No Kier. I will not be showing my classes Adolescence. Here's why.

Back in 1998 I had my teaching career at a school in south London.

Two lads about 14-year-old, had and argument. One picked up a Stanly knife and started to stalk the other. I followed this lad through one classroom after another, and just as he had caught up after his potential victim. The weird part of the memory was that he cried out when I knocked his hand on the ground to get him to drop the knife- I wondered at the time if had any empathy for the boy who he seemed intent on harming. "A few weeks before, I had met his mum to discuss my concerns about his willingness to threaten or resort to violence, to which her only response was, 'Yes, he is.'". A few years later, I was reading the local paper, only to find that as a young man, he had been jailed for his participation in a particularly gruesome murder.

By 2015 I had completed 20 years of working in London schools, my last stint being at a school not far from where I lived in Wood Green. During this time, a young black man, who had attended the school but had a troubled time, was stabbed to death in a house at the other end of my road. After chatting to locals, it emerged that it may have been over a weed debt of just 20 pounds, although it was reported as “burglary gone wrong”. An experienced teachers at the school quietly related that as a boy he had been at trouble in school, with several suspensions to his name.

Two stories all the more miserable for being so familiar. In 2024 the number of knife incidents in London climbed to 15016 almost as high as before lockdown.

In London, young black men are disproportionately represented.

Making up 13% of London’s total population, black Londoners account for 45% of London’s knife murder victims, 61% of knife murder perpetrators and 53% of knife crime perpetrators. Knife crime id often, though not always being linked to gangs. Fatherlessness is correlated with a higher likelihood of joining gangs and committing crime; in these cases, at least one of the boys, to my knowledge, grew up without a father in the home.

The Netflix drama, Adolescence Netflix takes real-life cases like these and according to the show's writer, Stephen Graham, the fatal stabbing of Elianne Andam by Hassan Sentamu a case involving a Black perpetrator and victim from a troubled background, including alleged abuse in Uganda.

The drama pivots away from the reality of knife crime in the UK, and recentres the story to Yorkshire and on the white, stable Miller family, with teenage suspect Jamie raised in a traditional, two-parent household. The drama follows Jamie, a bright 13-year-old boy from this stable, loving, upper-working-class family. His father has a clean record, yet Jamie, swayed by what the female detective dismisses as “that Andrew Tate shit” and the ideologies of the online manosphere, kills a girl who labels him an “incel.”

It is a scenario not as likely as the shows makers would like us to believe. "Teenage boys obsessed with screens remain more of a danger to themselves than to others. Over the past decade, there have been roughly 100 deaths or injuries linked to incel culture worldwide. In contrast, Islamist extremism has been responsible for around 204,900 killings in the same period—making it clear that these two issues are not remotely comparable, regardless of what those overseeing anti-terror initiatives like Prevent may believe. The UK government has found incel politics to be ‘slightly left of centre on average’ and that ethnic minorities are disproportionate represented.

As Rakib Eshan observes, adolescent boys who had seen or heard of Adrew Tate, only 26% had a favourable view of him, more than 60 percent had an unfavourable opinion of him. The ones who have a favourable opinion of him are disproportionately from ethnic minority backgrounds. He also observes that these are the boys who don’t have a father figure.

Whether in advertisements, novels, films, or TV dramas, the establishment Left increasingly relies on fiction to shape the narratives it favours. The acclaimed Netflix series Adolescence exemplifies this trend—by centering on a white family in Yorkshire, it lends a veneer of plausibility to what is, in reality, a progressive hallucination. The show reflects how elite cultural gatekeepers construct an alternate reality, one divorced from the lived experiences of ordinary people. Far from offering genuine diversity of thought, Adolescence is merely another product of a stifling cultural monoculture, designed to reinforce ideological conformity under the guise of storytelling.

In a revealing analysis of over 300 UK advertisements, the YouTuber Despot of Antrim exposes the growing chasm between cultural elites and the everyday realities of the British public. His breakdown highlights a pervasive trend: ad campaigns increasingly reflect the values of a progressive metropolitan bubble—values obsessed with performative diversity, hyper-awareness of identity politics, and a near-religious devotion to ‘disrupting’ traditional norms.

This is the same ideological ecosystem that birthed Netflix’s Adolescence. The show’s portrayal of family, gender, and social conflict isn’t just fiction; it’s elite projection, a comfort-blanket amongst other things, of how the cultural establishment has educated itself in to how society functions.

A black male and white woman is the relationship norm, women are depicted as the dominant sex, both professionally and in private life. The few white men in ad land are bumbling, lonely incompetent and unattractive.

Netflix itself has become something of a running joke, "The term ‘Netflix adaptation’ becoming a popular internet meme, mocking the platform’s tendency to routinely reimagine historical figures with actors of different ethnicities than those documented. Their portrayal of Cleopatra was so historically inaccurate that it sparked outrage from the Egyptian nation.

