Poisoning our boys with talk of toxic men

How do we 'raise' our children into adults if we only speak in negative terms?

Over the weekend the Scottish Women’s Convention hosted an event ‘Misogyny in Education’ in Glasgow with Jenny Gilruth and the EIS. There is no secret that there has been a sharp increase in violence in Scottish schools and that boys are largely the perpetrators of this violence - to each other, to girls in their classes and to teachers. I had hoped to go but due to the complex machinations of solo motherhood and responsibility to my son I was unable. It is something that is of great interest to me however. I do not want schools to be violent hellholes. I do not want teachers to have to *actually* physically defend themselves. But… also I do not want my son to be demonised by virtue of being male. (and it must be mentioned that the organisers struggle to define the word ‘female’, so one wonders how effective their campaigning can be but hey ho!)

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Previously, I wrote the post ‘Misogyny, Dieting and Raising a Boy Solo’ about the challenges of navigating mothering of a son with no significant men around and lots of negative messaging about his very existence. It’s a hard slog raising a good boy into a good man in the current climate. And the world needs good men.

Scottish Union for Education

has spoken cogently about the lack of authority in today’s schools being a big part of why chaos reigns. I suspect this is a big part of it.

Tom Bennett

also has done a significant amount of work addressing the lack of training provided to teachers in management styles that would help to mitigate many of the issues faced.

What *are* the behaviour policies? What are the *boundaries* set? Are they consistent and supported across the whole school?

I cannot help but think of my own experiences of working in schools over 30 years and how much the ‘atmosphere’ was determined by the school culture as set by management. It was not just platitudes on walls. One school I worked in North Philadelphia some decades ago - an area fraught with the worst kinds of gang violence you can imagine - faced none of these issues of violence (despite the outer world and these children’s day to day life being saturated in it). Why? When you walked over the threshold of that school the ethos was immediately evident. Leave the chaos behind, hold yourself up high. We might say the same for the Michaela Community School in London. And why when I speak to family members in different school districts in Pennsylvania and California they do not seem to have the same problems either. So why is it so bad here?

I often speak of our children needing nutrition to thrive. Food nutrition. Spiritual nutrition. Moral nutrition. And so on. It seems when I look at children who are thriving they have found purpose and are given opportunity to drive that purpose. I would also say there is no confusion about who is the adult and who is the child. Children look up to adults as someone to ‘grow into’. Adults see their responsibility to provide for, nurture and guide children.

How does Scotland address its problems? It seems to be in the context of ‘have nots’. We look at the children who are not thriving and tell them everything they are doing wrong. Or we validate their wrongs with things like restorative justice or ‘trauma’ approach. Whilst these things may have their place (a conversation for another post) there is very little will or attention to look at what the children have who are thriving.

And so I have my concerns with how Scottish Government will guide schools to meet the increase in violence. I don’t think they have demonstrated any real leadership in this regard thus far.

Following is a repost of an article I wrote for

Scottish Union for Education

Newsletter Number 96 on Misogyny Programs being implemented across UK schools. I do not think these programs are the answer.

Poisoning our boys with talk of toxic men

Last month it was revealed that schoolchildren in France were to be fitted with tracking devices in their playground in order to ‘explore the theory that boys dominate recreational spaces at girls expense’.[1] The proponents of this study purport that playground games demonstrate a wider malaise in society, indicating that boys playing football at the centre of the tarmac sets a standard that leads to high rates of domestic violence and assault later on in life. Christelle Wieder, who is in charge of sex equality at the council, went on to say, ‘These differentiated and inegalitarian uses of space will progressively come to be seen as normal and be replicated … outside school’.

This past autumn, I attended a Stop Surrogacy event where the lauded radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys was in attendance. While I can acknowledge the exceptional work regarding the topic of the event, Sheila’s ideas around men and ‘masculinity’, which once might have been considered ‘fringe’, are becoming mainstream. Sheila spoke openly about the need to ‘eradicate masculinity’ and went as far as to say that all sport should be abolished. This, in my opinion, is the Taliban version of raising boys.

Yet she is not alone in her assessment. This year, the Family Education Trust commissioned Lottie Moore to write the policy paper Boys and the Burden of Labels,[2] in which she explores the growing trend of teaching of ‘toxic masculinity’ in our schools. In her paper, she looks at how this contested subject area is being embedded in education across the UK. I was able to speak to Lottie about her report, on my podcast The Pink Elephant.[3]

One of the most telling aspects of these programmes is that ‘masculinity’ is to be understood only through the feminist lens, and the view is all negative. Boys are not to be understood or studied in and unto themselves, but merely in relation to girls. Think about it for a moment. How is the ‘boy question’ addressed at your child’s school? In the Glasgow City Council Education meeting in June 2023,[4] they go as far as to acknowledge ‘the problem with boys’ but then go on to say, ‘A feminist solution definitely includes men and I am glad to say this increasingly includes men, because the feminist solution is based on equality.’ Mary Robinson, Glasgow City Council Education Committee, then explains that one of the ways they are addressing the ‘boy problem’ is to have male representation in ‘Period Dignity Groups’. How is this good for boys?

