Victim...Or Hero?

Lucky Boy, from Tortoise Investigates, how toxic masculinity warps memory

This seems like an appropriate time in history to interrogate toxic masculinity. From the character Saxon in The White Lotus, to the doomscroll, it’s touching everything from auto parts to red wine.

Lucky Boy

- From Tortoise Investigates

In classic Tortoise style, this investigation is both personal and public, but manages to retain some shreds of human dignity despite drudging up some very dark material. Tortoise’s chart-topping, Netflix-adapted breakout series Sweet Bobby from 2021 helped to set the rules for how to report a scam story (a theme which feels very present this year in podcast titles).

With Lucky Boy, the Tortoise team is back to examine toxic masculinity, through the atypical lens of a masculin victim. It asks the thorny question: what has changed since the 1990s about how we view men and boys, in matters about sex and sexuality?

Reporter and host Chloe Hadejimatheou is introduced to “Gareth,” (not his real name) who, according to some, was a very lucky 14-year-old boy, because he captured the attention of an attractive older woman, a 27-year-old Chemistry teacher, at his all-boys school in North London.

What followed was a torrid romance; at first, completely hidden and secretive. But eventually, according to Gareth, their relationship moved into the public sphere, with them openly communicating and then spending time together while at school. They even attended s staff function together at the pub, says Gareth.

The problem with all of this, however, is memory. Whose memory is correct, can it be corroborated, and if so, can this memory be proven? The other problem with memory is that there’s an implicit layer of judgement that quietly slips between the two folds of memory and truth; hence the toxic qualities. And then there’s the need for a tidy bow to wrap up these layers together—proof.

Hadejimatheou interrogates Gareth’s story

His memories and his truths by unwrapping the events as he recalls them. Lucky Boy asks us to untangle the complicated question of victimhood. Was Gareth a victim of abuse, or was he lucky, as his school chums recall? As the storytelling set up this fact, I braced myself. I did not want the already titillating facts of the story to tilt the narrative away from a story that seemed to contain obvious abuse.

By the end of the mercifully brief series, just four episodes, this series becomes an exercise in how to do balanced journalism, while at the same time telling a story that dissects what is hopefully is a bygone era—back when it was ok for young teachers to get with their students. With balanced journalism, the requirement is that the audience should be given enough facts to make an informed decision. Both sides of the story, opposing viewpoints, should be given equal weight.

But when it came to Gareth’s relevant bystanders, his school chums, the school administrators and fellow teachers, none came forward to help Gareth to corroborate his story when he laid charges, many years later. Gareth seemed to have compelling evidence….but when no one else seems able (or willing) to stand by him, how do you source that burden of proof?

In the place of being able to interrogate a balanced story, the choice was made to instead interrogate toxic masculinity. Many of Gareth’s contemporaries viewed him as a “lucky boy” to have gotten laid by an older woman as a teenager. Why would they feel sympathy, or pitty, towards him? Even thirty years later, one guest holds this view of the story. This interrogation was somewhat satisfying, although not completely. The smoke from the gun never seemed to be obvious.

Perhaps because the intervening thirty years have offered numerous examples of outdated norms, many of us have had the unfortunate ability to reflect on the ways that institutions and workplaces should have, or could have, dealt with these instances of abuse differently. When many can pull their own narrative layer to consider the weight of evidence, it’s possible that helps to balance the conflicting memories. In the end, Lucky Boy is an example in how to tell this sort of one-sided story; but there are some ugly, gut wrenching moments to consider before this conclusion feels apparent.

The set up for the story that Hadejimatheou lays out prepares us to feel this ick. In an effort to remind us exactly what 14-year-old boys are like nowadays, she gathers up a group of them to ask them some uncomfortable questions. The pointed juxtaposition here is that instead of some of them thinking about having sexual relations with anyone, let alone a person in authority, one of them admits that he still plays with Lego. This reminder set my stomach on its side heading into the rest of the unfolding narrative.

Part of the issue with this case is that Gareth himself was also taken in by this myth….it took him many years to view these life events as abuse, not just a lovesick dejected teenager who was dumped. It was years before he realized that he was groomed, and threatened, and held toxic secrets. All this as an entire school also hid the truth from everyone who asked in order to protect their own jobs and reputations, whilst they quietly shushed the teacher and sent her away to be someone else’s problem.

Gareth had two people in his corner: his mother and his sister. But neither could produce the smoking gun to indict the teacher. Mom recalls meeting with the school administrator; he denied that ever happening. The sister only had second-hand information to go on.

By the end, Gareth did receive some level of vindication and validation…I will let you listen to find out what that might be. But is this justice? Or available justice, given his restrictions.

The story is told with delicacy

There were quick mentions at the top of the episodes: “Just a heads up before we start…” And then at the end the substantive component warnings and trigger warnings came at the very end of some very long episodes.

The job of giving appropriate and timely trigger warnings is delicate. The best that I’ve ever seen this done was in The 13th Step, who broke the fourth wall, in the middle of the story, stopped the tape, and said: “Hey, if you’re listening to this now and feeling these things, here’s what you can do.”

Lucky Boy does offer an end-of-tape 2-minute piece about where to go and who to talk to if you’ve been a victim of grooming or sexual coercion, or sexual abuse. This is detailed and helpful (at least for a UK audience).

While I agree this story was well-told, and more-or-less managed to tell both sides of the story, despite the inability to find two complete sides. Ultimately, I did not feel that it adequately interrogated the whole concept of toxic masculinity…or that the trigger warnings would lead us down that specific path. But without a bevy of proof to work with, they did well considering the limitations of journalism. However, this is deeply ugly work. Perhaps it’s hard to feel satisfied by a shallow depth.

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Briefly mentioned…

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