by “As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the change in the room; they’re squirming in their seats.” Mike Nicholson runs workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of coming manhood. Standing up for sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he’s a feminist, “I can see them looking at me, like, ‘I used to have you.'”
When Nicholson, whose program is called Progressive Masculinity, breaks down the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys he works with win.
“A lot of it is built from misunderstanding and how the word gets smeared,” he says.
But he is fighting against what he calls a “dominant-based model” of masculinity. “There is a revival of these old-fashioned regressive ideas, through your male influencers – your cartoonists, like Andrew Tate.”
Young men’s attitudes came under further scrutiny this week after a survey revealed that 16-29-year-olds are more negative about feminism than men over 60 – with one in five having a positive view. on Tate, the “self-professed misogynist. ” influence.
Professor Bobby Duffy of Ipsos, who carried out the research for King’s College London’s Institute of Policy and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, called this a “new and unusual generational pattern”, as younger cohorts tended to be more liberal.
Not everyone believes that attitudes have changed. Keziah Featherstone, chief executive of R3 Academy in Tipton, West Midlands, says: “I haven’t noticed any significant change. And I’ve been working in education for 30 years.” She is more concerned about truancy and school absences than she is about misogyny.
But teachers, coaches and other parents told the Guardian about changing values and behaviour, in the context of ubiquitous social media.
Anna, a secondary school teacher for 15 years until 2019, says she has seen “a decrease in feminism among young men” over that period – and an increase in problematic behaviour.
“We interviewed our students as they talked about their everyday sexuality,” she says. “The upskirting, slut-shaming, predatory behavior and occasional micro-aggressions. It was amazing to see how the girls saw it as another part of life.”
Related: Inside the violent, misogynistic life of new TikTok star Andrew Tate
Michael Conroy was also a long-time teacher before founding the consultancy Men at Work, which runs workshops for teachers and social workers.
He also describes a decline in behavior and attitudes, which he attributes to the widespread availability of smartphones. “That changed what we were used to at school. So instead of, like, a dick pic a month, it was five every week. And it wasn’t just year 10, it was year eight.”
Over that time, he says, the educators he works with have described “a clear sharpening in the way boys talk about women; and a growing sense that they must somehow be abused and hated because they are boys and men”.
He says Tate’s influence comes from being able to channel the powerful emotions of boys – and his message fell on fertile ground among a generation with easy access to pornography.
Conroy says: “He’s trying to take advantage of the boys’ naivety and confusion.”
Tate faces charges in Romania of human trafficking, rape, and setting up a criminal gang to sexually assault women, which he denies.
His slick videos, often delivered shirtless, cigar in hand, encourage men to work hard to make a lasting impact on the world – and he combines that message with attitudes towards women that he admits are misogynist .
Daniel Guinness is the managing director of Beyond Equality, which runs workshops with boys and men in universities and workplaces, as well as schools, challenging norms around masculinity. He says many people feel pressured by “internalized expectations” of men, which they may feel unable to meet.
He says: “It’s not showing that emotional weakness. It is always expected to be right too. Like you are not able to show that you can fail; that doing something and making a mistake is more embarrassing than just sitting out or falling out.”
He stresses that many of the men he deals with have positive attitudes towards women and feminism, but says some feel they are being stereotyped, or blamed from the actions of others.
Guinness cites the Everyone’s Invited website, where young women in the UK have shared their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, including in school environments, as part of the wider #MeToo movement.
“There has been a collective awareness of the violence that women and girls have experienced in certain parts of their lives. And the fact that men were doing that, and the fact that some of the norms in our society accompanied that violence because it was nothing more than a joke, or as part of flirting, or for no major reason.
“That message was often heard by many right-wing commentators, but also by young people in schools, because, ‘people think that all men do this’ – rather than, ‘these things are happening, and often they are being driven by some of the people. these attitudes that men have, so every man can play a role in fixing that and challenging it.”
Some parents of boys worry that they are not treated as sympathetically as their female peers. “My son is reluctant to go to school because of bullying from a group of girls,” says one woman from Derby, who wishes to remain anonymous. “It feels like there’s a huge power differential in schools, where boys are always punished, not listened to, and not believed.”
Nick Hewlett, head of St Dunstan’s College, a private sixth form in south London, says: “I think we are pushing boys into a place where they see no choice but to take an extremist view.”
He argues that what he calls “oftentimes innately masculine traits” such as “competitive frustration” and “banter” can be punished in schools, instead of being understood and addressed.
Hewlett says: “That’s not stopping. It’s about reshaping it. It’s definitely about bringing girls into that conversation, and making boys understand the impact of their behavior, not only on girls but on other boys as well.”
And he echoed Conroy’s warning about the effect of pornography in shaping boys’ expectations. “They are drawn into a world where they see coercive behaviour, which controls the pornographic behavior of boys, men towards women, and they think that is natural and normal.”
As for Tate himself, who is currently awaiting trial, Guardian teachers suggested he was less popular than he was before his arrest, in late 2022. But Nicholson says that even if Tate is convicted, many other options waiting in the “manosphere”.
“There are three or four influencers jockeying for position if it goes down,” he says. “It’s a symptom, not the problem.”
