How to deal with Andrew Tate?
I recently gave a presentation during a 16 Days of Activism event and was asked a very interesting question: What strategies do you find effective in challenging popular voices like Andrew Tate and the views they espouse (especially when often these voices have a 'mainline' to kids through TikTok or YouTube)?
I actually get asked questions like this a lot. This is my response…
The world is changing, and men and boys of all ages are struggling with what I call a “Crisis of Masculinity”; where they don’t really know their place in society, where they are profoundly disconnected and lonely, and where they don’t know how to connect with other people in healthy ways.
People like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson capitalise on mens’ insecurity, mens’ increased loneliness and disconnection, and mens’ vulnerability, and they paint themselves as heroes of men.
Whilst their ideologies can appear helpful, or that they have men’s best interests at heart, underlying them is a deep-seated hatred of women; viewing women as objects, and propagating the idea that men are under attack.
Unfortunately, there comes a point in our relationship with our kids where we have to accept that we cannot control what they are exposed to. There comes a point where we have to trust the values we have instilled in them as children and support (and trust) them to make their own decisions about how they will deal with the myriad of influences pulling them in different directions throughout their lives.
Basically, if you approach a teenage boy (any teenager for that matter) and just start telling them that Andrew Tate is bad or Jordan Peterson is bad, or x movie is bad, then they are going to be drawn to it.
So we have to be prepared to have a brave, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations that supports them to make up their own mind.
Leverage healthy male role-models to understand what they are going through.
One thing I have noticed is that the boys who are most drawn to people like Andrew Tate all seem to have one thing in common; a lack of healthy male role models to show them that being a man is about more than domination, conquest and status etc.
And so, the main strategy I use is to have conversations that give them a chance to unpack those ideas for themselves. As soon as you challenge it and tell them it is wrong, you are almost setting them up to align with it.
I use humble enquiry and genuine curiosity to ask questions so that I can better understand what is going on for them to make Andrew Tate appealing in the first place (rather than trying to convince them of the “right opinion").
After all, Andrew Tate is not the problem…he is capitalising on the problem, which is the challenges that young men are feeling right now. Making them feel guilt or shame will only make the problem worse.
As soon as you can demonstrate that you hear them, you validate them and you understand them, they won’t need Andrew Tate to do that. They’ve got you!
Give them a language!
Tarang Chawla, Anti-violence advocate and commissioner at the Victorian Multicultural Commission, said recently that:
“Violence is the language of the inarticulate”
Our boys and men cannot articulate their emotions in a way that does not involve aggression, power, dominance and control.
And they learn it in part from figures like Andrew Tate, but they also learn that from broader popular culture, from movies, television, from our leaders, from our communities, from our families.
But they also learn it from the way we treat women in society, and they way we treat women at work.
So when dealing with the influence of people like Andrew Tate, we have to help young men to accept that two things have to be true:
Male privilege is real, it exists, men are not being discriminated against the way women are by virtue of their gender...AND
The individual experience of being a boy or a man can be really hard.
If we can get young men to accept these two things, then we can give them a language and engage in a conversation that draws them in, rather than pushes them away.
When we do this, we can get them to stop and ask:
“What kind of man am I?”
“What kind of man do I want to be?”
“What kind of men do I want to surround myself with?”
“What role can I play in creating a safer and more equitable culture?”
We need to give them a language and get them to develop the skills to make their own decisions in the context of people like Andrew Tate.
And this is best facilitated by the healthy male role models in the community... the very people that young men crave connection with.
If you are interested in more reading, check out these two links:
How to raise boys who don’t Rape women - Dr Monty Badami
What’s needed to educate boys about gender violence - Michael Flood
Dr Monty Badami is an Anthropologist and the Founder of Habitus. He combines evolutionary evidence with cross-cultural research to demonstrate how our creativity, diversity and imperfection, is actually the secret to our adaptability and success as a species.
He has spent most of his research living with the Paniya, a marginalised indigenous group in India, who were slaves until recently. However, he now works closer to home, where he delivers transformative workshops that help people put more meaning and joy back into their lives.
Monty supports organisations to improve their performance and gain a competitive edge by embracing our humanity and nurturing collaborative and inclusive cultures.
He runs a series called “Brave Conversations”, where he uses his anthropological knowledge to talk about what it means to be human, as well as challenge the norms of toxic masculinity as well as other stereotypes of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and race.