We would not accept girls being studied through a ‘male lens’, so why should we accept the converse with boys? Furthermore, and as indicated by the French council, there is a growing trend of pathologising what might be considered ‘traditional’ male behaviours. Lottie Moore’s paper shows school materials which include versions of the ‘pyramid of sexual violence’, which present the idea that a man displaying ‘traditional gender roles within the family’ might go on to commit rape.[5]

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Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. Figure 5, page 29

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This also obfuscates what might be valuable insights into natural sex differences between males and females. While nurture plays a significant role in how children are raised into adults, nature plays a substantial role too. The male hormone testosterone plays an important role in boy’s lives from nursery. Numerous studies show that male patterns of socialisation and play are not merely down to how a child is raised.[6] To this end, diagnosing ‘male’ behaviours as problems, like the schoolyard programme does, undermines what might be natural development and might be better addressed in more healthy ways. Equality of opportunity as opposed to equity of outcome.

These programmes present the ‘boy problem’ solely as a problem of violence against women and girls. And while this is an issue that may be addressed in numerous ways, the real ‘boy problem’ is much more widespread than that. None of these ‘toxic masculinity’ programmes acknowledges or addresses the sex gap between boys and girls in education, where girls outperform boys in just about every metric: development, literacy and numeracy rates, and test scores. They are also far more likely to be permanently excluded from school, which has devastating lifetime consequences. This is before we even get to the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50.

To add another level of complexity to the problem, schools are commissioning outside third-party quangos to lead their training (see diagram below). In Lottie Moore’s report, she recounts how in 2021/22 one popular programme, ‘Everyone’s Invited’, asked people to share their experiences of sexual assault and violence. As a result, thousands of reports were posted onto their website through self-verified submissions. These self-reported accounts included hundreds of names of primary and secondary schools and universities, which directly implicated students. It served as judge, jury and executioner, as no controls were put into place to ensure what was being published was true. In response to the astounding level of reports, the UK government and the police carried out a rapid review of sexual misconduct in schools. To date, no person has been charged with an offence as a result of these investigations. Meanwhile, thousands of boys were implicated in something they were not guilty of. The programme succeeded in manufacturing a moral panic while not addressing what real problems might have existed.

In this context, individuals like Andrew Tate come to the fore. Andrew Tate is not a good role model. Yet is it any wonder boys look to him when the pickings are so slim in education and popular culture?

Good role models are essential in demonstrating what good men look like. For boys without fathers in their lives, this becomes even more necessary. In the case of the ‘boy problem’, this is another issue that is not being dealt with. It is no secret that stable families are what is good for children. Yet the Relationship education modules in non-denominational schools downplay this fact, if it is even acknowledged at all; instead, sexual experiences are presented as a grocery list of opportunities and body parts.

Is it any wonder our children are confused? It is clear to me that discriminating against boys, for being boys, is the last acceptable biases allowed in our society. Yet as Lottie Moore reminded me, the equality law, for all its faults, is quite clear. Discrimination based on sex is not allowed for females … or males. And we’d be better to remember it.

As the solo mother of a son, I must admit I have skin in the game. Since his babyhood, I have become heightened to the increasing amount of negative messaging around boys, at the same time seeing how boys are struggling. It’s nonsensical. It’s like a diet wherein all nutritive food is denied while being bombarded with messages of how disgusting and fat you are. Hardly a winning combo to be healthy. We need to give our boys good messaging and opportunities so that they can grow up to be stable and functioning men.

Psychologist Dr John Barry writes that, ‘The evidence is much clearer therefore that it is not masculinity that is the problem as much as our attitudes to it. It cannot be good science to pathologise half of the human race. The fact that we can even seriously entertain the hypothesis that half of our gender spectrum in the human species is faulty shows evidence as to where the real problem lies.’[7]

References

1. Sage A. ‘Pupils will be tracked by GPS ‘to make playtime more inclusive’. The Times, 18 November 2024. https://archive.is/HtlXO.

2. Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. https://familyeducationtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Boys-and-the-Burden-of-Labels-Lottie-Moore.pdf.

3. Deeming KE. ‘Toxic Masculinity’: in Conversation with Lottie Moore. Podcast.

4. Glasgow City Council Education, Skills and Early Years City Policy Committee, 1 June 2023. https://onlineservices.glasgow.gov.uk/councillorsandcommittees/viewSelectedDocument.asp?c=P62AFQDNZ3ZL0GDNZL.

5. Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. Figure 5, page 29. https://familyeducationtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Boys-and-the-Burden-of-Labels-Lottie-Moore.pdf.

6. Archer J. Sex differences in the development of aggression from early childhood to adulthood. Encyclopaedia on Early Childhood Development. January 2012, page 4. https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/pdf/expert/aggression/according-experts/sex-differences-development-aggression-early-childhood-adulthood.

7. Barry JA. The male gender empathy gap: time for psychology to take action. New Male Studies: An International Journal. 2016;5(2):9. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1534129/1/Gender Empathy Gap Seager Farrell Barry 2016.pdf.

In other news…..

My son got sent home forms so that he can go on his Primary 7 residential trip. Imagine my surprise that they expected me (and him) to agree to him consenting to ALL medical treatments! This is legally false. Gillick Competency & Fraser guidelines are formal protocols related to contraception. Even when used they need to be individually applied & assessed AND in the assessment the assessor needs to consider the relationship of the CHILD to the parent. Funny enough there is no confusion who has legal duty of care to PAY for the trip. This is on my MANY official forms and is widely being abused in Scotland. I can tell you straight out my child is not yet competent enough to make independent decisions about medical treatment -he will defer to the adult present - and that adult needs to be me. Be aware of this sleight of hand and DO not sign off your consent by having your child also fill out the form.

Lastly….

Today is the feast of St. Blaise. When I was a child I remember going to mass on the 3 February to have my throat blessed. This doesn’t seem to be a ‘thing’ in Scotland.

Blaise is known as the patron saint of throat ailments, physicians, woolcombers, and wild animals. You can read more about him here.

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