‘We see misogyny every day’: how Andrew Tate’s
twisted ideology infiltrated British schools
A year ago, most teachers had never heard of the
ex-kickboxer and social media influencer. Now, his toxic machismo is the talk
of the playground – and the staffroom
Sally Weale
Sally Weale
Thu 2 Feb
2023 10.00 GMT
Daniel is
10. He likes football, Fifa, the gaming website Poki, coding and basketball.
Last year, he asked his dad if he had ever heard of Andrew Tate. “I hadn’t,”
admits his father, Nick, who went away, did some research and was horrified at
what he found.
Today, it
seems as if virtually every parent in Britain has heard of the ex-kickboxer,
social media influencer and self-professed misogynist, whose videos have been
watched millions of times and whose recent arrest in Romania on suspicion of
human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group to exploit women
has kept him in the headlines.
Children
are not only mainlining Tate’s toxic social media content, which has resulted
in him being banned from most major platforms; they are also tracking his
progress through the Romanian criminal justice system, where he and his
brother, Tristan, have been remanded in custody until 27 February while
investigations continue. An appeal against their detention was rejected
yesterday. They deny all the allegations.
Among those
following developments in Bucharest is 14-year-old Isaac. “I want to know what
happens,” he says, with some glee. Isaac seems to be an average teenager. He
plays a lot of football and goes to the gym. He likes Fortnite and goes fishing
when he gets the chance. He thinks Tate is an idiot, but he says there are
other boys at his inner-city state school who idolise him.
“I probably
first heard of him about six months ago and really quickly he was just
everywhere online. You couldn’t avoid him,” says Isaac. “When I first saw him,
I was quite interested. Now, I think he’s absolutely stupid. When we’re talking
about him, mostly we make fun of him. Out of my friends, I only know about two
people who support him. They like the fact that he is rich and strong.”
Andrew
Tate, who was arrested in December on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and
forming an organised crime group to exploit women
Tate was
arrested in December on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an
organised crime group to exploit women. Photograph: Bogdan Cristel/EPA
Tate, 36, a
US-British citizen who came to public attention when he was thrown off the
reality show Big Brother in 2016, likes to pose with a cigar in front of
expensive cars and private jets, and often dispenses dubious advice to young
men (he once claimed reading books is “for people with slow brains”). But it is
his extreme misogyny that has gained him notoriety, prompting fears that boys
and young men are being radicalised by his views. He has said women are partly
responsible for being raped and that they “belong” to men. In one video, in
which he imagines a woman accusing him of cheating, he is shown saying: “It’s
bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up,
bitch.”
Campaigners
fear Tate’s views are even seeping into the minds of primary schoolchildren.
Last month, the Labour MP Alex Davies-Jones spoke in parliament about Tate’s
“toxic” influence on schoolboys and criticised Rishi Sunak for being “too slow
to recognise the damage this is causing”. As a result, she was “bombarded” with
rape and death threats. But wall-to-wall media coverage in the past few weeks
means teachers and parents are increasingly aware of Tate’s poisonous messaging
and the threat it poses. Secondary schools across the country have mobilised to
arrange additional training for staff, workshops for pupils and
awareness-raising events for parents.
So far,
Daniel’s inner-city primary school has not raised the issue, with either
parents or children. “It’s worrying,” says Nick. “I think the school should
address it. They should talk about it in class. Children are getting hold of
stuff earlier than parents think they are.”
There’s an expectation from boys that girls are going
to do what they tell them to do
Lisa McCall
Many
secondary school teachers feel they were slow to pick up on Tate’s influence.
Last year, they began to notice pupils using phrases they didn’t recognise:
“What colour is your Bugatti?” (a way of bragging about status); “Make me a
sandwich” (to belittle women and girls).
“Students
knew more than teachers in those early stages,” says Lisa McCall, the deputy
headteacher at Wales high school in Rotherham. “We were in the dark.” Now that
teachers are catching up, they are worried about the corrosive influence of the
extreme misogyny espoused by Tate. One says she is concerned about some of the
behaviour between boys and their girlfriends in school: one boy was seen
pinning his girlfriend to the wall by her shoulder; another was seen trying to
confiscate his girlfriend’s phone. “There seems to be an increased need for
boys to control girls,” she says. “There’s an expectation from boys that girls
are going to do what they tell them to do.”
Sean Maher,
the headteacher at Richard Challoner, a Catholic boys’ school in New Malden, Surrey,
with a co-educational sixth form, describes how he has seen Tate’s influence
spread through his school. “It wasn’t really coming up last year,” he says,
adding that isolated incidents were dealt with as they arose. “But now it’s got
to a point, probably due to the arrests, that he is mainstream. In terms of
student knowledge, it’s a common discussion point.”
A lot of it
is covert – pupils using a hand signal associated with Tate, for example – but
the school has decided to tackle it head on, talking to pupils about the impact
of “toxic masculinity” and highlighting positive role models. Maher is planning
to send a letter to parents with advice on how to talk to their children about
Tate. “I don’t think schools can tackle this on their own. Parents play a very
important role.”
In other
schools, it has become a behavioural issue, with pupils mimicking Tate and
sometimes openly expressing support for him. Teaching staff are signing up in
growing numbers for training sessions from organisations such as Men at Work.
Its founder, Michael Conroy, offers advice on how to build constructive
dialogues with boys and young men.
I listen in
on one Men at Work training session, attended by 20-plus teachers from state
and private schools. Many of those attending are also parents, worried about
the impact of influencers such as Tate on their sons. “We see misogyny every
day in my school, with everything from boys ignoring instructions in corridors
from female staff to serious sexual assaults,” says one teacher. “We need to do
something.” Another describes how boys entertain themselves by seeing how many
times they can slip the phrase “Make me a sandwich” into her lesson.
“They feel
a shared confidence, as they are all accessing the same content online,” says
one teacher. Another adds: “Our boys have an emotional connection to the
influencers they are accessing. They will use any argument to defend both their
views and their behaviour.”
Tate’s
particularly nasty form of misogyny has not appeared out of thin air. As Conroy
makes plain, misogyny is as old as the hills. Almost three years ago, Soma Sara
founded the Everyone’s Invited initiative, which began as a website for
survivors to share anonymously their experiences of rape culture and has lifted
the lid on the scale of sexual violence and misogyny in schools. Since then,
there have been several high-profile killings of women, including Sarah
Everard, while official statistics published last month showed a large rise in
the number of young men referred to the government’s Prevent scheme in relation
to misogynistic “incel” ideology.
I don’t think schools can tackle this on their own.
Parents play a very important role
Sean Maher
“We need to
focus on the issues and not the individual,” says Conroy, who spent 16 years
working in secondary schools before setting up Men at Work. “It’s not about
Andrew Tate; it’s about misogyny. These issues have been there for ever.” He
is, however, concerned about the amount of pornography to which children and
young people are now exposed. Recent research revealed that one in 10 children in
England have seen pornography by the age of nine, and one in four by 11.
“Porn is a
huge accelerant to this,” says Conroy, who believes Tate should be a wake-up
call for parents to “get with the programme” and learn what their children are
exposed to online. “It’s only by the rigorous actions of some parents and
carers that any child has any form of filter.”
As well as
training for teachers, schools are also bringing in teams from organisations
such as Beyond Equality, School of Sexuality Education, Hope Not Hate,
Everyone’s Invited and Bold Voices to work with pupils on gender equality,
gender-based violence and misogyny.
Natasha
Eeles, the founder of Bold Voices, says her team has worked with more than 50
schools since June 2022, when they started hearing Tate’s name mentioned by
young people. “Now, we can’t go into a school without hearing his name in every
workshop. Since the beginning of January, we have seen an unprecedented rise in
inquiries, with concerned staff getting in touch to ask for support on Tate
specifically.
“None of
our talks or workshops focus exclusively on Tate, as we try to support young
people, staff and parents to understand the roots of gender inequality and
gender-based violence and see Tate as one small part of that wider issue.”
The
messenger can be as important as the message, though, says one senior staff
member in a London secondary school. Their school has invited a number of
external groups to give talks on misogyny and related issues, but worries that
they are often presented by “middle-class white women”, who might not make an
impression on the school’s diverse cohort of boys. The school is considering
training a young, male teacher as an alternative.
Jessica
Ringrose, a professor of the sociology of gender and education at University
College London’s Institute of Education, has worked in schools on issues of
masculinity, gender inequality and sexual violence. She focuses on 13- to
15-year-olds who are particularly vulnerable to gendered misinformation online.
From her experience, 15% to 20% of the boys taking part in her workshops are
“somehow buying into this ideology”.
“It’s not
surprising that these kinds of norms are continuing to filter through when
they’re being championed by somebody like Tate, who embodies these kind of
superdominant, aggressive – ‘Here’s my Bugatti and my 30 cars and my knife
collection’ – tough, virile masculinities.”
Ringrose
says the government should take a stronger line: “Where is the Department for
Education [DfE] response on this? What is it actually doing to support
schools?” She says she was commissioned by the DfE to do a report on harmful
sexual behaviour in schools and how to address it, which she and her team
handed over last March, but it has not been published.
Her paper
argued for a preventive, whole-school approach, raising awareness about and
challenging harmful sexual cultures, rather than responding once harmful
behaviour has already taken place, which is what often happens now. “You can’t
just teach one RHSE [relationships, health and sex education] lesson on this;
you need to have a whole-school ethos. We need to make it a priority.”
In
response, the government said it had made RSHE a compulsory part of the
curriculum and had published statutory guidance stating that schools should be
alive to issues such as everyday sexism, misogyny and gender stereotypes. “We
will be publishing further non-statutory guidance later this year to provide
practical advice on how to create a whole-school culture of respectful
relationships, and how to teach about sexual harassment, sexual violence and
violence against women and girls.”
Rather than
focusing on Tate and his ilk, Ringrose recommends an affirmative approach.
“It’s about calling boys and men allies and trying to find relatable ways to
understand equity and want to fight injustice. There are really great
programmes trying to call boys and men into the conversation, raise their
awareness of gender inequality and gender stereotypes. They’re doing good
work.”
Some names
have been changed
How to talk to your children about toxic masculinity
A guide by
Bold Voices
1 Keep the
discussion casual and friendly. Try striking up the conversation in a space
without direct eye contact, such as when driving, walking or watching TV, to
avoid feelings of confrontation.
2 Be
proactive, not reactive. Bringing up the conversation organically, rather than
in reaction to a comment or event, will set the tone as objective and minimise
defensiveness.
3 Little
and often makes it less intense and less awkward.
4 Discuss
healthy role models and narratives around masculinity.
5 There are
no right or wrong narratives. Inspire agency by offering information and
letting them think about it critically.
6 Don’t
panic or react with shock. It might be startling or enraging to hear certain
views coming from teenagers, but reacting with shock or anger can shut down a
conversation.
7 Don’t ban
social media. This misses the point. Social media is a vehicle, not a root
cause
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