Adolescence, a Netflix mini-series, about knife crime, social media, male rage, toxic masculinity and the impact pernicious, misogynistic online influencers like Andrew Tate can have on young men has become a surprise hit.
Created by actor Stephen Graham and his wife it follows the case of a 13-year-old boy arrested for killing a female classmate.
A reviewer wrote: “Adolescence is a loud wake-up call to parents who are raising children in times of social media… I grew up on conversations they speak in emojis… I grew up on books they scroll reels… I grew up on self-discovery they are surrounded by comparisons… the pandemic is NOW! We just don’t see it.”
Stephen Graham was born 3 August 1973 Kirkby, England, no birth time, with a social worker mother and paediatric nurse stepfather, a Swedish grandmother and a Jamaican grandfather. He started acting very young and has had a memorable career with a recent outing in Peaky Blinders. He has an entertaining Leo Sun in a confident opposition to Jupiter, and in a compassionate trine to Neptune with an ambitious sextile to Pluto. His Pluto in turn is in a tough, enduring square to Saturn in Cancer. Plus a volatile, excitable Mars in Aries opposition Uranus and a Libra Moon. A complex temperament, both confident and inclined to depression, he will have highs and lows.
His creative Neptune is heavily aspected being sextile Pluto, square Venus in Virgo, trine Sun, sextile Jupiter and inconjunct Saturn and South Node.
What is intriguing is to see quite why Andrew Tate has become the figurehead for the latest social mania.
Tate, 1 December 1986, Washington, DC, no birth time, has a Sagittarius New Moon conjunct a know-it-all, self-righteous Saturn which squares onto an enthusiastic and opportunistic Mars Jupiter in Pisces. He has a litany of criminal and civil cases approaching from human trafficking, rape to financial fraud. All hotly denied.
He has a sexually manipulative Venus Pluto conjunct in Scorpio trine Mars Jupiter, sextile Neptune which fits.
A sample of his ‘influencing’ – women belong in the home, can’t drive, and are a man’s property; rape victims must “bear responsibility” for their attacks. He dates women aged 18–19 because he can “make an imprint” on them. In clips, the British-American kickboxer – who poses with fast cars, guns and portrays himself as a cigar-smoking playboy – talks about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings and stopping them from going out.
In 2022 he became one of the most famous figures on TikTok, where videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times, though was banned elsewhere. He appeared on InfoWars, the podcast of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; was pictured with far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson and met Donald Trump Jr at Trump Tower. He met with Nigel Farage and has spoken of ties with the anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson.
I am less interested in him than in what he represents in the culture and why such extreme views have been given an audience.
Dying days of Pluto in Capricorn? The North Node conjunct Algol in 2022? Tate does have his North Node in Aries prompting him to fight against any backsliding into dependency. If his Moon is conjunct Saturn and square Mars he will certainly dislike women and want to cause them harm. Maybe at a guess he has Pluto in his 10th also pointing to a dislike of being controlled by women so he has to suppress them.
No clear answers about the cultural phenomenon though the boys-have-lost-their-bearings worry is a good deal older than the last three years. The rise of feminism threw old certainties out of the window – and further back Pluto in Cancer during World War One broke up the old family structure and gave women independence.
A friend mentioned, maybe from this series which I haven’t seen, there was a gripe that only 20% of men/boys were attractive to women. The other 80% were rejected which is what gives rise to male resentment. She said in the bird kingdom it was why the male birds adopted brilliant plumage in the hope of attracting a mate. In other mammal species, the males have to fight each other for supremacy to gain the females acquiescence. Animals analogies are not always a good fit. But my sense is we have forgotten what the original laws of nature were. In chimp society (nearest to human), the alpha male has the right to mate but only if the female agrees, otherwise her girlfriends in the troop will attack him. There is also a clear cut ranking/pecking order where the alphas get first go of the food. The low rankers only get crumbs – and no females.
Maybe it is something to do with a narcissistic culture where everyone expects to get exactly what they want without making an effort. The old tribal initiation rites where boys were separated from their mothers and sent out as teenagers to undergo trials of strength to become men would be regarded with horror nowadays but there may have been a grain of sense in the end result.
