Teaching Religious Studies, and the occasional PSHE class, I get the opportunity for insight into pupils’ views about society and morality. I have noticed a growing number of boys who do not accept the ideology being espoused by liberal society and that it would like to have dominate those Personal, Social, Health and Economic classes.
I was particularly confronted with this when teaching in an all-boys school where an assembly was given to address sexism. In the assembly, a teacher had used the example of the gender wage-gap. Instead of taking a nuanced approach, the school had decided to come down hard on the topic.
It had an unfortunate result. Many students (and one rather vocal teacher) were deeply unhappy about what was presented – some pupils rebelled against it wholesale (which surely the presentation was not aiming to achieve).
In the days following, I had discussions with pupils who often revealed that, whilst they accepted sexism existed, they felt they had all been painted with a broad brush. They knew they were not responsible for the wage-gap or any other historic ills.
Teenage boys hear it all the time: “because you are male, you’re intrinsically bad”, or “men are responsible for all the evils of the world”.
The rise of the social-media “bad boy” star Andrew Tate in 2016 was rightly condemned in education circles, but the response of immediately dismissing and mocking him and everything he espoused caused more harm than good. Many educators didn’t realise that Tate is just the tip of the internet “manosphere”.
Due to being Gen Z myself and consuming a fair amount of socially conservative <em>YouTube</em>, I unfortunately see much of the content that is being presented to these boys. Whole channels dedicated to showing men being rejected, or women being misandrist.
Saddening examples include street interviews in which men and women are asked if they need each other. The clips show men saying, “yes, of course we need women”, whilst women mock saying “we don’t need men”.
Other videos show men finding out their girlfriends are cheating on them, or videos of “gold-diggers” trying to flirt with men after finding out they have an expensive car.
How demoralising! On the one hand, we are telling boys they are evil and sexist, but at the same time they are seeing these videos seemingly applauding anti-social and amoral – if not immoral – behaviour.
The same education system that punished boys for mentioning Tate in schools is the same system that is pushing already confused and vulnerable boys even further into the misogynistic online world.
This real misogyny is typified by the “Whatever Podcast”, which features OnlyFans porn stars (thankfully clothed) having topical conversations with pseudo-intellectuals and getting academically humiliated.
Through listening to the podcast, boys can attempt to work out their problematic fantasies by vicariously achieving a type of sexual and intellectual gratification through the presentation on offer of male domination of attractive women. It is all very messed up.
Little wonder boys are so confused! They are desperate to impress and be respected, but there seem to only be two paths.
Either they embrace social liberalism’s system of self-identification and relativism to fit in, or they reject the whole system and turn inwards, creating the likes of so-called “incels” (involuntarily celibates), “red-pillers” (who remove themselves from what they see as a female-dominated society) or “sigma males” (unhealthily hyper-masculine males). None is a good choice.
This divisiveness is being thrown at a group already overwhelmed by a lack of good male role models through fatherlessness, divorce, pornography and media.<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/happily-ever-after-secular-modernitys-irrational-discomfort-with-boy-meets-girl/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Happily ever after? Secular modernity’s irrational discomfort with boy meets girl</mark></a></strong>
Andrew Tate has clearly struck a chord with disassociated Gen Zs. But instead of mocking, rejecting or isolating these typically angry and frustrated young men further, we need to ask why they feel the way they do.
I suspect the answer is this: Tate’s ideas seem more truthful than those proposed by social liberalism.
Teenage boys <em>know</em> that males can’t become females. They also know that males are not intrinsically evil, rapists, abusers or oppressors. But this is what, in recent decades, they are told from infancy, and it is demoralising.
Truthful conversations about the nature of sexual difference and men’s issues such as homelessness, suicide and divorce custody, have been dismissed by third/fourth-wave feminism and LGBTQIA+ agendas.
Thankfully, there is a middle way for boys between sexism and denial of sexual difference – Christianity.
Christianity has the opportunity do incredible good in Western society if it acts soon. With truth about the roles and natures of men and women, it is uniquely placed.
In 2023, Jordan Peterson released a video titled “<a href="https://youtu.be/e7ytLpO7mj0?si=rQmSqxiHV0LTT5xg"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Message to the Christian Churches</mark></a>”. In it, he stated that young men particularly are disenfranchised, longing for responsibility, meaning and purpose.
He encouraged churches to “ask more, not less of those you are inviting…attend to some souls, that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s your holy duty.”
Catholicism can face this challenge. Pursuit of virtues and roles such as father, priest and monk can offer boys the positive responsibility and value that society isn’t.
This will not happen automatically. The Church needs to be active in its drawing men in, by offering them challenges to overcome. Pursuit of the virtues and our <em>telos</em> require striving and strength; men want this!
These disenfranchised boys aren’t looking for more gentleness or churches that <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/i-felt-out-of-place-praying-at-the-tomb-of-a-saint-a-pilgrim-finds-durham-cathedral-inhospitable-as-it-prepares-for-a-pop-concert/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">mirror society</mark></a>, they are looking for something firmer, more <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/getting-men-to-mass"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">traditional</mark></a>.<br><br><strong>RELATED:<mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"> <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/i-felt-out-of-place-praying-at-the-tomb-of-a-saint-a-pilgrim-finds-durham-cathedral-inhospitable-as-it-prepares-for-a-pop-concert/">‘I felt out of place praying at the tomb of a saint’: A pilgrim finds Durham Cathedral inhospitable as it prepares for a pop concert</a></mark></strong>
Boys especially need the Christ that faced injustice by flipping the tables in the temple; who faced the devil for 40 days in the desert and won; who despite knowing of a death to come so horrific He sweated blood thinking about it, He nevertheless willingly sacrificed Himself for our sake. That’s the Christ we should be showing boys.
Instead, though, Christians are often guilty of only offering the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who “loves you just the way you are”, with no challenge to overcome.
The Tate’s of the world offer challenge. That’s what they get right. Unfortunately, this challenge is the pursuit of women for sex, positions of power, or greed.
Catholicism offers a family and community to fight for, children to raise, people to lead, and the struggle against sin to be overcome.
Give men a dragon to slay and they will come running, sword in hand, ready to fight. That dragon is their own sin, their own situations, and the evils of the society around them.
If we don’t provide this, we risk more hyper-masculine extremism, the loss of real masculinity altogether, and a Church further haemorrhaging men. <br><br><em>Photo: The medieval sculpture 'Saint George and the dragon' in Storkyrkan Cathedral, Stockholm, Sweden, 29 April 2010. (Photo credit FREDRIK SANDBERG/AFP via Getty Images.)</em><br><br><em>Thomas Casemore teaches RS and is pursuing a master’s degree in divinity, researching St Bede and early British ecclesiastical history and spirituality.</em>
