Note: Discussions of rape.
Among the many questions plaguing teachers today, most recently, I can’t stop coming across one: What is going on with the boys?
In a viral TikTok, which has over one million views and over 11,000 comments, Austin (@awillmakeit), a high school world history teacher from the south, urges that the behavior he sees from adolescent boys in his classroom has become increasingly troubling, and in the current climate without pushback or consequences, it’s only going to get worse.
“As a high school teacher, this last week has really shown me that we are failing our boys pretty hard,” he began in his video.
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
“As the last line of defense before these kids get into adulthood, I really do feel like a part of our job is making sure that these kids are socialized and that they are respectful of just being in public when they graduate,” he continued. “But what we’re seeing is 18 to 25-year-old men who are completely unsocialized, who are lonely, who are honestly, incredibly crass.”
Austin explained that his students make blatantly unfunny jokes where the “punchline” is just rape, death, murder, racism, or harm.
Person discussing how men in teaching can improve, with text overlay regarding a session on high school boys. Posters seen in the background
Person in a room discussing teaching improvement for high school boys, gesturing with hands. Posters visible in the background
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
“Like, that’s the punchline,” he said. “That’s the purpose of the joke, is that, ‘Isn’t this a funny joke because it’s racist, because it’s about rape? Because it’s this crazy thing that we’re not allowed to talk about?”
Austin asked, “And where’s that starting? Where do they get in their head that this is something that they are OK to do out in public just openly?” before panning to his classroom. “Here. This is where it happens.”
Austin explained that in the classroom, boys aren’t facing enough resistance for their extremely crude jokes and behavior, which only allows the behavior to continue. “What I’m noticing is that these kids aren’t facing pushback,” he said. “They’re not facing pushback when they make seriously unfunny jokes. And when I say unfunny, I’m trying not to be subjective about it.”
“I’m really trying to point out that, like the joke is rape, the joke is death. Like, it’s not a joke. It’s it’s at the expense of somebody [else] who, as a teenage boy, you don’t experience it. You aren’t afraid of it. You’re not a girl walking home alone at 10 p.m. in the dark wondering if you’re gonna even make it home.”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
Austin said they’ll make these jokes in the classroom, in hallways, and even with teachers nearby. But when he, as a teacher, pushes back against it, they get defensive or angrier.
He said, “When I, as a teacher, say something to them and go, ‘Hey, what the hell are you doing? Like, why, what’s happening in your brain right now?’ They don’t have an answer. They don’t even seem to recognize why I’m even questioning them.”
One recent incident, which Austin described as his “breaking point” that led him to make his now-viral video, occurred when a student openly made a rape joke in his presence while walking through the hallway.
“I just stopped, and I go, ‘What’s funny about that? What’s funny about it, bud? What’s funny about rape? What’s so ‘ha ha’ about rape? What’s so freaking hilarious about your friend being raped?’” Austin said the boy then stared at him, gave him some attitude, and flipped him off.
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
To combat the problem, Austin said boys need more pushback and possibly even a little public shaming to know that this behavior is not OK. Austin explained, “These kids need to be shamed. And I know that’s not something that we really talk about, but the idea of public shaming has always been a thing that humans have done to make sure that social stuff works.” Perhaps you can think of it like when Tim Walz started calling conservatives “weird” for policing women’s bodies.
Austin continued, “Right now, we’re not shaming these boys. We’re not shaming them; they don’t experience shame. They feel like they can do and say whatever they want.”
“They can show up to class 20 minutes late. They can flick a teacher off. They can curse at you, and they feel this way. They feel emboldened, and right now, especially, they feel like no consequences are coming their way. That’s where we need to change.”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
In the last part of his video, Austin reiterated that his message is really for other male teachers out there who have the opportunity to set an example for this generation of boys. “It is our responsibility to show them what being a man looks like, what being a man actually pertains to,” he urged.
Austin added, “It’s not making crass jokes; it’s not making girls feel bad; it’s not laughing at people when they’re down. It’s being helpful. It’s building people up. It’s about being supportive. It’s about being a rock when somebody needs it. None of these boys are prepared for that. None of these boys are living a life right now where that’s where they’re going.”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
“It’s us. It’s you and me, bud. Like, me and you,” he continued. “We have to be the ones to be in their face and go, ‘You’re being a bad person right now. You are choosing to be a bad person right now, and I don’t know why you’re choosing that.”