My other – unpopular – opinion is that men and women have a different psychological make up, with men being more dependent on their egos, which is not necessarily a bad thing but just the way it is. Perhaps a half Pluto cycle – from Cancer at the start of the 20th century to a shift out of Capricorn – is forcing a rethink about the male/female balance and roles.
I don’t know if it would be appropriate to perhaps also talk about genitalia and maybe issues with that part of someone’s physical biology, as opposed to psyche, that then affects the psychology of a person… And in the chart of a male, they are Mars.
I think I once read about how Mars is also what kind of sexual encounter does one like and what they react to, so it is as if I recall e.g. Gemini loving very talky encounters… But I’m not sure. So that planet can tell us those things.
Certainly not…take it from a mars in gemini..houses and asteroids mean a lot and so the accuracy comes
If there is a turn on for me it’s silence ..not speech since my mars is not in 8th 7h or 5h where love and lovemaking rule
To tell you the truth, I think that observation came from someone who had much experience and studied astrology and charts for years. To put it that way. I will try to dig out where I got it from.
I’ve noticed that a lot of boys/men that have problems with women are/were terrified of their Mothers when they were children .
This at its worst culminates in beating women up when they’ve grown up
If Tate does have Saturn square Mars assaulting his Moon that would certainly fit.
Jackie – I think it’s worth equally acknowledging that a lot of women who are mothers (or mother figures) are treated as subservient or ‘less than’ by partners / family / wider family, targeted or controlled with overt/covert verbal, physical and sexual aggression and may not be able or willing to protect their children when they perceive doing so is an existential threat to themselves. The child then blames the victimised parent for failing them.
Actually their for sale of peace attitude makes such violent legitimate…not standing up for self so not possible to stand up for their kids and this encourages men who realise that macho wins …
So extreme other r feminists who wear mens apparel and fight for womens rights while feminity of delicacy is forgotten and seen as weak
Thanks for looking at this modern iteration of an ancient theme. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a Mesopotamian story of a young male ‘hero’, his trials and adventures, and his rejection of the great goddess of love and war, Ishtar. He resents Ishtar, who is attracted to him and tries to seduce him, because she has never remained with one lover. The origins of the Epic date back about four thousand years…..Fear and mistrust of women’s independence appears to be ancient. Perhaps we need to be more open about it, before we can move towards something more balanced?
One of Tate and other’s techniques is to pile on the criticism in order to control a woman.Here’s our ancient Mesopotamian hero, Gilgamesh, having a go at the goddess.
What could I offer
the queen of love in return, who lacks nothing at all?
Balm for the body? The food and drink of the gods?
I have nothing to give to her who lacks nothing at all.
You are the door through which the cold gets in.
You are the fire that goes out. You are the pitch
that sticks to the hands of the one who carries the bucket.
You are the house that falls down. You are the shoe
that pinches the foot of the wearer. The ill-made wall
that buckles when time has gone by. The leaky
water skin soaking the water skin carrier.
—Tablet VI Epic of Gilgamesh
Boils down to the fact that women give life and men cannot. It was never about p…is envy.
Because no one told them life cannot come without them
Thank you for this, Majorie. I think we all need to try to understand what underlies Andrew Tate’s attraction for young men.
I am always struck at the start of life boy babies have a (slightly) higher mortality rate than baby girls in most parts of the world.Genetically boys are biologically weaker than girls but this difference diminishes with age. Boys are more at risk of death neonatally and girls post-neonatally.
Imo I think females are more robust emotionally (possibly because of their history?) and there lies the possible draw of Andrew Tate describing a way to be invulnerable with women by manipulating and dominating them. Probably no way to back this up though.
I have long been fascinated by the difference between men and women and was struck by a Horizon programme years back looking at the work of a neurologist called (I think) something like Ganz. He discovered that sixteen weeks after conception the male chromosomes of the foetus triggered testosterone in the mother that helped with the development of secondary sexual characteristics. What it did was at the same time was damp down the development of the right brain (emotional) and promoted the left brain (logical, mathematical). So his thesis was that from pre-birth there were distinct developmental differences.
Midwives also noticed that boy babies were more disturbed by being separated from mother than girl babies. Psychoanalysts would say that was because the boy babies needed more help from mother to process their emotions.
It was one of those studies that seemed to disappear and was not much remarked. But it always made sense to me.
