Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
In what kind of reality are you living? Manosphere-dimension?
Men are btw not failing at university at all. The number of men successfully attending higher education continued to grow over the last centuries and it still does, with no significant change in rate.
It’s just that women’s successful attendance grows at a faster rate in the last ~10 years. And the reason isn’t that you have a handful of programs teaching girls for a few days “how to code”. It’s that there are simply more women who believe that higher education is worth it.
More of them decide to go to university lately. If you want men to also decide more often that higher education is worth it, instead of blaming feminism, you should encourage that more boys and men turn their backs on the idea that it’s unmanly to do your homework and learn.