The series makes no effort to conceal its contempt for traditional white masculinity, juxtaposing it against a parade of one-dimensional, morally flawless non-white characters: the noble Black police detective, his brash yet ‘empowered’ Northern female protégé, the endlessly patient immigrant mental health worker, and the stoic psychologist who gently prods troubled Jamie with therapeutic platitudes about his ‘feelings toward women

The series has become a runaway success for Netflix by tapping into a potent mix of parental anxieties—specifically, fears about what children encounter online—while carefully framing these concerns through a progressive ideological lens. The result is something far more unsettling than mere entertainment: it creates a distinct uncanny valley effect, where the show’s ostensibly relatable themes feel eerily artificial, as if real-world dangers have been repackaged to carefully conform to progressive tropes. A carnival of progressive terrors. See! The horror of The Manosphere—a cabal of unrepentant masculinity, lurking in gyms and meme forums, daring to suggest that men have a purpose! Shudder! At the Unapologetic Nuclear Family—a grotesque menagerie of one mom, one dad! Behold! The Mutant Boy—twisted into a monstrosity by the horrors of ONLINE influencers! Marvel! At the Wonder of FREE SPEECH—a dazzling, dangerous relic! Watch as it defies algorithmic censors and—oh, the scandal! —lets people disagree!

Adolescence is a complete fabrication. Not only did the events depicted in the Netflix series never occur, but they’re also highly improbable. This hasn’t deterred the BBC from claiming that the “Netflix hit underscores the need for male role models.” Jamie goes from watching content online, to stabbing a girl, although how this exactly happens, is not clear. But in the words of the show's creator,

“It shocked me. I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening in society where a boy stabs a girl to death? What’s the inciting incident here?’ And then it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again. I really just wanted to shine a light on it, and ask, ‘Why is this happening today? What’s going on? How have we come to this?’”

In every case that the writer claimed to base his drama on, the perpetrator was not a white working-class boy from a stable family. If the writers really want to go down this line of toxic influence, then far more dangerous to girls’ safety than online ‘right-wing influencers’ would be religious texts preaching female subjugation, rap lyrics glorifying sexual violence, and drill music celebrating brutality—yet none of these features in Keir Starmer’s censorship agenda.

It is wishful thinking that the main threat of violence to women comes from working-class boys bought up in stable families with strong male role models, in reality, the surge in violent crime against women in the UK and Europe has been largely due to increases in immigration. Data from collected police evidence showing that foreign men mostly from Albania Afghanistan Iraq and Algeria were over three times more likely to be arrested for sex offenses than British citizens. In 2013 there were over 16,000 incidents of reported rapes in the United Kingdom By 2022 this increased to over 69,000 Less than a decade on more than a 400% increase.

Starmer’s selective outrage reveals a political motive: it’s easier to scapegoat fringe online figures than confront the mainstream industries and institutions perpetuating harm. If ‘protecting women’ were the real priority, the censorship push would start with the art and ideologies that directly incite misogyny—not with chasing phantom threats from YouTube commentators.

The drama is deliberately designed to shape public discourse, a goal that politicians on the left have embraced with enthusiasm. The Prime Minister remarked, “As a parent, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter resonated deeply. These are conversations we all need to be having more often.” Supporting Netflix’s initiative to make the series available for free in schools nationwide, “so as many young people as possible can watch it,” Mistakenly referred to it as a “documentary” in Parliament—twice—before correcting himself.

We are compelled to treat a work of fiction as evidence, - and as Orwell observes, ignoring the evidence of our own “eyes and ears” - not because it reflects objective truth, but because the illusion has been cemented through sheer repetition in so-called 'public discourse.' The false consensus of media elites, activists, and institutional gatekeepers has transformed perception into pseudo-reality, leaving dissenters to either submit or be silenced as heretics.

Kemi Badenoch (leader of the UK opposition) delivered a real punch-the-air moment. In keeping her cool and reminding listeners that the series is in fact a work of fiction, sent LBC radio hosts of for a swim in the Kool-Aid deep end.

They told her that “not to have watched it might be regarded as a ‘dereliction of duty’.” She continued observed there are far more pressing issues demanding attention. The next morning, she told her inquisitors on BBC Breakfast ‘I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s going on in the NHS” . Kemi has been visiting schools, pushing for a smartphone ban, that this teacher agrees with. Not on the basis of a kneejerk reaction to a fictional work, but consistent evidence showing the damage to boys and girls, such as that detailed by Jonathan Haidt, in the Anxious Generation.

Adolescence is a case of fictionalized defamation—distorting reality through art or literature to smear ideological opponents—it’s a well-worn tactic in the progressive playbook. The target is masculinity, specifically a type of white working-class masculinity, which has become synonymous with Brexit types in the UK, Trump types in the US and a type of young man who has started thinking for themselves and have left the progressive project behind.

