Whose Adolescence?
Above - My article, as published in the 'Herald Sun' on Friday March 28th, 2025.
Over the past weeks, audiences have been glued to the four-part Netflix series, Adolescence, and its gripping story about a 13-year-old working-class English boy who stabs a girl to death. In the aftermath, there’s been a torrent of opinions on social media about the lessons to be taken from the series and its documentation of society’s apparent descent into violence. Few of the keyboard warriors seemed to be aware that there are on average less than 5 killings a year in the UK by children under 14 years of age.Given the worldwide war on women - a war that claims one woman every three days in the UK - I’m left wondering why writers Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham chose 13-year-old, Jamie, to be their killer ‘man’. This question wasn’t on the lips of the online theorists heaping praise on the writers, the gritty social realism that underpinned the storytelling, and the questions the series raised about the social media’s role in producing a 13-year-old murderer.
That Adolescence went so far as to portray misogynist podcaster Andrew Tate as a major threat to the relationship between boys and girls only won more praise from viewers. Adolescence does raise some serious questions about men and violence. Was 13-year-old Jamie a casual victim of a father who considered macho activities like boxing and football more important than books and sensitive fatherly guidance? Was Jamie’s rough around the edges, clumsy father blind to the social media’s place in his son’s progress through life?
Nevertheless, even if the answer is yes, does anyone genuinely believe the father’s failings would be sufficient to turn his son, and any other boy for that matter into a woman hater and a killer? If not, is it really Andrew Tate who must take the blame. Is Tate’s propaganda so beguiling that all a girl has to do is say ‘I’m not interested in you’ to transform a 13-year-old suitor into a woman killer?
The irony here is that virtually every adult woman who dies at the hands of a man known to her is ‘murdered’ because, like 13-year-old Katie, she has said ‘no’ to a relationship with her killer. Ending a relationship is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. As a long time campaigner against men’s violence, I find some of Adolescence’s offerings highly problematic. By transferring key elements of the misogyny that drives adult ‘woman killers’ to a 13-year-old boy and the rarest of events, have the writers enhanced society’s understanding of violence against women, or compromised it? The commentary on social media, where most ‘theorists’ seem wedded to the belief that such killings are a common event, leaves me believing the series has simply reinforced the same old misunderstandings about men’s violence. Researching the killing of women after the murder of my sister Vicki in 1987 left me in no doubt as to the complicity of the society in the violence stalking women. There was no internet or Andrew Tate when a newspaper ran the headline ‘Love pulls Trigger’ above the story of a man who’d shot a woman – his former partner – in front of her two children in 1987. ‘Despair prompts killing’ hardly captured the horror of a father murdering his ex-wife’s two young children in a house fire. Nor did ‘Dream Marriage Ends in Death’ and ‘Death on a Sunday Morning’ have readers thinking a woman had been strangled to death. The misogynist narrative of the 1980s didn’t need Andrew Tate’s inflammatory words. The newspaper headline in February 1989, ‘Kill case man’s love plea’, in the aftermath of the unsworn evidence of the man who attacked and murdered our sister outside her place of work was just more of the same. These were the days when juries - without access to online misogynist warriors - were punishing dead women with obscene not guilty verdicts that transformed killer men into victims and women into provocateurs. The verdicts and the pillorying of women in the media blithely rolled on without a word of dissent from politicians, law makers and media moguls until we campaigners stormed the patriarchal barricades. Given the history of the killing of women, and the victim blaming that has, and too often continues to sanitise the killings, we do need to be asking questions about why men kill. The problem with Adolescence is that it doesn’t ask those questions and seems oblivious to the fact that the killing of a 13-year-old girl by a boy her age is as rare as hen’s teeth. What’s more common is the abuse, sexual assault and killing of girls this age by older men, some of whom are their fathers. Rather than a torrent of theorising on social media about the rarest form of ‘woman killing’, we need to be talking about men’s violence against women and institutional and social complicity in it. The closest Adolescence gets to asking such questions is in the harrowing scene in which a psychologist interviews Jamie. What emerges is the haunting proposition that, like every other woman killer, young Jamie took Katie’s life because she didn’t want to be with him. In his words she was a ‘bullying bitch’, who’d ‘cruelly’ disparaged him. Although the psychologist talked to the boy about murder, she never asked him whether he knew that every year in the UK around 120 women were killed for the same reasons, he’d killed, or as he said, ‘should have killed’ Katie. Nor did the psychologist ask the boy whether he’d heard of the #MeToo movement or believed girls should have the same rights as boys. Given his mental agility in the interview, he was more than capable of answering such questions. So, while pondering whether Adolescence is the Netflix classic everyone should be watching, I’d suggest we lobby for a version of the series in which the killer is an estranged husband. Given the UK Prime Minister wants Adolescence shown in schools, maybe his Labour government could fund such a series and tell us why Jamie’s parents, and his sister, were depicted as victims, while the dead girl’s parents weren’t seen or heard from. Was the real victim the 13-year-old killer?