That’s an interesting reference – it does sound a bit like the Geschwind hypothesis? He and his colleagues suggested the idea that higher levels of testosterone in the womb could actually slow down the development of the left hemisphere, which then led to the right hemisphere compensating – rather than enhancing the left. So in their view, it was more about a shift towards right-hemisphere processing in some boys.
It was definitely quite a compelling idea and I can understand why it stuck with you. Since then, the research has evolved quite a lot – not so much because it was wrong, but because there are now some amazing tools to see how incredibly complex brain development is. Simon Baron-Cohen picked up on some of those threads in his ‘Extreme Male Brain’ theory of autism, though even that’s become part of a big debate.
What we understand now is that there’s far more overlap than difference between male and female brains. For instance, language areas like Broca’s and Wernicke’s are usually left-lateralised in everyone – but girls often develop them a bit earlier and there’s evidence that females use both hemispheres more fluidly during language tasks. So the idea that the male brain becomes more ‘left-dominant’ as a result of testosterone has sort of reversed in the literature.
But where it really gets interesting, and important, is when you think about how even slight delays in language or emotional expression in boys might affect how they cope in today’s socially complex environment. If boys are slower to develop those tools, and we don’t actively support them, it could contribute to difficulties with emotional regulation or connection later on – which is exactly where some of the toxic masculinity conversation comes in. There is something educational psychologists refer to as “Matthew Effects” (the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer). So although there is far more overlap than differences between male and female brains, even very small differences in language and social skills compound and widen over time into something much bigger, while those with a small language advantage keep getting stronger.
As always, it’s not just biology, but how we respond to it that really matters.
@Tara, thank you for this.
@Tara, fascinating! Thanks for this!
…” only 20% of men/boys were attractive to women. The other 80% were rejected which is what gives rise to male resentment.”
30 years ago when I was on a self development program there was a man complaining that he was always being ‘rejected’ by women, he couldn’t “get a steady girlfriend”. The advice given to him was: “Be the kind of man that a woman wants to be with and you will find your mate.” He didn’t understand at the time. But the penny must have dropped at some point because he is married now. And that’s the part these resentful youngsters don’t get or don’t want to see. It’s about respect and a willingness to enter into a relationship which serves both.
Maybe he was confused then and didn’t know whether to “be himself” or “change himself” into something the other half would desire.
Women get rejected all the time. They just pick themselves up and get on with it. Men (more often than women) can seethe and become obsessive.
Yes. The trouble is that these men think they’re entitled to what they see as beautiful women, ie who resemble the filtered women they watch in online pornography. They’re not content with dating women who are real because three dimensional, attractive women are not good enough for them. The behaviour is so deeply entitled and infantile and guaranteed to make them dissatisfied and unhappy with their lot, eventually leading to bitterness and self-loathing. Then of course healthy women with boundaries are put off by their projections and insistence that they are victims. It’s a truly masochistic mindset.
Not the case I’m afraid. Women are much more selective and pickier than men, for very good evolutionary reasons.
True, that’s why they numerically rate men and women’s attractiveness obsessively, but there’s another dimension to that. When they talk about relationships or a girlfriend they mean something different to you or I. They see it mostly in physical satisfaction terms. So to them women can be picky because if a woman made herself entirely sexually available, no matter her level of attractiveness, they claim, they would always be able to find a man, any man, who would agree to have sex with them. These men see themselves often as available as well, happy to lower their standards if needs be, and still can not find a willing partner. This is seen as unfair and causes a lot of pain to them. They see relationships as sources of guaranteed physical gratification, not as emotional bonds (or not just as that). They resent how a woman could have any relationship she may want (meaning a sexual encounter) and they can’t. They also resent how women are “transactional” about sex, often wanting more out of it or what they see as an exchange (dinner, support in other areas, affection shown in other ways etc) for it, it feels to them like they’re “paying” with things they don’t want to do or value to have a physical need met by a woman that can deny it to them at any point making them bitter and insecure. It really is a warped and masochistic mindset.
Thank you. Thinking more about it, it’s almost a form of self-harm coming from a state of depression, self esteem issues and possibly dysmorphic feelings and thoughts, along with the normal and natural adolescent feelings of inadequacy and anxiety about how they will fare in the pecking order of adulthood. During this Protean Neptune in mutable Pisces era, we’ve seen a proliferation in our daily consumption of media images of the supposed (and this is in reality very subjective!) perfect body, the pornificatiom of human bodies and an overemphasis on their sexual performance, rather than what our bodies can do and are capable of in other ways.