Children and young people have long been exposed to these types of tactics, from activist teachers and organisations now dominated by critical theory and intersectional dogma. Consistent with intersectionality's hatred of Christianity, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel about theocratic fascism, for example, is used as an A 'level text to paint conservative Christians as latent authoritarians hellbent on oppressing women. Despite being a work of speculative fiction, the novel (and its TV adaptation) is frequently taught not as literature but as a cautionary parable, implying that traditional religious values inevitably lead to Gilead’s horrors.

And in the teaching of history, what they call ‘decolonising’ the curriculum a cherry-picking of facts in a way that suits the objective of indoctrinating children into the seeing the world through the framework of intersectionality. Decolonising the curriculum isn’t so much about what we should add into the curriculum, it’s about what you must never teach.

For example, teachers might present the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs as a straightforward historical event while glossing over the brutality of Aztec society—its mass human sacrifices, tributary empires, and systemic violence—to frame the narrative solely as 'European evil vs. indigenous innocence.' Second, teaching the transatlantic slave trade as a uniquely Western crime while minimizing inconvenient truths, that slavery was a near-universal practice across civilizations (from the Arab slave trade to African kingdoms enslaving rival tribes), and also that the British Empire, to end slavery, not just on the practical level with the Royal Navy, but on a metaphysical level, the political classes being called to conscience by evangelical Christians, such a William Wilberforce. By contrast, Communism, which did so much to revive servitude and enslavement, find their crimes against humanity whitewashed dropped down the memory hole, for example BBC bitesize whitewashing the Russian Revolution, portraying Lenin and the Bolsheviks as rescuers of Russia, instead of the brutal mass-murders that they and their followers actually were. To quote Cambridge historian Robert Tombs

“To teach the history of communism as if it was just another political theory with a few minor downsides, rather than the basis of many of the most inhuman forms of totalitarianism in history, is utterly dishonest and makes it impossible for children to understand the modern world.”

In 2021, Wikipedia editors tried to delete a page documenting "mass killings under Communist regimes," arguing it presented a biased "anti-communist" perspective by linking atrocities to communist ideology. Critics, including figures like Stalin and Mao, were cited as examples, sparking debate over historical accountability versus ideological bias. Adolescence ticks this anti-colonial checkbox by making Jamie a fan of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great Victorian engineer.

The activist teacher -or third-party resource that aims to work through teachers- creates the illusion of free and open dialogue but subtly steers the conversation toward a predetermined conclusion. This approach is designed to make students feel like they are arriving at a conclusion independently, while the discussion is heavily manipulated to reinforce fundamentalist beliefs of identity politics. The goal is not genuine exploration of ideas but rather the reinforcement of a specific narrative or agenda under the guise of open dialogue.

Noam Chomsky:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

The 'Wheel of Power' isn’t the title of a low-budget dystopian film—it’s a crude roadmap of intersectional dogma designed to constrain and limit opinion and thought.

I sourced this gem straight from the UWC Singapore website, where it’s proudly deployed as part of 'DEI training' for their unfortunate primary school teachers. Because nothing cultivates harmony like teaching four-year-olds to sort themselves into 'oppressed' and 'oppressor' based on race and other immutable traits. Check out the DEI trainers. They have the glassy-eyed countenance that cult recruiters who used to hand out leaflets at tube-stations always seemed to wear. Their plastered-on smiles masking hollow vessels for social justice doctrine. Intersectionality is an ideology unfit for schools.

Anyway, the agitprop Adolescence is now being used to justify a more overt targeting of boys—all under the pretext of child protection. Beyond the widespread calls for increased social-media censorship, efforts are underway to make the film not just freely available in British schools (as Netflix has agreed to) but mandatory. Charities invited to Downing Street to discuss integrating the film’s messaging into schools included the NSPCC, Movember, Beyond Quality, the Children’s Society, and a young person who shared their personal experience with similar online content.

The Prime Minister also met with Netflix and the Tender charity. Tender have already blown through over 3million GBP on this nonsense, and are due to supply educational resources for parents, teachers, and caregivers on the themes addressed in Adolescence. Additionally, Into Film—the charity facilitating free school screenings via its Into Film+ streaming service—participated in the talks.

Speaking at a Tender event in February, Nazir Afzal, OBE, is the former Chief Crown Prosecutor and Chief Executive of the UK’s Police and Crime Commissioners, graced us with the revolutionary revelation that violence is - wait for it - a 'learned behaviour.'

One might almost hear Darwin rolling in his grave, given how this bold thesis casually discards millennia of animals perfecting bloodsport without so much as Joe Rogan podcast.

All those kittens swiping at yarn balls in clear homage to Call of Duty, chimpanzees throwing feces only after extensive Twitch streaming sessions.

Nevertheless, his perspective reflects a dominant ideological trend—one that arbitrarily confines evolution to the neck-down, maintaining a curious cognitive exceptionalism. This worldview perpetuates a form of evolutionary denialism, reflexively dismissing robust neurological and biological evidence as mere 'biological determinism' while maintaining mystical faith in the blank-slate plasticity of human behaviour. You can get a feel for this mode of thinking from the charity Boyhood Initiative.

