Note added 12/4/25: I have considerably expanded this post from the original version.

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The Netflix series “Adolescence” was irresponsible in promoting a distorted perspective on knife crime in the UK. In every respect the series was grossly misleading as regards the empirical evidence on knife crime. The creators were Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and it was directed by Philip Barantini. It centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested after the murder of a girl in his school. Graham plays his father in the production.

The production companies behind Adolescence were Plan B Entertainment, Warp Films and Matriarch Productions. Plan B Entertainment is Brad Pitt’s production company, founded in 2001 by a team including Jennifer Aniston. Brad Pitt is reported to be in discussion with the film makers over producing a second series. I dread to think where that might take us.

The principal character, Jamie, was a white boy who was doing well at school and had not been in trouble with the police previously. He was from a stable two-parent family, living in a decent neighbourhood. The parents were portrayed as an average, decent, working-class couple with the father in regular self-employment as a plumber. There was no indication that Jamie was other than well-adjusted, with no sign of mental ill-health. He appears to have had a reasonably good relationship with his parents and sister. In short, the killing came from the least expected quarter. Indeed, this is probably the cause of the hysterical reaction to the drama. If this lad could suddenly become a killer, it could be your son next. This is why its so pernicious.

UK official stats tell us little or nothing about offenders in knife crime cases, and nothing at all about whether the offenders against female victims tend to be male or female.

Care must be taken when interpreting knife crime statistics because merely carrying a non-folding knife or a knife with a blade longer than 3 inches is a crime, and most of the knife crime statistics will not distinguish between carrying a knife and using it to stab someone. The majority of knife crimes do not involve the knife having been used.

Further care must be taken when interpreting knife crime because the statistics generally refer to “non-domestic” knife crime, i.e., excluding domestic stabbings within the home. That is rather important because female perpetrators typically account for a larger proportion of homicidal stabbings within the home than they do outside the home (though generally the minority in both cases). Moreover, female perpetrators of domestic homicide are far more likely than male perpetrators of domestic homicide to use a knife (see Brown et al (2022) and references therein).

Let me emphasize that the rest of this article, and the data quoted herein, refers to non-domestic knife crime only, but it should not be forgotten that this is only half the story.

In the first Appendix, below, I include what stats I could find, the key points being as follows. 

About 8.7% of stabbing victims are female, about 13.1% of knife crime offenders are female. Like other forms of non-domestic violence, knife crime tends to be male-on-male.

Non-whites are about 5 times more likely to be knife crime offenders than whites (though whites account for most knife crimes due to weight of numbers). Non-whites are also more likely to the victims of knife crime, by a similar factor.

Only about 4.5% of knife crime victims are under 16, so the story of “Adolescence” which associates this age range with the problem is misleading. 

In short: white male adolescent offender and young white female victim is the least common combination in knife crime. The probability of the plot of Adolescence diminishes rapidly still further when the personal and familial characteristics of Jamie are taken into account.

Of course, there are individual cases of males stabbing young girls, that of Rudakubana being the most nasty recent example.

But I’ve not seen anything to link “the manosphere” to knife crime, this being arguably one of the propaganda targets of Adolescence. Rudakubana was arguably influenced by online sites, but Islamist in nature, not the “manosphere”.

My initial suspicion, before watching the series, was that the motivation behind this rather nasty series was to propagandize the UK public into support for even more draconian censorship laws – with “the manosphere” being particularly targeted. The recent Online Safety Act was not draconian enough for many of the usual suspects. However, after watching the series I see that “the manosphere” theme was not presented very forcibly and was only one of several potential motivations for the killing. Another theme was the father’s explosive temper, which the scene with the female psychologist revealed was shared by the boy, Jamie. But that is actually even worse because it centres Jamie’s motivation on masculinity itself, the same narrative that has been poisoning our culture for decades. Either way it can only be seen de facto as the blackest propaganda, whatever the writers intended.

Lamentably, the public lapped up Adolescence and have fallen 100% for the propaganda. One despairs.

Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, in a revealing Freudian slip, referred to the series in Parliament as “a documentary”. Consistent with that false perspective he has concluded that there must be a need to tackle the “emerging and growing problem” raised by the drama. That its narrative aligns with the ideological prejudices of the Labour Party is rather convenient. Starmer has even hosted a meeting with the film makers in Downing Street. At his suggestion, the series has been made free to all secondary schools….as if it were a public service broadcast.

