Louis Theroux’s Manosphere made me realise raising a son has never been harder |
Boys and young men are being radicalised en masse by a pandemic of brutal online misogyny. Raising a son in such a world has never been harder, our Writer at Large Neil Mackay argues
There was a moment as I watched Louis Theroux’s documentary about the ‘manosphere’ when a thought which has been coalescing in my mind took shape and moved to the forefront of my consciousness.
I didn’t like the thought. Indeed, I want rid of the thought. The thought is this: ‘I’m glad I didn’t have sons’. I shocked myself with that thought.
I don’t want to rehearse Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere too much. To do so would revisit the nausea I felt watching it. You can guess what happened: a bunch of grotesque, inadequate Andrew Tate imitators revelling like pigs in misogyny and narcissism. Pitiful, sad, thick-headed, dangerous, desperate, money-grubbing, venal little nobodies. That’ll do from me. If you want more, watch it on Netflix. Bring a sick-bag.
I hadn’t actually wanted to watch the show. I really couldn’t face another hour of men shaming themselves as brutes and morons, and in the process disgracing their sex.
Calling out the Old Firm: it took an English police officer to say what Scotsmen fear
The entire Scottish media should get behind this plan to tame social media
Timothée Chalamet sums up everything that’s wrong with influencer culture
But my daughters know I’ve long been interested in the state of modern masculinity and said I should tune in. So I did. I didn’t learn much new about the manosphere, but I learned something new about myself. I discovered that buried thought: that I’m secretly glad I didn’t have sons.
My wife and I are in our mid-50s, so many of our friends and family have sons and grandsons from their early teens to late 20s. We have two daughters in their mid-20s.
One fact has come to astonish me over recent years: every parent I know with boys fears for their sons. Now, obviously all parents fear for their children, and for girls especially given how dangerous the world is and how violent men can be. But there is a fear which the parents of boys display that the parents of girls do not.
I know nobody who is the parent of a girl or young woman who fears ‘what their child will become’: in other words, they do not fear that their daughter or grand-daughter will turn into someone unrecognisably cruel, mean, warped or violent. They do not watch TV shows like Adolescence or Theroux’s Manosphere and think ‘please, God, don’t let my lovely child morph into that monster’.
I find it a matter of horror - real horror - that every single parent I know of boys or young men worries about the internet corrupting them; that Jekyll becomes Hyde; that they’ll be radicalised by hate to degrade women and hurt women.
Andrew Tate is a leading figure in the so-called manosphere (Image: AP)
I’ve a friend who is a brilliant teacher. She and her husband are devoted parents. Their son was a gorgeous funny wee boy. Today, he’s a vile misogynist, absolutely captured by online hate. He sees women as less than animals. I’ve watched my friend cry over what her son has become. This friend is at the furthest range of the spectrum. Most of my friends with sons and grandsons say things like ‘I caught him watching that bastard Andrew Tate online last night’; or ‘It really worries me the kinds of things he’s started talking about’; or ‘I can’t believe he believes this stuff’. And especially: ‘But we didn’t raise him that way. We taught him to respect women’.
It’s everywhere. I’ve mulled over this pandemic-style wave of radicalisation and misogyny sweeping away young men for a long time, and it finally took shape in that thought: I’m glad I didn’t have sons.
I didn’t mind whether my wife and I had boys or girls. For a while, I sort of hankered after a son as our daughters grew up, wondering what it would be like to be the dad of a boy. But I’ve always had many more women friends than male friends (women are just much more interesting to me) so I won’t lie and say I found the lack of a son deeply troubling. Still, it might have been nice.
Now, though, I don’t think I could do it. How could I build the barriers to keep a boy safe when so many friends have failed? Not that ‘failure' is that right word. How can anyone possibly compete against a global tsunami of warped masculinity engulfing young men?
We all know the history of the world’s most powerful man, Donald Trump, and his treatment of women. Trump’s White House floods the world with memes deliberately targeting young men which are violent, childish and cruel. Masculinity is presented as a form of psychopathic adolescence. In truth, any decent man observes MAGA and the manosphere and thinks, as most young women would say: ‘Small dick energy’. These misogynist influencers are hollow and empty, no women could or ever would love them - even their mothers, one suspects. All they’re good for is grifting others who are dead inside like themselves: selling bullshit and fantasies to sorrowful boys like my friend’s messed-up son.
I understand why locals get frustrated but stop blaming campervans for every problem
'Holyrood Assisted Dying debate was sickening display of narcissistic exceptionalism'
French council's decision to sell home of Scottish writer and thinker sparks anger
Such men are morally and psychologically small and fear their smallness, so they must act big to heal their broken souls. So pathetic they repel women, they turn their hate on women. It’s the incelisation of manhood.
Boys are trapped in a hall of mirrors: a monstrous, deformed version of masculinity reflected back to them repeatedly online. That wasn’t the case for previous generations. Men have always been flawed, but guys my age didn’t grow up in this hellish woman-hating echo chamber. This makes me incredibly sad for young men and boys. It’s not easy navigating masculinity and trying to be a decent human being. It takes work. The same is true for women and femininity, evidently. There are plenty of toxic women out there too. But then, the world isn’t confronted with an endless litany of female violence against men. So the two issues are not comparable.
My daughters will one day have their own children. Perhaps, their generation will tame the house of horrors that’s the internet, so if they do have sons the world will be a safer, less damaging place for them, and the women in their lives.
I pray that happens. Whilst I long for granddaughters, I want to bury that painful thought Theroux’s show summoned. So I long for grandsons too, and the joy of watching them grow up into good men.
Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics