Andrew Tate and the Rise of Toxic Masculinity
by Stephen Ferguson | 19 November 2024 |
At the time I’m writing this, the Australian Broadcasting Committee has had a special documentary and podcast dedicated to the risk of Andrew Tate. If you are over the age of 30, you might have never come across this guy. By way of background, as reported by The Guardian newspaper:
“Andrew Tate says women belong in the home, can’t drive, and are a man’s property.
“He also thinks rape victims must ‘bear responsibility’ for their attacks and dates women aged 18-19 because he can ‘make an imprint’ on them, according to videos posted online.
“In other clips, the British-American kickboxer – who poses with fast cars, guns and portrays himself as a cigar-smoking playboy – talks about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings, and stopping them from going out.
“Tate’s views have been described as extreme misogyny by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to commit harm offline.
“But the 35-year-old is not a fringe personality lurking in an obscure corner of the dark web. Instead, he is one of the most famous figures on TikTok, where videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times.
“Styled as a self-help guru, offering his mostly male fans a recipe for making money, pulling girls, and ‘escaping the matrix,’ Tate has gone in a matter of months from near obscurity to one of the most talked-about people in the world. In July, there were more Google searches for his name than for Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian.”
It is easy to dismiss Tate as just another shock jock looking for clicks and notoriety. However, I put to you that we should take him seriously. For a start, Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are now reportedly facing charges of rape and human trafficking.
Moreover, as the news extract explains, Andrew Tate is a person with great influence. My own investigations perusing Twitter (now X), Reddit, and other social media platforms suggest he has a very large and loyal male following, which includes young Christian boys and men. As one commentator and concerned parent likewise noted:
“But my teen daughters knew exactly who he was because, as they told me, most of the Christian teen boys they know enthusiastically follow Andrew Tate online.”
Andrew Tate has also been given a degree of legitimacy by former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who continues to hold sway over Christian conservatives. And that is a big problem.
Modern masculinity
I don’t think Tate’s rise in popularity can be seen as an isolated phenomenon. His toxic brand of toxic hypermasculinity should never be excused, but we do need to understand where it might have come from.
Even amongst more progressive commentators, such as The New Yorker magazine, there is an admission that modern masculinity is facing challenges:
“Many social scientists agree that contemporary American men are mired in malaise, even as they disagree about the causes. In academic performance, boys are well behind girls in elementary school, high school, and college, where the sex ratio is approaching two female undergraduates for every one male. (It was an even split at the start of the nineteen-eighties.) Rage among self-designated ‘incels’ and other elements of the online ‘manosphere’ appears to be steering some impressionable teens toward misogyny. Men are increasingly dropping out of work during their prime working years, overdosing, drinking themselves to death, and generally dying earlier, including by suicide.”
Statistics seem to demonstrate new challenges facing boys and men, especially in Western countries, which tend to show:
- Boys are falling behind girls in every stage of education.
- Men are graduating university at lesser rates than women, and women are more likely to graduate with prestigious degrees such as law and medicine.
- Men are more likely to be unemployed.
- Men are much more likely to commit suicide.
- Men have lower life expectancies, and men are more likely to die from contagious diseases such as Covid.
- Men are overwhelmingly more likely to die in war and other military operations.
- Men are much more likely to be homeless.
- Men are overwhelmingly more likely to be incarcerated.
- Men are more likely to lose custody of children in divorce.
- Most of these measures of gender disadvantage for boys and men are exacerbated for those from a racial minority, such as amongst African-American and Indigenous communities.
Warped masculinity
Don’t misunderstand me: I have a daughter, and I am reluctant to get into some sort of contest of misery. I acknowledge women continue to face major inequities when it comes to income disparity, corporate leadership, housework, sexual violence, and a range of other issues.
Nevertheless, I also have a son. It would be equally disingenuous to ignore a growing disquiet amongst teenage boys and young men. If this were not so, people such as Andrew Tate wouldn’t be making such an impact. The rise of other so-called male-help gurus, from Jordan Peterson to Tony Robbins, illustrate this trend. We deny this at our peril.
Even if male disempowerment is illusory rather than real, there is clearly a perception of male disadvantage, and it is this perception that itself represents a risk. This has wider real-world implications, even if you are a liberal, atheist, feminist woman. As also noted by The New Yorker:
“And men are powering the new brand of reactionary Republican politics, premised on a return to better times, when America was great—and, unsubtly, when men could really be men. The question is what to make of the paroxysm.”