No, it is a deeply divisive public disservice broadcast.

Whatever the writers intended, the controllers of the popular narrative are insisting that the drama shines a light on the corrosive impact of social media and misogynist influencers on teenage boys. Some even claim that it motivates a need for a reform of parenting or a reform of schools. All this is based on a fictional story which is wildly empirically unlikely to the point that – as far as I have yet seen – no one has identified a single case quite like it, and certainly not one motivated by “the manosphere”.

As far as I am aware, the film makers have only suggested one case might be similar to that depicted in the drama, the stabbing to death of Brianna Ghey. Why have none of the sources which refer to this case not mentioned that Ghey was killed by two people, one of whom was a girl: Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe. The judge, Mrs Justice Yip, said in her summing up that Scarlett Jenkinson had a fantasy to kill, that she had lured Brianna to the park, and that it was acknowledged that Scarlett Jenkinson had been the driving force behind the plan to kill Ghey. And yet this case is being quoted as motivating Adolescence and the resulting hysterical targeting of the “manosphere” and/or masculinity itself – motivating, that is, a fictional character in a fictional and grossly atypical scenario.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, whilst the country has been obsessing over this dramatic misdirection there was a very disturbing event at Elm Park School in east London on 22 March 2025. This was an attack on a private 16th birthday party by a gang of 50 youths, high on nitrous oxide, who were wielding knives and at least one machete. Reports do not specify the ethnicity, but here is a video. Two males, aged 16 and 19, were stabbed and rushed to hospital.12 people were arrested and the police are looking for more.

The nearest real case to that of Adolescence that I’ve found was the stabbing to death of 15 year old Holly Newton by her ex-boyfriend Logan MacPhail, then 16. Another boy intervened and pulled MacPhail away but was himself badly injured. MacPhail is reported to be of low intelligence, autistic and with a speech impediment. He had a history of self-harming with a knife, had previously taken an overdose and on another occasion had been “found on a bridge”. He was apparently from a violent home in which the social services were involved. So, not really very like Adolescence, then.

The deeply pernicious aspect of Adolescence is that it creates a worry in parents that their son, despite perhaps being apparently a paragon of good behaviour, could be turned into a murderous monster at any moment by the influence of the “manosphere”, or perhaps just due to his intrinsically toxic masculinity. That there is no evidence for any of this is not the message being promoted, and the usual culprits are enthusiastically whipping up the hysteria aided and abetted by senior politicians and (real) influencers. Could there perhaps be ideological or political motives behind this reaction, irrespective of the film makers intentions?

What this reaction to the drama implies is a willingness to further partisan (and corrosive) sociopolitical objectives by burdening every boy in our society with a guilt he does not deserve. It is obscene.

Interestingly, that “Adolescence” is anti-male propaganda is evident even to AI engines. Tom Golden has already blogged on this. We have rerun chatGPT ourselves, and also Grok-3. The results are fascinating and spot-on so I attach them in the second Appendix. 

I conclude that the public are distressingly gullible but that the AI engines are not. AI emerges with credit, in this case at least, but only rotten tomatoes for the public.

Appendix A: Some Knife Crime Stats (England & Wales)

Fatal Stabbings

From “Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2024 – Appendix Tables”

Victims by Age & Sex (from Table 11)

Victims by Ethnicity

NB: The data below are not only for deaths by stabbings but all homicides…

Table 7b: Average rates per million population of currently recorded homicide offences by victim’s ethnic appearance, combined ONS Census categories
Ethnic appearance of victim	Apr 2021 to Mar 2024
White	8.5
Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African	39.8
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh	12.5
Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups	8.9
Other ethnic group	8.9

The rates per million are substantially larger for non-whites than for whites. But the absolute numbers of cases are far larger for whites than for non-whites.

ONS sources do not give offender characteristics, but evidence below is that the higher victimisation rates for non-whites relates to comparably higher offender rates for non-whites, i.e., they are due to black-on-black offences.