That Adolescence went so far as to portray misogynist podcaster Andrew Tate as a major threat to the relationship between boys and girls only won more praise from viewers. Adolescence does raise some serious questions about men and violence. Was 13-year-old Jamie a casual victim of a father who considered macho activities like boxing and football more important than books and sensitive fatherly guidance? Was Jamie’s rough around the edges, clumsy father blind to the social media’s place in his son’s progress through life?
Nevertheless, even if the answer is yes, does anyone genuinely believe the father’s failings would be sufficient to turn his son, and any other boy for that matter into a woman hater and a killer? If not, is it really Andrew Tate who must take the blame. Is Tate’s propaganda so beguiling that all a girl has to do is say ‘I’m not interested in you’ to transform a 13-year-old suitor into a woman killer?
The irony here is that virtually every adult woman who dies at the hands of a man known to her is ‘murdered’ because, like 13-year-old Katie, she has said ‘no’ to a relationship with her killer. Ending a relationship is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. As a long time campaigner against men’s violence, I find some of Adolescence’s offerings highly problematic. By transferring key elements of the misogyny that drives adult ‘woman killers’ to a 13-year-old boy and the rarest of events, have the writers enhanced society’s understanding of violence against women, or compromised it? The commentary on social media, where most ‘theorists’ seem wedded to the belief that such killings are a common event, leaves me believing the series has simply reinforced the same old misunderstandings about men’s violence. Researching the killing of women after the murder of my sister Vicki in 1987 left me in no doubt as to the complicity of the society in the violence stalking women. There was no internet or Andrew Tate when a newspaper ran the headline ‘Love pulls Trigger’ above the story of a man who’d shot a woman – his former partner – in front of her two children in 1987. ‘Despair prompts killing’ hardly captured the horror of a father murdering his ex-wife’s two young children in a house fire. Nor did ‘Dream Marriage Ends in Death’ and ‘Death on a Sunday Morning’ have readers thinking a woman had been strangled to death. The misogynist narrative of the 1980s didn’t need Andrew Tate’s inflammatory words. The newspaper headline in February 1989, ‘Kill case man’s love plea’, in the aftermath of the unsworn evidence of the man who attacked and murdered our sister outside her place of work was just more of the same. These were the days when juries - without access to online misogynist warriors - were punishing dead women with obscene not guilty verdicts that transformed killer men into victims and women into provocateurs. The verdicts and the pillorying of women in the media blithely rolled on without a word of dissent from politicians, law makers and media moguls until we campaigners stormed the patriarchal barricades. Given the history of the killing of women, and the victim blaming that has, and too often continues to sanitise the killings, we do need to be asking questions about why men kill. The problem with Adolescence is that it doesn’t ask those questions and seems oblivious to the fact that the killing of a 13-year-old girl by a boy her age is as rare as hen’s teeth. What’s more common is the abuse, sexual assault and killing of girls this age by older men, some of whom are their fathers. Rather than a torrent of theorising on social media about the rarest form of ‘woman killing’, we need to be talking about men’s violence against women and institutional and social complicity in it. The closest Adolescence gets to asking such questions is in the harrowing scene in which a psychologist interviews Jamie. What emerges is the haunting proposition that, like every other woman killer, young Jamie took Katie’s life because she didn’t want to be with him. In his words she was a ‘bullying bitch’, who’d ‘cruelly’ disparaged him. Although the psychologist talked to the boy about murder, she never asked him whether he knew that every year in the UK around 120 women were killed for the same reasons, he’d killed, or as he said, ‘should have killed’ Katie. Nor did the psychologist ask the boy whether he’d heard of the #MeToo movement or believed girls should have the same rights as boys. Given his mental agility in the interview, he was more than capable of answering such questions. So, while pondering whether Adolescence is the Netflix classic everyone should be watching, I’d suggest we lobby for a version of the series in which the killer is an estranged husband. Given the UK Prime Minister wants Adolescence shown in schools, maybe his Labour government could fund such a series and tell us why Jamie’s parents, and his sister, were depicted as victims, while the dead girl’s parents weren’t seen or heard from. Was the real victim the 13-year-old killer?
Vicki Cleary 2025 - End Men’s Violence Against Women – Day
The annual Vicki Cleary Day match will take place on Sunday 4 May 2025 at the Coburg football ground. If you want to stand in solidarity with women in the campaign to end violence against women, please join me for the moment’s silence at 12.45 when we remember Vicki Cleary and all the women taken by violent men. The football match, between Coburg and Carlton, starts at 1.05 pm.
https://www.vickiclearyday.com.au