The four-part Netflix television series “Adolescence” has sparked significant public debate since its release earlier this year. For anyone not in the know, “Adolescence” follows the experience of a fictional 13-year-old boy named Jamie, his family, and his community after learning that Jamie had murdered his classmate, a girl named Katie. It’s not a murder mystery – we know that Jaime is guilty from the beginning – rather, the show implores us to grapple with why an average boy from a “good home” would commit such a horrifying act of violence.
“Adolescence” depicts the dangers of the manosphere and influencers like Andrew Tate, as well as the constrained space that men sit in trying to meet the impossible expectations of “The Man Box”.
Since the show’s release, there have been some thoughtful and nuanced articles written about the challenges boys face today and our collective responsibility to better support them. Unfortunately, there has also been some very unhelpful commentary.
On 2 April 2025, The West Australian published an article outlining the response of the head of a prominent WA boys school. The headmaster expressed concerns that the show “risks the same (unintended) boy bashing we sometimes see from various commentators.”
But simply seeking to understand what is driving some boys to use violence is not “boy bashing”. Asking that men who’ve used violence be held accountable for their actions is not an attack on all men. Primary prevention practitioners and gender equality advocates are genuinely seeking to engage men and boys in a conversation about the causes and impacts of men’s violence against women, in order to find solutions.
Defensive responses to conversations about men’s violence against women are not unusual. The question, “what about men?” is too often used as a way to shut down discussions about women’s safety and wellbeing, rather than being asked from a place of genuine curiosity. What if instead we could ask: “What is really going on here? Why are we seeing so many isolated boys and why do some of them become violent?”
Questions like that would lead to solutions, whereas defensiveness only serves to maintain a status quo in which one woman is killed by an intimate partner every 11 days.
The headmaster also said, “Serious acts of violence are rarely rooted in ordinary, loving homes as depicted in the show” and that it was “highly unlikely for an average adolescent boy from a good home to commit an atrocity such as depicted in the show Adolescence.”
This is categorically false.
Gendered violence occurs across society, within all kinds of homes, and is perpetrated by men and boys of all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Saying otherwise only contributes to the shame and stigma associated with violence and makes it more difficult for those experiencing it to speak up. Incidents like the one in “Adolescence” are not mythological. They happen, as in the case of a mother and her daughter murdered by an Andrew Tate follower in the UK in 2024. Furthermore, the reality is that “average boys from good homes” are very susceptible to the messaging that Andrew Tate and the manosphere offer, increasing the risk of them becoming violent or at the very least becoming more misogynistic.
We need the leaders of our institutions to educate themselves on issues of family and domestic violence and gender equality so they can speak about them with confidence and contribute to solutions.
We need leaders, particularly men who are role models for young boys, to demonstrate empathy and compassion, to embrace freeing men from the stereotypes that have kept us in a box for so long, and to facilitate conversations with boys about growing up as a man and the challenges they’re facing.
There are no easy answers. We need leaders to engage in the complex and nuanced conversations required to achieve meaningful change. For the sake of boys and those around them, we can’t just leave them to figure it out for themselves.
Ryan Corbould – Prevention Sector Development Officer, Preventing Violence Together
