Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
In that case, men need to work less so we don’t have to use pre/elementary/middle/high schools to replace the parental figure.
Also maybe abolish the nuclear family and go back the premodern gens (i.e. extended family community) so that boys have lots of men in their family to look up to. Even if they don’t have a dad they might have an uncle, grandpa, or one of their 20 older cousins to look up to.
It’s as if you are saying people should be brought up by their families and not mass media, ads and random influencers
I’m really worried about the iPad toddlers and who they’re going to grow up to be.
This is one of the reasons I’m terrified to have kids. How the hell do you deal with other parents’ failures? Your kid either gets to be a mindless consoomer due to peer pressure, or a social pariah because he doesn’t live his life on a screen.
Hell, I have problems with maintaining ties IRL. How is a kid supposed to deal with that?