have pre-existing mental health problems, be absent from education and are known to the authorities.”

Any youth violence is, of course, deplorable, but in the original story, co-creator Stephen Graham was inspired by the real murder of a non-white girl by a late-teens, non-white male with a record of violence against girls. In Adolescence, both victim and perpetrator are in their early teens and white.

Fictionalised

However, in the progressive-minded entertainment industry, any new proposal is likely to receive a “wokeover” before being accepted; and with real-world cases of Islamist internet radicalisation leading to violence, Adolescence could be seen as an example of imaginative “whataboutery”, its message being that there are other sorts of terrorism. This approach holds no risk of violent retaliation from “largely peaceful” Islamists – or prosecution either, given that discussing Islamism may soon be criminalised as a kind of racism.

This sounds like yet another instance of “woke” double standards. With television under pressure from the rather less woke internet, it would help to boost TV if its rival were restricted in order to prevent “horrible words leading to even more horrible actions” (in non-Islamist contexts, that is).  

Inciting violence is already illegal, but the UK’s newly minted Online Safety Act, justified by the need to prevent violent crime, targets “legal-but-harmful” material and anything perceived as “right-wing”. Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer believes the latter leads to “far right” violence, and Adolescence – seen as compulsory viewing for politicians – could justify restrictions on internet content they would term “disinformation”, but may well include anything they dislike.

So seriously has this work of fiction been taken that Sir Keir (a lawyer) has described it as a “documentary“.

More worryingly, despite its violence and sexually explicit language, he favours showing it in schools.

The Spectator commented: “Adolescence’s lesson, coming soon to a classroom near you, is that every sensitive young man can transform into a murderer through overexposure to what it clumsily calls the ‘manosphere’.”

Progressive politicians, obsessed with Adolescence, fail to show equal concern about a real “crisis of masculinity”: male suicides, which far outstrip those of females.

So concerned are they about alleged “white privilege”, they also overlook the fact that white working-class boys lag behind all other groups educationally.

And while men are responsible for most violent crime, and most domestic violence victims are women, most victims of “stranger” violence are male.

Also sidelined are men’s health problems and the fact that millions are missing from the workforce.

Despite this, the “entertainment” industry continues to battle “toxic masculinity“. In TV adverts, men do the domestic chores while also looking after the children – mostly little girls – while mothers are busy doing something somewhere else. According to media watchdogs, showing women doing housework is “misogynistic“, but they have simply replaced one negative male stereotype (the “violent male”) with the equally unrealistic “househusband”.

Destructive Messages

Dramas like Adolescence teach little boys that the internet may “make them toxic”, but this prophecy seems self-fulfilling, as more young men turn from TV’s woke nagging to the “manosphere” where internet “influencers” like Andrew Tate vent against alleged female power while humiliating and exploiting women.

There is indeed a problem, but as they used to say, “Give a dog a bad name, and he’ll answer to it.” Trusted adults giving little boys feminist lectures about violence and misogyny will likely encourage violence and misogyny – however, the “entertainment” industry, that most zealous promoter of “diversity”, is run not by angry feminists but largely by privileged white males. Their seemingly endless condemnations of white male privilege recall what G. K. Chesterton termed “a public apology” – “very stiff and not very convincing”.

Despite clothing itself with the mantle of feminism by featuring more female presenters, experts and actors, TV is still male-dominated, mainly due to the lack of older females – something the “diversity“-obsessed media ignores.

They fail to see that adding “feminism” to a steady diet of sex, violence, and profanity simply tells the very worst sort of males – cowardly bullies – that “strong women” are too weak to withstand their sexual advances. And that, while unable to protect themselves from toxic males, women can address any unwanted consequences thanks to their “right to choose” – “right” celebrated by really toxic males everywhere. TV teaches that “women control everything”, and cowardly bullies conclude that they must be controlled – ironically, the sort of Andrew Tate misogyny at which Adolescence takes aim.

Concern about disaffected young males is nothing new, but the answer is no longer military discipline, or single-sex clubs channelling their energy and superior strength into competitive sport and positive pastimes. Now, all-male settings are regarded as sexist, and boys have little chance of projecting themselves into an apparently female-dominated world. No wonder their reaction is, “What special talents can I offer the world – what am I good for?”

Society’s response seems to be “Nothing – women can do everything” – ignoring the fact that maternity leave and/or part-time working leads to “shortages” of workers in female-dominated professions.

As to manual labour, teams of female construction workers, hole diggers and rubbish collectors are conspicuous by their absence.

Heretical Religion

But “wokeness” is less reheated 1970s feminism and more Chesterton’s definition of modern heresy: one facet of religious truth – “Love thy neighbour” – elevated into a secular religion. Its latest expression – the acceptance of self-defined “identity” – leads to inevitable clashes of interest, most controversially in “transwomen” being allowed to share female-only spaces.

With politics replacing religion, right and wrong are replaced by Left and Right – and Left is always right. “Wokeness” has been seen as the new religion of the left-liberal progressive, and when a TV series is treated as holy writ, it does suggest a secular religion.

With males seen as intrinsically bad, the only way for them to escape damnation is to make a full “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” confession. Under “DEI”, it is not a person’s actions that matter, but their origins and their biology, which they cannot help. Their sexual “identity” is treated as equally immutable – at least it is, once they have abandoned heterosexuality to choose from an ever-lengthening list of sexual fads and fancies.

Becoming a man is hard enough for young boys; the suggestion that in order to escape being a “toxic male”, they must adopt stereotypical female behaviour does not help. Even less helpful is the idea that they can actually “become a woman”. The “trans” idea received a setback by the recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, which prioritised biology over “choice”; the ruling may protect young children from this harmful ideology, but the “trans” lobby is not giving up without a fight.

Despite a growing backlash,  “woke religion” still rules, and male suicides will no doubt continue to be ignored, along with the need for marriage and stable families. Boys need good fathers to provide them with good role models, but insisting that a good man provides for his own family is now seen as sexist. Marriage is equated with the oppression of women – even while same-sex marriage is lauded, and the married state is rapidly becoming a privilege mainly for the privileged.

But if wokeness is indeed one aspect of Christian teaching torn from the pages of the Bible, why not return to the foundational faith of Western civilisation to address our present problems?

Restoration or Regression?

God the Father can provide fatherless boys with the love of a perfect father; Jesus would make not just a good role model for boys, but a perfect role model for all, teaching the true meaning of love: sacrifice. The strong have always been able to force their attentions on the weak, but this merely highlights the fact that they cannot force anyone to love them. True love is freely given; God does not force us to love Him or even believe in Him.

Only Jesus can save us from our sins – and from ourselves. But the good news is that growing numbers of young men especially are taking an active interest in Christianity and the Bible, perhaps seeking what Viktor Frankl — Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor — termed “meaning and purpose”.

“Family, faith and flag” provides meaning and purpose, and would give little boys something good to fight for,  but progressives would see it as backward-looking. They see fairy stories as harmful to children; instead, they would tell them scary stories, while believing the biggest fairy tale of all – that little boys who are shown violent and sexually explicit material in the classroom will grow up to be good feminists. The more well-meaning progressives would no doubt warn little boys about male suicide, with equally tragic results.

This same class, while priding themselves as progressive, is helping to regress our culture to more savage times. While regarding themselves as the grown-ups in the room, increasingly, they exhibit all the symptoms of a troubled adolescent’s delayed development. Sadly, their zeal for defeating “toxic masculinity” is matched by a toxic indifference to the real problems of both males and females.

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Image courtesy of Adobe.