Sidelining Women's Rage in 'Adolescence'

Men are having their moment. Again. This time, it's the exploration of their misogyny in the Netflix drama, 'Adolescence.' This series has generated a huge amount of hype, so I had high expectations. There is so much that could be explored: the factors behind why young men are lured into such hateful thinking, where their sense of entitlement comes from, the myriad of ways daily sexism hurts girls, to name just a few. But I don't think 'Adolescence' got anywhere near such insights. Yes, it has gotten people talking, but without any real understanding or solutions, I think it falls into reactionary, status-quo politics, which is pretty standard fare these days.  

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Recent EVAW polling showed that half of women think the UK has become more dangerous for women and girls in the last 5 years. Half of people polled by YouGov think the internet has become more dangerous for women and girls in the past 12 months. Amnesty research showed that 73% of Gen Z social media users have witnessed misogynistic content online with half encountering it on a weekly basis and that 71% of Gen Z women believe misogyny on social media mirrors real-world sexism. This kind of online brainwashing forms the primary motivation for the 13-year-old murderer of his female schoolmate who had humiliated him by rejecting his offer of a date. 

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If, as the series and young peoples' experiences suggest, the online world is the main driver for his hatred of women, it wasn't much explored in the series itself. Like the boy's parents in the series, I was still left pretty mystified by the whole 'manosphere' of bad faith, toxic influencers and an aberrant algorithm. The parents of the killer are left scratching their heads, wracked between blaming themselves and absolution because they were not privy to, nor apparently interested in, what their son was doing online for so many hours in his bedroom. I would have thought that this kind of mystification would be tackled head-on, trying to bridge the gap between the generations - a gap that urgently needs to close - to break the fear of digital dumbness that holds so many parents back from actually engaging with the online world their children are so invested in. 

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His parents were 'normal' in the sense of having fairly traditional gender roles, but nothing that points to raising a homicidal teenager. The fact that online incel culture had such a profound effect on a boy with no existing mental health or family problems is a bit of a stretch. The point, I guess, the writers wanted to make was that any boy can be susceptible to this kind of thinking. But in doing so, it simply projects maximum fear onto viewers. This fear of online misogynists taking over our kids' formerly sane and healthy brains is compelling and leaves us stuck in the headlights of forces bigger than ourselves and beyond our control. The dad tells himself he could have done more; he took his eyes off the ball. But most parents are not willingly neglecting their children; they have stressful, full-time jobs to make ends meet, leaving them little time to engage productively and joyfully. Individualising this common experience only serves the interests of those who want to deflect attention from the rising impossibility of our living conditions. 

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This feeling of being stuck in a world of forces beyond our control is a reactionary political position, offering no way out - other than sticking together with your family. The neighbours and people where the family in the programme live offer no solace or friendship or sense of community. They are only nosy busybodies or threats to their safety. In this embattled and isolated position, we look for someone to save us. Enter the police. They swoop in, the model of professionalism, making sure the teenager, after he is arrested, is advised of his legal rights, called 'mate' and 'son', told he is doing well, he's almost there, are cornflakes alright for breakfast, does he mind sitting there? This blindingly polite version of the police, who have CCTV evidence that he savagely murdered a teenage girl, is baffling. Where is the anger and contempt for this boy and his actions? Needless to say, a black boy being treated in the same way would be laughable. Are we seriously supposed to believe that the police are the good guys? This is why police procedurals are so insidious; we love them; they're great TV, but they work as propaganda, trying to focus attention on their role as our saviours, even though, after all the scandals that are now common knowledge, we know otherwise. 

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And there is no anger and contempt for his actions from his own family either. The reactions range from support to disbelief to denial to some, but not a lot of, parental accountability. Obviously, parents love their kids, but to not show any of the complex feelings that would undoubtedly arise when you've seen footage of them stabbing a girl on the floor multiple times seems pretty simplistic. But this is the world of 'Adolescence.' Interestingly, the only visible rage is from the black best friend of the murdered girl. Nobody can deal with her totally legitimate and proportional response to the murderous entitlement of the boy. They're all too sad and disbelieving at his downfall, a great student with a bright future ahead of him. But the anger that women and girls feel at a system that is actively trying to destroy them hardly gets a look in. 

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Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash