Loving Kids Loud Part Two - The Manosphere

If, like me, you were one of the millions of people who watched Adolescence on Netflix a few months ago, no doubt your head spun for a few days or weeks afterwards, maybe it‘s still spinning.  Not just with the sheer genius of the production but with the acting skills of the entire cast, in particular 13 year old Owen Cooper.  If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to take some time out and watch it, particularly if you are a parent.  Warning, spoiler alert below…

Stephen Graham who created Adolescence was shaken by the increase in male adolescent violence where a number of girls had been murdered in completely unrelated incidents.  In the series Jamie, seemingly out of the blue, murders a girl, Katie, from his own year at high school.  Unbeknownst to his parents, an average family, on an average street, in an average town in the UK, their young son had gone down an internet rabbit hole and found himself fully ensconced in “the manosphere”.  Jamie is by no means an “alpha” male and likes Katie.  He sees her being treated badly by the “alpha” boys and tries to be empathic and supportive of her.  She however throws his offer of support back in his face.  This is basically the incident that prompts Jamie to murder Katie.  Of course it’s far more complex than that.

There is a plethora of research which indicates that boys are struggling at school, with friendships, with drugs and alcohol, with intimate, family and social relationships and with their mental health. According to Suicide Prevention Australia; 50% of young people will be impacted by a suicide by the time they turn 25 and males are three times more likely to die by suicide than females.  The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) have been working on a longitudinal study into men’s health and wellbeing called Ten to Men.  This research has indicated that 1 in 3 men aged 18 - 65 self-reported that they have used violence in their intimate partner relationships and that half of young men aged 18 - 29 are regularly drinking at unsafe levels. The Australian National Resource Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) in their Adolescent Family Violence Report suggested that 20% of their adolescent participants had used violence within their families and of those 20% almost half had started to use violence below the age of 10.

This is not a problem of the health system or the education system or even individual parents.  This is a whole-of-society problem.  The AIFS and ANROWS research separately described the importance for boys of having warm and trusting relationships with their father or father-figure as an important protective factor.  The research is also clear that a  significant number of adolescents are growing up in families where their fathers (and occasionally mothers) are perpetrating violence. What we have is boys who desperately need warm and trusting relationships with their fathers but many are growing up in families where the exact opposite is true.

In the absence of positive, warm and trusting relationships with their fathers, there is a void, and voids need to be filled.  The voids in the lives of adolescent boys are being filled by the likes of Andrew Tate and the other male influencers within the “manosphere”.  These men are confident, loud and have a very clear message: “boys and men are being harmed by society as it currently stands and by women in particular”. The voices of these men are taking up the airwaves and our children are getting sucked down the rabbit hole of social media algorithms; the more they click, the more links hit their feeds and round and round it goes.  Deeper and deeper into ”the manosphere”, and none of us would know until something catastrophic happens; like Jamie murdering Katie in Adolescence.

I’m going to let you into a secret… I hate the term “The Manosphere”.  I also hate the term “Toxic Masculinity”.  What do they even mean?  And who made up the terms anyway?  I’ve done the research so you don’t have to.  Manosphere arrived on the scene around 2009 and describes a loose collection of internet forums, Reddit groups and blogs.  According to Wikipedia, “A central tenet of the manosphere is the concept of the red pill, a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix. It concerns awakening men to the supposed reality that society is dominated by feminism and biased against men”.  The term was popularised by Ian Ironwood, who Wikipedia describes as a ”pornography marketer”.  Say no more. I promise you I did look at more than Wikipedia and I did in fact read some of Ian Ironwood’s book.

Toxic Masculinity came into the vernacular in the 1980s and 90s.  It is generally used as a description for beliefs and behaviours related to male dominance, violence and homophobia.  It grew exponentially following Donald Trump’s first presidency and the increasing influence from men such as Andrew Tate.

I don’t like either term for a couple of reasons; firstly I think they’re too simplistic and secondly, when we use terms like these, they do what I like to call “othering”.  It’s some other person’s problem and the responsibility lies with some other person or some other group.  If the problem and responsibility lies with an “other” that means it’s not my problem and it’s not my responsibility to fix it.

This is why we have to look at the situation with a self-critical eye rather than “othering” it.  Having said that, I need to make it absolutely clear, violence is a choice and the only person responsible for violence is the perpetrator.

Members of the manosphere would say that boys are going backwards because girls are going forwards.  Girls have taken the places that rightfully belong to the boys.  Girls are given too many allowances.  Teachers favour girls etc.  What if it wasn’t to do with any of those things though?  

What if it was to do with boys not being given permission to do the things that girls are allowed to do or to be the boys they’re not allowed to be.  I’m talking about the rhetoric that “boys will be boys”, that boys need to “man up”.  That men and boys should be the “strong” ones.  I’ve never heard anyone say “girls will be girls” or that girls need to ”woman up” and I’ve certainly never heard anyone say that girls and women have a duty to be the “strong ones”.  In fact what we hear constantly is that women are the “weaker” sex.  That girls and women need to be protected.  In a war zone it’s always about protecting the “women and children”.  If I was a bloke and I spent my life hearing this, I might be tempted to start talking about how unfair it is.  Apparently in a war zone, it’s all about women and children, men’s lives are expendable.  Apparently men are not allowed to be “weak”.  

It seems that these gender stereotypes and tropes hurt everyone.  Women and girls are frustrated and angry about having to conform to some sort of expectation of being the “perfect” woman, but the thing is, men and boys are expected to conform to the idea of being the “perfect” man.  It is only very recently that we have started to observe non-stereotypical characters in the media, movies, advertising etc.  Gay couples have only very recently been portrayed in television programs and the movies.  People from a variety of different cultural heritages are only just starting to be seen, occasionally we will see a dad being depicted as the stay at home parent and people with disabilities are still hidden.  We have all been sold the lie that real men watch the footy, drink beer and take care of the BBQ.  So what if you’re a boy who doesn’t fit into that stereotype?  Where do you go?  

We all, but adolescents in particular, need a “tribe” to which we belong and if teenagers don’t belong to the tribe portrayed in the mainstream media etc then they will go and find their tribe somewhere else.  One of my favourite Brene Brown quotes is this: “Connection is why we’re here; it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.”  The manosphere exists because boys and men need connection and we, as a society, have failed them.  Every time we told our boys to “man up”.  Every time we told our boys “only girls cry”.  Every time we told our boys they “run like a girl”.  Every time we told our boys they can’t learn a musical instrument because they have to do sport.  Every time we told our boys “only girls have long hair”.  Every time we told our boys they’re not allowed to play with dolls.  Every time we told our boys they have to “protect their sisters or their mum”, “boys can’t be friends with girls”, “if someone tries to bully you, punch them”.  Every. Single. Time.

The very first thing we need to support boys with is how to manage their emotions.  We need to support girls with this too.  I’ve never heard a parent say “my daughter needs to toughen up and not show emotions” but I’ve heard plenty of parents say it about their sons.  John Gottman is one of the world’s most renowned and respected psychologists who has researched couple and family relationships for over 40 years.  He is able to predict the success or failure of a marriage he has assessed with 94% accuracy.  In the 1990s he developed the concept of Emotion Coaching.  You can read more about it in his book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child.  I think it’s the most important skill anyone can learn.  Whilst the context in the book and in this blog is about children and adolescents.  Emotion Coaching is important for every human, irrespective of their age. 

A huge amount of research tells us that children and adults who have been supported to manage their emotions, are more resilient than their non-emotion coached peers. These improvements are seen across all general assessment areas; wellbeing, academic results, relationships, mental health and are effective across all cultures.  Rather than raising children who are “weak”, parents who talk to their children about emotions and help their children manage them, are raising kids who can bounce back from adversity.  I can talk about the details in another blog post and I will expand on the concepts in next week’s post about respectful relationships but for now, I’ll give you a crash course in Emotion Coaching.

There are 5 key elements to Emotion Coaching and it is essential that they are addressed in the right order.  To help people remember the 5 points in their correct order, I developed a mnemonic; RIVER.

R - recognise.  Recognise your child is having an emotion and recognise how you feel in response to your child’s emotion.  This sounds easy enough but the majority of older adults were not raised in families where emotions were supported and so we’re often not adept at recognising them in others and in noticing them within ourselves.  On top of that, we’re busy, we’re stressed and we’re distracted which means we’re not really focussed on what’s going on for our children.

I - Intimacy.  I don’t mean intimacy in a sexual way at all.  I mean intimacy in terms of you and I are connected in this.  I see you, I’m with you and I’m not going anywhere until you’re ok.  Intimacy means I’m listening to you with my whole body, my mind and my heart. This intimacy is what builds connection and trust and it is a huge factor in children being able to trust other people throughout their lives.

V - verbalise.  This is the bit that can get parents confused.  We generally understand that asking people how they feel is a signal that I am empathic and listening to you.  However, let’s really think about that.  If I have any kind of relationship with you and I have to ask you how you feel, the subjective message is that actually you don’t know me.  What we need to do instead is reflect back to the child what we are seeing.  We verbalise the emotion we see.  So we would say something like I can see how sad you are right now.  I hear that you’re really confused etc.  What this does is two things; on a practical level it gives language to the child’s internal state but on an internal level the message is this person really gets me.  They understand me.  Dan Siegel, who I mentioned in last week’s blog, describes a concept that we all need to “feel felt”.  This is what happens with Emotion Coaching.  I have been asked numerous times whether naming the emotion is actually going to make the other person feel that emotion.  That we’re going to somehow suggest to them they should be feeling that emotion.  The simple answer is no. Our child is already feeling the emotion and if we are attuned enough to pick an emotion that’s in the ball park of what they’re feeling, what it does is say, we can talk about this together.

E - empathy.  All of this must be done with empathy and we show empathy by our body language, our facial expression, our actions, our words and our tone.  We would say in a low quiet, sensitive voice “I see how sad you are” as we sit next to them or look at them. That’s empathy.  If we used the same tone, look and voice if our child was angry, for example, that would not be empathy, it would be patronising.  If someone is feeling angry, what we would need to do is elevate our tone and our voice and say something like “wow, I can see how angry you are.  You look totally furious”.

R - resolution.  One of the things that sets Emotion Coaching apart from a simple empathic relationship is that when the other person is ready, we move to problem solving.  To asking how do you resolve this now and what do you need to do in the future if something like this happens again.  This is where equipping our children for their futures comes in.  We are scaffolding their learning so that in the future they have the skills to do this by themselves.

If we go back to the series Adolescence, what we see is that there was an enormous amount going on in Jamie’s world that his parents were simply not aware of.  It’s not that Jamie’s parents weren’t kind and loving parents.  They were portrayed as pretty average parents who love their children, who are committed to them.  They were kind and respectful.  What they hadn’t done though is model connection on a deep level.  So many children grow up thinking they can’t trust their parents with their inner-most world because they are afraid of disapproval or of being dismissed or of being punished or simply not being understood.

We have to do things differently.  We have to step into our discomfort so our children don’t look to fill the void that they are feeling elsewhere.   I’m going to pick up this more next week and unpack respectful relationships between everyone, not just boys and girls, men and women.

Take Care

Angharad