Animal and India’s lonely men -

If you had the absolute misfortune of watching and tolerating the Ranbir Kapoor, Animal Kapoor and Rashmika movie called Animal like me - how did you feel after you’ve watched the movie, especially after seeing how phenomenaly well the movie did in the box office?

Not only did I feel like I wasted nearly 3 hours of my life (thankfully, I saw it on Netflix so at least I didn’t waste money on a cinema ticket) but I also felt how such a large legion of people found the movie so appealing. How could people not see through the rampant misogynist undertone in the entire film where a wife was treated like disposable junk and cheated on - all justified in the name of the protagonist appeasing and safeguarding his dad. How can using women as trophies be normalized? Or where the bad guy, in his macho look, treats women like objects? How could such am unbearable and unlikeable protagonist appeal to so many people, most definitely young men?

If you look around, observe the world and connect the dots, the answer simply is that the young Indian man is largely lonely and in brought up in such a way that he more often than not becomes a misogynist - to whatever extent. His birth is celebrated as a blessing whereas his sister’s birth is treated like an extra responsibility or even a burden (or in extreme cases, ill fate). He is pampered a little too much by a mother who thinks of him is the trophy of her life and a father who is emotionally distant. He doesn’t know how to talk to women normally and generally hangs out only with other boys, all of whom also think alike. His overall lack of self-esteem leads to him doing all kinds of things to feel important - he drives rashly and dangerously, and he consumes alcohol, tobacco or narcotics copiously. He doesn’t feel the burden of responsibility and feels that education is a waste of time. He competes with his friends in a game of macho one-upmanship in order to boost his fragile ego just like how he wants to earn the approval of his father. He tries to portray himself as a macho person in front of women -something that is so normalized in our movies.

It’s no wonder that Animal did so well - the young men probably saw an extreme version of their own bottled-up desires, fantasies and emotions portrayed through that vile character that Ranbir Kapoor was playing.

Rich kids in particular are suspect to it, given their privileged and pampered childhood and access to expensive cars and gadgets, they tend to channel their inner angst and need to feel important by becoming extremely reckless and more often than not -leading to civic damage or even fatal casualties - as you have seen in the Pune Porsche case or the Vadodara law student case or the latest Lamborghini case in Noida.

Indian men are even more emotionally isolated than ever before and this is leading to more rampant misogynist actions and general violence against women and the increasing acceptance of a global phenomenon called Incel Culture.

What is Incel Culture?

80-20, Red Pill, Kidney Bean/Coffee Cup, Black Pill - these are some extremely common used terms in the dark world of Incel culture. I didn’t know most of these and I most definitely did not know that the colour of the heart emoji also signifies some deeper meaning.

The colour of the heart emoji demystified:
Red - Love
Purple - Sexual attraction
Yellow - Are you interested
Pink - I like you but not sexually
Orange - You'll be fine

I always thought of 80-20 as Pareto’s law but in the world of Incel culture, it means that 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of the men which leaves the remaining 80% of men neglected and alone. This is where misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate come in and promote the manosphere - an online ecosystem of videos, blogs, Reddit and 4Chan forums, talk shows, and podcasts that push ideas of male dominance and female subservience. Ideas within the manosphere range from fitness and self-improvement advice, albeit geared towards becoming a “high value” or “alpha” man, to overt misogyny and even calls for violence against women. It calls for men to be more dominant and for women to be more submissive.

This is getting only worse with the Trump administration going overboard with re-inforcing orthodox views of a family and women whereby even once critical Mark Zuckerberg has scrapped DEI programs at Meta and is calling for more “masculine energy”.

I was told by someone who works in the States that this was actually much needed as companies in the US were going overboard with their woke culture that distrupted innovation and enterprise.

Maybe he has a point, but when do you ever see that elusive balance playing out between the 2 extreme views for almost any subject in history?

Adoloscence

This 4 part show on Netflix has been a critical and commercial success all over the world, not just for its subtle but bold take on how this incel culture has devastating real-life consequences on society but it is also a technical and cinematic masterpiece where each episode was shot in a single camera shot.

The show is a slow burner and requires some patience and a need to read between the lines wherein a 13-year-old boy in small-town UK is suddenly arrested for the alleged murder of a girl from his class. What is shown next is an emotional roller coaster ride of how the boy, a generally good kid from a very well-meaning and supportive family, is initially in denial of this act but slowly changes colour during a long session with a child psychologist, where he shows his inner “alpha male” but yet craves for her validation when he feels emotionally vulnerable “You do like me, don’t you?”. I’ll not give away more because it will spoil your experience of the show, if you have not watched it yet.

