Browsing by Author "Ayesha Abdul Wadood"

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    Performing what’s learned
    (UMT, Lahore, 2025) Ayesha Abdul Wadood
    This qualitative content study examines the developmental arc of toxic masculinity, including its social construction, psychological internalization, and embodied performativity in youth through a close textual and analytical reading of the 2025 Netflix limited series Adolescence. The study investigates the illustration of youth radicalization through its central character, Jamie Miller, as he adopts and performs traits of hegemonic masculine behaviours such as aggression, domination, and emotional suppression under the influence of both familial modeling and toxic ideologies promoted within the digital male-dominated spaces. Employing a dual theoretical lens of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning as found in his profound work, Social Learning Theory (1977), and Judith Butler’s Gender Performative Theory, presented in her influential work, Gender Trouble (1990), this research aims to explore how Jamie’s masculine identity is not innate, but rather a product of social conditioning which is reinforced and ultimately enacted through repeated performances. Furthermore, the study explores how the digital environment operates as a pedagogical space for absorbing toxic masculine traits, where toxic norms are cyclically enacted and reinforced through positive rewards and peer validation. In this way, the constant passive exposure to digital spaces shapes Jamie’s distorted perception of male identity as he absorbs and internalizes a curriculum of hypermasculine values that promote male aggression, control, and emotional detachment. This study, thus, emphasizes the perilous intersection of hegemonic gender norms, digital radicalization, and rigid performance of masculinity by providing a cultural critique of modern masculinity through the narrative of Jamie’s downfall.