The show hits its lowest point when it bends reality to force this ideology: a classroom erupts in cheers upon hearing about a girl’s murder, while a boy in a supermarket callously shows Jamie’s father a video of the killing. In my years as a teacher, I’ve never witnessed students react to tragic news with anything but shock, sadness, or solemn silence. This portrayal isn’t just fiction—it’s a grotesque indictment of an entire generation, framed as casual truth.

The interest here, is not to get boys and girls away from their screens- good schools have been keeping phones out of classrooms for years.

Coming the way of schools, courtesy of Tender is this infographic. It’s similar to the wheel of power except it’s, *gasp* a pyramid! It stems from the absurd premise that offensive language inevitably escalates to mass violence—a slippery slope argument as intellectually flimsy as it is politically convenient. Its adherents treat colonialism as the original sin of human history, propagating the racist fiction that non-white societies were peaceful utopias until corrupted by European contact.

It seems to replay the "noble savage" myth—the romanticized notion that indigenous peoples lived in harmony, free from racism, slavery, or systemic oppression until white colonizers introduced these evils.

Make a double entendre while using a tool in the DT lab (it’s almost impossible not to), that’s not a dad joke, its contributing to “rape-culture”.

This article from a couple years ago directs us try “intersectionality". Intersectionality, anti-racism, Critical Race theory, whatever label it has, doesn't matter it's the same bunch of ideas, puts boys and young men on death ground:

Accept the moral accusation of privilege, along with the punishment and retribution that it entails. An end to your freedom of thought, or a right to an speak freely. Accept that as boy you have no role or stake in society, no ambition whatsoever other than to facilitate people from “marginalised” groups, and not to operate in any way that doesn’t somehow enable “gender equality”, although how that could be defined and delimited, is never explained.

As Conor Fitzpatrick observes in this excellent article, titled the war on quiet boys, the purpose of Adolesce, is not just facilitate discussions and conditions to facilitate further restrictions on information, but to bring quiet intelligent boys into the open where they harangued and scolded for not accepting the judgement placed upon them by progressive ideology.

“So the figures and forums to whom negative attention will be turned in light of the show are not just troublesome because of the retrograde sexual attitudes they might have, or the threat they pose to women and girls. They are troublesome because they are aligned to the upward surge in exactly the kind of political activity that is most disruptive of the status quo. The post-Adolescence discussions being held in parliaments and on TV are best understood as an intensification of the ones around dis- and misinformation. The utility of this discussion for governments and activists everywhere is not that this will help get phones out of schools, but that it will give a second wind to these attempts to reign in inconvenient political speech on the internet.

Some groups are more in need of this kind of control than others. This is the heart of the matter; the idea of Adolescence as a call to action has been embraced because it presents a chance to interfere with and oversee the inner lives of the demographic that Progressives are worried about the most - quiet, smart young white men.”

The show is an expression of progressive's worst nightmare. Not violence against women and girls, not knife crime amongst black and ethnic communities, but the quiet young men who have rejected “the Message”.

The manosphere refers to a broad network of online communities, forums, and platforms where discussions about men’s issues, masculinity, and gender dynamics unfold. Its ideological range is vast, spanning from self-improvement (e.g., fitness, career advice, emotional resilience) to controversial or extremist viewpoints (e.g., anti-woman, male separatism, or involuntary celibacy narratives).

Yet unlike other ideological movements—where distinctions are carefully drawn between moderates and radicals—the manosphere is frequently lumped together. For instance, while mainstream Muslims are distinguished from Islamic extremists, any individual critiquing progressive orthodoxy (whether on dating, divorce laws, or male mental health) risks being guilt-by-association smeared as a "toxic" misogynist or "incel", not a helpful mode of operation.

This double standard reveals a deeper bias: dissent from elite progressivism is framed as inherently dangerous, while analogous dissent in other contexts is granted nuance. The result is a rhetorical silencing tactic—where legitimate conversations about men’s struggles are drowned out by reductive caricatures.

The timing of Adolescence is certainly poignant, coinciding with the rise of the “manosphere” and the radicalisation of young men and boys by figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.

Adolescence on Netflix: Is the Stephen Graham drama a true story?

The visceral backlash against Jordan Peterson underscores a fundamental rift in modern discourse: his challenge to the progressive dogma that human behaviour is entirely socially constructed strikes at the movement’s ideological core. By invoking evolutionary biology and psychology, Peterson dismantles the “Blank Slate” myth—the belief that culture alone shapes actions, with no innate influences—and in doing so, threatens the moral authority of those who reduce complex human struggles to simplistic narratives of systemic oppression.

This tension manifests in the very language of his critics: terms like “bigot” or “supremacist” are wielded not as arguments but as secular blasphemy charges to avoid engaging with inconvenient questions. Why, for instance, do progressives claim “patriarchal norms” cause male violence without defining which norms, how they operate, or why societies with identical norms produce wildly different outcomes? The answer lies in what the ideology cannot permit: an acknowledgment that biology, hormones, and evolutionary hardwiring shape behaviour beyond that which culture is able to do. To concede this would unravel the utopian premise that society can be engineered into perfection—and expose the movement’s moral posturing as a substitute for rigor.