Non-Fatal Stabbings by Sex

Disaggregation of knife crime stats by sex or ethnicity are hard to find. However, House of Commons report ‘Knife crime statistics: England and Wales’, Grahame Allen & Helen Wong, 27 January 2025, gives the following table based on NHS admissions/discharge data,

Female victims overall account for only 8.7% of all victims of knife attacks recorded in these medical data. Moreover, only 4.5% of knife attack victims are under 16.

Offender Characteristics

ONS data tells us nothing about offender characteristics for knife crime. For this I use the 2020 study,  

“Victims, offenders and victim-offender overlaps of knife crime: A social network analysis approach using police records” by Laura Bailey, Vincent Harinam and Barak ArielI’

This was based on one police force (Thames Valley) only, which covers a total population of 2.34 million. The study concentrated on non-domestic knife crimes. Knife crime accounted for 2.2% of all non-domestic crime.

Sex

13.1% of knife crime offenders were female, a total of 945 female offenders in the four-year study period.

Ethnicity

Were offender ethnicity was recorded…

• 10.9% of offenders were Asian (not including Chinese / SE Asian)
• 20.0% of offenders were black
• 0.7% of offenders were other non-white ethnicities
• 68.4% of offenders were white

Hence 31.6% of offenders were non-white compared to the total population which is only 8% non-white. Per capita, therefore, non-whites are 5 times more likely to be knife crime offenders.

Age

• 14.1% of offenders were under 16
• 35.7% of offenders were aged 16 – 24
• 23.6% of offenders were aged 25- 34

Relationship to Other Criminal Behaviour

• 81% of offenders and 92.2% of victims were found to be unaffiliated with any organised crime groups.
• Most victims are generally not involved in crime of any sort; nevertheless, victims are more likely to have a criminal record than the general public.
• The majority of offenders were known to the police from prior offences (74.2%).
• The study did not address “radicalisation by the manosphere” which appears to play no part in these expert authors’ opinions.

I now turn to a brief summary of the findings of other studies of knife crime in the UK.

Vinnacota et al (2022) “Exploring UK Knife crime and its associated factors: A content analysis of online
newspapers”. From Table 1, the causes of the knife crime as a percentage of cases where this was known,

• Family issues 9.4%
• Relationship issues 6.0%
• Mental health issues 6.5%
• Robbery 7.2%
• Fights/gang attacks 18.4%
• Street violence 28.3%
• Substance misuse related 2.1%
• Unprovoked  5.9%
• Others 16.2%

Browne et al (2022) “Knife crime offender characteristics and interventions – A systematic review”. Quotes, with sources given in the original,

• “Gender – with males being more likely to use knives against strangers and in community settings, while females were more likely to use knifes against family members and partners in domestic settings”
• Victimhood – with victims of crime and violence being more likely to engage in knife crime;
• Substance Misuse – both substance use disorder and general drug use were linked to increased risk of knife crime;
• Mental Health difficulties – Mental health issues such as psychotic disorders, anxious disorders, low self-esteem and self-harm were linked to an increased likelihood of knife crime involvement.

Eades et al (2007) “‘Knife Crime: A review of evidence and policy”

The percentage of respondents who had carried an illegal knife in the previous 12 months was 1.56% (39% of 4%). 7% of those that carried a knife had used it to threaten someone, and 2% of those that carried a knife has used it to injure someone.

The majority of those who said they had carried a knife stated that that they did so only rarely. Half had carried a knife ‘once or twice’ in the preceding 12 months, 23% said they had carried one ‘three or four times’ and only 16% said they had carried a knife ‘ten times or more’. 85% of those who had carried a knife said the main reason for doing so was for protection. Fear and victimisation play the most significant role in a young person’s decision to carry a knife or weapon.

• People living in poor neighbourhoods stand a far greater chance of finding themselves at the wrong end of a knife;
• The unemployed have a violence victimisation rate more than double the national average;
• Those living in ‘hard pressed’ areas are over twice as likely to be victims of violence than those in wealthier areas.
• For 10 to 25 year olds, the characteristics of those at higher risk of being frequently victimised included being part of households that had difficulties managing on their income and living in areas experiencing disorder problems;
• For homicides by any method, both offenders and victims tend to come from lower socio-economic groups.
• Figures for the decade to 2006 reveal that each year, on average, 12% of homicide victims by sharp instrument have been black – around five times over-represented against population estimates. Asians occupy a similar position, accounting for each year, on average, 7% of victims.

