If you were to watch Netflix’s Adolescence, or listen to Gareth Southgate’s recent Richard Dimbleby lecture, you could easily come away with a bleak picture of British masculinity – lost, insecure and at times toxic. Contemporary culture often portrays young boys as the victims of a new social order that gives them no blueprint for how to be a man in the 21st century. At worst, we see them as disciples of misogynists such as Andrew Tate, as perpetrators of violence, or as victims of divisive, rightwing ideologies.
It can seem as though young men are inevitably bound to be radicalised. More than half of gen-Z men in the US aged between 18 and 29 voted for Donald Trump. As Southgate put it in his lecture, more of our sons than we could possibly realise are beholden to “callous toxic influencers”, including Tate. In recent research we commissioned at St Dunstan’s Education Group, the group of private schools that I lead, we found that nearly half (49%) of 18 to 25-year-old men felt there were very few strong male role models in society, while 17% of young men said that credible accusations of sexual assault would not change their perception of someone they considered a role model. More than half (59%) of young men felt that feminism had gone too far.