Peterson’s real offense isn’t just his rhetoric and his refusal to let dogma override reality, he urges young men to reject victimhood, embrace personal accountability, and recognize that their lives hold intrinsic purpose. In a cultural climate often hostile to what it straw-mans as “traditional” notions of masculinity, Peterson’s call to action—contribute, strive, and take ownership of your future—strikes a chord precisely because it dares to affirm what others dismiss: that young men, too, deserve guidance, structure, and the dignity of meaningful responsibility in shaping society. We live in a truly degraded age when an intelligent man, backing up his arguments with rigorous clinical research and other empirical evidence, and speaking mostly plain common sense, is labelled controversial.

The loathing the woke have for Jordan Peterson is clear, constantly making him guilty by association, siloing him with Andrew Tate, and individual he has clearly signalled his revulsion for.

Yet he is far from the only academic to have faced severe backlash for challenging prevailing progressive ideologies. Nearly three decades ago, Steven Pinker sounded the alarm in his influential book The Blank Slate, critiquing the denial of human nature in favour of purely social constructionist views. More recently, Kathleen Stock, a philosopher at the University of Sussex, became a prominent example of an academic persecuted for acknowledging biological reality—specifically, her views on sex and gender. After enduring intense harassment and protests, she was effectively forced out of her position. In response, the University of Sussex was fined £585,000 for failing to uphold her right to free expression, marking a significant legal rebuke against institutional censorship. For more examples, the Free Speech Union is well worth a visit.

Meanwhile, organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have been tracking such cases, compiling enough data to rank U.S. universities based on their commitment to intellectual freedom. Their findings highlight a troubling trend: many institutions, rather than fostering open debate, are increasingly punishing dissent from ideological orthodoxy.

What are these ideas that progressives are terrified of?

If you suggest that evolutionary biology or innate psychological differences between men and women might play a role—rather than just the all-purpose bogeyman of 'patriarchy'—you may find yourself smeared as a 'supremacist' or accused of peddling 'biological determinism,' a strawman trotted out to avoid robust discussion and debate.

Social constructivists don’t just ignore biology; they actively suppress it, because admitting that men and women might have different inclinations or aptitudes (on average, and with vast individual overlap) would demolish their narrative that every inequality is oppression. Instead of engaging with research in endocrinology, neuroscience, or evolutionary psychology, they retreat into circular reasoning: disparities must be social constructs, because if they weren’t, their worldview would collapse.

Worse, they conflate acknowledging differences with justifying discrimination, as if observing that men, on aggregate, take more risks or that women prioritize different career paths is tantamount to advocating for segregation.

It’s a cheap rhetorical trick, but an effective one, that finds particular resonance in education, a field predicated on teachers trying to administer equal and fair treatment, in the manner of and extended family.

You can get a taste of exactly this kind of thinking in this bonkers article, where hypergamy isn’t an observable phenomenon consistent across all human cultures and societies, along with other species, it's a white supremacist conspiracy theory. Because of course it is.

Hypergamy, that is, women’s tendency to seek partners of equal or higher status, stems from deep evolutionary pressures. Genetic studies reveal a striking asymmetry in human ancestry, that there are nearly twice as many female ancestors as male ones, indicating that historically, a smaller pool of high-status men dominated reproduction while many lower-status males left no genetic legacy. This pattern emerged because women, who bear greater biological costs in reproduction, evolved to prioritize mates who offered survival advantages—strength, resources, or social dominance. In ancestral environments, partnering with such men increased offspring survival, creating a "winner-take-all" dynamic where successful males had multiple mates. Though modern society has softened these pressures, hypergamy persists in subtler forms, reflecting an ingrained drive to secure stability and status. The genetic evidence underscores how profoundly this selective process shaped human mating strategies, explaining why women remain attuned to signals of ambition and capability in partners today.

The collision of hypergamy with modern technology—particularly dating apps—has exposed a profound shift in mate selection dynamics, one that science now illuminates with stark clarity. Platforms like Tinder and Bumble amplify innate female selectivity by granting women near-unlimited access to high-status men, effectively creating a 'winner-takes-most' sexual marketplace.

Studies confirm what everyday users already know, that the top 10% of men receive 80% of matches, while a majority of men compete for minimal attention. These data-driven realities have outpaced ideological frameworks, forcing even reluctant establishments to acknowledge that technology hasn’t just changed dating—it has weaponized evolutionary instincts in ways no cultural script can easily mitigate.

Dating apps amplifying hypergamy by creating an environment where users can easily prioritize and filter potential partners based on highly selective criteria, such as physical appearance, socioeconomic status, and lifestyle. These platforms often encourage a "shopping mentality," where individuals, particularly women, are incentivized to pursue partners perceived as higher value due to the sheer abundance of options available.

