Credits: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0.
This Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 10:55 PM, France 2 is broadcasting, in "Infrarouge", "Let’s Educate Our Sons" by Marie-Christine Gambart and Émilie Grall. Filmed in France and available on france.tv, the film examines "toxic masculinity" through testimony and analysis. It also explores educational approaches to prevent male violence without stigmatizing men, from school to family.
The Schoolyard, Stage For Prescriptions
It’s 8 a.m., the schoolyard opens like a stage. Backpacks knock against knees, yellow vests slide toward the gate. In the middle, a father slowly releases his son’s hand. “Stand up straight,” he murmurs, as if entrusting a responsibility beyond the child. A bit further on, other words fly: “don’t cry,” “act like a man.” They hang in the morning air and sketch a familiar scene. It is there, in this ordinary drama, that France 2 is offering this Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 10:55 PM a documentary. It asks a simple and broad question: how to educate our sons and prevent toxic masculinity without stigmatizing?
The Film: An Inquiry At Men’s Level, Without Tribunal Or Scapegoat
Aired in the "Infrarouge" slot and available on france.tv, "Let’s Educate Our Sons" is by Marie-Christine Gambart (director and co-writer) and Émilie Grall (co-writer), produced by Les Batelières Productions. The film keeps its distance from a witch trial: it gathers men’s stories, calls on female researchers and specialists, and observes prevention initiatives. The broadcaster promises a perspective that does not “accuse” “men” as a group, but seeks causes and remedies.
The announced running time is around 58 minutes, a compact format that fits the evening schedule. FranceTVPro’s press notes set the course: understand why the vast majority of violence is committed by men and, above all, how education can alter these trajectories.
Behind The Words: What "Toxic Masculinity" And "Hegemony" Cover
The film uses the term "toxic masculinity", not to essentialize, but to designate a set of norms and injunctions. These include suppression of emotions, domination, and valorization of risk-taking. They can harm others as well as oneself. The approach is socio-cultural: it speaks of scripts that are learned, internalized, transmissible, and therefore changeable.
In the literature, sociologist Raewyn Connell proposes the concept of “hegemonic masculinity”: a dominant model rarely majority, but prescriptive that organizes the hierarchy of masculinities and the asymmetry with the feminine. This tool helps locate practices: some boys adhere to it, others partially conform, others resist. Describing hegemony is to denaturalize the expectations placed on bodies and minds.
The Times: Countercurrents And Backlash
In the background, the shockwave of the “Gisèle Pélicot affair” has refocused attention on sexual violence, the question of consent, and what’s called rape culture. At the same time, men’s-rights narratives gain audience, social networks amplify controversies, and schools crystallize conflicting concerns. In this context, "Infrarouge" takes a civic stance: to offer a narrative framework linking biographies and structures without fanning the flames. The documentary gives space, notably, to the voices of Floriane Volt (Fondation des femmes) and Cédric Rostein (podcast Papatriarcat), to consider education, prevention, fatherhoods, and more egalitarian models of masculinity.
Data That Disrupt: When Numbers Give Scale
Public statistics compose a clear picture: men represent the predominant share of perpetrators of violence. On the road, the indicator is massive: in 2024, 77% of people killed in metropolitan France were men according to ONISR. Regarding attribution of fatal accidents, 84% of alleged responsible parties are male. These figures come from the Ministry of the Interior. It must be acknowledged: this reminder does not aim to stigmatize, but to document behaviors socially encouraged that expose men and those around them more.
Another marker, often cited by Justice: the prison population remains overwhelmingly male, around 95% men according to long series. Again, the point is not to deduce essences. It is to take note of the gaps to question the learned behaviors that feed them.
Finally, historian Lucile Peytavin proposes an economic order of magnitude of €95–100 billion per year that aggregates health expenses, justice, compensations, and social costs. It is an estimate derived from a methodology of adding itemized costs: useful for grasping the scale of the phenomenon, to be used with caution and pedagogy.