A person wearing glasses and a patterned shirt gestures while talking about the role of men in teaching and improving education for high school boys
Person speaking in classroom, text reads:
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
“I don’t know what about your life right now put you in a position where you feel like you could just be a jerk, where you can just make jokes at the expense of others. But it’s not funny, it’s not good, it’s not right. Stop doing that.’”
In his final plea, Austin explained that he’s worried about the future of the generation of boys growing up if something doesn’t change. “I just feel like the next couple years are gonna be very long and very hard, but I’m not a fan of the back end of Gen Z, and we’re about to start getting the start of Gen A, and we have to fix it,” he said.
“We have to fix it. We have to make sure these boys understand that running through the hallways and shouting, ‘Your body, my choice,’ is not OK. It’s not right. It’s not funny. I don’t know who you’re doing this for. There are no cameras here. You’re not going to blow up on TikTok. You’re just making women feel unsafe. Is that what you wanna be doing? Is that the life you wanna live? Is that the person you wanna be?”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
“I don’t think they do,” Austin remarked. “I don’t think that’s who they wanna be, so let’s remind them of that. Let’s actually take the effort to remind them of who they want to be in life, and then hold a mirror up to them and say, ‘Is that who you’re being?’ I don’t think so, bud.”
Since sharing his video, Austin has received an overwhelming amount of support from teachers, women, and parents. One male teacher even said Austin’s video makes him want to do better.
Unfortunately, a concerning number of teachers also chimed in with their own similar experiences happening in their schools and classrooms. One person mentioned that a male English teacher in their school avoids teaching stories with female protagonists, claiming “the boys can’t empathize.” Austin challenged this notion, arguing that it is the teacher’s responsibility to bridge that gap so that harmful ideologies — like that men and women cannot inherently understand each other — are not perpetuated.
In his school, Austin told BuzzFeed that teachers are “giving up in droves,” partly because of the bad behavior. He said that multiple teachers have left at his school, and haven’t been replaced, compounding the issue with overflowing classrooms. Even worse, though, he said, is its impact on the women in the school.
“I don’t think I can go a day anymore without one of my female colleagues crying openly in the hallway over the vitriol that has been sent their way,” he told BuzzFeed. “If you could access the behavior logs that administration keeps, you would see exactly how pervasive this issue has become.”
Andrey Zhuravlev / Getty Images
These experiences and the discussions he’s seen with other teachers online on “#TeacherTok” prompted Austin to speak out.
“My initial motivation was to just reach the teacher side of TikTok with a simple message to male teachers that we have to be the example for those boys who are currently lost,” he said. “I have seen way too many great teachers up and quit because of the abuse they experience on a daily basis, as someone in the room where it is all happening, I feel like its my duty to speak up and speak out for those who can’t.”
TikTok
Austin’s not the only one who’s spoken out about the growing, visible divide between men and women, especially in our current political sphere. Earlier this year, researchers found that a global ideological divide is forming, where young women are more progressive and young men are more conservative.
John Burn-Murdoch / Financial Times / Via Twitter: @jburnmurdoch
That shift became even more apparent in the US post-election — early exit poll data from swing states showed that 19-29 year-old men favored Trump 49-47%, while 18-29 year-old women favored Harris by 24 points, marking the largest gender gap within any age group, and for the first time showing that Gen Z might not be as progressive as many thought.
On Substack, Alice Evans, one of the leading researchers on the topic from Stanford University, wrote that social media bubbles have created “echo chambers of righteous resentment, channeling frustrations and zero-sum mentalities against [women] and foreigners.” Others have also argued that this pervasive “Gen Z bro media diet” is partly to blame for the disconnect between young men and women (if you recall, the top podcasts in the world are dominated mainly by right-leaning bro hosts or apolitical content).