Appendix B: AI Critiques of “Adolescence”

ChatGPT

**Adolescence and the Framing of Masculinity: A Critical Response**

Netflix’s limited series *Adolescence* has generated considerable debate, not only for its dramatic premise—a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a classmate—but for what some see as its underlying ideological message. The show attributes the boy’s descent into violence to his exposure to the “manosphere,” a loosely defined constellation of male-oriented online spaces. While it is legitimate to explore the dangers of online radicalisation, *Adolescence* goes beyond cautionary storytelling and veers into ideological territory. Through selective framing, a contrived premise, and an unrelentingly negative depiction of male identity, the series can reasonably be interpreted as anti-male propaganda.

**An Implausible Premise**

The central narrative arc—that a teenage boy could be radicalised to commit murder solely through engagement with male-focused online content—is highly speculative and lacks real-world precedent. While the influence of extremist content is a genuine concern, particularly in relation to terrorism and hate crimes, there is no known instance in the UK of a child murdering a peer as a direct result of manosphere involvement. Youth violence in Britain is more commonly linked to gang activity, drug disputes, or local conflicts. *Adolescence* thus manufactures a highly specific moral panic, attributing lethal behaviour to ideological exposure in a way that feels contrived and unmoored from actual patterns of violence.

**Flattening a Complex Terrain**

The manosphere is a diverse and fragmented ecosystem, encompassing everything from fitness advice and career motivation to fringe ideologies. By presenting it as a monolithic pipeline to misogyny and violence, *Adolescence* erases the complexities of why young men are drawn to these spaces in the first place. Many feel dislocated or unrepresented in mainstream discourse, and turn to these communities in search of belonging, answers, or guidance. Rather than engaging with that reality, the series opts to depict the entire landscape as toxic—a digital breeding ground for future predators.

**Pathologising Masculinity**

This reductive lens forms part of a wider trend in media: the pathologisation of masculinity itself. Male characters, especially young boys, are often framed not as individuals facing difficulty or disconnection, but as latent threats. In *Adolescence*, the protagonist is shown to be passive, suggestible, and incapable of agency outside his online consumption. The implication is clear: when boys suffer or lash out, the cause lies within masculinity itself—not in social conditions, institutional failings, or broader cultural neglect.

Moreover, the show offers no real counterbalance. There are no healthy male role models, no depiction of positive masculine values, and no genuine attempt to examine the causes of the protagonist’s alienation. Instead, masculinity is presented as something to be feared and corrected. In contrast, female characters are cast predominantly as victims—well-meaning, blameless, and reactive. The result is a moral binary that oversimplifies complex human experiences and undermines the viewer’s ability to empathise with the boy’s situation.

**From Critique to Condemnation**

The issue is not that *Adolescence* critiques extremism; it is that it collapses all male-oriented spaces into a single narrative of threat. This is both intellectually dishonest and socially counterproductive. A more responsible series might have distinguished between self-help communities and incel forums, or shown how some young men find genuine support and connection in these circles. Instead, *Adolescence* treats all male spaces as suspect, contributing to an atmosphere of moral panic and reinforcing suspicion toward any form of male solidarity or expression.

**A Cultural Symptom**

This portrayal is not unique to *Adolescence*. It reflects a broader cultural pattern in which masculinity is routinely depicted as problematic or dangerous. While public discourse readily engages with issues like “toxic masculinity,” it pays comparatively little attention to male suicide, underachievement in education, declining mental health, or the absence of male role models. In such a context, narratives like *Adolescence* do more than entertain—they reinforce damaging assumptions and deepen social divides.

**Real-World Impact**

Cultural narratives shape perception, which in turn influences policy and practice. When boys are repeatedly portrayed as threats rather than individuals in need of support, schools, institutions, and even families may become less willing to engage with them empathetically. The increasing focus on “male radicalisation”—often without a strong evidentiary basis—has already led to censorship and the stigmatisation of men’s issues. *Adolescence* adds fuel to this fire, contributing to a climate in which young men are treated with suspicion rather than compassion.

**Conclusion**

*Adolescence* positions itself as a timely drama about online danger and youth violence. In practice, however, it delivers a highly ideological narrative—one that casts masculinity in a consistently negative light and fails to engage with the real challenges facing boys today. By flattening complex issues into a simplistic morality tale, the series not only misrepresents its subject matter but risks reinforcing the very sense of alienation it purports to warn against.

