The Boys are NOT Alright
I just finished watching a series on Netflix called Adolescence. If this is on your list, move it to the top and read this after you finish. If you’re not planning to watch it, here is a quick synopsis. The series opens with Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, being arrested in his parents’ home. He is taken to the police station and booked on suspicion of murdering a female classmate with a knife the night before which he insists he did not do. In fact, what he repeats over and over is the phrase “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Upon the first meeting with his assigned lawyer, a tape is introduced with CCTV footage of Jamie indeed stabbing a young girl named Katie in a parking lot and running off. His father watches in horror. What follows in subsequent episodes is a visit to his school by the detectives investigating the case, a psych evaluation by a female therapist, and a day in the life of his family trying to cope with their son’s (and their) soiled reputation in a small town.
Brilliant acting aside, the portrayal of this young boy and his disassociation from what he has done left me feeling something all women have felt many times. Yet this feels like a growing problem with no end in sight. Not only is the fragility of masculinity so apparent, but the complete inability to see the destruction left in its wake. After discussing the incident with Jamie, his therapist is left in disbelief that a boy so young could be so angry, manipulative and have no regard for human life. This girl was not a person to him, she was an object of desire. We learn more about the events leading up to Katie’s murder in an attempt to extract a proper motive.
The objectification of this young girl had reached a crescendo month prior, when a topless photo circulated the school via another male classmate’s snapchat. Her social stock plummeted when it was concluded that she is flat chested. Assuming her vulnerability in this humiliation, Jamie made his move, asking her to a dance. She refused his advances and paid the ultimate price.
There was a halfhearted attempt to prove that Katie was bullying Jamie via cryptic emoji comments on Instagram, none of which warranted violence, much less MURDER. Not that murder is ever warranted, but you know what I mean.
This show, and many other thought-provoking pieces of cinema (think It Ends with Us and Promising Young Woman) have an eerily similar message, and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. They demonstrate what women have known for years and have not quite been able to put into words. That is why art is so important. It is an expose of our lived experience.
I do not believe I can fully incapsulate the nuances of this modern gender dynamic, but I will sure try. I’ll start with an anecdote that I shared with my last husband before we met in person for the first time: on a first date a man’s worst fear is being rejected, a woman’s is being killed. In fact, I would say that the woman’s fear is being killed for rejecting the man.
We live in an age where any unpleasant feelings have become intolerable. Why? Because our nervous systems are jacked, our attention spans have dwindled, and we have a constant supply of dopamine at our fingertips. We literally can’t handle being human. We medicate, numb and escape in any way we can. What we especially can’t handle is any form of rejection because that requires effort on our part to self soothe. It takes time to move through uncomfortable emotions and we want to feel better RIGHT NOW.
Jamie Miller is an avatar. He is a representation of what has happened to us. The final scene in the series shows his father tearfully pondering where he went wrong. But he isn’t the one who failed Jamie, it’s our collective failing not to evolve into this new paradigm. Until we all start taking radical responsibility for our emotions, incidents like this will keep happening.
Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the men in the highest offices. The fish rots from the head down. According to a CNN report, there were 83 school shootings in the United States in 2024. I don’t believe increasing security or running drills is the solution. Instead of throwing our hands up we need to get to work, and we need to do it NOW. And again, this starts with parents, educators, and guardians of any kind. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and we have not put guardrails in place to help kids manage their nervous systems. They have been bombarded and stretched in all directions since they had a screen placed in their hands.
Women have been on the leading edge of personal development and our spiritual evolution. It’s easy to believe that men are just as involved, but seeing men in leadership positions is only a reflection of society elevating those who are loudest, not the most capable. This too is changing.
I can count on one hand the number of men who have come to see me on their own accord over the last five years. Most of my male clients are there at the insistence of a female partner. They shift around in their seat waiting to get it over with. By enlarge these men are in front of me because their female partners are at their whit’s end. But one Human Design session (as illuminating as it can be) cannot unravel years of the cultural conditioning that makes women feel unappreciated, unseen and unloved by their male counterparts. So, women go further inward.
Women are expanding at an exponential rate. They are becoming increasingly mindful, self-aware and confident. They know their value and they refuse to settle. They want men who will help shoulder the emotional labor of a relationship instead of coasting as they have been. So where does this leave men? They are so woefully behind, and I fear they won’t be able to catch up. The emotional maturity gap is widening as we speak, and instead of looking inward for why women are rejecting them, men deflect blame as has become customary. In the words of Jamie Miller “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Or the one we’ve all heard a million times “but I’m a nice guy.”
This deflection is exactly the problem. The addendum to my previous statement is that men don’t fear rejection as much as they fear being seen as the “bad guy.” They will villainize women for wearing short skirts and drinking too much, long before they take accountability for what they did while the woman was in a compromised state.
This lack of responsibility became abundantly clear to me last summer, when I wrote a blog post about the men in leadership roles in the Human Design community. I was struck by a similar lack of awareness. In the aftermath of that post, I had MANY women reach out to me lamenting “me too.” I received a borage of screen shots, DM’s and even phone calls (and I kept all the receipts). My heart broke because even while writing the post I had no idea how bad things truly were.
