Stopping misogyny shouldn’t just be about Andrew Tate

The writer is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of ‘Fix The System, Not The Women’

“Bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.” These are the words of Andrew Tate, the online influencer arrested in Romania on charges of organised crime, human trafficking and rape. Unlike others accused of similar crimes, Tate boasts an adoring fan base of millions online, many of them young men. As his views (including that women are men’s property, and that rape victims should “bear responsibility” for their attacks) gain traction, schools and parents are asking how to tackle his popularity with boys.

First things first: this isn’t just about Tate. Yes, a worrying number of boys have been exposed to his vitriolic misogyny — his TikTok videos alone have 11.6bn views — but he isn’t the “Pied Piper” figure some have suggested. In fact, the dramatic uptick in young people’s awareness of him has, in my direct experience working with young people, escalated since the wall-to-wall media coverage of him.

This isn’t a sudden, isolated case of a macho Svengali brainwashing all boys. Nor is it an issue confined to the UK — the urgent need to take a feminist approach to education is a global one. Even if Tate is jailed or loses his social media megaphone, the wider problem of extremist misogyny will remain. Schools must be cautious about framing responses as specific lessons on Tate, as if he acts in isolation. This misses vital wider context about societal misogyny, and risks lionising Tate, feeding directly into the conspiracy theory of the persecuted martyr he is desperate to promote.

Instead schools should offset this kind of misinformation and misogyny with high-quality relationships and sex education (RSE), focusing on consent and respect, not as a one-off tick-box session but in a thorough, regular forum where children can explore their anxieties and know they will be supported. Working with expert organisations or local survivor services will help schools to support young people appropriately.

Approaches should include celebrating alternative male role models such as footballer Marcus Rashford. A wider exploration of gender stereotypes should encompass how they harm boys — it must be made clear that feminism isn’t anti-men. Teachers and parents should familiarise themselves with the rhetoric on YouTube, Reddit and TikTok to help understand young people’s online landscape. Conversations should be calm, regular, open and non-judgmental. Let young people take the lead. Encourage scepticism about online sources and use real statistics on issues such as false rape allegations. (A man in the UK is estimated to be 230 times more likely to be raped himself than falsely accused of rape). Leadership from men in pupils’ own lives is also vital, whether it’s teachers, parents, sports coaches or youth workers. Don’t leave it to the women to tackle this alone.

Crucially, schools have a wider responsibility to be proactive, not reactive. Responding to someone like Tate after the fact is too little, too late. They should be building age-appropriate foundations of consent and relationships education from the start of primary school, not waiting until the age of 14, by which time more than 50 per cent of children have already seen online pornography. These issues should appear throughout the curriculum, from diverse authors in English to social justice movements in history. There must be a whole-school approach from sexual harassment to discriminatory dress codes, to create a robust environment of equality where views like Tate’s would find it harder to take hold in the first place.

A good quality RSE lesson will be ineffective in the context of a school where girls are sent home for wearing short skirts or boys are allowed to sexually harass with impunity. We must join the dots between rhetoric like Tate’s and the fact children recently told Ofsted inspectors that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are simply a routine part of their lives.

Perhaps the most effective way to contradict Tate’s drivel about macho alpha males is to juxtapose this with his claim to be a great champion of boys. The outdated stereotypes he espouses are, the American Psychological Association suggests, drivers of the horrifying crisis in male mental health and the devastatingly high male suicide rate. Far from being a champion of boys, Tate exploits and denigrates them for his own financial gain. Learning that the only way to be a man is to own, control and exploit women is a recipe for a sad and lonely life, not one full of relationships and success. This isn’t about attacking boys but supporting them: they deserve so much better.