Andrew Tate isn't feminism's inadvertent bastard child. He's sexism's last gasp
Andrew Tate isn’t feminism’s inadvertent bastard child. He’s sexism’s last gasp
Martha Gill
Equality has spawned a masculinity crisis, goes the theory. But a glance around the world’s patriarchies proves otherwise
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Andrew Tate: a ‘leading indicator of disorientation’ or guru for young men seeking someone to blame for their problems? Photograph:
Sun 8 Jan 2023 01.30 EST
Last modified on Sun 8 Jan 2023 05.25 EST
Is feminism ultimately to blame for the rise of Andrew Tate, the “trillionaire” guru and self-identified misogynist who once claimed women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted and who last week was arrested in Romania on charges of people trafficking? Is it western strides in equality that have pushed young men to join his 4 million followers online? Plenty of people think so. “His appeal should… be seen as a leading indicator of some of the genuine disorientation being felt by millions of boys and men,” writes the author Richard Reeves, a feeling, he says, which results from “the extraordinary successes of the women’s movement”. Boys are being overtaken by girls in education. Men no longer know who they should be.
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Does misogynistic anger among young men in the west correlate to their new economic and social status? Is Tate equality’s bastard child? It’s a theory. Just one problem. Take a look at the world’s more entrenched patriarchies – those countries where men still unequivocally hold the whip hand – and you’ll find just as many angry young men flocking to misogynist ideologues at the merest glimmerings of feminist progress. Except they’ll be angrier. And there will be more of them.
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And are we really in the grips of a “masculinity crisis”? I only note that a masculinity crisis has been diagnosed wherever and whenever women fight against sexism. Historians have located a “masculinity crisis” as far back as the 1880s, when roles available to women widened. Masculinity crises erupted in the 1960s and 1970s. The masculinity crisis was a central motif in 1980s and 90s British cinema and in China the government has denoted a “masculinity crisis” among boys and men. (In China, women in their 20s still face huge pressure to leave the workforce and get married.)
It is true that women in the west are overtaking men in some subjects in the relative meritocracy of formal education. Pay gaps have closed for younger employees. But young males can still look ahead and anticipate a brighter future than young women. They can look to their 30s and 40s and anticipate parenting pay gaps in which they will probably be the victors; they can look at the tiny proportion of women at the top of most career ladders and predict a more successful 50s and 60s. Men do not, in fact, lack for role models: they have entire libraries, film archives and the leaders of almost every country and profession. We worry about young male “status loss”. We rarely ask how young women – barraged by street harassment, low rape convictions and a TV schedule full of dead, sexy female bodies – feel about their own “status”. Why does Tate really appeal to young men? Well, like everyone else, young men are susceptible to the idea that they are special, deserving and that others are to blame for their problems. And like everyone else, they will behave as badly as society permits. The west is still replete with sexist narratives. Tate is not a symptom of too much equality, but too much patriarchy. The real work is getting rid of it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/08/andrew-tate-isnt-feminisms-inadvertent-bastard-child-hes-sexisms-last-gasp