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My favourite Young Adult mlm reads to celebrate London Pride and Omar's new music video Talk.
I don't think we ever really talk about the power imbalance in Wilhelm and Simon's relationship. I know it's a given, but we don't often examine the nuance. How being asked to be a secret boyfriend to someone who has more power over you (the Royal Court is an extension of Wilhelm and will dictate how Simon behaves even if they're secret to the public, so they have power over him), is different to being asked to be in the closet with someone who is your equal. One person inherently makes more sacrifices than the other, aside from being closeted, in this imbalance. Ordinarily, in an equal relationship, this is negotiated and discussed often with the person you love, to safeguard them and your own wellbeing. They are equals in many ways, which is why they, and we, think that with changed circumstances they are a perfect match. But, yeah, until those changes happen, they were only going to meet obstacles that would destroy one more than the other. Especially when Wilhelm doesn't have control over how his power impacts Simon.
I loved the conversations I've seen today about Katie and her absence in the show Adolescence and her best friend Jade.
Katie is dead, so we will never get to hear from her again. The psychiatrist asks Jamie if he knows what it means that she is dead. She's gone. She's never coming back to have meaning as a full human being with a voice to tell her own story. Her story has ended.
Then Jade is asked to tell the police about Katie's character. They don't say it explicitly to her but what they're looking for is motive, why Jamie did what he did. They want Jade, her grieving best friend, to explain what reason Katie gave Jamie to kill her. As if knowing more about Katie, essentially defaming her character, will lead to the reason that Jamie was 'provoked' into murdering her.
And then we as an audience learn that she called his incel characteristics out and we as a society say she bullied him by letting everyone know that he was a person that was dangerous. We make a judgement call on her as a person. Then we say she was partly to blame for her own murder. I saw someone ask today: does the audience understand that she is dead? Or do we have the ambiguous understanding that Jamie has that he is not solely to blame for her non-existence.
The show has us tussle with the idea that no victim is perfect and expecting victims of sexual violence (Katie was one: she was murdered for rejecting sexual advances. Jamie only showed interest in her after he saw her nudes), to be perfect in order to feel sympathy for them is ludicrous.
Showing us more of who Katie was would likely have condemned her more. A girl who was shamed with her naked pictures will not get sympathy from the society we have today.
Jade is not given the sympathy in the show in her grief that Eddie is given. Eddie explodes in anger and has loved ones walk on eggs shells around him in order to offer him support as he struggles regulating his emotions. He physically assaults a kid who painted a slur on his work van. Jade explodes in anger at the police and they are disgruntled by her behaviour and are not soothing of her emotions or even try to connect to what she needs in this moment of grief. She physically assaults a boy she is convinced was involved in her best friends' murder. Yet, we are given more time with Eddie to feel ready to cry with him in the final scene. The last scene we see with Jade, she is walking home alone, having to deal with her anger, grief and loneliness on her own. One is left to imagine a full hour of Jade's life as an episode in parallel to Eddie's, if we wish to. We can fill in the blanks. We are told about her life. Will we take the time to?
The show deliberately short changes the women and girls in this story. Because this is what happens in real life and the show is a mirror. This is misogyny. Men's feelings and emotions are given more credence than even little girls'.
There is an added intersectionality with Jade that she is a dark skined Black girl and the adultification of these members of society means that they do not get the consideration of other children their age. Jade perfectly exemplified Katie's loved ones. The futileness of their outrage. Even full justice with Jamie's sentencing won't fill the complete void left by the loss of Katie.
when shows like adolescence (2025) pop out (and it was really good) i hate that the debate orients itself on young men mental health in incel circles, rather than on the fact that the government let men hate SO much on women online that it enables them to kill young girls and women. like, it's the state responsibility to ensure hate speech is condemned. it's the state responsibility to protect women against misogyny and revenge porn first and foremost. idc that jamie is fucked in the head because he listened to white supremacists and alpha males. i care that nothing was in place to prevent him from killing that girl, that society didn't offer any strictly enforced laws against the circulation of the content that allowed this girl to be murdered. let's talk about THAT.
“What if it wasn’t Jamie, but Ryan?” “He was bullied” “He just wanted validation”
Okay, ignoring the fact that these excuses completely negate the entire message of the show, I think it’s interesting how people are willing to shift the crime over to another 13 year old boy just to make it feel more justified to hate the crime, while feeling sympathetic for Jamie. Like, the reason people are finding it hard to believe Jamie killed Katie is because he’s a kid, and because there are moments where he is vulnerable and scared and even sweet. People find it hard to come to terms with the fact that killers aren’t always heartless, soulless individuals but are, most of the time, real people with complex emotions and motivations, and that doesn’t make them any better.
Why is it more comforting for it to be this other boy, when it makes no difference to the fact that a child murdered another child? Is it because we don’t know Ryan? Can you justify it more because it lets you think that he isn’t as “child-like” as Jamie? Why do people feel the compulsion to purify Jamie’s actions? Why try to justify it by pointing out the fact he was bullied, or victimising him? Because, yes, Jamie was bullied. There are things from the way his dad behaves, and the way he was treated that lead to what Jamie did. That doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t fix what he did. It changes nothing. It explains it, it doesn’t excuse it. And the way people are willing to blame any outside entity (blaming Katie, blaming Ryan, blaming the teachers, his family) for what Jamie did fascinates me, because it makes me think that people didn’t watch the show. Yeah, the show is about toxic masculinity, and how media, and attitudes can affect how a child perceives the world, and about violence against women, but these themes are told around the main premise of people having to come to terms with the fact that Jamie, a child, killed Katie.
