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.”
Ah, ok, I was having a hard time imagining how it could be just taken out of context without just being entirely misquoted. I was making the mistake of trying to imagine the author saying that themselves rather than saying it as a hypothetical quote to then criticize. And perhaps it’s even possible the other way, too.
I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate. At times, I haven’t been too sure what any given “ism” most generally means when different people might misunderstand or even deliberately skew the meaning, and, at least for me, this helped me see a really good example of how that’s done in the context of misrepresenting feminism, in particular. Even without referencing an original source, it’s helpful to see examples to learn how to recognize that when it does happen.