The Left, Men, And Tiktok: Why Third-Wave Feminism is Failing to Combat Andrew Tate
In the last year, a horrifying statistic was uncovered. In British schools, the half-year of school since lockdown saw a 800% higher number of young boys who had to be expelled or suspended for inappropriate sexual behaviour towards their female peers than previous full years. According to the testimony of teachers, this is, at least in part, a result of influential men on social media, and are directly cited as reasons why some boys think this conduct is okay. By far the most common name among them; Andrew Tate.
Social media has brought some good, but it has also led to a lot of harm. With the youngest in our modern society spending hours each day on these platforms, it is more important now, than ever, to be paying close attention to how ideologies form, how these ideologies lead to behaviour, and what steps we can take to ensure this behaviour is stopped. And I think, in part, this involves tackling the ideology.
As context for this discussion, I am an intersectional, third-wave feminist. I studied politics at a higher level, and my personal focus was on how ideologies form. It is important to acknowledge that my critique of modern feminism here is one done with love, with my intended end goal to be a world that is safer for women.
Whilst I am not a socialist, I do like French philosopher Louis Althusser’s approach to ideology, which is an adaptation of Karl Marx’s view on the subject. Marx believed that ideology resulted from material conditions and class interest, but Althusser added an addendum, which pulled directly from another of Marx’s ideas.
Now, if you don’t believe in patriarchy, feminism, or Marxist critique, read this whole article. You might be surprised that it makes a surprising amount of sense.
Marx proposed the idea of false consciousness. In this concept, people misappropriate what their position in society is, and especially why it is where it is. He believed that false consciousness is how systems toxic to our lives remain in power. Althusser simply suggested that people act in accordance with what they think is their class interest, and form ideologies accordingly. In short, people base their ideology not in what they think is their class interest, but in the interest of the class they think they are part of. And that this class can be a fictitious one.
This might seem like a simple concept, but the difference between those two conceptualisations of ideology have massive implications for how we can address ideologies we might consider toxic. The pure Marxist take would be that men and boys act in accordance with what is beneficial with their class as boys and men. Althusser’s take would suggest that they act in accordance with what is beneficial for what they perceive as their class.
This divide is fundamentally the dialogue with the modern left. You have those who think men are acting in the way they are, because they are driven to what benefits them. That in order to change men and boys, patriarchy must first be damaged enough. Others argue that the class of men and boys is as fictitious as the idealised class of women, and in order to address men and boys, and the problems modern society is facing in this regard, their perceptions are paramount.
Emotionally, this second view can be quite challenging. When one class holds a dominating power imbalance, and especially if you are someone who has suffered as a result of that imbalance, which most women have, listening to the concerns of that dominating group is deeply uncomfortable. And what’s more, listening to their concerns comes frighteningly close to listening to their ideology, which we have suffered at the hands of.
If it wasn’t obvious, I take the second view. And, though politics fanatics don’t like bringing other areas of study in, psychology and sociology back up this view. In fact, perceptions of self and how it relates to groups is a driving factor of beliefs about the world, and people are products of the world that surrounds them. In this way, the first group recognises that in a patriarchal system, the natural inclination of everyone is to adopt patriarchy as an ideology. But, it fails to recognise the fact that it is boys’ and mens’ perception of patriarchy, as it related to themselves and their own issues, that draws them to it.
Now, maybe you don’t believe in patriarchy. Many people struggle with the term, often because it is misused and misloaded most every time it is used. So clarity here is important. Patriarchy is not about men being better-off. Returning to Marx, even in the simple struggle of the bourgeois and the proletariat, the bourgeois were not actually better-off as a result of the stringent class system he was criticising.
Much the same, this is not about how patriarchy benefits men. It is about who has the power in society. As with all ideologies, it’s as much about the perceived reality and the prescriptions of who should have powers the reality. In fact, the reality is a tangential topic, because reality only informs ideology insofar as it is recognised.