It happens with Briony, it’s Eddie’s entire arc throughout the show. It’s how the show ends, where Jamie finally changes his plea to guilty.
Rewatch the show if you can’t accept that Jamie was guilty, and stop trying to excuse or purify him for doing so. We can understand why someone does something without justifying their actions, and without excusing them. Learn to accept that it’s uncomfortable, because that’s the whole fucking point.
I watched adolescence on Netflix because my dad recommended it and I’ve had this thought and I just need to articulate it:
Jamie was caught so swiftly after committing the murder that a part of me doesn’t really believe that his initial intention was to actually kill Katie. Ryan admitted that it was his knife and that he thought Jamie was going to use it to scare Katie.
I think maybe that was his initial plan. He felt emasculated by her and probably wanted to extract some form of revenge, except, as we could see, she didn’t submit, she fought back — and in Jamie’s readicalised mind that would not fly, so he killed her.
Obviously the show never tells us exactly how it all went down, or Jamie’s exact motifs, what was going through his mind at the time — but I also think that’s sort of the point? Because it doesn’t matter. He still killed her and showed little remorse for it and I think it’s representative of how violence against women is often perpetrated.
Men will beat a woman to a pulp, and that final blow will take her life. They might defend themselves by saying: “I didn’t mean to kill her!” — but you still beat her. Still tried to exert power over her through violence because you think women aren’t subservient beings who should bow down to men.
Ryan gave Jamie a knife because he thought Jamie was going to use it to scare Katie. He didn’t think twice about the implications or to question it. Even if Jamie only used the knife to scare her, is that still acceptable behaviour? If he’d only harmed and not killed — does that make his actions less malicious?
Idk what I’m saying, just: something something violence against women doesn’t need to be planned out or calculated, it just takes certain resistance for men to feel like they need to use violence to exert power, and something something men who enable each others toxic behaviour are complicit in the fall out.
What was interesting to me as a parent was watching how in episode 4 we see the father mirroring Jamie's behaviour in episode 3. It's in so many subtle and more obvious ways.
The way that hour of t.v. in episode 4 is slow so that we can steadily watch the father and watch how closely his wife monitors his emotions so that she can step in to regulate them for him. She pushes her emotions aside to monitor his because his potential to blow up and get violent verbally or physically is potentially dangerous for her and her daughter.
Jamie switches from screaming to apologising in episode 3. Then we see the father apologise in episode 4 for spilling the water from the bucket after blowing up at his wife. He apologises for the wrong things. His son does the same.
His father hasn't shared with his wife what he saw Jamie do on the video and she says he shuts down and doesn't want to talk about it. In the same way Jamie hasn't spoken to any of his family about how he and his friends have been bullied at school - spat on and ridiculed in real life and online.
Episode 4 is so fascinating to me. Watching each person's individual roles in relation to each other in that regular family. Lisa especially monitoring the emotional state of her parents, so that she can intervene to soothe them or distract them to calm them down. She does the same with Jamie on the phone and still claiming Jamie as theirs. The parents think they've raised their kids the same. But they themselves have gendered roles in the family. The kids have mirrored their mother and father respectively.
american viewers/non brits watching adolescence i need you to understand that british secondary school is That. what you saw. that’s it. it is actually really genuinely TRULY like that. teachers yelling, kids talking back to the teachers, saying horrendous things to each other. they nailed it. they didn’t exaggerate anything or make it up.
In episode 3, when Briony the psychiatrist, asks him if his dad has women friends and he's offended that she thinks his dad is cheating on his mum. Female friendship is not considered possible unless attraction is involved. Love from female friendship is not something he's seen modelled by his dad. His dad's mates are all men, so his mates at school are all boys. Women are not seen as full human beings worth being mates with.
This is modelled by a majority of straight, cis men in real life. Children have mixed gender friendships in primary school but too often the opposite gender relationships fall off in middle/secondary school as children enact stereotypical masculinity and stereotypical femininity at school. They learn from the adults.
We do this as adults. As couples in committed relationships, we let our opposite gender relationships fall by the way side as we are concerned for the suspected insecurity of our partner of us maintaining a platonic friendship. Men and women do this. Societally we only keep opposite sex friendships if they come as couples. Then we hang out separately with our same sex mates. Attraction is always expected in platonic relationships.
This pattern is observed by our kids so they do the same. This is obviously only majorly part of straight, cis relationships.
I've seen a response to episode 2 of Adolescence saying that it's important to choose the right schools for your kid, that it's worth it if you can afford it.
This is exactly one of the reasons that this happened to Jamie and Katie in the first place. Our lack of collective consciousness and individualism. Millions of other kids will go to schools like theirs, even if your kids don't or you homeschool your kids. These kids will exist in our society, grow up to be your neighbours, your workforce and every part of your community in the next five years.
Their traumatic experiences at school if they managed to survive it will contribute to their mental health out in the world. What are we doing to ensure that no child is left behind in adequately nurturing and learning environments. With nothing to say about the mental health of teaching staff and the quality available to teach kids.
People who are directly responsible for how these schools are funded, supported, populated and staffed, are politicians who can afford to send their kids to private schools. Politicians in charge of budgets, libraries, mental health, building of secondary schools, teacher training and curriculum, and teacher salaries. The fact that many UK teachers in comment sections about this show can relate to being in the psychiatrists shoes, when interacting with some children in their schools, is horrifying. They have to go in everyday and teach around that. Other children are trapped in classes and school grounds around that type of interaction.
The fact that libraries are compulsory in prisons but not in schools in the UK shows you how concerned the government are with children's education and well being.
