Next Gen Mentors: December Recap
This session proposed that educators should be aware of anti-feminist influences surrounding boys, and be ready and willing to explore them alongside boys themselves. What do educators need to know about voices like Andrew Tate? How do we use an affirming, strengths-based approach to respond to tough boys while still maintaining the safety of our classroom?
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Key Themes
Understanding Andrew Tate
Despite its occasional veneer of aspirationalism, the ‘manosphere’ isn’t about growth or self-esteem, it’s about power and profit. We know that because the intersection of identities most represented in audiences of influencers like Andrew Tate are male, white, cisgender youth—those who either think they should have power, or you have been told that they must get it, in order to be a ‘real man.’
The problem is that even if some of his content does revolve around less immediately harmful tenets of traditional masculinity like discipline, grit and self-improvement, the messages of anti-feminist influencers like Andrew Tate revolve around an inherently harmful worldview. The issue, then, is less Andrew Tate as an individual and more Andrew Tate as the clearest example of an ongoing cultural shift towards re-entrenching the status quo of gender hierarchy and masculinity ideology.
If this caught your interest…
Watch Mark Greene’s explanation of domination-based masculinity
Watch John Merizalde’s short film, Incel
Read reports in the NGM Library, including Understanding and Preventing Incel Violence in Canada and The Incelosphere: Exposing pathways into incel communities and the harms they pose to women and children
Circle of Courage
A deeper exploration of the manosphere uncovers the increasing links between aggrieved entitlement, online radicalization and masculinity. So it’s not just that online spaces can be toxic, it’s that these subcultures intentionally and viciously leverage the pain of boys and young men, they translate it into anger, and they aim it, with a finger on the not so proverbial trigger, at the marginalized communities who are most vulnerable to extremist violence.
How do we respond to this? A relevant way of thinking about boys’ development is the Circle of Courage model, which proposes four core needs: belonging, independence, mastery and generosity. Many boys who are exposed to radicalization may be looking—and finding—a sense of belonging, but we have to recognize that these spaces disconnect them from generosity (“purpose and positive impact on others”). An eye on boys’ core needs may help us get to the roots of male-led violence.
If this caught your interest…
Learn more about self-awareness and trauma in Anthony’s blog post, Understanding the Window of Tolerance and How it Affects You, or track down a copy of Dan Siegel’s seminal book, The Developing Mind
Read Kym Brown’s article, Understanding the Circle of Courage
Watch the short film Safety
Transformative Conversations
There is a critical difference between reacting and responding. As Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness put it: “Responding, a spin off from the word responsibility, is considerate and deliberate. Reacting, on the other hand, literally means to meet one action with another one.”
Debriefing is an art that in a lot of ways relies on feeling and intuition. At the same time, however, there is a science and a structure to it. Rolfe’s model of reflection and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle both provide the foundation for Partners For Youth Empowerment’s model of a transformative conversation.
The first step is to acknowledge the behaviours. What did the youth do? From there, you can explore the underlying values and beliefs that motivated those behaviours. Why did you do what you did? Building honesty into this conversation means that you can authentically explore the benefits and costs of those values and beliefs. If the costs outweigh the benefits, then you can answer the crux of the conversation: What values can we turn to instead? And what will it actually look like to put that into practice?
If this caught your interest:
Listen to Louis’ story in the Breaking the Boy Code podcast, starting with the episode New School, New Friends
Keep your eye out for Partners for Youth Empowerment’s creative facilitation trainings
Check out Bold Voices’ toolkit, How to Talk to Young People About Andrew Tate