The kid’s parents are devastated and can’t understand where they went wrong in his upbringing. The obvious answer is a mix of increased toxic peer pressure in school, especially in the age of universal accessibility of social media and also access to the dark corners of the internet where incel culture is so widely promoted and young minds, who don’t know better, as easy prey.

Indian Schools, Kids and Teens

I grew up at a school where there was definitely a fair bit of peer pressure where kids wanted to feel cool or just be accepted but it never crossed over into hardcore misogyny, at least not that I was aware of. I think the single biggest factor that helped us back then was the lack of mobile phones and especially social media at school.

I notice that kids these days are far more aware than I was back then - thanks to the internet or just better privilege. I swear to god, I had no idea what IIT-JEE was till a month after my class 10 boards ended (no - I was not a bad student). The downside of all this manifests itself through their mental health. If you think teenagers or young men are not affected by the incel culture in India - think again. There are likely thousands of such pages on social media that promote misogyny and it’s easy to fall prey to them if you face mental stress due to rejection from a girl or lack of emotional awareness or just the lack of acceptance by your peers.

Jonathan Haidt’s seminal book and a global bestseller “The Anxious Generation” highlights exactly this issue that kids and teenagers of this generation face where he says that:

• Kids are overprotected offline and underprotected online

• Kids are deprived of a play-based childhood - i.e - freedom to experience the physical world and real people by themselves by overprotective parents

• There is a rise of a phone-based childhood - an explosion of social media and activities on the internet thanks to the ubiquity of the smartphone

He says that this shift in the social landscape of childhood and adolescence, often referred to as the “Great Rewiring of Childhood,” has had a significant impact on the mental health of Gen Z. As their social lives have increasingly moved online through the constant access to social media, video gaming, and other internet activities, the first generation of teens in the United States to go through adolescence with this level of connectivity has become more anxious, depressed, and suicidal than any generation recorded before them.

He cites the importance of getting kids to return more to the physical world and cutting off or at least limiting their smartphone use so that they do not fall prey to the tentacles of incel culture and other toxic traits.

How are the well-being of women and the fortunes of the Indian economy linked?

Thanks to this excellent representation made by Qualtrics, you can see that India is ranked a terrible 166 position in the world when it comes to female labour force participation. Even if I give into the possibility that this survey has some flaws and does not fully factor in part-time women workers or other such factors, it is still extremely damning and in my opinion, the single biggest roadblock to India’s road to becoming a middle-income country in the next 3 decades.

The rise of fortunes of many rich and middle-income countries can be attributed to the high labour participation by women.

Working women can not only bring in additional labour and productivity to the country but her participation in the workforce also leads to delayed marriages/fewer or later births and a general sense of better well-being of a family.

This is especially true in East Asian countries like China, South Korea, Japan and even slightly poorer countries like Vietnam, Thailand or Indonesia and led to a term called the Tiger Mom.

The "tiger mom" stereotype, popularized by Amy Chua's book, describes strict, demanding Asian mothers who relentlessly push their children to excel academically and in extracurricular activities, often at the expense of social and emotional development

So if women’s participation in the labour force is so important, how can this be improved? By making it easier for them to work

How can we make it easier for them to work? By making them feel safe and reduce prejudice and harrassment.

How can we make them feel safe? By making men treat women with dignity and respect

How can we make men respect women? By intervening earlier in their lives and ensuring that they grow up to develop an emotional quotient that values and safeguards women and doesn’t glorify the “alpha”

How can we intervene earlier? By grooming them in schools, giving them space to express their emotions and be heard. Give them better role models to follow and make them develop empathy and kindness

The path to a better and more prosperous country is more dependent on how it treats its women than how enterprising its citizens are.

I look back at my own behaviour throughout my life and don’t claim to be a perfect role model. At the same time, I think I’ve been largely decent and have come to recognize how I can do better in this regard. That is the most difficult part - how do convince make the large swathes of wannabe alpha men that misogyny is not “cool” when they are surrounded by a ecosystem that promotes this so rampantly?

This starts with how you, the reader, treat women and how you can influence the thinking of people around you regarding this. Do your bit.