Tate and gender divide

Male influencer Andrew Tate, who proclaims himself as a king of misogyny, entered the popular discourse after traditional news media heavily publicized his arrest in Romania. To some, this would be the first time that they ever heard his name but for teenage boys he is a figure that they look-up to.

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News media in Australia such as The Age and The Guardian had conducted interviews with Melbourne Teenagers, Fathers, and Teachers to hear their opinion about him. Interviews from his target audience reveal that his motivational speech content are gateways for boys to be exposed to Tate’s more extreme content. On various platforms he talks about the traditional view of masculinity and portrays how he is agreeing with misogynistic views. While girls are disgusted by his view, young boys of Melbourne are divided. To some, they agreed that controversial audio was taken out of context, that it was a joke and the short clips are spreaded out. Before his arrest, a tweet on Tate’s Twitter account said “The Matrix sent their agents” he used this to refer to the movie the matrix, in which he declares that the real world goes against him because he dares to take the red pill; for some boys this enhanced Tate’s authenticity value, they worship and idolise him as someone who dares to go against the current. On the other hand the blame should not fall to the audience, interviewed Teachers and Fathers mentioned that the lack of male idol figures for young boys nowadays might contribute to his idolisation therefore it is important for parents to talk about it with their sons, As Turnbull mentions “It is only when a teenager watches an Andrew Tate video and sees it as diametrically opposed to everything in their daily lives that his irrelevance will become obvious, and they will happily scroll to the next clip.”

Gendered Visibility in Online Media

Previously I have mentioned how in the context of gendered visibility and authenticity, scholars argue that members of marginalised communities must carefully police themselves to be both visible to a large audience but not make themselves too vulnerable in the process (Duffy and Hund 2019: 4983–4997). However, as our politics have notably become more progressive, far-right content creators in their own bubble are also thriving through the means of economies of visibility as utilised by previously feminist content creators that are vulnerable to online harassment (Cunningham and Craig 2021:41–43).

Economy of visibilities is a way of making capital for social commentary creators to voice their views that may be deemed as not advertiser friendly to platforms through means of sponsorship with companies that also want to push the same cultural agenda for public awareness and are incentivized to do so; in economy of visibilities creators merge political views with corporate sponsorship and build their brand by supporting goods that they believe in (Collin and Cunningham 2021:40–45). For example feminist Youtuber ‘Melanie Murphy and her video “Vulva Vagina Chart” that explains about feminine hygiene and campaigns to “End Period Poverty” enthusiastically mentions the involvement of period products provider “Always” as her sponsor (Collin and Cunningham 2021:47).

For Andrew Tate, who was de-platformed by a majority of social media, the means of his economy of visibility is through his venture of online courses that were catered to young boys. His audience was largely engaged through a private channel such as the crowdfunding platform Patreon. As defined by Weiser in Cunningham about economy of visibilities Tate positions himself for “visibility is all there is” (Collin and Cunningham 2021:43). In a highly politicised space mediated visibility is providing limited or filtered out content in their own bubble to be consumed by the masses, they are subjecting themselves to public scrutiny(Duffy and Hund 2019:4986). I alleged that for Tate his mission is not to defy gender norms it is only a way for him to gain fame, Tate’s behaviour that seeks to be cancelled is cunning, he is using radical views when attempting to raise public awareness.

After reading through literature on cancel culture, I feel like Tate in a way knows that being cancelled online is not a real risk since even after his arrest he still did not change the way that he portrays himself. The only problem Tate could encounter was if he were to change his online persona because they will regard him as in-authentic, or tainted by the government after the institutionalisation.

REFERENCE

Literature

Cunningham, Stuart, Craig, David and Baym, Nancy K (2021) Creator Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Duffy, Brooke Erin and Hund, Emily (2019) “Gendered Visibility on Social Media: Navigating Instagram’s Authenticity Bind,” International journal of communication (Online), p. 4983.

Geusens, Femke & Ouvrein, Gaëlle and Remen, Soetkin. (2023). #Cancelled: A qualitative content analysis of cancel culture in the YouTube beauty community. The Social Science Journal. 1–17. 10.1080/03623319.2023.2175150.

Kanai, Akane and McGrane, Caitlin (2021) “Feminist filter bubbles: ambivalence, vigilance and labour,” Information, communication & society, 24(15), pp. 2307–2322.

Lewis, Rebecca and Christin, Angèle (2022) “Platform drama: ‘Cancel culture,’ celebrity, and the struggle for accountability on YouTube,” New media & society, 24(7), pp. 1632–1656.

News Article

Lola O (14 February 2023) ‘Parents, talk to your sons about Andrew Tate — we teachers can’t take him on alone’, The Guardian, accessed 15 April 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/14/parents-sons-andrew-tate-teachers-toxic-influencers

Nadeem B (1 April 2023) ‘Andrew Tate released from detention and moved to house arrest in Romania’, The Guardian, accessed 15 April 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/mar/31/andrew-tate-released-from-detention-and-moved-to-house-arrest-in-romania

Sasha M (9 March 2023) ‘Why too many young men love Andrew Tate — and why we need to understand that, not dismiss it’, The Guardian, accessed 15 April 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/09/andrew-tate-young-men-social-media-motivational-sexism

Bachelard, M (2023) ‘We are still making terrible mistakes in how we bring up our boys — There are many more socially acceptable identities for boys these days than the one or two I was confronted with four decades ago. But those labels are worn at least as belligerently, their boundaries patrolled by their defenders.’, The Sunday Age: Web Edition Articles (Melbourne, Australia), 17 Mar, (online NewsBank).

Topsfield and Lachlan Abbott, J (2023) ‘Man trouble’, Age, The (Melbourne, Australia) , 7 Jan, p. 29, (online NewsBank).

Turnbull, D (2023) ‘To mitigate Tate’s hate, more men must step up to the plate — Young men seem attracted to Andrew Tate’s toxic views, but that won’t change unless other men call out his misogyny.’, The Age, accessed 5 May 2023, Newsbank.