We have people thinking a bone-spurred, genital-grabbing, bombastic, womanizer who criticizes actual war heroes is supposedly a “strong man,” precisely because we seem to have lost all good sense of how genuine, non-toxic masculinity works. We likewise have growing support for real-life dictators, some of whom are now literally killing and kidnapping children, but who are being lauded as strong Christian men because they are supposedly preventing the snuffing out of Christianity, as well as not forcing us to eat dogs.
Andrew Tate’s attraction, as well as other male-help gurus, is dangerous precisely because he appeals to so-called “traditional Christian values.” For example, as Tate said in his interview with fellow purveyor of ridiculous toxic masculinity, Tucker Carson:
“They banned me simply because I had large swaths of the population agreeing to very traditional masculine values. I live a very traditionally masculine life.”
What worries me is so many conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, seem to swallow this bunkum. The fact Tate later called Christianity a joke and converted to Islam doesn’t seem to dissuade Carlson and others that Tate is not some version of the Second Coming.
Was Jesus a loser?
So, what is our solution? What every young Christian man needs to know is that Andrew Tate is no follower of Jesus. Why would he? By Tate’s metric of success, Jesus would be a total loser.
Jesus never owned a fast car or the ancient equivalent (Jesus did once borrow a donkey). He never owned any guns or practiced mixed martial arts (in fact, Jesus once healed someone whose ear was cut off by a sword). He never had a high-profile job (Jesus was a carpenter). He never owned a big house (Jesus claimed He owned less than a fox or bird). He never had much wealth (Jesus literally had to fish for a coin to pay His taxes). And He never grifted a large crowd out of their money (in fact, Jesus once fed over 5,000 people for free).
Most importantly, Jesus was a complete dud with the ladies. By all appearances, Jesus never had a wife or even a girlfriend. It seems Jesus lived His entire life as a virgin. No doubt, Tate would have called Jesus an ‘incel’ or some other supposedly effeminate term.
Jesus and true masculinity
Yet to us Christians, Jesus was the best man who ever lived. We even consider Him the Second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45-49), a very prototype of what men should be. Even for non-believers, Jesus is widely respected as one of the greatest heroes in all of history.
Jesus was no pushover or weakling, as some might try to frame Him. Jesus could be ferociously hard – even angry – when the circumstances demanded. Jesus could harshly condemn the so-called experts of Moses’s Law, calling them everything from vipers to children of Satan (Matt 12:34; John 8:44). Jesus could brandish a whip in righteous rage, to cleanse His Father’s house from a commercialized faux spirituality (John 2:15; Matt. 21:12-17).
Jesus could also show strong but silent confidence. With a few strokes of His finger in the dirt, Jesus could save a prostitute from hypocritical religious men with murder in their hearts (John 8:1-11). As a man facing execution, Jesus could stare down the greatest military power of the age and go calmly to His death (Matt. 27:12-14).
Jesus could also be soft and caring. Jesus had no compunctions about comparing Himself to a hen – note, not a rooster – who gathers her chicks under her wings (Matt. 23:37). Jesus loved children and put them at the center rather than the periphery of His mission (Matt. 18:1-10). Jesus considered women equals in a way that astounded other men and even angered other women (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus treated eunuchs (people we might consider transgender or intersex) with compassion and even admiration (Matt. 19:12). Jesus wept (John 11:35-38).
Tate is talk—Jesus real
For all his bravado, I get the impression that Andrew Tate is nothing but a scared and insecure boy, dealing with his own daddy issues. All the fast cars, guns, and playboy antics shared on Tik Tok suggest a person who is trying way too hard. For all his physical size and significant wealth, Tate is a bully who thinks bullying weaker people is only a good thing. And for all his many sexual conquests – even alleged rapes – we have a young man who by his own admission can’t form friendships with women.
By contrast, for all His supposed meekness and mildness, Jesus of Nazareth was a grown man clearly comfortable in His own skin. For all His lack of earthly possessions, Jesus felt no desire to accumulate fake accoutrements of worldly status. For all His power – what Christians believe was even divine power – Jesus could be gentle and kind. Jesus was a lamb but could be a lion, especially to those who sought to prey on the weak. For all His immense popularity and charisma, Jesus never took advantage of anyone sexually, and yet developed deep personal relationships with people, including women.
I get the impression Tate is not a real man; he is a boy playing some perverse dress-up pantomime of one. Jesus is the most real man who ever lived; only He can show boys how to navigate an increasingly confusing message of modern masculinity. It is in all our interests that our young Christian men know this difference.
Stephen Ferguson is a lawyer from Perth, Western Australia, with expertise in planning, environment, immigration, and administrative-government law. He is married to Amy and has two children, William and Eloise. Stephen is a member of the Livingston Adventist Church.
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