Sherman Criner is the co-founder and co-editor in chief of The Lemur and a third-year undergraduate student majoring in History and Public Policy. He is interested in political history, theology, and classical ethics.
For those who have not yet been transfixed (or perhaps spiritually drained) by Netflix’s latest exercise in cultural finger-wagging, let this be your spoiler warning. Adolescence is not another one of those small town, gripping British murder mysteries that your parents pay an extra fee to watch on Brit Box (is this not a common experience?). It is, unsurprisingly, a lesson in secular “morality.” And like all good progressive morality tales, it begins with a plainly evil act and ends with a sermon—not on evil, not on sin, but on the dangers of unchecked masculinity and the lurking specter of the online “manosphere.”
In the opening moments, we learn that a young schoolgirl has been murdered. There is no mystery about who did it. The killer is Jamie, her classmate—a pale, normal boy with empty eyes and, we are told through heavy-handed flashbacks and whispered parental fears, a browser history littered with clips of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and other digital horsemen of the masculinity apocalypse.
But this is not a whodunnit. The audience is left to wonder what drove this unassuming boy to carry out such a heinous act. And the answer, if you trust the showrunners, is simple: the internet did it. Or, more precisely, the murky bog of “toxic masculinity” that festers online, whispering sweet nothings about stoicism, leadership, physical strength, and male dominance over women.
Yes, according to Adolescence, it’s not that Jamie came from a broken home, a far more realistic setting. Not that he lacked moral formation. Not that he had been raised in a society that derides men as either predators or bumbling Peter Griffinesque buffoons. No, the true villain is the nebulous, amorphous, fabricated “manosphere.”
Now, before addressing the showrunner’s vacuous narrative, let me be clear: the manosphere—such as it is—does offer a kind of appeal that any reasonable person ought to reckon with. Young men are being radicalized not because they are inherently violent but because they are desperate for guidance. They hunger for formation, direction, and a vision of manhood that doesn’t require them to apologize for their mere existence. And in a world that now equates masculinity with latent violence, who can blame them?
Modern Western culture has no coherent vision of manhood because it has no coherent vision of the human person. I am not talking about the woes of gender ideology and its deconstruction of the plain and obvious nature of the sexes, though they are symptoms of this decline. No, what I am speaking of is the dizzying kaleidoscope of post-truth slop that has metastasized within our culture: identity politics, intersectional victimhood pyramids, and the tired mantra that “the future is female.” And when young men ask, “Where do I fit into this future?” the answer, often enough, is: you don’t. Men are expendable.
This is the society in which Jamie was raised. A world that treats boys as nameless grey faces, masculinity as a default position worthy of no further inquiry, and manhood as the ideological root of historical injustice. There are no scholarships for boys. No affirmative action for underperforming young men. No departments of masculine studies on college campuses. If a boy fails, it is his fault; if he succeeds, he likely did so either because he oppressed someone or because, well, men have it easier.
Now, lest you believe I am mounting a defense of Andrew Tate or the other goons of the manosphere: I assure you, I am not. If ever the term “misogynist” deserved its dictionary definition, it is in reference to Tate, who has said, with no hesitation, “I think my sister is her husband’s property.” He offered this gem in a discussion about whether women in relationships should be allowed to have OnlyFans accounts—his solution being that the man should receive a cut of her earnings. This isn’t masculinity; it’s pimp logic. But to reject Tate is not to reject all critiques of modern gender dynamics. Someone like Jordan Peterson (who has been unfairly lumped in with Tate), for example, may be irritatingly Canadian, but he is not of the same ilk as Tate. His lectures, often meandering, urge young men to shoulder responsibility, not to subjugate women.
But, returning to the point at hand, our boys are alienated. Of course they are. Yet, blaming this violence on the internet is a convenient avoidance of a more pernicious issue. The real problem is not “red-pilled” Twitter feeds—it’s the vacuum left by parents and culture alike. A vacuum where fathers no longer form sons and where secularism offers nothing to take their place.
This void is precisely what Adolescence fails to address. The show ends with a dramatic scene of Jamie’s shell-shocked parents consoling one another in their bedroom as they ask themselves what went wrong. They “did all the right things.” They didn’t beat him. They didn’t push him too hard. They let him “be himself.” And still, somehow, he became a monster.
What the show never dares to say—what no one in the room seems capable of articulating—is that perhaps fickle aspirations for “better parenting” are not enough. That children need formation and guidance, not permission to do whatever they want. When a child asks for chocolate cake at every meal, they need the parent to feed them broccoli and chicken (or something else with some nutritional value), not more chocolate cake. In other words, what Jamie lacked wasn’t simply parental oversight. It was moral formation. And what his parents lacked was not compassion—but conviction.
Herein lies the root of this crisis, which secularism has thrust upon us: the evacuation of Christian ethics from the public square and the family home. For centuries, Western civilization—however imperfectly—held to a Christian understanding of the human person that saw manhood not as domination but as stewardship. Men ought to be judged for their moral character and adherence to God’s commandments, not their earthly possessions or physical strength. Or, as Augustine of Hippo claimed in City of God, “A good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave.” Christ, not Caesar, was the model of the ideal man: a servant, a protector, a truth-teller, a sufferer, and, in honor of Holy Week, a liberator who humbly rode in upon a donkey.
This idea formed generations of men to see their strength as a liberating gift to be wielded for the good of themselves and others. It taught fathers to lead with humility, husbands to love with constancy, and boys to become men through discipline, virtue, and faith. Importantly, it also taught women to expect more from the men around them—not less.
But that ethic has been gutted. Christianity has been pushed to the margins—first out of the schools, then out of the home (although it may be rebounding), and now out of the very soul of our culture. The West is, in no uncertain terms, Apostate Christendom. In its place, we’ve erected a therapeutic, secular religion built on self-esteem and validation. There is no such thing as “goodness” or “righteousness” or truth in this world because how could there be? The individual dictates reality. As Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Goodness is whatever you want it to be. And who are you, as a parent, to tell your child that their “truth” is invalid? You are not them. You cannot possibly know what is good for them. Instead, you should be the “chill” parent who shares a beer with your twelve-year-old to seem “cool.”
And we wonder why our boys are lost.
The solution to the masculinity crisis isn’t censorship of Andrew Tate and his gang of thugs. It’s not another PSA about “toxic men”—a phrase rendered meaningless in a world without a standard for what is good. The answer is the restoration of a Christian male ethic: a vision of manhood that doesn’t deny strength but dignifies it; a parenting model that embraces authority not as domination but as a duty; a moral order where fathers are more than providers—they are strong, compassionate leaders in the complementary union of marriage.
This ethic, like most truths of the Christian tradition, cannot merely be taught—it must be lived. Our leaders must embody these virtues, not force them through legislation upon an unwilling public. They must persuade their constituents with the visible fruit of their lives.
Adolescence sets out to offer a cautionary tale, but in trying to signal virtue, it stumbles onto a deeper truth: strip a culture of its faith, and you strip boys of their fathers, their calling, and their future. We’ve traded the lion for the lamb—but not the Lamb who bore the cross. Just a neutered, docile imitation of manhood: sensitive, passive, agreeable.
If we’re serious about rescuing masculinity from the wreckage, progressive slogans won’t cut it. We need Christ.
By Sherman Criner