“Young men are seeing the strides women have made in the last several generations — out-earning men in college degrees and nearly tripling the share of women who earn as much or more than their husbands since the’ mid-70s — and feeling left behind and demonized by the left,” Rebecca Jennings, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote. She argued that algorithms further reward the content (it’s shocking and provocative); thus, men get further funneled into the “brosphere,” where the voices for toxic masculinity and bad behavior — the same that Austin witnesses in class — thrive.
Spotify
“Over the past two decades, as social progressivism has shined a light on movements like #MeToo, what we are seeing now is the backlash and the pendulum swing,” Austin said.
“There is a concerted effort by profit-motivated men to target young boys in online circles and convince them that ‘being a man’ means not caring or having feelings about anything, focusing only on themselves, and treating women like garbage.”
There’s been a lot of talk about the “male loneliness epidemic” (according to The New York Times, today’s young men are “lonelier than ever”), and many say these online brospheres are part of the problem.
The Independent laid it out as part of a larger, vicious cycle: early on, boys might be taught to be emotionally detached — to not cry, or show emotion – causing them to withdraw and feel lonely. They go looking for connection online (maybe on a “how to get a date” search), only to wind up on content that further reinforces the very stereotypes that hurt their connection and scapegoats women as the problem (think: Andrew Tate, who once argued that rape victims must “bear responsibility” for their attacks).
Piers Morgan Uncensored / Via youtube.com
“These men tell these boys daily that they are the only ones who understand them, that they are the only ones who get what they are going through, and the lonely 14-year-olds are eating that up,” Austin told BuzzFeed. “They have cornered the market on online spaces dominated by boys.”
Austin also emphasized that parents play a role by allowing their children “unfettered access to online spaces” without fully considering the potential consequences. “Would you let your child — your 12-year-old, your 13-year-old, your 14-year-old — go to a rated R movie with zero supervision?” Austin asked in another viral clip. “That’s what you’re doing every time you allow them to go on YouTube, to go on TikTok, with zero supervision.”
“Twelve-year-olds are interacting with grown men on a daily basis — grown men that their parents otherwise wouldn’t be allowing their kids around — because their parents have handed them a pocket-sized encyclopedia of the world with zero restrictions,” Austin told BuzzFeed. “People are essentially letting their elementary-aged children into NC-17 theaters with no supervision and expecting them to come out fine. Then they take everything they have learned and act out in class, emulating the reality they have been exposed to.”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
Despite all this discussion, I imagined plenty of people might look at Austin’s video and say, “Well, boy will be boys! This is nothing new.” In response to this kind of reaction, Austin said, “I think ‘boys will be boys’ has been an excuse that society has used for way too long to describe the lack of parenting boys.” He pointed to the comments on his video, where many argued that this kind of rhetoric only normalizes bad behavior, especially its impact on women.
“These boys need accountability; they cannot learn that anything they do will simply be excused away by the fact that they are boys. It is not inherent to boyhood to be racist, to be sexist, to be cruel, and crass, and I resent everyone who makes the argument that 14-year-olds making rape jokes in the face of young girls is ‘normal’ for them.”
@awillmakeit / Via tiktok.com
For parents and teachers wondering how they can better show up for their boys, Austin argued that it takes a concerted counter-effort to the voices that dominate their online space.
“We need to be the counter-example to what they are seeing online. We need to show them, through our actions, that they are not alone, and that there are versions of men that exist in the real world that are not misogynistic and un-empathetic,” he told BuzzFeed. “We need to show them that the ‘manosphere’ does not have a monopoly on the definition of what it means to be a ‘man,’ nor is there one correct way.”
Matt Cardy / Getty Images
As a final remark, he told BuzzFeed, “I do not believe these boys are broken, I do not believe they are beyond reproach, but they are lost and it will help all of us to recognize that. Too many are giving up on them right now because the battle feels lost, but these boys are still growing and learning, and I do absolutely believe that the vast majority of them want to be good. We just have to be vigilant in reminding them what that looks like.”
For me, personally, I can only hope more male figures are like Austin — and if not, I hope they heed his advice and also want to do better, as the teacher earlier said. More than ever, I think more than one concept of “being a man” is needed right now, and I can only hope videos like this are helping to expose this.
But let me know what you think — are you also facing a similar issue with young boys? Maybe you’re a parent, teacher, student, or mere observer with some thoughts — let us know in the comments.