Now, that might sound complicated, but let’s spell it out. The patriarchy that tells boys that it is appropriate to take sexual advantage of girls doesn’t necessarily advantage them, but it tells the boys that they are entitled to power. What’s more, it is okay to use that power for their own satisfaction, because they have a right to their power, and the power dynamic that gives it to them.
This is how patriarchy leads to sexual violence against women, and every sociological and psychological study on the matter reflects this. The predictor of sexual violence is not whether it benefits the men who do it, and it is not based on sexual attraction. It is based on a desire for power and the belief that they are entitled to it.
Note that none of this is about reality. What is true, and what isn’t, does not impact these mens’ behaviour. It is all about feelings.
But one thing is real. The concept. All paths lead to Rome. Or, in this case, all paths lead back to patriarchy. It exists because people believe in it. That is how ideologies work. That is how all social constructs work. Where conservatives fail is somehow thinking an ideology as pervasive as patriarchy, the simple idea that men should have more power than women, is not real, and doesn’t have consequences.
It does.
So when we think about online influencers like Andrew Tate, we need to think about why these young boys think he is speaking to them. What issues does patriarchy promise solutions for? By creating the class of men, and then suggesting that these boys need more power to solve their problems, they are being sold patriarchy.
We know Andrew Tate’s brand of masculinity harms women, but it harms men, too. The facts are, becoming a millionaire, cheating on loved ones and assuming they should be thankful for your attention, just doesn’t work. It does not solve the problems it promises to solve. Now it has gone so far that it suggests often irreversible vasectomies to young men, in the belief it will ensure their plans to become millionaires because they cannot become accidentally burdened with children.
That is just an awful idea.
So, returning to the dialogue, the group who believes they just need to smash patriarchy are not wrong. Presenting these boys with the truth that none of it works is a great step to take, because it does take a step to alter their perceptions, but it fails to identify the force that drove them to seek solutions in the first place. That their perceived solutions are wrong, but something about what they are feeling draws them to identify with the class of boys and men, and that they need solutions.
Because patriarchy, in and of itself, is an issue men face as a class. In fact, many issues that impact both men and women are separated only by the belief that patriarchy separates them. Take male loneliness and the fact that men are losing their virginity at an older and older age. For many boys, this biological drive, which is not entirely ideological, feels deeply isolating. But, studied bare out that whilst the average for women is unchanged, this is actually due to the rise in hypersexuality amongst girls of a young age, possibly as a result to the presence of social media, the rise in sexual abuse, and the rise in body dysmorphia.
The median age at which women lose their virginity is actually going up, like mens’. But because contemporary feminism is telling them there is nothing for them to be frustrated with, in some ways due to the belief that mens’ and womens’ issues are separate, they think it is an injustice being done to just them. This is rather than being a symptom of the information age and the rise in social media, which in many ways can be attributed to the current failings in contemporary capitalism.
So, if we take an Althusserien perspective, the solution to men like Andrew Tate and their undue, harmful influence on boys today, is empathy. That they seek out these toxic male role models because they don’t realise that women have dealt with most of the same things, just from the other side. And what remains are actually symptoms of patriarchy’s presence in our world.
Men are discriminated against in family court because women are the assumed caretakers. Men feel like they can’t talk about their feelings because that would expose weakness and threaten their social status, which would make them look feminine. Men struggle to maintain friendships with women because they were told they shouldn’t have them. See how each of these situations suck for women, too?
Men, women, non-binary people… Anyone can propagate patriarchy. Because it is not about men being better-off. If you think they are, if you think they aren’t — it is an interesting discussion to have. But it ultimately won’t lead us to solutions.
As feminists, who are meeting this old ideology taking a new form on social media, we need to recognise that fact. We need to show our men and boys empathy, and show them that feminism cares about them; It’s not a competition. It isn’t women’s rights at the expense of men’s.
We need to show them what feminism offers, and show them that men like Andrew Tate aren’t just bad role models for boys and men, but that boys and men can thrive if they can break free of the very concept that someone like Andrew Tate could ever have the solutions they’re looking for.
