Elliot Page is not the role model boys need

Women are now better at being men than men themselves. At least, that’s the message from Streatham Wells Primary, where pupils are being taught that Hollywood actress Elliot Page — formerly Ellen — is a shining example of positive masculinity.

Page, who underwent a double mastectomy and now identifies as a man, is, according to headteacher Sarah Wordlaw, the embodiment of what boys should aspire to be. “We need to encourage empathy, kindness, showing emotions,” she said, “listening to alternative points of view, and developing emotional literacy.”

All admirable qualities. But let’s be honest: these are traits traditionally associated with females — and more specifically, with the well-behaved girls every teacher quietly dreams of cloning. Meanwhile, behaviours more typical among boys — risk-taking, competitiveness, self-assertion — are largely written off as “challenging” or worse, “toxic”. And while boys are being told off, their views on sex and power are being quietly shaped elsewhere. Namely, by the porn-saturated culture they’re learning from long before puberty.

Tellingly, most of the role models held up for children in schools like Streatham Wells Primary — whether boys or girls — are chosen because they defy sex stereotypes. This began as part of a feminist push to liberate boys and girls from the shackles of sex roles. But somewhere along the line, the aim became less about expanding opportunity and more about engineering conformity.

As a feminist, I’ll admit I’m conflicted. I want children to be inspired by greatness, not trained to only admire those who share their pronouns. But idealism has its limits. The evidence is clear: boys are more disruptive, more impulsive, and it seems today’s young men are more hostile toward women than ever. That’s a hard reality to work with in schools, never mind the long-term implications for their future partners and families.

But trotting out weepy men, beautiful men, or stay-at-home dads at school assemblies isn’t helping. Boys don’t need pity or to be patronised, and they certainly don’t need lessons in manhood from women who’ve rejected their own sex. What they need are parents who guide them, and teachers who stop treating them like defective girls.

It’s now clear that half a century of school libraries stocking books with brave girls and vulnerable boys haven’t undone sex stereotypes. That might suggest at least some sex-based behaviour is biological and that the radical hopes of second-wave feminists were misplaced. We may never know the exact balance of nature and nurture. But we do know this: the world children inhabit today has changed beyond recognition.

Today’s most powerful teacher isn’t in the classroom — it’s the pornified content piped into their phones. Pornography offers boys a ready-made script for how to be a man: dominant, detached, and entitled to women’s bodies. Even if children haven’t watched it directly, they’re marinating in a world shaped by its expectations, it influences the music they listen to and the online games they play and now the AI companions programmed to simp and titillate them on demand. Porn has done more to reinforce the ugliest stereotypes than any tabloid or Disney princess could. It’s reshaped how we think about sex, power, and what men and women are for.

Meanwhile, schools fret about consent. At Streatham Wells, pupils are told to ask permission before embracing each other to teach children about boundaries, but no amount of polite phrasing can counteract the message that choking, slapping, and degradation are “just how sex works”.

The problem can’t be fixed by Elliot Page, hug policies or teaching kids about “toxic masculinity”. What needs to be addressed is deranged thinking that tries to fix misogyny with ideology while ignoring the global industry that profits from teaching boys that to be a man is to degrade women and girls. And until we’re brave enough to call porn what it is — a poison — no school assembly about boys who cry will make the slightest bit of difference.