This dynamic exacerbates hypergamy—the tendency to seek partners of equal or higher social and economic standing—by magnifying competition and reinforcing the prioritization of traits like wealth, status, and attractiveness. As a result, dating apps may be driving hypergamy to excess, creating imbalances in mate selection and perpetuating unrealistic expectations in relationships.

In the not-too-distant past, more people met at school, church, discos libraries, workplaces, where deeper attractions and relationships would have in the past, be formed, not the swiping left and right based on superficial characteristics. Dating apps and urban clustering create a winner-takes-most dynamic, where ~80% of women compete for the top 20% of men, leaving a growing underclass of disengaged, low-status males. These fuels plummeting fertility (as women delay family formation), political radicalization, and social fragmentation. The result is a lopsided sexual economy that deepens inequality, accelerates demographic decline, and erodes societal cohesion. Hypergamy a silent driver of civilizational decay.

As civilizations developed customs, values, and legal frameworks to counteract the destabilizing effects of hypergamy, these mechanisms ensured broad male participation in reproduction, social stability, and intergenerational continuity.

However, the very institutions that once mitigated hypergamy— marriage, monogamy laws, and gendered social expectations—are derided by progressive ideology as oppressive "traditional gender roles." Perhaps what critics dismiss as patriarchal control was often a pragmatic cultural immune system, preventing the concentration of mating opportunities in the hands of a small male elite.

Amid the growing clamour for pre-emptive measures against boys—treating them as latent predators in need of ideological reprogramming—I’m reminded of a student from years past. He was a slight, soft-spoken boy, physically smaller than his peers, with a temperament more suited to solitary creation than the rough-and-tumble of the playground. He would spend his lunchtimes the Design Technology lab, working on a model space station.

To keep his passion going, I would invent new "missions" for his project: "The crew needs a docking bay for supply ships," or "What if the station’s oxygen system fails?"

By the end of the term, complete with multiple bays, lighting and working solar panels, it occupied half a ceiling. We even had a small launch party to which the headteacher and other school dignitaries attended. His dad was a bus driver, and as white working-class boy, already faces an education system that, not only in this teacher's experience but according to evidence, has stacked against him.

The idea of this boy – and many like him - being harangued for his collective male guilt by some hoity-toity sociology graduate drunk to the eyeballs on social justice gloop, is an anathema to me. And, I think, any decent educator.

Neither is it accurate. As Stephen Pinker explains,

Everyone agrees that rape is a crime of violence. Probably the biggest amplifier of rape is lawlessness. The rape and abduction of women is often a goal of raiding in non-state societies, and rape is common in wars between states and riots between ethnic groups. In peacetime, the rates of rape tend to track rates of other violent crime. In the United States, for example, the rate of forcible rape went up in the 1960s and down in the 1990s, together with the rates of other violent crimes. Gender feminists blame violence against women on civilization and social institutions, but this is exactly backwards.

Violence against women flourishes in societies that are outside the reach of civilization, and erupts whenever civilization breaks down. Though I know of no quantitative studies, the targeting of sexist attitudes does not seem to be a particularly promising avenue for reducing rape, though of course it is desirable for other reasons, Countries with far more rigid gender roles than the United States, such as Japan, have far lower rates of rape, and within the United States the sexist 1950s were far safer for women than the more liberated 1970s and 1980s.

If anything, the correlation might go in the opposite direction. As women gain greater freedom of movement because they are independent of men, they will more often find themselves in dangerous situations. What about measures that focus on the sexual components of rape?

While Labour will now expect schools to show Adolescence and deliver it’s package of toxic masculinity, rape-culture ideology, it hasn’t called for exposure to that actual systematic rape of children and women areas that largely under its control, or ask schools to show “Three Girls”, the story of three victims UK rape gangs.

This is especially galling that while two-tier Kier was being led around by the nose, by and entirely fictional drama, his government was busy opposing a national inquiry into actual systematic rape.

For two decades, town after town—frequently represented by a Labour MP and governed by a Labour-run council—was revealed as the backdrop for the systematic rape, drugging, trafficking, mutilation, and murder of some of society’s most vulnerable individuals.

The towns of Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham, Huddersfield, and Newcastle are just a few among many. The reporter Charlie Peters has identified at least 50 towns affected by these predominantly Pakistani rape gangs. The scale of the abuse is staggering, with thousands upon thousands of victims spanning multiple generations. Investigations and reports have consistently uncovered the same troubling moral failures by local councils and police. Authorities were too hesitant to take action, fearing accusations of racism or the risk of escalating community tensions. Victims were often dismissed as merely wayward girls who had brought trouble upon themselves.

In one case, police approached two men who were with a young girl. “Piss off copper, or I’ll make a complaint”.

While we are being told men need to be less toxic and more compassionate, many shelved their own compassion and empathy for those children abandoned to racial sexual violence and brutality. Tellingly, rape gangs in all my child protection training over the years, rape-gangs never made an appearance. By comparison, there is a seemingly never-ending supply of resources on imaginary “toxic masculinity”.

