Adolescence and Toxic Masculinity

Jacob Johanssen

30 March 2025

Adolescence is about more than incels and toxic masculinity, it shows the vicissitudes of relationships and the complexities of desire

Netflix’s record-breaking miniseries Adolescence has been praised for its raw and complex portrayal of the consequences of a femicide. The drama’s protagonist, 13-year-old Jamie is accused of murdering his classmate Katie. Shot in one entire take, the series chronicles the consequences of Jamie’s arrest and the impact it has on his family and the local community. The film has introduced the wider public to the manosphere, particularly the incel community, and the toxic content that reaches increasing numbers of boys and men online. However, it would be too superficial to argue that Adolescence is only about misogyny, bullying and the complexities of growing up in an age of ubiquitous smartphones. It is a nuanced and complex account which goes beyond those immediate themes. It confronts viewers with profound and universal questions amid the utter tragedy at its heart: the brutal murder of a girl.

Adolescence is a period in which questions and experience of sexual and gender identity are intensely felt and negotiated by individuals. It designates the phase of fundamental bodily transformation from child to adult. The growth of the genital body is exciting and frightening in equal measure and a new balance between self and other(s) is called for. This period is therefore regularly accompanied by a toing and froing between (internal and external) states of dependence, weakness, fragility and also omnipotence, confidence and the knowledge of being seen and desired, in sexual and non-sexual terms. The individual is faced with existential questions about their identity, desirability and others around them.

The psychoanalytic scholar Vera King has argued that patriarchal societies make a successful and good enough transformation towards adulthood particularly difficult for women, because of impossible demands which girls experience in the home and once they are “grown up” of integrating care for others and independence, love and work, motherhood and other care work, having a job, bodily ideals and norms, “feminine” behaviour and so on. Society provides inadequate means and actually rests on those very inadequacies in order to hold women back at the advantage of men. Creative or healthy means of integrating and negotiating those demands are not absent, but often harder to access or use for women than men. Boys and young men equally face challenges in adolescence. Some are universal to every human being and some unique to those of a particular gender category. While debates around an alleged crisis of masculinity and the usefulness of broad terms like “toxic masculinity” remain ongoing in gender studies and elsewhere, the internet and social media have radically transformed the experiences of adolescence today. A drastic increase and as some argue a normalisation of bullying, misogyny and sexism has been brought about by social media, the manosphere and particular “manfluencers” who reach hundreds of thousands of users as they spread their hatred of women. As the series alludes to, the incel community is a particular subculture within the manosphere which Jamie had some contact with but, in his words “didn’t like”. He exploded in violent rage after being called an incel by Katie on Instagram who he had unsuccessfully asked out on a date.

Featuring stellar performances by the cast, the series also needs to be applauded for the nuance and complexity with which it portrays the themes. It does not fall into the trap of sensationalist and superficial portrayal of incel culture where incels are often portrayed as terrorists or psychopaths and are securitized in media and scholarly discourses alike. Instead, I would argue, that Adolescence is a psychoanalytic series in every sense. It portrays the vicissitudes of human relationships and touches the viewer with its raw and uncompromising portrayal of trauma and loss. Underneath, it shows a sense of ambiguous empathy and radical humanism. A key question, for me, that runs throughout the four episodes is also central to psychoanalysis: what does the other want? This question is implicitly and explicitly thrown up in a number of scenes and relationships between different characters as they navigate the complexities of life and relationships: DI Bascombe and his son are shown bonding over knowledge he can offer to his father about incel ideology. Katie’s best friend alludes to a complicated relationship with her mother when talking to a teacher. The new teacher, Mr Malik, says to DI Bascombe that he did not really know Jamie and that kids he teaches “are fucking impossible”. The male officer in Jamie’s youth detention facility puts lots of questions to Jamie’s psychologist and repeatedly gets too close to her. But, above all, the question is frequently asked in disguised form both by the psychologist and by Jamie in Episode 3 as part of Jamie’s assessment.

A desire for belonging and being seen is paramount and formative in adolescence, as young people navigate peer groups, school, family life, bodily changes and relationships. Being 13, Jamie is still relatively young and has the full teenage years ahead of him, but it is at that age when questions of who likes or fancies who and who is in or out of a peer group become crucial. For psychoanalysis, the question “what does the other want (from me)?” is universal and remains constant throughout one’s life. Debbie Ging has written in an excellent article, the kind of masculinity portrayed in Adolescence is complex; it is about questions of violence, but it is also fragile and contradictory. “I think you and everyone else for that matter are far more complex than straightforward questions allow for”, the psychologist says to Jamie. In its complex portrayal of human relationships, the show resists the urge to provide easy answers. In dealing with the social problem of misogyny, we must follow such a path and engage in difficult conversations with boys and men and everyone from a young age.

The show vividly portrays the destructiveness of social media, public displays of connections, affections and humiliation. Psychoanalysis teaches us that we can never fully answer the question of what the other wants and what we want from them. In fact, we can never fully understand our own desires, motivations and actions. Rather than seeing this as a limitation or obstacle, it propels humans forward and ideally drives creativity, dialogue, cooperation, care and love. Social media and toxic influencers suggest that men and boys can learn tricks or steps to master themselves and dominate others. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the radical enigma the other presents to us that in healthy relationships leads to a continued sense of curiosity and care for the other. Unlike romantic depictions of love and relationships in mainstream films, it is the acceptance of never fully knowing ourselves and others that can bring a sense of closure and calm to the individual. Those dynamics are again implicitly portrayed in Episode 3 where Jamie and the psychologist repeatedly grapple with the word “understanding” and who is to gain an understanding of whose understanding. This is also brilliantly shown in Jamie’s articulated desire to see the psychologist’s notes, a common desire for any patient in therapy which the therapist of course cannot fulfil. “Can I see your notes? What you've got written down about me?”, Jamie asks. When he is told the final session is over, he gets upset and shouts “Do you like me”? “Don’t you even like me a bit?”, “What did you think about me, then? Decide, come on!” Neither Jamie nor the viewers are informed. There may be an other supposed to know but there is no other who really knows. It is this radical uncertainty that makes the series so important. It leaves viewers uncomfortable and unknowing.

The final episode portrays a radical humanism that Freud or Lacan could have similarly articulated. “Jamie's ours. Isn't he?”, his sister asks her parents as they are coming to terms with his decision to plead guilty. The boys and men of the manosphere are ours too. However difficult that may be, it must be the starting point for fighting misogyny and other forms of hatred.

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Jacob Johanssen is Associate Professor in Communications at St Mary's University, and researches how individuals are (un)consciously shaped by and in turn shape digital media. He is author of Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition, among other books.