Do you know who was silent? THE MEN. Not a single man reached out to me with concern for the experience of women in this space. Instead, they scrambled amongst themselves trying to figure out the names of the people I had alluded to. I even heard a list of suspects was compiled by one of the men I had mentioned. That was a real face-palm moment for me.
Here is what else I learned:
- I was made aware of plans to create Human Design porn (whatever the fuck that means). Not only is this disgusting but a complete betrayal of what this system represents (dignity being at the top of that list).
- I saw screen shots of a prominent male member of the community threatening a woman with violence if she exposed his bad behavior. He denied all accountability for inappropriate advances made on a woman at a conference, because all he did was “touch her shoulder.” Let me make something abundantly clear to any man willing to read this; THAT IS NOT WHAT WE WANT FROM YOU! We want to come to learning spaces feeling safe to move about without ANY type of physical touching or advances. For men in a position of power, this is your primary responsibility.
- I found out many other ways in which women’s bodily autonomy has been compromised at such conferences. I believe SA has probably already taken place (it would be naïve to hope otherwise).
- Financial dominance also became a theme of the women who came forward. Egregious price gauging persists along with a refusal to refund fees when proper value was not provided. Many women experienced gaslighting or being blocked on all platforms for such requests.
- This goes hand in hand with the lack of substance in the teachings that are being offered. And the lack of support women experiences once they have gone through some of these programs.
- Finally, I was made aware that I was classified as a ‘man hater’ by the men in the community long before I published that post. Apparently creating a safe space for women to decondition (The {Be} Hive) warrants a tired label. Now you can add ‘Dyke’ to the end of it. Really makes it sing, don’t you think?
The funny thing is, I don’t hate men. I just believe their time in power is up. We’ve heard enough excuses and deflection. The world is on fire and the men would sooner see it burn than admit they don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all the answers either, but I know that suppressing the feminine is a big part of what got us here.
Women are creative, resilient and nurturing. In our true essence we are the solution to a world in chaos. Unfortunately, the most powerful women I know are on the verge of giving up. ‘What are we even trying to save?’ they whisper to no one in particular. I understand their exhaustion. I feel their pain deeply. Earth feels fucked up beyond repair sometimes. So, here’s a powerful antidote: the truth.
If you don’t think the frequency of hate, anger, and misogyny have seeped into every crevice of our lives, then you aren’t paying attention. And I will say this again since the women did not seem to hear me the first time; we must stop giving men with spotty reputations a platform. It is downright naïve to believe that men who have done or said questionable things won’t become worse when they realize there are no consequences to their actions. Not to mention, dismissing the accusations “because that’s not your experience.”
The most dangerous predators don’t prey on ALL the women they know. After all, it was Harvey Weinstein’s female assistant who stood watch at his hotel while he almost beat a woman to death with a toilet seat. It was Ghislain Maxwell who went fishing for young women for Jeffery Epstein to rape. And it was a group of women who enabled Keith Reniere to run a sex trafficking ring of underage girls because they thought he was “helping them.” If you don’t like these, comparisons, TOO BAD. None of those men would have been able to hold power without the help of a woman. Most of those women reflect on this and realize they had been too conditioned to say no, or too complacent to intervene. That’s why I am trying to shake you awake. Conditioning is not just what your parents taught you or your fucking open centers. It’s the society that’s trained us to be good little girls and not complain. We were told anger wasn’t attractive and that nobody likes a complainer. My hands are trembling with anger as I type these words and for the first time I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. If you could see what I see, you’d be angry too. And scared and confused and horrified.
We can no longer afford to pretend like childhood trauma isn’t affecting us. We can no longer afford to pretend like therapy and medication are effective solutions. And we definitely can’t afford to stick our heads in the sand as our children literally kill each other. WE are the adults and discipline isn’t going to cut it. What we need right now is a gentle touch, a collective softening. If powering through actually worked, it would have worked by now.
Only through compassionate self-inquiry and a collective effort to slow it all down can we begin to breathe again. We must find ways to reconnect with nature regularly. We must ensure that we move energy through our bodies. We must learn techniques to cope with difficult feelings. And we must dedicate time to knowing ourselves so we can cultivate deep self-trust. These must be things we prioritize as adults, because we set the tone for the next generation. Little boys must be taught the meaning of consent and the sanctity of the female body. They must learn to honor the principles of nonviolent communication and understand their roles as protectors. Little boys must understand the power of the divine masculine. Not when they start acting out, by that time it is far too late.
Whether you are a parent or not, this is all that matters now.
You might be asking yourself what makes me such an expert? As a childless woman, what gives me the authority to speak on how people should raise their kids? Because I raise adults who raise kids. And the difference between an adult who knows how to self-regulate and repair after a rift and one who is regularly triggered by their own kids is night and day. This is what is being asked of us now, to model the behavior that we never saw. The consequences of the uninterrupted generational trickle-down trauma is clear and has reached critical mass. Women are on the leading edge, and men it would behoove you to follow.