If we genuinely care about the welfare of young men, we must move beyond ideological portrayals and engage in serious, nuanced conversations. Until then, dramas like *Adolescence* will continue to offer spectacle in place of substance—and blame in place of understanding.

Grok-3

Netflix’s *Adolescence*, a four-part British miniseries released in March 2025, has garnered significant attention for its unflinching exploration of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Miller, accused of murdering a female classmate. Directed by Philip Barantini and co-created by Stephen Graham (who also stars as Jamie’s father, Eddie) and Jack Thorne, the series employs a striking single-shot technique for each episode, immersing viewers in the raw emotional aftermath of the crime. While lauded for its technical prowess and performances—particularly Owen Cooper’s debut as Jamie—the series’ portrayal of masculinity as a pathology invites critical scrutiny. It frames male identity as inherently fragile, susceptible to corruption, and prone to violence, often leaning on contemporary cultural anxieties rather than offering a nuanced interrogation of gender.

From the outset, *Adolescence* positions masculinity as a volatile force shaped by external pressures, notably the online “manosphere” and figures like Andrew Tate, who is explicitly name-dropped in episode two. Jamie’s descent into violence is tied to his consumption of misogynistic content, which the series suggests preys on his insecurities—his perceived unattractiveness, social isolation, and failure to meet peer-enforced standards of male dominance. This narrative arc implies that masculinity, when left unchecked or exposed to toxic influences, becomes a breeding ground for rage and destruction. The show’s third episode, a standout for its intense two-hander between Jamie and a child psychologist (Erin Doherty), lays bare his internalized beliefs about women as objects to be conquered or punished, a worldview ostensibly absorbed from digital spaces. Here, masculinity is not just flawed but diseased—a condition exacerbated by a lack of adult guidance and societal failure to “correct” i

This portrayal, however, risks oversimplification. By centering Jamie’s actions on his engagement with incel ideology and cyberbullying—symbolized by coded emojis like the dynamite “red pill” on his Instagram—the series reduces complex psychological and social dynamics to a cause-and-effect morality tale. Masculinity is pathologized as a monolithic entity, vulnerable to radicalization, rather than a multifaceted identity shaped by individual agency, upbringing, and broader cultural forces beyond the internet. The show’s focus on Jamie’s “normal” family—loving yet oblivious parents in a typical suburban home—underscores this critique: if even a stable environment can’t prevent such an outcome, the implication is that masculinity itself is inherently predisposed to toxicity, awaiting only the right trigger.

Moreover, *Adolescence* juxtaposes Jamie’s unraveling with the grief of his parents, particularly Eddie, whose quiet devastation (epitomized in the finale’s teddy bear scene) contrasts with his son’s explosive anger. This dichotomy reinforces a binary view of masculinity: the stoic, broken father versus the volatile, corrupted son. While the series avoids overtly vilifying Jamie—casting him as both perpetrator and victim—it rarely explores alternative expressions of male identity that might challenge its central thesis. The female characters, including the murdered Katie and the psychologist, serve primarily as mirrors to reflect male dysfunction, leaving little room for a broader examination of gender dynamics.

Critically, the series’ reliance on the manosphere as the primary villain sidesteps deeper systemic questions. Knife crime, a stated inspiration for the show, is a real issue in the UK, but *Adolescence* filters it through a narrow lens of online radicalization, sidelining factors like economic disparity, mental health, or peer culture outside digital spaces. By framing masculinity as a pathology fueled by social media, the show aligns with a popular narrative that risks demonizing young men rather than understanding them. Its technical brilliance and emotional weight are undeniable, but this portrayal can feel didactic, prioritizing a cautionary tale over a more probing dialogue about what masculinity could be, beyond its potential for harm.

In conclusion, *Adolescence* compellingly dramatizes masculinity as a fragile construct, prone to collapsing into violence under the weight of toxic influences. Yet, its strength as a visceral narrative is tempered by a tendency to pathologize rather than dissect, presenting male identity as a problem to be solved rather than a complexity to be explored. For all its merits, the series might leave viewers questioning whether it illuminates the crisis of modern boyhood or simply amplifies a familiar alarm.