Societies have long established systems to help young men channel aggression and sexual drives constructively. Cultural values, rites of passage (like Bar Mitzvahs or Maasai initiations), and mentorship programs instil respect, discipline, and emotional intelligence. Religious teachings promote virtues like patience, while sports and physical activities provide disciplined outlets for energy. Legal frameworks set boundaries, and mental health services encourage healthy emotional regulation. Community engagement and volunteering further direct youthful vigor into meaningful contributions. Together, these structures foster responsibility, self-control, and positive societal integration, ensuring young men develop into balanced, purposeful adults.

Left-leaning, constructivist organizations and outlets refrain from labelling aggression by social justice activists as "toxic," despite readily applying the term to traditionally masculine or conservative expressions of anger. The descriptor seems reserved for "blokey white men," in Gillette commercials, while progressive movements—whether DEI advocates, far-left "allies," or militant activists—are frequently exempt from similar scrutiny.

This double standard becomes evident in the tolerance for aggression when it serves "woke" causes. Actions such as property destruction during BLM protests, vandalizing Teslas (because they don’t happen to like Elon Musk), or the violent rhetoric and actions of some anti-Israel demonstrators (including calls for Jewish genocide) or the harassment of so-called "TERFs", are often downplayed or justified as righteous indignation. Meanwhile, comparable aggression from other ideological camps is swiftly condemned as dangerous or regressive.

The inconsistency suggests that, for many progressives, the morality of aggression depends not on its form but on its alignment with approved narratives. This selective framing undermines principled critiques of violence and risks normalizing harmful behavior under the guise of social justice.

I was recently required to use this resource in a RSE or “wellbeing” lesson. The ostensible aim of the lesson was anger management and how teach kids strategies for controlling their anger, to avoid confrontation., In the next slide, the authors have changed their mind when fictional “Mo” doesn’t use his “anger” to say, help out at an old peoples home, but to vandalise his local community.

Just don’t have the “wrong” anger, such as being groomed into a rape-gang , or over rising antisemitism, for example.

External "resources" like these are common rather than unusual. They serve to remind teachers that we should not exploit children as tools to advance Critical Social Justice ideology, especially when such is based on dodgy Marxist zero-sum assumptions about how education –and everything else- functions.

A troubling contradiction arises in how society often treats male violence: while young boys are frequently subjected to collective guilt through constructivist theories—broadly blaming "male socialization" for crimes against women—those who actually commit these crimes are increasingly framed as victims of extenuating circumstances.

On one hand, ideological narratives paint all boys as proto-perpetrators, indoctrinated by "toxic masculinity" and thus vaguely complicit in systemic male violence. This sweeping generalization ignores individual agency and reduces complex behaviour to reductive social determinism.

On the other hand, when specific men commit violent acts, progressive discourse often pivots to contextualizing their actions—pointing to trauma, poverty, or systemic disadvantage as mitigating factors. While understanding root causes is crucial, this selective empathy creates a paradox: boys as a collective are condemned pre-emptively, while actual offenders are granted nuanced excuses.

The inconsistency reveals a flawed logic: if structural forces absolve individual perpetrators, why aren’t those same forces used to absolve boys collectively? Conversely, if collective guilt is valid, why the reluctance to apply the same unforgiving standard to criminals? This hypocrisy exposes how ideological frameworks often prioritize narrative over coherence, weaponizing generalizations when convenient and abandoning them when inconvenient.

Under the UKs Labour government, proposals from The Sentencing Council for England and Wales (and unelected quango) would have cast significant doubt on the principle of equality before the law. Recently, it issued new sentencing guidelines that would have given preferential treatment to offenders from ethnic-minority backgrounds. According to these guidelines, judges would have been required to review a pre-sentence report (PSR) before determining the sentence for an individual belonging to an ‘ethnic-minority, cultural-minority, and/or faith-minority community.’

Despite this, the UKs Justice department under the current Labour government, have published new probation-service rules that remove the principle of equality before the law. The

new guidelines mandate that the probation service evaluate bail conditions not solely based on the specifics of an individual’s case, but also taking into account factors such as their ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

The bail guidelines are actually more unequal than the pre-sentencing guidelines. They even order the probation service to consider ‘important historical events’ that may have had a greater impact on suspects from specific groups and cultures. This a clear directive to weigh the supposed historical trauma of colonisation and slavery when determining bail conditions. Needless to say, ‘important historical events’ do not mean the Norman Conquest, which reshaped Britain’s social fabric. Nor will the English Civil War, a period of profound upheaval, count for those with Puritan ancestry. At a stretch, the Irish Potato Famine might be invoked to excuse crimes by those of Irish descent, but don’t hold your breath for consistency. It is not even clear whether trauma experienced by British Jews – either from the Holocaust or the recent Hamas attacks – should count, as this tends to be conspicuously absent from the woke’s selective ledger of victimhood.

None of this is to suggest that young men’s digital interactions are exclusively elevated, intellectual exchanges. While meaningful discourse does occur, these spaces are also rife with misogyny, bigotry, and ugly rhetoric—realities that are widely acknowledged and frequently contested.

