The Adolescence Autopsy: The Show That Forgot to Show Misogyny
4 min read
Adolescence presents itself as a confrontation of misogyny but offers no actual depiction of it – no online hate, incel culture, or recognisable misogynistic behaviour, just vague unease and empty signals. Ambiguous scenes go unexplained, with no effort to trace the roots or patterns of harm. With no insight into how misogyny forms or how to identify it, and with a victim who remains voiceless and invisible, the show abandons both education and accountability. What remains is not a critique, but a moral panic – leaving boys confused, girls erased, and viewers without clarity.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Adolescence was about misogyny. That’s how it was pitched – with buzzwords that are fast becoming empty signals: male rage, incel, toxic masculinity, online radicalisation. And if I ever begin to doubt how this show was sold, that doubt vanishes the moment I see how it’s been received. Politicians calling for it to be shown in schools. Headlines declaring it a wake-up call.
But if misogyny is the disease this show sets out to expose, it forgot to include any of the symptoms.
There’s no manosphere. No incel culture. No online forums. No hate speech. Not even a slur. No group chats or screeds. No smirking TikToks. No badly lit YouTube rants. All we get are “vibes”. A boy in a hoodie. A dead girl. A vague sense that the internet might be bad. And the closest thing to a red flag? He was “on his computer a lot”. Revolutionary.
There’s no online misogyny in this show. There’s no misogyny, full stop.
While quick to call out bullying, it shows and tells us nothing about the misogyny it’s heralded as being about. A girl dying is not enough to claim misogyny in a show with no language, no worldview, no grooming, no groupthink, no buildup. Even the act of violence is kept deliberately ambiguous and repeatedly denied. There is no framing of the killing as gendered. Rather, it’s presented as a retaliation by someone positioned as a victim – with a motive that’s personal, not political; emotional, not ideological – and therefore, just a tragic misunderstanding and an adolescent lashing out.
The few moments that might be misogynistic and suggestive of learned entitlement and/or male dominance, lead nowhere. A prison guard who’s a bit too friendly to the psychologist. A scene where the boy yells at her. But both interactions are easily deniable. Maybe he’s just awkward. Maybe he’s just angry and fed up with being institutionalised. Maybe the guard’s just “old-fashioned” and “trying to be nice”.
And that’s the problem with this show: everything is so buried in ambiguity that no one ever names what’s happening. But ambiguity isn’t insight, silence isn’t subtlety, and aesthetics aren’t analysis. If no one says it, no one will see it.
The only name they do drop is Andrew Tate. Like a shout-out to a mate. A dog whistle to his followers. A cultural shadow with no context. It’s as if we’re all just supposed to know – or care – who he is. #IYKYK. But his ideas are never unpacked. Never challenged. He’s just some guy given free advertising. Because a viewer – especially an adolescent – doesn’t know who Andrew Tate is, this show gives them every reason to go find out, and not a single reason not to.
The show – and many of its politically inclined viewers – claim it is a tool for education. But it teaches nothing.
Perhaps that’s why it needs an hour-long lesson plan in schools: because there’s nothing in the show itself. No depiction of what misogyny looks like or how it forms. No insight into how it spreads or how to resist it. It doesn’t give anyone the language to spot it in themselves or others. And there’s no discussion of support, consequences, or accountability. No definition. No diagnosis. No guidance. Just a dangerous signpost to go find out your answers from Andrew Tate.
There’s no affirming of female instinct or protection of them either. No tools are provided to navigate these dynamics. The victim is not made central. She’s not even made visible. The victim is a blank space. A dead girl with no voice, no context, no inner world. We never learn what she went through. We don’t see her messages (or emojis). We don’t know what ‘red pill’ she saw in him – or what he said to her. The show itself acknowledges that she is sidelined – and then continues to sideline her, doing further harm.
She is reduced to a plot device, who only matters because she died. Not because she lived. Her actions and decisions are framed in a way that subtly undermines her – even her choice of a best friend, who happens to be Black and female, and is flattened into a stereotype of aggression.
Perhaps then the show does depict misogyny – by enacting it. By trying to imply that misogyny can be understood through a single violent outcome, rather than a system of beliefs or behaviours. By trying to define misogyny as merely a side-effect of male suffering. By its storyline, creation, and all the hype and buzz around it demonstrating how misogyny is more than just “hatred of women” but a system of attitudes, behaviours, structures, and ideologies that devalue, silence, control, punish, or harm women because they are women.
But to watch the show is not to experience an exposé on misogyny. It’s to witness a rebranding of moral panic. And not even good one – because moral panic, at the very least, usually identifies the threat. Adolescence doesn’t even commit to that. It doesn’t deconstruct misogyny. It evaporates it. And in doing so, it leaves boys with confusion, girls with silence, and all of us with a big dramatic void where truth and clarity should be.
