Netflix’s Adolescence is a call for male allies before it’s too late

It’s also never too early to talk to children – especially when you consider the age of Jamie in Adolescence — about male allyship so that we can cultivate a society where everyone feels safe. And we need men in the public eye to become better role models too, especially for impressionable young people. We need positive representations of masculinity everywhere from our homes to our celebrities. We can’t just tell men what they shouldn’t be, we need to offer them a visual representation of something different.

“One thing that I’ve personally found helpful is reframing allyship from ‘riding in on the white horse and saving the day’ to a cycle of trying to support people, getting it wrong (often) and learning to apologise and adjust as needed,” Ben says.

Ben Blackall/Netflix

After all, some young people can’t even see how insidious the trickle down effect is from the likes of Andrew Tate. “The scary thing is that lots of boys don’t even realise that this is happening to them,” Ben adds. “When it comes to the manosphere, there are thousands of men who are willing to provide easy answers on the internet to anybody looking for them, regardless of how true those answers are and this means that we have to provide boys and young men with spaces to explore the things that concern them and come to their own healthy conclusions.

“We can’t police people out of their opinions, that only drives them deeper into them and so opening up spaces for conversation and critical thinking before it’s too late is key.”

As Adolescence shows, misogyny doesn’t just impact the life of the person consuming it, it has a domino effect, impacting entire families, schools and beyond. Toxic masculinity damages the lives of men, too and we, as men, need to do better for ourselves and everyone else around us. Let’s start by actively listening and then sharing what we’ve learned with friends, family and other men around us, so that we can help not only ourselves, but others too, become the allies all women deserve — before it is too late.

This article first appeared on Glamour UK

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