Would lessons on "toxic masculinity" have saved the lives of the young men I mentioned earlier—or others like them? I do not beleive so.

While modern discourse often frames male violence as a product of social conditioning or stifled emotions, this view neglects the deeper evolutionary and ecological roots of aggression. Violence is not merely a cultural aberration; it is, in many cases, a strategic adaptation shaped by millennia of competition for survival, status, and reproductive success.

Human behavior—particularly male aggression—cannot be divorced from its biological underpinnings. Across species, males employ violence to secure resources, defend territory, and establish dominance hierarchies. In humans, this legacy persists. Evolutionary psychology suggests that

where institutional safeguards are weak, aggression becomes a high-reward tactic: it deters rivals, enforces social contracts, and signals strength to potential allies and mates. This is not a justification for violence but an acknowledgment of its functional logic in certain environments.

Nisbett and Cohen’s Culture of Honor aligns strikingly with this framework. Their research shows that violent cultures thrive in lawless settings where material assets are vulnerable and state protection is absent. In such contexts, honor-based aggression is not irrational—it is a rational response to existential uncertainty. Pastoralist clans, frontier societies, and marginalized urban communities all exhibit this pattern: when formal institutions fail, individuals revert to primal strategies of deterrence and retribution.

To attribute these behaviors solely to "toxic masculinity" is to ignore the interplay of biology and environment. Social narratives may influence how aggression is expressed, but they do not create its foundational drive. If we wish to reduce violence, we must address the conditions that make it adaptive—economic desperation, systemic impunity, and the absence of nonviolent dispute-resolution mechanisms.

Amid these challenges, skilled educators remain steadfast in their time-tested approach: meeting students with openness, fostering constructive engagement, and prioritizing active listening, teaching boys how to back down without losing face. Their role isn’t to dismiss or lecture, but to guide—transforming volatile debates into teachable moments and modelling healthier ways to navigate conflict and identity.

However, we cannot ignore the growing hostility toward boys under the guise of institutionalized "wokery." We must start by ensuring boys are not taught to despise themselves. A September 2024 report from the Family Trust found that children are being taught certain masculine traits are "problematic"—yet another manipulative term favoured by ideologues. The report concluded that current education often frames masculinity as inherently toxic and harmful to society.

The term "toxic masculinity" should be rejected by teachers—it’s a vague, unfalsifiable concept based on double standards, and similarly with the term “privilege’, a moral accusation aimed at the core of the individual. Privilege is accusation of unearned power and advantage. Within the zero-sum framework of critical social justice, it is also a demand for retribution, revenge, recompense, and punishment. There is no social justice without social punishment.

If we are going to act in schools, which we must, rather than be dictated to by ideology should allow ourselves to be guided by informed discussion and individuals. Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation, identifies the key issues affecting boys and girls.

For girls, he argues that social media and smartphones amplify anxiety, depression, and body image issues, as they are more susceptible to the pressures of comparison, perfectionism, and online harassment. The constant exposure to curated images and social validation creates a toxic environment that undermines their self-esteem. For boys, Haidt suggests that technology, particularly video games and online platforms, contributes to escapism, reduced motivation, and social isolation. Girls are more likely to experience direct mental health challenges due to social media and societal pressures, while boys may face issues related to independence, resilience, and educational engagement. Addressing these challenges requires a nuanced understanding of the different needs and experiences of boys and girls, considering their evolutionary predispositions and cognitive development.

Watch or do not watch adolescence. Let’s have no more nonsense about it being a documentary, that makes it necessary to rewrite our rules on freedom of speech on the internet.

A troubling assumption has begun to surface in debates over online safety: that well-intentioned efforts to shield children from pornography and fake-porn apps could inadvertently pave the way for broader censorship of lawful content. This slippery slope raises legitimate fears about where the line will be drawn—and who gets to draw it.

The issue gains urgency when considering how children today engage with information. Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, recently observed that “most children are getting their political education off TikTok.” Her remarks reveal a stark generational shift in media consumption—and its consequences. She notes, for example, that while figures like Nigel Farage cut through the noise by communicating effectively on these platforms, other leaders remain unrecognizable. “I go to schools,” she says, “and they ask me: ‘Oh, wasn’t Barack Obama our Prime Minister?’”

Such anecdotes underscore a deeper problem: when viral snippets replace structured civic education, children’s understanding of politics becomes fragmented at best, distorted at worst. Yet the solution is not to ban or heavily restrict platforms like TikTok, but to empower young people with critical thinking skills—while safeguarding free expression for all.

What remains most alarming is the government’s persistent willingness—mirroring predecessors of all stripes—to seize on any justification, legitimate or contrived, to expand its control over online expression. Under the guise of protection, it increasingly conflates safeguarding children with enforcing ideological conformity, advancing a narrow worldview under the banner of "progress." This trajectory risks trading one form of indoctrination for another, all while eroding the very liberties it claims to defend.