The obsession with ‘toxic masculinity’ shows no sign of abating. As reported this weekend, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has warned of ‘the misogyny increasingly gripping our schools’.
In response to this threat, the government is to issue guidance for teachers to look out for signs in the classroom of ‘incel culture’ stemming from the ‘manosphere’. Teachers of pupils aged over 14 are to be told to look for clues that boys were being drawn into aggressive misogyny, behaviour that could lead to violence and sexual abuse. They are to be on guard for rhetoric indicating teenage boys are being radicalised into ‘hating women’.
A preferable route would be to stop teaching boys to hate themselves in the first place. This is the source of so much discontent among teenage boys, the reason why so many are becoming dysfunctional to begin with, and the reason why many take refuge in the manosphere.
A good first step would be to cease the narrative of ‘toxic masculinity’.
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