Cnn
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Jamie Miller is extremely disturbed. He is perhaps only a 13-year-old character in a fictitious television program called “adolescence”, but his story provoked a general dismay on the fate of disgruntled men who feel dangerously isolated and alone.
Even if you have not seen the British dramatic series in four games, which quickly became the best program of Netflix streaming in 75 countries, you will probably know that his character is trained in a world of misogyny and hyper-masculinity, radicalized online and arrested for killing a school woman.
The devastating account inspired a societal calculation, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, addressing Parliament with his concerns.
“There is a reason why the debate suddenly sparked life,” said Starmer. “Many people, who work with young people in school or elsewhere, recognize that we can have a problem with the boys and young men we have to approach.”
While parents, teachers and government ministers on a global scale are now trying to fight against the misogynistic crisis which now emotionally paralyzes young people, they will inevitably focus on the plague of toxic masculinity spread by certain male influencers online. The former football manager in England, Gareth Southgate, recently spoke in a BBC conference on “insensitive, manipulative and toxic influencers whose only campaign is for their own gain”.
“They readily encourage young men to believe that success is measured by money or domination, this force means never showing emotion and that the world, including women, is against them,” he said.
But anyone looking for answers should also focus on the environment that has made so many young men vulnerable to be practiced in the first place. The psychologist, author and professor of world renowned organization, John Amaechi, told CNN that he had found that “adolescence” was disturbing, adding that he did not want the fact that he was supposed to feel sympathy for those who are sucked in the Manosphere and are therefore also “victims”.
“The way men behave concerns their choices and their perceptions,” said the former NBA player. “We cannot evolve from this point. Their story of domination is that they are entitled to the body of women and to any work they want, whatever the efforts. ”
In “Adolescence”, Jamie Miller reveals to her psychologist that her experiences with sport have contributed to his vision of the world. He is an artistic and lean character whose gaps as a football player have shame her father, whose peers have ridiculed her son, and Jamie boasts of regularly jumping the physical education course.
Amaechi says he can understand exactly why Jamie would have felt this.
“I hope people recognize that the experience of fear of the sports environment as a young child is not exclusive to fictitious characters,” he said. “There are tons of children who make their day at the moment, which each fiber of their being is:” How can I get out of the PE? ” It’s so toxic to them.
Instead of being a welcoming community of positive strengthening and shared goals, the retirement basketball player who became a psychologist declared that so often sport was the complete opposite.
“He can be armed by people who say that only certain types of people will (sport) if they are large and strong, noisy and extroverted. But if you are something else, if you have not yet crossed puberty, you make fun and abusive.
“I am not surprised that there are many people who think:” I prefer not to, thank you. This is not my idea for a good time. “”
Amaechi himself can relate to this feeling of apprehension. By his own admission, he was an extreme introvert in school, more attracted by the works of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams than for rugby or football. At 6 feet 9 inches high, his bizarre height was either something to ridicule or fear, but at the age of 17, he picked up a basketball ball for the first time, putting him on an improbable trajectory for the NBA. The details of this day are always insane in his mind, because what could have been so easily a traumatic event has become something wonderful.
“I entered and everything in this room stopped,” he recalls the Manchester scene, not far from the place where “adolescence” is defined. “They looked at me, and instead of making fun of me, they caught me by the arm and said to each other:” You are in our team “.”
By telling the story more than three decades later, Amaechi revives him.
“I missed my first blow by about six feet,” he said with a smile, “and a child said:” It’s incredible, it was his first blow and he only missed six feet. “It was the second I realized that I never left this space.
“I looked at the faces of the people of this team, and all that I can see reflected is a legitimate care and a feeling of my own great potential. This is what sport can be at its best. But you and I know that there are children who wonder in a gym like that, and the coaches cannot ridicule. ”
Amaechi: coaches change people’s lives
The fictitious Jamie Miller was clearly traumatized by his experience of sport, which led to his feeling of isolation. Amaechi argues that a positive experience in sport can lead to much more than a healthy lifestyle and a feeling of community, especially since the notion of emotional stoicism has paralyzed so many young men.
“At best,” he explained, “sport is a place where intimacy is not only authorized but explicitly requested.
But he warns that everyone in the whole sports community should adhere to this broader vision and appreciate societal value, otherwise experience can only strengthen the message that pain should be hidden and that adversaries, even teammates, should only be destroyed if they bother you.
“If his teammates insist that it is a vulnerable space where people can live very rich emotional lives,” he said, it will help people like the character represented in “adolescence”.
“There is a place where people legitimately care and show care so as to hit them in their arms and say:” You will be fine. “”
Amaechi has observed too much sport at his worst to believe that he is able to reform, not to mention a societal crisis.
“Sport is one of those areas where the most vulnerable people are in direct contact with coaches with the least possible qualifications,” he said. “I am not saying that they must be therapists, but they need to have more skills than just know how to teach a child to score a goal or a basket.”
However, he hopes forever that he could provide part of the answer.
“Sport has done well,” he concluded, “with the explicit goal of looking for young men who would find themselves otherwise isolated to the point of being attracted by these toxic people, absolutely this can.”
There are many factors that must be treated; Including the role of parents and the socio-economic pressures that could prevent them from being present, the underinvestment in the teaching and the belly of the great technology. But while the company is faced with an answer to this intensive emergency, it appears to the leaders of the sport to be part of the solution rather than in the problem.