The incel mindset is one of victimhood partly due to the perceived ugliness of their bodies and that victimhood is very seductive because to a certain extent in a narcissistic fashion it makes them feel special, chosen, a brethren. At the same time, they can project onto women the role of villain, persecutor, tormentor, etc thus altogether avoiding their own internal chaos.
I’m reminded of the myth of Hephaestos, the blacksmith god who was the child of Hera and Zeus. According to myth, Hera gave birth to Hephaestus to avenge Zeus’s parthenogenic fathering of Athena. But because the child was to Hera’s mind imperfect she flung the lame child from Olympus into the ocean where he was rescued by the sea goddess, Thetis who raised him. But Hephaestos’s relationship with his real mother, Hera was strained and unhappy, since her rejection of him went deep.
In one myth he makes Hera a magical golden throne which, once she sat upon it was unable to get up again. The gods begged him to come back to Olympus to free her, but he replied, ‘I have no mother’ and refused. Zeus promised to Hephaestus marriage to Athena if he would release Hera. But Hephaetus demanded the most beautiful goddess on Olympus, Aphrodite. Once they were married however, Aphrodite continued to have affairs with other gods, including Ares. Their relationship is one of cheating, animosity and the resultant vengeance. Even though the god had the woman of his dreams, he was still dissatisfied and his feelings of inadequacy did not go away.
I don’t think anyone should change elements of their truth to fit in, or be more attractive to anything. But then I’m Sun Pluto, and so I’m of the understanding that the truth of one’s self will always come out at some point, in some way. It’s best in the long run, not to hide it. For any woman. It’s not fair to her.
That said, if a female mate was a true priority for him, I would never speak out against him practicing self-improvement. So good for him.
@Marjorie, the 20/80 rule of attractiveness is prominent in Incel Culture in general. The culture started to get traction on certain internet spaces, especially image boards when the early 2000’s pick-up culture vaned. I remember early proponents, particularly a Finnish bona fide sociologist Henry Laasanen starting to make waves on women abusing sexual power around 2005 when I was at my “most online” subsequent to a break up and would find myself in some weird corners of the internet. As with “human biodiversity”, it’s been really strange to see these ideas becoming mainstream, especially among young men who were not even born at that time.
Male initiation rites were often about bonding men into groups. In some societies such as Ancient Sparta unmarried men lived communally and ate together. Some of these activities still go on today in criminal gang culture which is almost exclusively male dominated. Most male violence is also male on male with young men making the bulk of the victims. The number of female victims of homicide in the U.K. have barely changed since 2008.
What is happening in elite universities today, such as Oxford and Cambridge? Are clubs such as the (in)famous Bullingdon in exstance?
https://cherwell.org/2020/03/12/beyond-the-bullingdon-a-closer-look-into-oxfords-secret-societies/
@ Hugh, in America hazing rituals occur in many organizations including fraternities, athletic teams, and the U.S. military and unfortunately it has gone too far in some instances and led to death resulting from physical violence or overconsumption of alcohol.
There’s the so-called ‘Vision Quest’ in the Americas which derives from some First Nation cultures where the individual spends time alone in nature, apart from his family and circle. Often there is fasting, prayer or spiritual practices and dreams are noted as a conduit to an important message from the divine.
Whatever the culture, these practices appear to recognise and mark the liminal phases of our lives boyhood/girlhood to puberty, youth to marriage, parenthood to andropause or menopause and the beginning of seniority and wisdom as important transitions. Part of the problem is our materialistic worldview which no longer incorporates meaning and enchantment into our lives.
Sun in Leo trine neptune brings out the strongly compassionate element to Stephens roles, and his natural ability to captivate through performance.
Shame we don’t know his birth time for his rising sign, but my guess is Pisces.
I think he’s great. Thanks Marjorie.
I wonder about Chiron in Aries (sibce 2018) and it’s impact on men, young men in particular, a wound to identity. I notice Stephen Graham has natal Chiron in Aries from the last transit (1968-77), so he could be tapped into that. Also Chiron related, Tate has Chiron conjunct Lilith. Others with this aspect (signs vary) – Joe Rogan, Tiger Woods, Armie Hammer amongst others.