A Pedagogical Dramaturgy: Life Stories, Expertise, Workshops
The device takes the form of a journey. Men tell their stories, distance themselves from past attitudes, say what changing has cost and brought. Specialists describe the mechanics of virilist injunctions: refusal of tears, valorization of risk, confusion between authority and domination. The filmmaking, close to the voices, interweaves intimacy and collective spaces: classroom workshops, fathers’ discussion groups, prevention modules. You hear concrete actions: naming emotions, disrupting toy and textbook stereotypes, working with peers, involving fathers without shaming them.
Since its creation, "Infrarouge" claims a public service function: open zones of ambivalence, refuse anathemas, hold together individual responsibility and the weight of social frameworks. Here, the film links critique of virilist norms to an educational horizon. In that horizon, mothers, fathers, teachers, educators, media and institutions share the burden.
What We Know About Public Policy: Programs, Plans, Useful Numbers
France has equipped itself with concrete tools. 3919 (Violences Femmes Info) provides listening and referral 24/7, free and anonymous. The interministerial equality plan 2023–2027 combines prevention, training, care, and justice. The 2023–2027 plan against violence toward children sets six objectives, from protection to data production. Finally, the Téléphone Grave Danger (TGD) is issued by prosecutors. It allows victims in grave danger to reach law enforcement immediately via a dedicated button.
These measures do not solve everything, but map out a path of public offers: from first reception to emergency, from prevention to support. The essential task now is to measure their effects: number of calls to 3919, deployment of the TGD, actual trainings and impact indicators. This allows correcting blind spots such as adolescence, peer groups, and social platforms.
School, Family, Screens: Where To Act?
The film focuses on the places where ordinary behaviors are made: bedrooms, cafeterias, sports fields, news feeds. It shows proven experiments, such as equality education sessions in primary and middle schools. It also offers empathy workshops to name and regulate emotions at the onset of puberty. Additionally, programs for fathers shift the paternal figure from sole authority toward presence and care. In class, advertising clichés are unpacked. At home, tasks are redistributed online. Moreover, men’s-rights rhetorics are spotted and one learns to question them.
On this ground, Cédric Rostein Papatriarcat reminds that educational coherence matters: setting limits is not the same as humiliating, demanding can rhyme with respect, apologizing is exemplary. Floriane Volt, for the Fondation des femmes, stresses the support pathways. She also highlights the role of the associative network. Finally, she emphasizes the need for a responsive justice. The film orients without dictating: it offers actions, it invites trying them.
What The Evening Asks Of Us: Four Questions To Continue
What exactly is meant by “toxic”? First, behaviors established by research — risk-taking at the wheel, verbal violence, contempt for emotions. Second, internalized norms like “boys don’t cry.” Finally, contexts that reward these attitudes among peers or in certain professional cultures. Which educational levers work? Those that involve fathers and equip mothers play an essential role. They also train teachers and value empathy. Furthermore, they evaluate their effects over time.
Which public measures produce results? Access to 3919 and the deployment of TGD are major projects. In addition, training of magistrates, healthcare staff and law enforcement is crucial. Moreover, the 2023–2027 plans on equality and child protection are essential. In these areas, indicators matter as much as announcements. Finally, how to articulate individual responsibilities and social frameworks? By reminding that people are accountable for their acts, but that norms are transmitted and changed collectively.
A Fully Functioning Television: Tell, Connect, Repair
In the tradition of public service, "Let’s Educate Our Sons" does more than denounce: it weaves knowledge into narrative and opens spaces for practice. Faced with the post-#MeToo backlash, the evening keeps a compass: do not succumb to caricature, stick to the facts, inspire action. Amid noise and fury, the camera listens. It records ambiguities, contradictions, restarts. It is little and it is much.
But the remaining methodological caution is that not all the figures used are of the same nature: ONISR data are official and updated, the economic approximation of €95–100 bn is an argued attempt, useful to grasp an order of magnitude. Distinguishing them is not opposing them: it is situating arguments and avoiding misunderstandings.
The credits roll, the schoolyard reopens. A father looks for his son in the crowd, a boy cries without shame, someone hands him a tissue, everyone breathes. Perhaps that is where education begins: in these little things that undo the fear of being tender. If this film could, for one hour, defuse a spark? To give families, classrooms, and institutions the words and the gestures to speak differently of strength and vulnerability.